God's Messiah

By Sandy Grissom

This book was written to get people to listen to God and not to what the world including the church tells us to think. The church in the western world is intended to come from the precepts of the Jewish writings. Yet people in supposedly Christian Chruches teach the Bible differently than it was written. Some passages have been added and other misinterpreted. The chapters present information that will hopefully cause believers to listen to God and not people when it comes to what the Bible is telling us. That is, that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah meant to be sacrificed as a sinless man to obliternate our sins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandy Grissom
• Release date: May 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224403752

Sandy Grissom

Sandy Grissom has loved books all her life. That love began by listening to her older sister read when she was still too young to discover the magic for herself. She's read everything from history to the phone book but her favorite authors are James Michener, Agatha Christie and the mystic William Blake. Over the years, romantic novels became a favorite. The top of that list is Pride and Prejudice. When she retired she had too much time on her hands and spent too much money and trips to the library to get books in order to satisfy her restless soul. It was then she began to write herself. As an adult she held a variety of jobs, all of them grist for her imaginative mind. The occupations in Choppy Waters will hopefully inspire someone to fight for their own dreams, to never give up on themselves or on love. A widow, Sandy recently moved to southern Indiana where she lives near the younger of her two beloved sisters.

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Introduction

One God

This book comes after years of study of the Bible. Not that I know it all. I sure don’t. But this truth has come to me slowly and deliberately and I want badly to share it with others. I believe that at some point the church in the western part of the world made some mistakes. We know the Catholic Church got a lot wrong in the past, such as the Inquisition. In case you aren’t aware of it, it was in the twelfth century that the Catholic Church began the questioning of people using torture to get confessions of wrong doing. Wrong according to the Catholic Church’s teaching, that is. Their aim was at first to fight heresy. But soon they turned their fight against Jewish worshippers along with those in the newly formed Protestant sect.

Then in the thirteenth century, the church did the same with the Knights Templar. It was fine to use them when it was convenient. But when the Templars became rich and powerful in their own right, they had to be divested of both of those things. More recently, we’ve learned that the church was a major reason that high ranking Nazi’s were able to flee Germany so they not be punished for their role in persecuting Jewish and other ‘less desirable’ people. In all these cases and so many more, we have to admit that the Catholic Church does whatever it takes to retain power and money.

Even so, we cannot divorce ourselves from past mistakes blaming them solely on the Catholic Church. Christianity took many of their tenets for themselves, rather they were valid or not. We can see by the above examples and many others how the church tenets change to match society rather than keeping to a godly standard. Church leaders who claim to follow the Bible are accepting homosexuals today as if God will accept anything immoral and call it good. Yet the church will if it suits their purpose.

It is so wrong for the Bible specifically says that God cannot be in the presence of evil. Homosexuality is one of the sins God tells us to avoid for our own good. In this life and the one to follow. Those who sin without repentance and forgiveness will be separated from all that is good for all eternity. The Bible goes on to say that anyone who causes an innocent person to sin (by allowing them to think it normal behavior) will be called to account for it. We cannot approve of behavior by accepting what is evil and calling it good.

If we are honest, we must admit that the Christian Church, like the Catholic, has accepted teachings that are not godly. It might be fine to accept different methods of teaching for a new generation of believers. But the Word of God cannot change. God is a moral Being and never changes His character. The world’s people do that and it will not be forgiven without a change of heart. That is only done one person at a time. Unfortunately, we have become a people who accept what others say instead of researching topics for ourselves. You might say we’ve become too lazy for that. But believing something is right because someone else says it is reduces us to a robot status, following orders and never asking why.

When a person spends a lifetime seeking to know God, they have a burden to correct inaccuracies. I know that those with authority do not like things to change. Indeed, they will fight to keep us believing what they’ve told us to believe as long as possible. Sadly, some of that has been inaccurate for the last eighteen hundred years or so. I do not want to think what that will mean for eternity for those who believe false teachings. Though I fear it may be damnation. I pray God reaches their hearts before they leave this world for the next one.

Inaccurate or false teaching is bad enough. Though the Bible warns against it emphatically. What is worse is that some of what church leaders have taught today is presented as fact when their teaching is not provable facts by the Word of God. Only yesterday, I heard a well-known preacher on television giving as fact something he said was in Revelation. Though I cannot find that ‘fact’ anywhere in that Book. He went on to suggest there would be sex in heaven. I wondered how spiritual beings would be sexual. It is my opinion that we will be too busy praising our Creator and thanking our Sacrifice to care about earthly matters like sex. Nowhere in the Bible does it speak to sex in the afterlife.

People claim to know the Word of God and yet they feel free to add to what that Word says. Perhaps it seems right to them but I rather think they bend toward earthly things instead of standing strong on ONLY what the Bible says is so. If I cannot find some so called fact in the Bible, I count it as untrue. I suppose I am too stubborn to accept such additions.

The ‘fact’ that preacher gave I will not recount here. Some might believe it. But it reminded me of some scientists who use proven facts, such as where they found some artifact to present their version of what happened centuries ago as a fact. It is truly that person’s conclusion and not a truth but only a premise. He might believe his conclusion and repeat it long enough that people come to think his truth is the only possible truth. Yet it is only one possible conclusion and there could easily be others just as valid.

I believe there was more than one extremely important idea in the church that began as an inaccuracy but then led to worse ones. I will speak to only one of those in this book though I know of others. I will explain first by saying that the first false idea that was proposed then caused the last one to be wrong. Perhaps the evil one enticed the church to believe a lie. Or perhaps some misguided person tried to explain God in terms people might more easily understand Him. Yet a simplified explanation soon became gospel to the church in the western part of the world. Sadly, missionaries then spread this inaccuracy all over the world.

This book is an attempt to speak the truth of God’s Word as best I can to correct that inaccuracy.

We read in Genesis that when Eve and then Adam sinned, they committed treason against God. Just as we accept someone else’s word about the Bible and God, they took someone else’s word as truth. Though God had already shown them the real truth. He said:

Do not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. If you do, you will surely die.

A careful reading of scripture poses that the first couple would die physically one day but it is also true that they died in a spiritual way when they ate that fruit. When they bought into Satan’s lie and partook of it, they died to being in God’s camp. Afterward, all children born of them were born in Satan’s camp.

Just as a decision led to their fall from the grace of God, a decision would have to be made to move back into God’s camp. Every child born in the world, because they have free will has to make a decision for God. We don’t often think of it in that way but it is a truth that no decision is a decision in itself because we are born into Satan’s camp.

Until God would make a permanent way for us to return to His flock, He did something temporary. God cannot be in the presence of evil so he made a way to have a relationship with Adam and Eve. He killed an innocent animal to cover their sin. The Bible tells us that it requires the shedding of blood for the remission of sin. Not just any blood either. It has to be the blood of a sinless offering. Only sinlessness covers or eliminates sin. Once sin (or disobedience) came into the world, everyone born was born into Satan’s sinful camp. Something sinless had to die to cover Adam and Eve so they could be in relationship with God again.

God told the Jewish people to do the same. He chose those people to keep the Word of God alive for all time. Do you ever wonder that most ancient societies are gone, either integrated into later ones or died out. Yet God will never let that people group who protect His Word be abolished. Yet like everyone else born into a sinful world, they were cut off from God.

He used the same method as in the garden to keep a relationship with them. Once a year God instructed each family to sacrifice an innocent animal to cover their sin. The priests did the same to cover the nation’s sin, as well. To a person, it was more than a sacrifice to God. It cost them something because the animal could be sold for money or killed for meals. Sin always costs us something though we don’t always count the cost when we mess up. The sin done by the Israelites (Jewish) people was meant to do the same for them as it did for the original couple. That is, the shedding of blood of a guiltless animal was the only way to cover their sin and allow a holy God to accept their worship.

Both of those writings happened. They are valid and true though unbelievers try to convince the world they are myths. They are true happenings but they are also a picture of what God would in His timing do for all people in this sin driven world. When the time was right, He put an innocent child in Mary’s womb. That child was as pure and innocent as those earlier sacrifices. The substitution for us had to be guilt free because all people born into the world were born under sin. No sinful person could become a sacrifice for the rest of us. God intended the work of the sinless Messiah Jesus to be done once for all people who accepted the substitutionary work.

The church seems to agree with what I’ve written so far and yet there is a difference between their tenet and my belief. I disagree that Jesus was God, or any part of God. No previous sacrifice had that distinction. I do not believe it could. God said He was the I am, not the ‘We are’. He is God and there is no other. Moreover, God is eternal and cannot die. That says to me that Jesus cannot be some third part of God and die. The substitution and sacrifice had to be done by someone who could die for our sins. I suppose some will argue that God brought Him back to life but that does not negate the fact that he did die a human physical death.

Another argument might be that God called Jesus His son. That is true. But then He calls us all of us His children. If you consider it, I think you will see that there can be no physical child of a spiritual God, only created ones. That means that Jesus cannot be godlike and a sacrifice for earthly beings at the same time.

Yet he had to be physically born the same way as all people but not of a sinful parent. Mary was innocent of men. Her betrothed had not been with her. They had kept themselves pure for marriage. The true and only God, the great I AM, put an innocent spirit into Mary’s womb to live a physical existence. To teach God’s truth to those who would listen and then to die for everyone who accepted the sacrifice he willingly went to for us.

God is One Being and not three persons in some unexplainable godhead. The theory of trinity had to be a man caused tenet. I find no use of the word or even a hint of it in the Old Testament. God did not introduce Himself as ‘We are’ but ‘I am". I have to discount the trinity as factual because the Bible tells us that God is eternal. So how could Jesus be both the sacrifice and some third part of God? If he was God, He couldn’t die for our sins. If he was the innocent sacrifice alone, he could. But then he could not be part of God.

If Jesus was some part of God, he would not need to get away to pray to God. But he did. If he was not part of God, it surely explains the bloodlike sweat that ran down off his brow in the garden of Gethsemane. He was willing to do God’s bidding but that does not mean it was easy for him. He needed, just as we do, to draw strength from God. He told his followers, when you pray, pray like this ‘Our father’. He included himself when he said ‘our’. He did not say we should to pray to him but to God.

We are mistaken that calling God his father was the same as a physical father. It is a title that tells us about one of God’s attributes. We call Him our Father, too. But then so is Jehovah a title and Immanuel and so on. These titles are descriptors of God’s character. They describe Who God is. He Who is all knowing and complete within Himself...and more than we can comprehend.

Just as a woman is a daughter, a sister and a mother, titles explain our relationship to our family. God uses titles because He is more interested in relationship with His family, that is, us and ours with Him more than anything else on this earth. He created us for relationship with Him and with others. Jesus taught us that there were only two commandments, to love God and love people. No wonder the evil one fights to separate people from groups into single persons. He is God’s polar opposite and proposes whatever is opposite from a loving God.

It is recounted, not only by Jesus’ followers and other believers, but also by Roman soldiers that Jesus did indeed die. To my mind, that means he wasn’t part of an eternal God but the long awaited Messiah that the Old Testament mentions in several places. It was never God spoken of in those passages but Messiah. I asked a pastor for clarification when I began thinking about this. He told me it was a mystery and I had to believe in a trinity because the church leadership said I did.

I apologize if you take up an offense when I say that I wanted to hear a truth from God. Not from what some person said I should believe but what God tells me in His written Word is true. Sadly, that pastor had nothing further to add. I had the feeling, however, that he was saying believe it or go to Hell for not believing it.

I soon began to study not only the Bible but also what those in the first few centuries wrote about God and the trinity. I read where such a godhead possibility wasn’t even proposed to the church before the fourth century AD and not accepted until the seventh century. Reading that affirmed to me that the trinity was a manmade doctrine and did not come from God. I admit that God gives us new revelations into His written Word but He does not add new information to what He has previously taught. The trinity falls into that category, new information that is not supported by anything in the Bible.

Else there would be mention of it in the Word of God. Likely in Genesis, the Beginning of man, but not the beginning of the eternal God we serve. I find no hints or phrases to support the theory and certainly not God coming right out and saying it was so. God cannot lie and He does not hint around when it comes to important issues. Notice how well He prepared Adam and Eve to live