Demoting Christ Series

The Demotion of Christ

In Matthew 16, Jesus asked His disciples who people say that He is. Some claimed he

was a teacher, a prophet and a number of other possible theories. Then Jesus brought the

question home, "But who do you say that I am". This one question must be answered by

every man or woman who will ever walk the earth. How we answer this question

determines whether or not Jesus is our Savior or just another teacher we pass by. This

question is the foundational issue of Christianity. If we get this wrong, nothing else

matters.

Jesus is Jehovah

Satan will always attack the identity of Christ. If we miss the mark on who Jesus is,

everything else becomes mere religion. We recently completed a study on the doctrine of

the Trinity. One section was devoted to deity of Jesus. Even though Jesus veiled His

glory to become flesh and die for our sins, the Bible makes no mistake about it - He was

God in the flesh. There are pages of passages that testify to the fact that Jesus is God in

the flesh. Since I have already hashed this out in an earlier study, I will only use a few

reminder passages here. The Gospel of John in the first chapter tells us that the Word was

God, became flesh and dwelled among us. This agrees with Zechariah 2

10 " Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion! For behold, I am coming and I will

dwell in your midst," says the LORD.

11 "Many nations shall be joined to the LORD in that day, and they shall become

My people. And I will dwell in your midst. Then you will know that the LORD of

hosts has sent Me to you.

The word ’LORD’ is the Hebrew word YHWY or Jehovah. In this passage Jehovah is

declaring that His people should rejoice for He will dwell in their midst and they will

know that Jehovah has sent Him. Jehovah has sent Jehovah to dwell with His people.

John 1 uses similar wording:

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the

glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:10 tells us that the world was created through Him but did not know Him.

Colossians 1:16 states, "For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are

on earth". This agrees with Isaiah 45:

18 For thus says the LORD, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed

the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who

formed it to be inhabited: "I am the LORD, and there is no other.

Three times in Isaiah God calls Himself the ’First and the Last’. In Revelation, Jesus calls

Himself the ’First and the Last’. There are many more examples of how the Bible

identifies Jehovah (God) and Jesus Christ as being the same. In spite of this, Joseph Good

of the United Pentecostal Church states:

Yeshua [Jesus] we do not see as being God when walk here on earth. We see him

as a man. A man anointed by God and sent by God. In his resurrection, he is not

God - we do not see him as God. He was a man anointed by God and restored by

God. There is nothing he or his disciples said that would cause one to believe that

he was deity."

I think the key phrase in this statement is, ’we do not see’. I would like to point out that

there is a big difference between the United Pentecostal Church (UPC) and other

Pentecostal denominations. The UPC openly denies the deity of Christ and has many

teachings contrary to the Bible. The reason I am using Joseph Good as an example is

because he was affiliated with the Word Faith movement but has since moved to the

’Christian’ satellite broadcasting company called ’Prime Time Christian Broadcasting’.

As we will see, the Jesus of the Word-Faith movement is not any more divine than you

and I are. The majority of Word-Faith teachers divide into two main views concerning

Jesus - He is a mere man or He is divine and so are we.

No Right?

Even with the departure of Joseph Good, the Word Faith doctrine openly demotes Jesus

Christ. Here is an example:

Here is where we are going to depart from ordinary church (i.e. Historic

Christianity). God is injecting His word into the earth to produce this Jesus. This

faith filled words that framed the image that’s in Him. He couldn’t just walk on to

the earth and say, ’Let it be’ because He doesn’t have the right. He had to sneak it