The title of a six page article from a sincere and determined Jehovah’s Witness is: "Why Jesus of the Christian Greek Scriptures is not Almighty God." On the contrary, the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures and "the Christian Greek Scriptures," as translated by the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ scholars (NEW WORLD TRANSLATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES), show that the preaching done by John the Baptist about "Jehovah," who is "God Almighty," was the "beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ":

The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ: Just as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: "(Look! I am sending forth my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way;) listen! Someone is crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of Jehovah, you people, make his roads straight’" (Mark 1:1-3; also, Matthew 3:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23).

Thus the "Jehovah" predicted by "Isaiah the prophet," and proclaimed by his "messenger," John the Baptist (Matthew 3:11), was none other than "Jesus Christ" (Mark 1:1). But how could Jehovah, whom "no man" can see "and live" (Exodus 33:20), be Jesus in visible "flesh" (John 1:14)? Is there more than one Jehovah? Impossible, for "Jehovah our God is one Jehovah" and "there is no other" (Deuteronomy 6:4; 4:35, 39; Mark 12:28-34). How can one be three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

In human reckoning, one cannot be three. We can understand in marriage that two can and should become one, and we can understand how one humanity can be billions of individuals. But how can one deity be three persons? "Can you by searching discover God? Can you find out the Almighty to perfection? (Job 11:7-8). Indeed, "great is the mystery of godliness" (1 Timothy 3:16).

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! (Romans 11:33).

Yet God expects us to know him, and heaven depends on our doing so. "This is eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3). A God of love does not require the impossible, and "his commandments are not grievous" (1 John 5:3). The wayfaring man, though simple, can come to a saving knowledge of God (Isaiah 35:8). "Be not foolish, but understand what is the Lord’s will" (Ephesians 5:17).

According to Richard Trench, SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, p.7, the only New Testament word expressing deity in the absolute is theotes (Colossians 2:9). It is translated "Godhead" (KJV, ASV), "Deity" (NASV, NIV), "deity" (NRSV), and mistranslated "divine quality" (NWT). Jesus has "divine quality" (theiotes, Romans 1:20), yes, and more: "In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead (theotes bodily" (Colossians 2:9).

Though the biblical Godhead is one (‘ehad, Deuteronomy 6:4; heis, 1 Corinthians 8:6), yet he is a triune being, a trinity. The second verse of the Bible mentions, in the creative work, the Spirit of God, and God was speaking to Jesus when he said, "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26; John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). Clearly, then, the Godhead is a three-fold being. How three can be one and one can be three are now unrevealed matters (Deuteronomy 29:29), but the biblical fact is indisputable.

Three unsurrenderable items of faith are "one Spirit, ... one Lord, ... [and] one God and Father of all" (Ephesians 4:4-6). Jesus was not "the Everlasting Father," a mistranslation of Isaiah 9:6, but he is the "Father of Eternity," reflecting his timelessness (cf. Micah 5:2).

As there is one being in the Godhead called the "Father," so one is called the "Son," but literalness calls for a mother. The words "Father" and "Son" were never meant to be literal. In one sense, all human beings are sons of God (cf. Luke 3:38), and angels are sons of God (Psalm 29:1; Job 1:6), but there is a sense in which Jesus is a special Son of God (Psalm 2:7; John 1:18), that is, the only one of his kind, a sui generis, a unique one.

Physically Jesus was begotten by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35), but as the second member of the Godhead he was never begotten. A begotten son can never be as old as his father. If Jesus were begotten he could not be "the first" (Revelation 1:17). He was not the beginning of God’s creation, but he was the beginner (arche of it (Revelation 3:14), "and without him nothing was created" (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). Nothing preceded him, for he is timeless (Micah 5:2; Revelation 1:17).

Therefore only in a figurative sense Jesus is called "the Son of God. "The thrilling prediction of an excited Father, "this day I have begotten you" (Psalm 2:7), had no reference to the Bethlehem birth. It is a figurative expression, comparable to the happy announcement of a birth in any home, but the heavenly Father was speaking of Jesus’ resurrection and of his being crowned as king and of his being anointed as high priest (Acts 13:33; Hebrews 1:5; 5:5).

In another thrilling predictive utterance God the Father had the Psalmist (45:6) to write what he would say on his Son’s coronation day in heaven on Pentecost Day, May 28, A.D. 30: "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever" (mistranslated by NWT, and also mistranslated in Hebrews 1:8).

Another prediction about the coming Christ, that physically he would be the son of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), makes his deity a prerequisite, for if he were not virgin-born he would no more divine than the rest of us. I rejoice that the NWT, in citing the meaning of "Immanuel," did not say "With us is a god," but instead: "With Us Is God" (Matthew 1:23, NWT).

Paul wrote that Jesus is "equal to God" (Philippians 2:6), but the NWT has reduced Jesus to a "god" (John 1:1). The Witnesses’ misguided attempt to avoid the trinity makes them polytheists, believing in a superior and lesser gods. In their reduction of Jesus from "God" to "a god" (John 1:1, according to the Greek, they say), they fail to carry through in verse 6, for they dare not translate that John the Baptist was a man sent from "a god" (where the Greek has not changed).

Further, they are not bold enough to make Thomas say to Jesus, "My Lord and a god" (where the Greek stays the same, John 20:28). Further, the NWT inserts a non-Greek word "Jehovah" 237 times in the New Testament where the Greek word "Lord" (kurios) is found, but leaves the Greek word in place in not having Thomas to say to Jesus, "My Jehovah and God." Jehovah’s Witnesses do not want Jesus to be called "Jehovah," a non-biblical hybrid word but precious to them. They also omit the word "Jehovah" in 1 Peter 3:15, for they did not want to say, "But sanctify Christ as Jehovah in your hearts." Making the Bible say what we want it to say is one form of "twisting" the Scriptures (2 Peter 3:16).

Moreover, it is sad that the dedicated Jehovah’s Witnesses demote the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Godhead, to a "spirit." While Jesus was yet wet from his baptism in the Jordan River, "the heavens were opened up, and he saw descending like a dove God’s spirit coming upon him" (Matthew 3;16, NWT). Since a spirit is invisible, what did Jesus see?

How can it be said that the spirit, not a person, "pleads for us with groanings"? (Romans 8:26). How can scholars say that "he who searches the hearts knows what the meaning of the spirit is"? (Romans 8:27). Is the one who knows "the things of God" the Holy Spirit or "the spirit"? (1 Corinthians 2:11). The Holy Spirit can hear, speak, and pray (John 16:13; Romans 8:26), but not an impersonal "spirit." Furthermore, only a person has feelings and can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30),

Like the Father (Revelation 21:6) and like the Son (Revelation 1:17), the Holy Spirit is timeless (Hebrews 9:14). Peter did not accuse Ananias of lying to "the Holy Spirit" but to "the Holy Spirit"? (Acts 5:3). Furthermore, if baptism is to be performed "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19, NWT), what is the Holy Spirit’s name?

My sincere and determined JW friend asks a sensible question: "If Jesus is Almighty God, why did Jesus say, ‘My Father is greater than I’?" It is true that in authority Jesus was inferior to God, for "God is the head of Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:3), but Jesus was not inferior in substance, in being God, for he was "equal to God" (Philippians 2:6). Similarly, in authority "the man is the head of the woman" (1 Corinthians 11:3), but the woman is not inferior in substance, in being a human being, for she was created "in the image of God" as was the man (Genesis 1:27; 5:1-2).

My JW friend asks another question: "If Jesus is Almighty God, why does John say, ‘No man has seen God at any time’?" Truly the essence of God is invisible, for God is a spirit being (John 4:24). A "spirit does not have flesh and bones" (Luke 24:39), which Jesus had, and his apostle wrote that "we have seen him with our eyes," and "we have looked upon" him (1 John 1:1).

However, "with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26). Adam and Eve "heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Genesis 3:8). On mount Sinai God made himself visible to Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel:

Moreover, Isaiah "saw the Lord sitting upon a throne" and exclaimed, "My eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of hosts" (6:1, 5). The experiences of these people show that God can cover his invisible spirit with things visible. Bible scholars call physical sightings of God theophanies, as Jesus coming in "the flesh" (John 1:14; 1 John 4:2; 2 John 7).

However, no earthly theophany, even if such were available today. Will compare with seeing God in heaven! Sometime all the redeemed will "see him just as he is" (1 John 3:2). Job confidently affirmed that

Three thousand years ago David prayed: