Who is He?
But he said to me, “Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and of those who heed the words of this book. Worship God.” Revelation 22:9 NASB
Do not do that – A strange change in capitalization occurs in the NASB of Revelation 22. The conversation recorded in this text begins in Revelation 21:6. John sees the new heaven and the new earth (21:1) and then hears the one who sits on the throne saying, “Behold, I am making all things new.” The NASB capitalizes this pronoun (“He”) because it clearly refers to a divine being. If there were any doubt, the next verse clarifies the choice. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says this person. Divine? Yes, for sure.
But now follow the conversation. Verse nine says that one of the seven angels carries John away, showing John the city gates, the walls and the foundation stones. Then chapter 22 begins with this angel showing John the river of life. Verse 3 tells us that the Lamb sits on the throne of God. His (the Lamb’s) name shall be on the foreheads of the ones who serve Him. Then notice the pronouns beginning in verse five. The first reference is to the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets. Verse seven reports the statement of the Lord, “I am coming quickly.” In verse nine, John attempts to worship the one who is revealing this vision to him. But the angel refuses. “Do not do that!” Why? Because this messenger says that he is also a “fellow-servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets.” He then gives the very clear instruction, “Worship God.”
Without any break in the conversation, suddenly we hear the words, “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (verse 13). But who is speaking? Verse ten is clearly the conversation of the same person who instructed John not to worship him. Verse eleven is from the mouth of the same speaker. But verse twelve repeats the statement of 21:6, indicating that it must be in the mouth of the one who sits on the throne. The speaker continues (is it the same speaker?) in verse 16, identifying himself as Yeshua. But when did Yeshua begin to speak and the angel stop speaking? Are we to simply assume, without any textual information, that the conversation that began with the angel is suddenly curtailed and we are now hearing the voice of the Lamb? Without punctuation, how would we know? Remember that all the capitalization, all the quotation marks, all the periods are added to the text according to the translator’s interpretation and theology.
Suppose, just for a minute, that the instruction, “Worship God,” is in fact uttered by an angel and not by the same speaker in verses 12 to 20. Why would the angel insist on the worship of God, not of the Lamb who sits on the throne of God? There’s no doubt about what the angel says, even without punctuation. Theo proskyneson. “Worship God.” But if the very next person introduced is Yeshua, then why doesn’t the angel say, “Worship the Lamb,” or “Worship the one whose name is on your forehead, “ or “Worship Yeshua (“Jesus”)”?
Ah, you will say, “Well, that’s because Yeshua is God. So ‘Worship God’ means ‘Worship Yeshua.’” But this requires a Trinitarian doctrine, something that doesn’t seem to be very obvious in John’s writing. In fact, one wonders how the instruction of the angel could have even been interpreted as “Worship the Messiah” by any of John’s first century orthodox readers.
But who knows? Maybe the Spirit whispered in the ear of the translator when he added the quotation marks and the capitals.
Topical Index: worship, Lamb, God, proskyneson, Revelation 22:9
I am so thankful we worship and walk with Father, who indeed walks with us. The reason i live is to worship him in trust and obedience. Since he is here with us at all times, we can lay down our belief’s and images we have created him in and sit with him as his children and learn together. The point of scripture is not that i understand it, but that i am transformed into the image he is making me into.
My husband has been saying the same thing about these verses for some time. Thanks for the “second witness”.
Biblegateway comes up with these non-Tanakh verses for “worship him” in the NIV: Mat 2:11, Mat 14:33, Mat 28:9, Mat 28:17, Luke 24:52, John 9:38, and 2 Thes 2:4 (which is about the anti-Messiah). Now Yeshua quotes the Tanakh to resist ha satan in Mat 4:10 (Luke 4:8) but the English is unclear–does only grammatically modify both verbs in the conjunction or only the second and not the first? Searching on “worship only” provides no help. It is clear, however, that Yeshua did not rebuke anyone for worshiping Him.
David: You have mentioned the following verses as proof that Jesus accepted “worship”. I would like to make a few observations about these verses. First, it is noteworthy that Darby’s translation of the Scriptures (one of the best and most accurate I have found) translates every one of these “worship” situations as “did him homage”. Homage according to the dictionary is “paying respect or reverence”. Synonyms are “deference’ and “honor”. Thus it is certainly possible that the gospel writers intended exactly this…respect and honor… not worship which only accrues to God Himself.
Let us now look at the context for each verse quoted.
Matthew 2:11 involves the Magi “worshiping”. Note in Matt 2:2 they indicate to Herod they have come to “worship” the new king. Surely this would have raised more than an eyebrow among the Jews who heard these words.. .but then again the Magi were gentiles so maybe they would have concluded that worship of a baby was appropriate. Ooops now we have Herod himself using the same terminology in Matt 2:8. He wants to also go and “worship” the new king. Is this conceivable? Hardly! Homage likely but not “worship”. The Jews would never countenance worship of a baby, no matter how promising a future he might have…even being the Messiah.
Matthew 14:33 recounts the reaction of the disciples in the boat. The verse informs us they “worshiped Him, saying You are certainly the Son of God”. If the writer had simply stopped after saying they “worshiped Him” it would seem to indicate more than simple homage. But they don’t! They “worship” by saying he is the Son of God. This terminology is NEVER used in the Scriptures for deity. Rather it always refers to human kings, or angels, or Messiah. So it is impossible to worship by way of attribution of such status in this case.
Matthew 28:17 tells us the disciples saw Him and they “worshiped Him” Ooops again… there is no “He/Him” in the Greek. It has been added in and shows in my NAS in italics. My Bible Soft interlinear shows number 9999 in brackets to show the “he” is not in original manuscripts. So exactly Whom were the disciples “worshiping”? Were they worshiping God for this marvelous event? Likely. Or perhaps as Darby informs us they were “paying homage” to Yeshua.
Luke 24:52 context involves reaction of disciples after Yeshua has already parted from them. So it is hard to argue that He (Yeshua) was accepting their worship.
John 9:38 involves the reaction of the blind man “Lord I believe…and he worshiped Him.” Yet verse 40 informs us that the Pharisees were present and they say… Nothing about this worship of a man! Rather they inquire of Jesus/Yeshua “we are not blind too are we?” Why would they not challenge the worship of a man going on in front of their eyes? Or more likely the healed man was paying homage/respect to the one who had just healed him.
That leaves us with Matthew 28:9. The women after the resurrection come up to Jesus, hold His feet and “worship” Him. Jesus tells them “Do not be afraid!” Is it possible that they were involved in worship? Maybe but unlikely. More probable is fear/respect/reverence.
In my studies of the new Testament I cannot find any unambiguous reference to Jesus/Yeshua being worshiped. Now it probably does not matter much what I think. However I would suggest that it does matter what first century Jews (not Greeks) thought about worship of anyone other than God. Two thousand years after the fact and multiple centuries of Trinitarian doctrine being imposed (at penalty of death I might add) it seems so easy to believe that worship flowed to Jesus as being God on numerous occasions …yet this is simply not the case.
A few things to “chew upon”!
Thanks, I had the same question about those verses. Strange how it can feel like rejecting Jesus in some way to think like this. It’s like ‘downgrading’ his role, nature, ect – however, it may actually be more in-line following in his/His? footsteps. I will be chewing on this for a while.
Re 5:12 Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.
proskyneson seems to be missing. :/
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE?
“He who has seen Me has seen the Father;
so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father,
and the Father in Me? The words that I speak
to you I do not speak on My own authority; but
the Father who dwells in Me does the works.”
Jn 14: 9-10
You always give us much to chew on. If the Hebrew uses the same verb, then the distinction between worship of God and paying hommage to a non-God is determined solely from the direct object, not the activity. No one could judge the activity itself. The observers would not be inclined to judge worship was going on because they would perceive nothing indicating anything other than homage. Or are you saying acceptable worship of God consisted of a non-congruent set of activities vis-à-vis those employed to pay homage to a non-God and thus worship of a non-God would be obvious?
David: What I am saying is that there is no evidence that Yeshua was worshiped as God. The use of the word “worship” is not required in any of these verses. As I mentioned Darby, no slouch of a scholar himself translated every occurrence you mentioned as “paid homage”. What I was trying to outline was that in most of the cases in the list “worship” would not have been likely at all. Example: the disciples in the boat. In a Hebrew context (very important to understanding what the original author intended) there is no case of a man being worshiped, only God Himself. So the burden of proof requires more than simply using a Greek word that has multiple meanings. None of these verses indicate they worshiped Yeshua as God. They do not say that directly or indirectly in my opinion. Of course if you start with the assumption that Jesus/Yeshua is in fact God there is a different problem. Why don’t the authors simply say that? Why don’t the disciples in the boat “worship” him because He is God, not simply the Son of God, a non-divine title for Messiah? Why does John at the end of his gospel not inform us that he has shared these things with us to prove Yeshua is God and not simply prove He is Messiah? I have written elsewhere that Greeks have no problem with God showing up in human form (Zeus etc) but the Jews have a huge problem with this. There are at least four verses I can think of in Tanach that all say God is not a man… Why do the disciples writing their gospels not disavow us of that obviously obsolete truth if Yeshua is in fact God. Why do they stress that he is Messiah. Surely being God outranks being Messiah.
I appreciate your insight that “worship” is something that would be difficult to observe as distinct from “paying homage” (i.e. the individual is unlikely to say “I am worshiping”) That is when associated comments become important… like the disciples in the boat. What else have they declared in addition to their imputed “worship” that would confirm that they thought Jesus was in fact God… I don’t think there is any…because I have come to the conclusion that the disciples did not believe Yeshua was God. Rather they believed He was Messiah, the One sent from God to be Savior of the World. I know this sounds strange, even heretical to modern ears…..
Your observations have been very helpful to my wife and I. Thank you for all the work you did examining these verses. We share your view of Yeshua as the Son of God, the Messiah. It makes perfect sense to us.
Because we are commanded not to worship even the true God with the image of anything in the air, sea or land it was curious to me before I became a non-Trinitarian that Y’shua would be presented as a “lamb” in the New Testament book that show him in the state in which he is going to rule and reign. I did a word study on the Greek word for lamb used in the gospel of John and although it is the word for a sheep it also comes from a word that can just mean male. This derivation would then give a different meaning to “behold the Man of God who takes away the sins of the world”. We would be looking at the Suffering Servant messiah in this passage. I have no linguistic skills beyond looking into a lexicon so I was wondering if Skip had done any work on this.
Obvious contextual misunderstanding.
“I, Jesus, have sent My angel to attest these things to you[g] for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright Morning Star.” verse 16, chapter 22
Jesus is God.
Your insistence that Jesus is God is based on the theology, not the text. The text is just as understandable if Yeshua is the designated agent of YHVH with regard to the judgment of the world, the entry of the Messianic Kingdom, the vehicle of creation and the atonement for sin and the victory over death. He is divine, but divine does not mean YHVH since the word is applied to even human kings in Scripture. He is the offspring of David, etc., but none of this REQUIRES He be co-equal with the Father nor does it REQUIRE that He share the same essence (as Trinitarians believe). Appointment to task, recognition of role, honor and glory, uniqueness among men, etc. does not mean “exactly the same as YHVH.”
Back to you.
Skip (or anyone else, too) – I can immediately think of 4 verses elsewhere that say Jesus is God.
John 1:1
Hebrews 1:3
John 14:9
Philippians 2:6
I’m not talking about proving a Trinitarian doctrine that was authorized by a council long ago. I’m clarifying that Jesus is God just as God the Father is a separate person who Jesus talked to and like the God the Holy Spirit is the same one who hovered over the deep before the creation and the same one who exalts Christ Jesus. Not schizo, but just like I’m made:
I am me made in God’s image –
My essence (God the Father)
I speak words (God the Son)
I have tone and spirit behind who I am and what I say (God the Holy Spirit)
I appreciate your comments and clarification. But we must carefully distinguish between FUNCTION and ONTOLOGICAL ESSENCE. Your example plays on the confusion of these terms, but the creed is quite clear. Homoousios (see http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/270595/homoousios) does not say that one manifestation of God plays the role of Son and another the role of the Spirit. It says that the three are equal in essence (a Greek philosophical term). This is the issue. It is not about the Son being the Son, the atonement, the Messiah, the King of the olam ha’ba or all that. It is about whether or not the Son is co-equal with the Father, not as two equal but separate beings but as the SAME being.
Now, since the vocabulary of the Scriptures is quite loose with words like “divine” and “gods,” we must determine the meanings of these verses from the culture, not our definitions. What did it mean for a Jew to “worship” Yeshua as “god” (my deliberate lack of capitalization since the Greek has no such thing). Did it mean that Thomas thought of Yeshua as YHWH, or did Thomas use the word as Yeshua himself used the word when citing the Psalm? Can we imagine that Thomas thought Yeshua was actually YHWH? A god in flesh and blood. A god who died. A god who slept, ate, relieved himself. Does Thomas think this about YHWH? Or does Thomas think of Yeshua in some other capacity that causes him to blurt out the statement? What does the context teach us?
Just asking.
John 1:1 is a problem, I admit. But then I need to ask what was John intended to accomplish with the Genesis-based model? And does it diminish the divinity of the Son to say that while he is not YHVH, he is the agent through which all creation was brought into being (I think about Plotinus when I say such a thing).
Hopefully, you are saying Jesus (before he was born) was the same being as God the Father – one God. Otherwise, I completely don’t get that.
On John 1:1, A.T. Robertson said, “Was (ειμι — ēn). Three times in this sentence John uses this imperfect of εγενετο — eimi to be which conveys no idea of origin for God or for the Logos, simply continuous existence. Quite a different verb (γενεσται — egeneto became) appears in John 1:14 for the beginning of the Incarnation of the Logos. See the distinction sharply drawn in John 8:58 “before Abraham came (ειμι — genesthai) I am” (ο λογος — eimi timeless existence).”
Like I said, I see this is a little mysterious. But, Jesus was obviously there with God the Father before birth and maybe it’s like my illustration of the Word (my word) and God the Father (my essence). Inseparable, but not three Gods just like I don’t separate my words from who I am (can’t according to Jesus, anyway). Never thought about it this much and want to be careful, since there’s a lot of stuff floating about that is disingenuous. I signed up to study with you because I saw just the opposite in you. 🙂
Thanks for your time, by the way.
Couple of things. First, even though Robinson suggests “timeless” existence, the combination is actually an oxymoron (at best) and a self-contradiction (at worst). It employs a Greek spatialization fallacy (see my extensive argument and historical analysis in God, Time and the Limits of Omniscience. So, let’s put that aside as a mistake on Robinson’s part because he is influenced by the Hellenism found in Christian theology. What do the texts really tell us? First, they suggest that God the Father and the Son are temporally eternal, but this is no different than Proverbs personalization of Wisdom (and common to the way rabbis thought about God and His characteristics). Secondly, there is no difficulty here with the idea that the Son was manifested in flesh and blood at some temporal point (you might ask how an ex-temporal “timeless” God could even actually be manifested in a temporal frame). This is incarnation, and presents no difficulty since there are prior examples of the same phenomenon in the Tanakh. The question is not “What about the incarnation?” The question is “Does John think of the Son as IDENTICAL with the Father in being?”, which unfortunately is a very Greek kind of question put to a very Jewish kind of writer.
So, now we have to ask what all this would mean to an audience of Jews, not Gentile Hellenists? What would they think of the idea of an eternal Son? Would they have any more difficulty with this idea than they had with an eternal “Wisdom”?
Skip,
In the context of this discussion, how did the audience of Jews
understand Isaiah 9: 6-7? How did they respond to the promised Son
having the name Mighty God?
This is so difficult, because the name is not “mighty God.” the name is the whole phrase. I think Rodney wrote about this in the past and I know I did. And the other problem is the the reference in Isaiah has a locus in the time of Isaiah as well as Messianic seen in hindsight AND the rabbis sometimes interpreted the passage as applying to Israel as the Son, which the Tanakh also supports.
Once again, the issue is not the text. It is the paradigm that interprets the text. Oh, what a mess!
Thanks Rich…isn’t this better interpreted “Heroic God”?
Okay Skip, I’m beginning to understand your study methods a tad better. The Eternal God becomes flesh does makes sense only if I try (my illustration above helps me more) and this is from Mr. Robertson on Philippians 2:6 –
“Being (uparcwn). Rather, “existing,” present active participle of uparcw. In the form of God (en morph qeou). Morph means the essential attributes as shown in the form. In his preincarnate state Christ possessed the attributes of God and so appeared to those in heaven who saw him. Here is a clear statement by Paul of the deity of Christ. A prize (arpagmon). Predicate accusative with hghsato. Originally words in -mo signified the act, not the result (-ma). The few examples of arpagmo (Plutarch, etc.) allow it to be understood as equivalent to arpagma, like baptismo and baptisma. That is to say Paul means a prize to be held on to rather than something to be won (“robbery”). To be on an equality with God (to einai isa qeoi). Accusative articular infinitive object of hghsato, “the being equal with God” (associative instrumental case qewi after isa).”
The real key to all this, in my opinion (from studying) is that the message of the apostles was that Jesus was the Sent One, the Messiah, the Anointed One who should make bring all things back to normal. Neither Jesus nor the apostles made this grasp of his Deity a condition for first meeting Jesus as our savior. As a matter of fact, John in 1 John clearly says that believing he is the Son of God is how we are saved…that we believe Jesus came from God and so we receive him as Jesus prayed in John 17 “for those who believe on me through their message…” I’m pretty sure the thief on the cross, the epitome of all doctrine in action, didn’t need a theological lesson to simply know Jesus was sent from God and he needed Jesus.
My point? That this is fascinating, but I’m certain understanding it well is a lot of fun for we who already believe. I do not see it as a point of introduction to Jesus Christ. Anyway, how many of us met him in our need and still do? We run to his word like shelter from the hurricane of terror to protect us from further bruises by the evil one. I’m so comforted to know that’s God and terrified lately I don’t really believe God is truly so good.