How Did I Get Into This Argument?
As a child I was made to attend local church on a Sunday until I was fourteen years old, at which point I chose not to. My attention was poor, I learned very little, I cannot remember one sermon, and I saw it as a waste of time. At our village junior school we would have a nativity play at Christmas and we memorized the first four books of the NT. During my youth and early adult life my friends and I did not discuss God from one years end to the next, Christianity was seen by me as a crutch for the old and infirm. My stand during those times and into my thirties was that I was an atheist, however it was in my late twenties that I started to question my thinking. By the time I was forty years old I had come to the conclusion that there was more to life than a universe without a creator and something, or someone, that looked over me from afar. I started attending Church in 2000 and became a baptized disciple in the Los Angeles Church of Christ.
I read my bible daily from that time onwards and devoted myself to my Christian way of life. I had read odd scriptures that didn't make sense to me regarding who Jesus was but because there was so many other focuses for me, it didn't concern me. I thought that these scriptures along with many others on many other topics would make more sense to me as time went on.
In the year 2006, after six years of reading my bible I heard a minister say that God came to the earth as a man which I considered to be ludicrous and something that I totally disagreed with. I brought this subject up with my wife on the way home and to my amazement we realized that she also agreed with him. After trying to prove to her, unsuccessfully, that Jesus was not God I started to study in great detail to prove to us both that I was correct. At that time it was just a discussion between her and I. However over the last nine years I have discussed and studied this topic with several people from our Church and amazingly most of them also believed Jesus was God. A few have since changed their minds, others have not.
I discovered over time that this topic has been dividing the Church since the late third century. I also discovered that the founders of the Churches of Christ in the USA in the mid 1800s both had the same viewpoint as myself, they were Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. It was their intention, among many things, to get away from the Trinitarian teachings of the time and teach that Jesus was in fact a created heavenly being.
Somewhere since the mid 1800s this viewpoint in our Church has changed to where most, if not all, leaders believe Jesus is God and many of them profess to be Trinitarians.
It was never my intention to be so involved in such a historic Church argument, I had hoped to work for Hope Worldwide or something similar. I am often saddened that I have to be arguing with friends and leaders to whom I would rather offer support and encouragement. However here I am, in a place where it is my belief that they are mislead and incorrect in their thinking and it is my Godly responsibility to reveal and help correct this misinterpretation.
David Griffith
Ephesians 4:11-13 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
1 Corinthians 13:2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love I am nothing.
I read my bible daily from that time onwards and devoted myself to my Christian way of life. I had read odd scriptures that didn't make sense to me regarding who Jesus was but because there was so many other focuses for me, it didn't concern me. I thought that these scriptures along with many others on many other topics would make more sense to me as time went on.
In the year 2006, after six years of reading my bible I heard a minister say that God came to the earth as a man which I considered to be ludicrous and something that I totally disagreed with. I brought this subject up with my wife on the way home and to my amazement we realized that she also agreed with him. After trying to prove to her, unsuccessfully, that Jesus was not God I started to study in great detail to prove to us both that I was correct. At that time it was just a discussion between her and I. However over the last nine years I have discussed and studied this topic with several people from our Church and amazingly most of them also believed Jesus was God. A few have since changed their minds, others have not.
I discovered over time that this topic has been dividing the Church since the late third century. I also discovered that the founders of the Churches of Christ in the USA in the mid 1800s both had the same viewpoint as myself, they were Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. It was their intention, among many things, to get away from the Trinitarian teachings of the time and teach that Jesus was in fact a created heavenly being.
Somewhere since the mid 1800s this viewpoint in our Church has changed to where most, if not all, leaders believe Jesus is God and many of them profess to be Trinitarians.
It was never my intention to be so involved in such a historic Church argument, I had hoped to work for Hope Worldwide or something similar. I am often saddened that I have to be arguing with friends and leaders to whom I would rather offer support and encouragement. However here I am, in a place where it is my belief that they are mislead and incorrect in their thinking and it is my Godly responsibility to reveal and help correct this misinterpretation.
David Griffith
Ephesians 4:11-13 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
1 Corinthians 13:2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love I am nothing.
