Bridge of Reason

  I love having the use of a thesaurus when writing in Microsoft Word. I find the suggestions it offers extremely helpful, and I get to use some words that would not normally be in my vocabulary. One such word offered by my helpful thesaurus recently was ‘exacerbate’ which means to ‘make worse’. My wife says I am a natural when it comes to making things worse. I don’t set out to make things worse or ‘exacerbate’ (my new favourite word) the problem, but sometimes in trying to clarify something, we can find ourselves making something less clear. I came across an example of this as I read about what Mormons teach concerning Jesus’ famous words at John 3:3. Speaking to the Jewish religious leader Nicodemus, Jesus said to him: Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. The article began by saying that Jesus’ words have become a ‘matter of debate and controversy amongst Christian believers.’ It ...

Jehovah's Witnesses are known for their Unitarian doctrine of God. Utterly rejecting the Trinity doctrine of the Christian Church, they insist: 'Many Christian denominations teach that God is a Trinity. However, note what the Encyclopædia Britannica states: “Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament. . .The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies.” In fact, the God of the Bible is never described as being part of a Trinity.' We begin with a point I never tire of making, and that I made in my last post . I think of the generations of theologians, teachers, and leaders who have studied such things in great depth. Does the Watch Tower Society, which discourages further and higher education in favour of door-knocking, think it knows better? This no more true than when it comes to the nature of God. Do Jehovah’s Witnesses think the answer to this question is there to be had by anyone who cr...

  ‘ A   rose   by   any   other   name   would   smell   as   sweet ’ is a famous line from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This is one of many phrases taken from his plays that are employed in modern parlance. This particular line is used to indicate that things are what they are, no matter what name you give them. What’s in a name? Three years ago this month, Russell M. Nelson, president of the Mormon church , made an announcement to the Faithful. He said the ‘ " Lord has impressed upon my mind the importance of the name he has revealed for his church." That name, he said, was given by God to the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1838. “For thus shall my church be called in the last days, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” [1] Thus, after years of being known as Mormons, using the name Mormon for their websites, and releasing documentaries like ‘Meet the Mormons’, the name was now to be abandoned. When I h...

  In our last Watchtower Wednesday on the Facebook page we looked at the Watch Tower teaching on the Holy Spirit. The article we linked to on their website had the title What is the Holy Spirit? The Watch Tower Society deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Christian Trinity. They write: 'By referring to God’s spirit as his “hands,” “fingers,” or “breath,” the Bible shows that the holy spirit is not a person. (Exodus 15:8, 10) A craftsman’s hands cannot function independent of his mind and body; likewise, God’s holy spirit operates only as he directs it. (Luke 11:13) The Bible also compares God’s spirit to water and associates it with such things as faith and knowledge. These comparisons all point to the impersonal nature of the holy spirit—Isaiah 44:3; Acts 6:5; 2 Corinthians 6:6.' They also say, 'The Bible gives the names of Jehovah God and of his Son, Jesus Christ; yet, nowhere does it name the holy spirit. (Isaiah 42:8; Luke 1:31)' ...

  THE ONLY GOD ‘Thus all men who ascend to the glorious status of Godhood can do so only by one method – by obedience to all the principles and ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ… No prophet of record gave more complete and forceful explanations of the doctrine that men can become Gods than did the America Prophet, and, furthermore, he definitely pointed the course which men must follow.’ [1] In part 1 we saw that Mormons believe God was once a man who, through following laws and principles, achieved Godhood. This God, Heavenly Father so called by the Mormons, is the God of this planet but, according to Mormonism, there are countless other Gods and planets out-there. Thus, the desire and hope for Mormon men is that they too may be found worthy and attain Godhood. ‘…the Spirit of God fell upon me to a marked extent, and the Lord revealed to me, just as plainly as the sun at noon-day, this principle, which I put in a couplet: ‘As man now is, God once was; As God now is, m...