William Branham and the nature of God: Difference between revisions

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 :''God was in Him. '''He was a man, but He was a—a dual Person. One, He was a man; the Spirit in Him was God.'''<ref>William Marrion Branham, 59-1129 - Let Us See God</ref>
-:''The Spirit left Him, in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had to die, a man. Remember, friends, He didn’t have to do that. That was God. God anointed that flesh, which was human flesh. And He didn’t…If He’d a went up there, as God, He’d have never died that kind of death; can’t kill God. But He didn’t have to do it.<ref>William Marrion Branham, 65-0418M - It Is The Rising Of The Sun, para. 241</ref>
+:'''''The Spirit left Him''', in the Garden of Gethsemane. '''He had to die, a man'''. Remember, friends, He didn’t have to do that. That was God. '''God anointed that flesh, which was human flesh'''. And '''He didn’t…If He’d a went up there, as God, He’d have never died that kind of death; can’t kill God.''' But He didn’t have to do it.<ref>William Marrion Branham, 65-0418M - It Is The Rising Of The Sun, para. 241</ref>
+These comments by William Branham are clearly heretical.  Jesus was no less God when he died on the cross than in any other point in his life.  Jesus was 1005 God and 100% man.
+The Nestorian heresy, from the 5th century, effectively holds Jesus as having two persons as well as two natures in Christ.  But if this were so, then when Christ sacrificed his life on the cross, it was not the person who is also divine, the Son of God, who died for us. In this case, the atoning sacrifice of Christ would have no divine value and could not be efficacious for our sins. Only if one and the same person, who is both God and man, dies on the cross for our sin can we be saved. For unless Jesus is both God and man he cannot reconcile God and man. But the Bible says clearly, “there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).
+Since Christ is one Who (person) with two Whats (natures), whenever one question is asked about him it must be separated into two questions, one applying to each nature. For example, did he get tired? Answer: as God, no; as man, yes. Did Christ get hungry? In his divine nature, no; in his human nature, yes. Did Christ die? In his human nature, he did die. But in his divine nature he did not die. The person who died was the God-man, but his Godness did not die.
+When this same logic is applied to other theological questions raised by Muslims it yields the same kind of answer. Did Jesus know everything? As God he did, since God is omniscient. But as man Jesus said he did not know the time of his second coming (Matt. 24:36), and as a child he didn’t know everything, since “he increased in wisdom” (Luke 2:52).
+Another often asked question is: Could Jesus sin? The answer is the same: as God he could not have sinned; as man he could have sinned (but he didn’t). God cannot sin. For example, the Bible says “it is impossible for God to lie” (Heb. 6:18; cf. Titus 1:2). Yet Jesus was “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). That is to say, while he never sinned (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 1:19; 1 John 3:3), he was really tempted and, therefore, it was possible for him to sin. Otherwise, his temptation would have been a charade. Jesus possessed the power of free choice, which means that whatever moral choice he made, he could have done otherwise. This means that when he chose not to sin (which was always), he could have sinned (but did not) as man.<ref>Norman L. Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 274–275.</ref>
 ==Branhamism and Swedenborgianism==