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1.2.2.5 1 John
5:7
The only verses in the whole Bible that explicitly ties
God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in one "Triune" being is the
verse of 1 John 5:7
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are
one."
This is the type of clear, decisive, and
to-the-point verse I have been asking for. However, as I
would later find out, this verse is now universally
recognized as being a later "insertion" of the Church and
all recent versions of the Bible, such as the Revised
Standard Version the New Revised Standard Version, the New
American Standard Bible, the New English Bible, the Phillips
Modern English Bible ...etc. have all unceremoniously
expunged this verse from their pages. Why is this? The
scripture translator Benjamin Wilson gives the following
explanation for this action in his "Emphatic
Diaglott." Mr. Wilson says:
"This text concerning the heavenly witness is not
contained in any Greek manuscript which was written earlier
than the fifteenth century. It is not cited by any of the
ecclesiastical writers; not by any of early Latin fathers
even when the subjects upon which they treated would
naturally have lead them to appeal to it's authority. It is
therefore evidently spurious."
Others, such as the late Dr. Herbert W. Armstrong argued
that this verse was added to the Latin Vulgate edition of
the Bible during the heat of the controversy between Rome,
Arius, and God's people. Whatever the reason, this verse is
now universally recognized as an insertion and discarded.
Since the Bible contains no verses validating a "Trinity"
therefore, centuries after the departure of Jesus, God chose
to inspire someone to insert this verse in order to clarify
the true nature of God as being a "Trinity." Notice how
mankind was being inspired as to how to "clarify" the Bible
centuries after the departure of Jesus (pbuh). People
continued to put words in the mouths of Jesus, his
disciples, and even God himself with no reservations
whatsoever. They were being "inspired" (see chapter
two).
If these people were being "inspired" by God, I wondered,
then why did they need to put these words into
other people's mouths (in our example, in the
mouth of John). Why did they not just openly say "God
inspired me and I will add a chapter to the Bible in
my name"? Also, why did God need to wait till
after the departure of Jesus to "inspire" his "true" nature?
Why not let Jesus (pbuh) say it himself?
The great luminary of Western literature, Mr. Edward
Gibbon, explains the reason for the discardal of this verse
from the pages of the Bible with the following words:
"Of all the manuscripts now extant, above fourscore in
number, some of which are more than 1200 years old, the
orthodox copies of the Vatican, of the Complutensian
editors, of Robert Stephens are becoming invisible; and the
two manuscripts of Dublin and Berlin are unworthy to form an
exception...In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
Bibles were corrected by LanFrank, Archbishop of Canterbury,
and by Nicholas, a cardinal and librarian of the Roman
church, secundum Ortodoxam fidem. Notwithstanding these
corrections, the passage is still wanting in twenty-five
Latin manuscripts, the oldest and fairest; two qualities
seldom united, except in manuscripts...The three witnesses
have been established in our Greek Testaments by the
prudence of Erasmus; the honest bigotry of the Complutensian
editors; the typographical fraud, or error, of Robert
Stephens in the placing of a crotchet and the deliberate
falsehood, or strange misapprehension, of Theodore Beza."
"Decline and fall of the Roman Empire," IV, Gibbon, p.
418.
Edward Gibbon was defended in his findings by his
contemporary, the brilliant British scholar Richard Porson
who also proceeded to publish devastatingly conclusive proof
that the verse of 1 John 5:7 was only first inserted by the
Church into the Bible in the year 400C.E.(Secrets of Mount
Sinai, James Bentley, pp. 30-33).
Regarding Porson's most devastating proof, Mr. Gibbon
later said
"His structures are founded in argument, enriched with
learning, and enlivened with wit, and his adversary neither
deserves nor finds any quarter at his hands. The evidence of
the three heavenly witnesses would now be rejected in any
court of justice; but prejudice is blind, authority is deaf,
and our vulgar Bibles will ever be polluted by this spurious
text."
To which Mr. Bentley responds:
"In fact, they are not. No modern Bible now contains
the interpolation."
Mr. Bentley, however, is mistaken. Indeed, just as Mr.
Gibbon had predicted, the simple fact that the most learned
scholars of Christianity now unanimously recognize this
verse to be a later interpolation of the Church has not
prevented the preservation of this fabricated text in our
modern Bibles. To this day, the Bible in the hands of the
majority of Christians, the "King James" Bible, still
unhesitantly includes this verse as the "inspired" word of
God without so much as a footnote to inform the reader that
all scholars of Christianity of note unanimously recognize
it as a later fabrication.
Peake's Commentary on the Bible says
"The famous interpolation after 'three witnesses' is
not printed even in RSVn, and rightly. It cites the heavenly
testimony of the Father, the logos, and the Holy Spirit, but
is never used in the early Trinitarian controversies. No
respectable Greek MS contains it. Appearing first in a late
4th-cent. Latin text, it entered the Vulgate and finally the
NT of Erasmus."
It was only the horrors of the great inquisitions which
held back Sir Isaac Newton from openly revealing these facts
to all:
"In all the vehement universal and lasting controversy
about the Trinity in Jerome's time and both before and long
enough after it, the text of the 'three in heaven' was never
once thought of. It is now in everybody's mouth and
accounted the main text for the business and would assuredly
have been so too with them, had it been in their books
Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part I
can make none. If it be said that we are not to determine
what is scripture and what not by our private judgments, I
confess it in places not controverted, but in disputed
places I love to take up with what I can best understand. It
is the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind
in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for
that reason to like best what they understand least. Such
men may use the Apostle John as they please, but I have that
honor for him as to believe that he wrote good sense and
therefore take that to be his which is the best"
Jesus, Prophet of Islam, Muhammad Ata' Ur-Rahim, p.
156
According to Newton, this verse
first appeared for in the third edition of Erasmus's
(1466-1536) New Testament.
For all of the above reasons, we find that when thirty
two biblical scholars backed by fifty cooperating Christian
denominations got together to compile the Revised
Standard Version of the Bible based upon the most ancient
Biblical manuscripts available to them today, they made some
very extensive changes. Among these changes was the
unceremonious discardal of the verse of 1 John 5:7 as the
fabricated insertion that it is. For more on the compilation
of the RSV Bible, please read the preface of any modern copy
of that Bible.
Such comparatively unimportant matters as the description
of Jesus (pbuh) riding an ass (or was it a "colt", or was it
an "ass and a colt"? see point 42 in the table of section
2.2) into Jerusalem are spoken about in great details since
they are the fulfillment of a prophesy. For instance, in
Mark 11:2-10 we read:
"And saith unto them, Go your way into the village
over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye
shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him,
and bring [him]. And if any man say unto you, Why do
ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and
straightway he will send him hither. And they went their
way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place
where two ways met; and they loose him And certain of them
that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the
colt? And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded:
and they let them go And they brought the colt to Jesus, and
cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him. And many
spread their garments in the way: and others cut down
branches off the trees, and strawed [them] in the
way And they that went before, and they that followed,
cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed [is] he that cometh
in the name of the Lord: Blessed [be] the kingdom of
our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord:
Hosanna in the highest."
Also see Luke 19:30-38 which has a similar detailed
description of this occurrence. On the other hand, the Bible
is completely free of any description of the "Trinity" which
is supposedly a description of the very nature of the one
who rode this ass, who is claimed to be the only son of God,
and who allegedly died for the sins of all of mankind. I
found myself asking the question: If every aspect of
Christian faith is described in such detail such that even
the description of this ass is so vividly depicted for us,
then why is the same not true for the description of the
"Trinity"? Sadly, however, it is a question for which there
is no logical answer.
Once again, here is the table:
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Explicit Statement
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Implicit Statement
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God is ONE
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Isaiah 43:10-11, Deuteronomy 4:39, Isaiah 45:18,
Isaiah 44:6, Isaiah 45:6, Isaiah 45:22, Exodus
20:3, Exodus 34:14
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-
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God is TWO
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John 1:1, John 10:30
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John 20:28, John.14:6, John 14:8-9
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God is THREE
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1 John 5:7
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Matthew 28:19,
I Corinthians 12:4-6,
II Corinthians 13:14,
Jude 1:20-21
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God is MANY
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Genesis 1:26
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