'Jesus is not God,' says the billboard
Like me, you may have recently seen that a group who believe the earth is flat is publicly proclaiming through billboards around the country that Jesus isn’t God. No, I’m not making this up. You can read the CP article on it here.
The organization is named World’s Last Chance, and their billboards say, “Jesus is not God. Scripture says Jesus did not pre-exist in Heaven.” Here’s what they claim on their website about Jesus:
“There is one mediator between Yahuwah and men, the man Christ Yahushua (1 Tim. 2:5) who is the first begotten, totally human, non-pre-existent, son of Yahuwah born of a virgin (Luke 1:26-35). He came to fulfill the promises and covenants of Yahuwah with mankind. He is not ‘God the Son’ of the false ‘trinity.’ He was made of the seed of Abraham and of David (Rom. 1:3).”
And here’s the flat earth part:
“At WLC, we honor and worship our Creator by acknowledging the world He created for us, and denouncing the counterfeit world created by the pseudo-scientists and the Roman Catholic Church (and her Jesuits). Scripture is abundantly clear: The Earth is flat (not spherical); The Earth is immovable. It does not rotate or orbit anything.”
Alrighty then. I’m going to take a wild guess that you’re not going to put a lot of stock in what this group believes, but push pause just for a moment.
It’s easy to say pish posh and brush these folks off, but what they believe about Jesus isn’t restricted to those afraid of stepping off the edge of the earth. A Lifeway Research article posted a few years ago revealed: “While 80% of Americans say Jesus is the Son of God the Father … More than half of Americans (55%) say Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, according to the 2022 State of Theology study.”
Bart Ehrman, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill, believes even less about Jesus and says so in a book he wrote some years ago entitled How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. In an interview he did with the Boston Globe about it, Ehrman said, “The problem is that Jesus only makes claims for himself as being divine in the Gospel of John ... What I argue in the book is that it’s virtually inconceivable that if it was known Jesus called himself God, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke would just leave that part out.”
It seems like a lot of people think Jesus isn’t God: from flat-earthers, to regular Joes on the street, to Princeton-educated scholars like Bart Ehrman. Why should we believe differently, and what does it matter if Jesus is God or not?
What the Bible says
From the beginning, orthodox Christianity has taught the exact opposite of what those like the WLC believe, with the Westminster Confession of Faith giving a good summary of the doctrine: “The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man's nature”.
This teaching does not contradict the Bible’s claim that a single God exists, which is called monotheism. The doctrine of Jesus being God does not mean that more than one God exists (polytheism) or that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity equates to there being three gods (tritheism) or that there is one God who represents Himself as one person in three different ways or modes (modalism).
Instead, Christianity teaches that there is one God that exists in triune fashion as three persons within one God, i.e., one “what,” but three “who’s”; a plurality of persons that are one in essence. To be sure, there’s inscrutability where the Trinity is concerned, which A. W. Tozer speaks to when he writes: “Our sincerest effort to grasp the incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity must remain forever futile, and only by deepest reverence can it be saved from actual presumption. We cover our deep ignorance with words, but we are ashamed to wonder, we are afraid to whisper ‘mystery’”.
When it comes to the Bible labeling Jesus as God, even a hardened skeptic like Ehrman admits that the Gospel of John is replete with statements making the claim. Just the seven primary I AM statements in John show how Jesus equated Himself with God, something that no orthodox Jew would ever do. As the old saying goes, when “even the enemy testifies to the truth,” like Ehrman, you know you’re on solid ground, and that’s the case with John.
But what about the other three biographies of Jesus? Is Ehrman right that they are bare when it comes to claiming Jesus is God?
Not at all.
In the synoptics you first see Jesus taking specific names/roles for God in the Old Testament and applying them to Himself such as the rock (Ps. 18:2; Matt. 7:24), the ruler of all (Is. 9:6; Matt. 28:18), the bridegroom (Is. 62:5; Matt. 25:1), the sower (Jer. 31:27; Matt. 13:3-9), the stone (Is. 8:14-15; Matt. 21:44), and the one whose word never passes away (Is. 40:8; Mark 13:31). No one else in Scripture dares to do that.
You also have one “I am” claim in Matthew that occurs during the calming of the storm, where the Greek of Matthew has Jesus literally saying “Take heart; it is I am” (vs. 14:27), which references God in Exodus 3:14 as well as John 8:58, where Jesus makes His most overt claim to be God. The result is the disciples worshipping Jesus after the storm is calm — something He allowed and was a no-no for any human being to do.
Next you see Jesus acting like God in that He demonstrates sovereignty over birth defects (Matt. 12:9-13; Mark 3:1-5), disease (Matt. 8:2, Luke 7:1, Mark 3:1), nature (Mark 4:35, Matt. 14:25), creation (Matt. 14:13-21; Luke 9:12-17), Satan/demons (Matt. 8:28, Luke 8:26, Mark 1:34), Jewish customs (Matt. 5:22; Luke 6:27), death (Mark 5:22, Luke 7:11), and saying He was the Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28) with his own authority. Never once does He say “Thus says the Lord” or call upon God to perform a miracle, but instead He acts solo in every case.
Finally, you see people treating Jesus as God or reacting to His God claims and actions such as his enemies asking during the healing of the paralytic, “who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7; Luke 5:21), John the Baptist saying he was preparing the way for “the Lord” (Matt. 3:3), and the wise men worshipping Christ (Matt. 2:2, 8, 11) along with the disciples (Matt. 28: 9, 17).
There’s more, but you get the idea. And let’s not even get started with the rest of the New Testament writers and their statements about Jesus’ divinity (see this brief presentation if you’re interested in a compilation). A slow reading of Hebrews 1 alone will leave your eyes wide-open about what other NT writers say about Jesus’ divinity.
The apostle Paul warned us long ago about those presenting “another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4). Whether it’s the WLC folks and their billboards or academics like Ehrman, the danger in following them is that a counterfeit Jesus can’t save you. On that point, Christ said simply, “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24).
Let’s hope one day the WLC’s and Ehrman’s of the world realize the truth about Jesus and avoid the awful warning He issued about error spreaders like them: “Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!” (Matt. 18:7).
Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master's in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.
