Greater Progress of The Gospel.

The Divinity Of Jesus Was Known Well Before The Declaration By Council.

Jesus' divinity wasn't invented by a council. Jews already believed it.

By Dale Moreau, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, September 22, 2026

iStock/Wirestock

There is a confident story told in a lot of lecture halls: the first Christians met a Jewish teacher, and only later — under the influence of Greek philosophy or by decree at a fourth-century council — did they inflate Him into God.

On this telling, the deity of Christ is a betrayal of Israel's fierce monotheism, a foreign idea smuggled in from Athens.

 

It's a tidy story. It's also almost exactly backward.

The raw materials for a divine Messiah were never imported. They were native to Jerusalem, sitting in Israel's own Scriptures the whole time, and the strangest of them is this: the Hebrew Bible presents Yahweh as, in some sense, multi-personal.

There is a Yahweh who cannot be seen. He tells Moses plainly, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And there is a Yahweh who is seen constantly — who eats a meal with Abraham, who wrestles Jacob to the ground, who speaks to people face to face. The text does not treat these as two gods. They share one name, one authority, one worship.

But they are distinguished, and sometimes in the same sentence. When judgment falls on Sodom, the narrator writes that “the LORD rained fire from the LORD out of Heaven.” A Yahweh on the ground, raining fire from a Yahweh in the sky. One name, two figures and the grammar is deliberate.

This visible Yahweh most often appears as “the Angel of the LORD,” and He is no ordinary messenger. He speaks as God in the first person, accepts worship, and, most tellingly, forgives sins, which everyone in Israel knew was God's prerogative alone.

God says of him, “my Name is in him.” In Hebrew thought a name is not a label stuck on from outside; it is the very presence of the one named. To say God's Name is in the Angel is to say God Himself is in Him. And when the prophets are given a look at the throne of Heaven, they don't see a formless glow. Ezekiel sees “a likeness with a human appearance” seated on the throne, the glory of God in the shape of a man.

Now here is the fact that dismantles the whole “Greek import” theory, and it comes from Jewish history, not Christian claims. The Judaism into which Jesus was born was not scandalized by the idea of a second figure who shared God's identity and throne. Jewish interpreters of that era speculated about it freely. Trying to name this second power, associating Him with a great, exalted angel who bore the Name, or with God's own Word, or His Wisdom.

This was not fringe. It was a permitted, live feature of the theological landscape.

Only in the second century, well after Jesus, did rabbinic authorities finally condemn belief in “two powers in Heaven” as heresy. Sit with the timing. The doctrine wasn't censured because it had always been alien to Jewish thought. It was censured because it had become the property of the Christians, who had done the one thing centuries of Jewish speculation had left undone: they identified the second power by name.

 

That is what the New Testament actually does. It doesn't invent a new god. It takes the visible Yahweh, the Name-bearing Angel, the human-formed glory on the throne, and it says: we know who that is. The letter of Jude casually states that it was “Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt,” placing Him at the exodus as the very Yahweh who redeemed Israel. And it puts the divine Name on his own lips. In the sharpest moment of His ministry, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” — reaching back and taking the self-name of the God of the burning bush. His hearers did not miss it. They picked up stones to kill Him (John 8:58–59).

You don't stone a man for a modest claim. They understood exactly what he had said.

This is why the two great titles the first believers gave him are not the same claim twice. “Messiah,” the anointed one, comes from the world of covenant and kingship, the promised heir of David's throne. “Son of God” reaches further, into the language of Heaven itself. When Peter fuses them at Caesarea Philippi — “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” — he binds the covenant King of Israel to the divine identity in a single person.

The Messiah is not merely a great man anointed to rule. He is the visible Yahweh, come in the flesh to sit on David's throne.

And the early church didn't tuck this away in later, more philosophical writings. They put it in their prayers. They took Israel's most sacred confession — “the LORD our God, the LORD is one” — and reworked it around Jesus, naming him the one Lord within the very words meant to guard God's oneness. That is not a Greek graft. That is a Jewish confession, made by Jewish monotheists.

So, the honest history runs the other way from the lecture-hall story. The deity of Christ was not bolted on by Greeks or manufactured by councils. It was the payoff of a pattern woven through the Hebrew Bible from the burning bush to the throne room, a visible God who bore the Name and waited, across the whole Old Testament, for a face.

The first Christians did not smuggle a foreign god into Israel's faith. They looked at a crucified and risen man and recognized the one who had been there since Genesis. The scandal was never that there was a second figure beside the invisible God. Israel had lived with that for a thousand years.

The scandal was that his name turned out to be Jesus of Nazareth.

 

Dale Moreau (BA, Biblical Studies; MDiv; PhD, biblical theology and languages) pastored for thirty years, has taught at the college and seminary level, and has written for more than 55  years with work cited in scholarly literature. He hosts Theological Voice on Substack, recovering the Bible's supernatural worldview for pastors, scholars, and students: dalemoreau.substack.com

 

Birdie.

 

God Pursues You.

 https://www.christianpost.com/voice/god-isnt-waiting-for-you-to-find-him-hes-constantly-chasing.html

The Book of Enoch.

 Why the book of Enoch is not Scripture.

By David Wilber, Op-ed contributor Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Getty Images

The book of Enoch has become increasingly popular among Christians in recent years. It is easy to understand the fascination. Reading the Book of Enoch can sometimes feel like reading a science-fiction novel. Its elaborate accounts of fallen angels, giants, heavenly journeys, and the coming judgment naturally capture the imagination.

More importantly, New Testament authors such as Peter and Jude draw on traditions also found in the Book of Enoch. For students of Scripture, the book provides valuable insight into the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism and can illuminate the historical and literary background of the New Testament.

 

But some Christians have gone much further. They argue that the Book of Enoch is not merely interesting ancient Jewish literature but inspired Scripture that belongs in the Bible.

So, how should followers of Jesus approach the Book of Enoch? Should we really consider it inspired Scripture, on par with Genesis, Isaiah, and Daniel?

In my book, Pseudo-Scripture: Why 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and Jasher Are Not Inspired Scripture, I examine this question in much greater detail.

When it comes to the Book of Enoch, I believe there are three compelling reasons Christians should not consider it inspired Scripture.

1. Jesus did not consider the Book of Enoch Scripture

Contrary to popular claims that the Book of Enoch was “removed from the Bible,” there is no evidence that it ever belonged to the Jewish biblical canon in the first place.

By the first century, Jewish Scripture was recognized according to the familiar threefold division of the Law, Prophets, and Writings. Josephus, writing near the end of the first century, describes a fixed collection of 22 sacred books that Jews regarded as divinely authoritative. He distinguishes these books from later writings that were not considered to have the same authority (Against Apion 1.37–42). Notably, Josephus also begins his list with the five books of Moses. If he believed Enoch had written an inspired book centuries before Moses, we would expect him to include it before the books of Moses. However, the Book of Enoch is nowhere mentioned.

More importantly for Christians, Jesus affirmed this same basic understanding of Scripture.

After his resurrection, Jesus told his disciples that everything written about him “in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” had to be fulfilled (Luke 24:44). Luke immediately identifies this collection as “the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45). This corresponds to the traditional threefold Jewish canon — the Law, Prophets, and Writings.

Likewise, Jesus frequently appealed to “the Scriptures” in his disputes with other Jews (Matt. 22:29; John 5:39). The apostles did the same (Acts 17:2, 11). Yet neither Jesus nor his apostles ever disputed with their Jewish contemporaries over which books constituted Scripture. That silence is significant considering how readily they challenged prevailing Jewish opinions on other matters.

If the Book of Enoch really belonged in Scripture but the Jewish community had wrongly excluded it, we would expect Jesus to correct them. Instead, he affirmed the Scriptures they already recognized.

For Christians, Jesus’s judgment concerning what constitutes Scripture ought to carry considerably more weight than the opinions of modern internet personalities.

2. The Book of Enoch identifies Enoch as the Messiah

There is an even more serious problem.

The section of the Book of Enoch known as the Book of Parables (chapters 37–71) describes an exalted Messianic figure called the “Son of Man,” “Chosen One,” “Righteous One,” and “Anointed One.” This figure brings salvation, sits upon a throne of glory, judges mankind, and receives universal worship.

Understandably, Christians who believe the Book of Enoch is inspired often assume these passages are prophecies about Jesus.

But there is just one problem: the Book of Enoch eventually tells us who this figure is. It is Enoch himself.

In chapter 71, Enoch is taken into Heaven, where the “Head of Days” comes to him accompanied by Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Phanuel, and innumerable angels. Enoch is then told: “You (are) that Son of Man who was born for righteousness, and righteousness dwells on you” (Book of Enoch 71:14).

Thus, the Book of Parables identifies Enoch with the Messianic Son of Man described throughout the preceding visions.

Some defenders of the Book of Enoch appeal to R. H. Charles’ old translation, which renders the statement, “This is the Son of Man,” making it appear that Enoch is being introduced to someone else.

 

But that is not what the Ethiopic text says. The Geʽez contains the second-person pronoun meaning “you.” Indeed, Charles himself acknowledged in his notes that the text actually reads, “Thou art.” He deliberately emended the passage because he believed the text should say something different. Subsequent scholars have rejected that emendation because it has no manuscript support.

For followers of Jesus, this creates an obvious theological problem. The New Testament identifies Jesus as the Messianic Son of Man and explicitly warns believers against accepting rival messianic claims (Matt. 24:23).

Christians cannot accept a book that identifies Enoch as the Messiah.

3. Jews and Christians historically rejected the Book of Enoch as Scripture

If the Book of Enoch belongs in the Bible, why did the communities responsible for preserving the Scriptures overwhelmingly reject it?

Jewish tradition never included the Book of Enoch in the Tanakh. Early Christian writers likewise repeatedly affirmed an Old Testament canon that excluded it.

Origen, for instance, was familiar with Enochic literature but acknowledged that these books were not considered authoritative among the Jews. Even more explicitly, he wrote that “the books which bear the name Enoch do not at all circulate in the Churches as divine” (Contra Celsum 5.54). Later Christian writers such as Cyril of Jerusalem, Rufinus, and Jerome likewise affirmed canonical lists excluding the Book of Enoch.

There were exceptions. Tertullian accepted the Book of Enoch, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church preserves it in its broader canon. But Tertullian himself acknowledged opposition to his position among other Christians. The historical evidence simply does not support the popular narrative that the Book of Enoch was accepted as Scripture until someone later removed it from the Bible.

But doesn’t Jude quote the Book of Enoch?

This is probably the strongest objection.

Jude 14–15 undeniably contains material also found in the Book of Enoch, and Peter likewise draws upon Enochic traditions (1 Pet. 3:19–20; 2 Pet. 2:4). Does that prove that the apostles considered the Book of Enoch inspired?

No, it does not.

First, the Book of Enoch is not a single work written at one time. It is a collection of writings composed and compiled over centuries. Jude’s and Peter’s references are associated with the Book of the Watchers (chapters 1–36), not every section of the collection now called the Book of Enoch. Their use of those traditions therefore cannot establish the inspiration of the entire book.

More importantly, quoting a source does not canonize it. Paul quotes the pagan poet Aratus in Acts 17:28 and Epimenides in Titus 1:12. Nobody concludes that the works of Aratus and Epimenides therefore belong in the Bible.

The same principle applies to Jude. His use of an Enochic tradition can tell us that he considered that particular tradition useful and true without requiring us to believe that every text collected under the title “Book of Enoch” was divinely inspired.

The value of the Book of Enoch

None of this means that Christians should be afraid of the Book of Enoch.

Quite the opposite. It is an important ancient Jewish work that helps us better understand the religious and intellectual world in which the New Testament was written. Christians interested in biblical studies can profit from reading it.

But appreciating an ancient text is not the same thing as recognizing it as Scripture. The historical evidence indicates that the Book of Enoch originated in the Second Temple period rather than with the patriarch Enoch himself. Jesus affirmed a Jewish canon that did not contain it. One section identifies Enoch as the Messianic Son of Man. And Jews and Christians throughout history overwhelmingly declined to recognize it as inspired Scripture.

So read the Book of Enoch. Just don’t add it to your Bible.

 

David Wilber is an author, Bible teacher, and CEO of Pronomian Publishing LLC. He has written several books and theological articles and has spoken at churches and conferences across the country. David’s articles, teaching videos, and debates are available at DavidWilber.com.

IDOP.

 International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

Sunday, November 1 is the International Day of  Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP). VoPC has prepared a set of digital resources to  help churches mark the day. Our theme is Light in the Darkest Places, and the pack includes a short feature film, Bible talk outline, PowerPoint, prayer points, and discussion questions. I really want to encourage you to use these resources in a church service, prayer meeting, home group or special IDOP event during November. You can download the pack and find out more here.

Well Done!

                                       

France's two main Protestant bodies agree to regular dialogue.

The leaders of France's two main Protestant umbrella organizations have agreed to create a standing forum for dialogue and cooperation, following a two-day meeting both described as unprecedented.

Birdie.

 

Super Advice For All.

 

More Than 1300 Prisoners - A Large number of Whom Have Committed Heinous Crimes - Are To Be Released Without Labour's Promised Tags.

Apparently, another 5,000+ jailbirds have already been released - after serving only a fraction of their sentence - without the promised tags.

This is appalling.

No human being who believes in proper justice can now ever vote for Labour again!

Fear of those released has also sent non-stop waves of terror throughout huge numbers of these people's victims.

Disgraceful. Their abandoned promises to voters have now made them into a very dangerous laughing stock.

The Weaknesses of Dawkins' Contentions On Origins.

The existence of God is perhaps the most enduring and fiercely debated question in human history Credit: Stone RF/Fred de Noyelle

Twenty years ago, Richard Dawkins published his international best-seller The God Delusion, thus establishing “New Atheism” as a major cultural force. Over the ensuing decade, other authors – such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss and Daniel Dennett – seized the popular imagination with their respective arguments about why belief in the divine is untenable.

The physicists among them argued that the universe could be explained “from nothing”. The biologists argued that Darwinian explanations of “apparent design” in living organisms make appeals to an actual designing intelligence unnecessary. Thus, Dawkins concluded: “God almost certainly does not exist.”

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is one of the world’s most prominent atheists  Credit: Jay Williams

But now, two decades on, the influence of the New Atheists has waned. Former adherents, most notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have repudiated atheism entirely and embraced the Christian faith. Others, such as Alex O’Connor, the hugely popular atheist YouTuber and Steven Bartlett, the businessman turned podcaster, have moderated their outlooks too. Ironically, even Dawkins admitted in 2024 he feels “at home” in the Christian “ethos” – though he still firmly rejects the existence of God.

As many atheist philosophers (such as the eminent John Gray) have noted, the New Atheists’ philosophical arguments were never very good. Moreover, their arguments seemed strangely anachronistic following many of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th century.

Consider first modern cosmology. Cosmologists have discovered that the universe, contrary to the expectations of those who long portrayed it as eternal, probably had a beginning. Multiple lines of evidence from observational astronomy support this conclusion. Developments in theoretical physics (such as the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which states that any universe that is expanding – as ours is – cannot be infinite in the past), also back it up.

Nobel laureate Arno Penzias, who helped make a key discovery supporting the Big Bang theory, noted the obvious connection between its affirmation of a cosmic beginning and the concept of divine creation. “The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses…[and] the Bible as a whole,” he wrote in 1978.

Atheist physicists Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking claimed to explain the beginning of the universe from “nothing”, but their “nothing” turned out to be a set of mathematical laws that allegedly pre-existed (or existed independently of) the material universe. But maths has no causal power. Mathematical equations are inherently conceptual. Thus, the attempt to circumvent the problem of the beginning with what was called “quantum cosmology” led inexorably back to the need for a pre-existing mind.

Prof Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, did not believe in God Credit: Karwai Tang/Getty Images

Second, physicists have discovered that we live in a kind of “Goldilocks universe”. In other words, the fundamental laws and parameters of physics are finely tuned against all odds to make a life-friendly universe. Even slight alterations of many independent factors – such as the strength of gravitational and electromagnetic attraction, the masses of elementary particles, or the initial arrangement of matter and energy in the universe – would render life impossible.

Not surprisingly, many physicists have concluded that this improbable “fine-tuning” points to a cosmic “fine-tuner”. As Cambridge astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, previously a staunch atheist, argued: “A common sense interpretation of the data suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics” to make life possible.

To explain fine-tuning, some physicists have postulated a vast number of universes. This “multiverse” idea portrays our universe as the outcome of a grand lottery in which some mechanism spits out billions and billions of universes – so many that ours, with its improbable combination of life-conducive factors, would eventually have to arise.

Yet multiverse advocates overlook an obvious problem. All such proposals – whether based on “inflationary cosmology” or “string theory” – postulate universe-generating mechanisms that themselves require prior unexplained fine-tuning (thus taking us back to the need for an ultimate fine-tuner).

Third, discoveries in molecular biology have revealed digital code in even the simplest living cells. Francis Crick and James Watson elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. Crick then developed his famed “sequence hypothesis”. He proposed that chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language, or digital symbols in computer code.

Computer code depends upon a precise sequence of zeros and ones. Similarly, the DNA molecule’s ability to direct the assembly of crucial protein molecules depends upon specific arrangements of chemical constituents (called “bases”) along the spine of the double helix.

As Dawkins has acknowledged: “The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.” Or as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates explains: “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”

Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion was a publishing phenomenon 

No theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information in DNA (or RNA) needed to build the first cell from simpler non-living chemicals – as Dawkins has acknowledged. Instead, our uniform and repeated experience – the basis of scientific reasoning – establishes that systems possessing functional or digital information invariably arise from intelligent causes. As information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “information is habitually associated with conscious activity”.

Materialists also reject the idea of a designing mind because no such entity can be directly observed. Yet scientists often infer unobservable entities – physical fields, subatomic particles, past evolutionary events, subsurface geological features, the Big Bang – based upon the explanatory power of those postulated entities or events.

Dark matter, for example, which has been in the news of late, was first inferred not because it could be seen, but because – if it existed – it would explain the otherwise unexplainable motions of galaxies within distant galaxy clusters. The fact is that scientists often infer unobservable causes from their observable effects, and the inference to intelligent design from the observable features of living cells has this same character.

Dawkins has claimed that invoking a designing mind to explain the complexity of life would violate Ockham’s razor (the principle that the simplest explanation is usually correct). One should never invoke something more complex to explain something less complex, he avers. Yet this argument implies that archaeologists should not, for example, have invoked the mind of a scribe to explain the inscriptions on the Rosetta stone.

Dr Stephen Meyer was featured in The Story of Everything, a 2026 documentary about the origins of humanity and the cosmos

In fact, Ockham’s razor does not prohibit invoking the activity of complex entities (such as a mind) to explain complex systems or the features of artifacts. Instead, it cautions against invoking complex or convoluted hypotheses – ones that posit many explanatory entities (as the multiverse does) to explain facts that can be explained more simply by positing a single cause or entity.

Oddly, Dawkins himself once acknowledged the cell might contain a “signature of intelligence” – although he attributed that possible signature to a complex alien intelligence. As he mused, “it could be that somewhere in the universe, a civilisation evolved ... and designed a form of life that they seeded on to this planet”.

But invoking alien intelligence as the source of life on Earth does nothing to explain how life, and the information needed to produce it, first arose elsewhere. This “alien designer” hypothesis just kicks that ultimate question out into space.

It is, along with the multiverse and the “universe from nothing” idea, illustrative of the growing strangeness of scientific atheism. Its proponents are reaching for increasingly exotic ideas to explain evidence that seems otherwise to point straightforwardly to a transcendent and intelligent creator. In other words: God.

Dr. Meyer is the author of Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe. He has a PhD in the philosophy of science from Cambridge University and is featured in the new film The Story of Everything, which was covered in the Telegraph.

 

DT.