We continue with our comparisons of the Seventh Day Adventist beliefs and the Bible Students.

Seventh Day Adventist say: The church derives its authority from Christ, who is the incarnate Word revealed in the Scriptures.

Is Jesus “Divine”?

Most certainly, that is to say ever since his resurrection when he was highly exalted to the divine plane of existence by the Father, viz.

Since his death and resurrection and subsequent glorification he (Jesus) is “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone (with the exception of the Father) has immortality (the Divine Nature), dwelling in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.” (1 Tim 6 15, 16)

“For as the Father hath life in himself (life inherent; immortality); SO HATH HE GIVEN to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26)

This shows that our Lord was NOT immortal, NOT divine until after he was highly exalted. And that it was something that was given to him, not something he already possessed.

There is however no specific scripture which uses the word “divine” (Greek theios) for Jesus. The word appears three times; Acts 17:29, 2 Pet 1:3, 4. The first two refer to God, the third says the church becomes “partakers of the divine nature.” In the latter sense, however defined, Jesus would have to be included.

Getting back to our subject, Incarnation means an assuming of a human body. It would mean that our Lord in His pre-human existence assumed flesh–materialized, just as He and two angels did back in the days of Abraham. (Gen. 18:1, 2) The three were incarnated. They were still spirit beings, but appeared to Abraham as men, and ate and talked with him.

But this was not true with our Lord Jesus at His First Advent. He who was rich and became poor for man’s sake–not that He merely pretended to be poor; not that He acted as if He were poor and so assumed an inferior body for a while. On the contrary He “was MADE flesh“–NOT assumed flesh.

Do you perceive the difference?

He was “the Man Christ Jesus,” NOT “appeared to be the Man Christ Jesus.” He left the glory which He had with the Father before the world was; He laid it aside; He divested Himself of that glorious condition on the spirit plane, and exchanged His life on the spirit plane for a human nature, in order to be a corresponding-price for the man who sinned–Adam.

The Bible explains that it was a perfect man that sinned. Therefore, whoever would ransom him must himself also be a perfect man–a corresponding-price. No matter how great the angel, no matter how glorious the Logos, NO ONE ON A HIGHER PLANE OF BEING WOULD DO. Nor would anything below the human plane do. The finest bullock in the entire world could not be a real sin-offering or actually takeaway sin. God’s law of justice is very exacting in this matter, a life for a life, the exact same life for the exact same life.

Nothing higher or lower than perfect humanity would atone for the sinner, nor could a dual nature being composed of both a spirit nature and a human nature satisfy. A perfect man had sinned. Only a perfect man could redeem the sinner. —Psa. 40:6-8; Heb. 10:1-10.

Let us ponder this for a moment and see how our Trinity friends’ try to explain these facts:

According to the doctrine of the trinity our Lord although incarnated in a fleshly body was still nevertheless the same divine being (an immortal being and thus death proof), that he always was, if so, how then we ask could he have died on the cross?

The answer according to our Catholic friends:

“By the virtue of his incarnation Christ possesses two sources of operation divine and human. By having a divine nature Christ can perform actions belonging to God and through his human nature Christ can perform actions belonging to the human nature. These actions whether it be divine or human are all performed by the person of Christ; thus, we can say that God was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary and God died on the cross.”

A bit more nonsense from our Catholic friends:

“Death is “separation.” It is the separation of the body from the soul. The soul goes to heaven or hell and the body is buried in the ground. Death does not mean annihilation, it means separation. When you die, you cease from your earthly existence, but you are still alive in your soul.

Jesus had two natures (human and divine) but he was only one “person.” He is a divine person (not a human person). He is God who has taken on human nature and therefore he is God and a man.

Just like you, when this divine person of Jesus died on the cross it was a real death. But he was not annihilated or altogether dead. His body was buried in the tomb but he was soul and person was alive just like you will be alive in your soul when you die.”

These statements stand in direct contradiction to the Scriptures and are false, erroneous and misleading.

1) Death is “separation.” It is the separation of the body from the soul.

Wrong, death is not a separation of body from soul. Man does not have a soul. Man IS a soul. The scriptures are very adamant as to what a soul consist of. It is the combination of body (organism) and the breath of life, together these two make a living soul, remove either one and the soul ceases to be.

2) Death does not mean annihilation, it means separation.

It’s true that presently death is not annihilation, but said to be a “sleep”, but it will eventually terminate in annihilation for those going into second death.

3) When you die, you cease from your earthly existence, but you are still alive in your soul.

Wrong, when you die you cease to be, the breath of life is removed. To say you are still alive in any fashion or form is to concede to Satan’s lie, “Thou shall surely not die”.

We will respond to items 4 and 5 in our next post.