"Absorbing" Comments

In the last negative speech of the second night of the recent Denham-Neubauer debate (April 20-23, 2017), came one of the most shocking claims that any of us have heard in a discussion with a brother in Christ. To be absolutely fair, we are presenting the entire context of this segment as it occurred from about 3:45 to 8:00 minutes into the speech. The ellipsis (after the second quote) involved a side comment and was irrelevant to the discussion. Neubauer taught:

Brother Denham said…I took the position that Jesus died spiritually and yet He wasn’t separated for the full three days in the grave. That’s my position. Give me Matthew 27:46, please. Now notice:

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

This is the only time where God addresses the Father without actually using the title, Father, because He is sacrificing His relationship with His Father so that we might be sons. He is separated from God; He is paying for sins.

Suppose cancer were the penalty of sin. Jesus would have to pay the penalty and actually experience that cancer in order to pay for sins. And the physical death was minuscule compared to the death that He endured on the cross. And, yes, in fact, the Bible teaches He died spiritually. Give me 2 Corinthians 5:14. Now the Bible clearly teaches that the kind of death that Jesus died for all is the kind of death that everybody experiences—but here in this text he’s not talking about physical death because everyone was already dead. Look what he says:

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead.

Now in what sense were they all dead? Spiritually. And so Jesus had to die because it’s the payment for sin. He paid for sin. He died in Spirit. And so He was separated from God. Now he [referring to Denham, GWS] says that’s heresy. I could be wrong…. I believe that He did, and I’ve found lots of brethren who have believed that over the years—that Jesus died in spirit.

And again, God is changeless, right? Malachi 3:6. “I change not.” And yet, when Jesus was on the earth, He didn’t have omniscience, did He? No. But the Godhead remained constant, didn’t it? So what was lost in Christ was absorbed by the other two persons of the Godhead [emph. here and when repeated later, GWS].

And so, as Jesus is tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin, the Bible says in James 1:13 God cannot be tempted with evil. So whatever was lost in the Godhead by Christ was absorbed by the other two persons in the Godhead. That’s a philosophical truth. It’s just un-get-around-able. And so, Jesus dies in spirit, sacrificing relationship to pay for the sins of mankind. God is still constant. God is still intact.

But when Jesus says, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” he dies spiritually. Isaiah 53:10. There’s many texts that teach that Jesus died in spirit. So did it please the Lord to bruise Him? He put Him to grief. “Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.” His soul was an offering. He died in spirit. He had to pay for sin. He paid the penalty of sin. Sin is death. So you sin, you die. Jesus paid the penalty.

One of the appeals of a false teacher is that he often wraps his error around the truth. How many times did Neubauer say that Jesus dies for our sins—that He paid the penalty for our sin? Of course, this is not disputed by anyone. All Christians believe that fact. One might hear these repeated affirmations and conclude, “Why, he is speaking the truth.” No, he is mixing truth with error. In order to see what the worst part of that error is, it was bolded so that it would stand out. Some strange doctrines have been set forth.

Joyce Meyer

For example, one televangelist, Joyce Meyer, possesses a multitude of doctrinal problems, but one of them concerns Jesus and His atonement. She thinks that Jesus was tortured not only on the cross but for three days and three nights in hell for our sins. She absolutely raves about the demons jumping up and down on Him and mocking Him, saying such things as, “Ha, ha. You trusted God, and look where you ended up.” Furthermore, she claimed that if anyone does not accept this doctrine, he cannot go to heaven.

To say this about as sensitively as possible, “She’s nuts!” If Jesus was being tormented for three days in the Hadean realm, then either He lied or was mistaken when He told the thief that they would be together in Paradise that very day. Also, He must have miscalculated when He proclaimed, “It is finished.” When Jesus commended His Spirit to the Father, He would have had to reply (according to Meyer), “Not so fast, not so fast. You have a little more suffering to do first.” It is hard to say where such a doctrine as Jesus being tortured for three days originated, but it is false. Neubauer seems not to agree with Joyce Meyer, but he does agree that Jesus and the Father were separated and out of fellowship while Jesus was on the cross—and that Jesus died spiritually.

Paying the Price

The theory is that if the price for sin was cancer, Jesus would have had to suffer with cancer. And that seems to make sense—until one realizes that it is not a valid comparison. In Matthew 8:14-17, Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law. Matthew quotes Isaiah concerning this action: “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.” Did Jesus have to experience a high fever in order to heal her? Imagine Him having to experience every health problem in order to cure it!

So, was it required that He be unable to walk in order to heal the lame man? Did He need to be temporarily unable to see to heal the blind man? One shudders to think what He must have had to do in order to raise Lazarus from the dead. No, He bore our sicknesses without having to become sick.

Similarly, Jesus did not actually need to die spiritually (experience actual torment in hell either for three days or even three hours on the cross) in order to pay the price for our sins. One would have to prove that such a thing was required to pay the price. If Jesus was separated on the cross the way sinners are in hell, then He was out of fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. How can God not be in fellowship with Himself? Jesus paid the price for our sins, and the Father allowed Him to by not helping Him (therefore forsaking Him). But where is the verse that says the Father and the Spirit were out of fellowship with Jesus? If they were, the unity of the Godhead Jesus had just prayed for (John 17:20-21) was destroyed, as well as their fellowship.

The price for sin was the crucifixion—not being disfellowshiped. Jesus “bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). This relates perfectly to Isaiah 53:5: “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” Notice that it is always the physical suffering of the crucifixion that is related to our salvation. We remember each week His broken body and the blood that He shed—not a theoretical disruption in the Godhead.

What about Isaiah 53:10-11, when the text says that God would be satisfied by the travail of His soul? Is Isaiah contradicting himself? Is atonement made through the physical or the spiritual? The answer may be found simply in the definition of the word, nephesh, which has various meanings. In the King James it is translated “soul” 475 times and “life” 117 times. In its 161 other appearances, it is translated as “person, mind, heart, creature, body, desire, man,” et al. Jesus did pour out His soul or life unto death.

In making the spiritual separation argument, Neubauer has claimed more than he can prove, but he absolutely climbed out on a dead limb in his comments on Jesus’ Deity being absorbed.

Jesus’ Deity Absorbed?

The consequences of this doctrine are terrifying. If Jesus’ Deity was absorbed by the Father and the Holy Spirit, then Jesus had none. He was only a human being, which is (in fact) heresy. The first question to ask is: “When did Jesus give up His Deity and the others absorb it?” Was it on the cross? Or was it when He left Heaven and came to earth? Sometimes people mistakenly interpret Philippians 2:5-8 to mean that Jesus gave up Deity. The passage does not say that. He gave up the privileges of the Godhead—the right to be served, for example. He became flesh, a human being, one of us. What humility! He Who created us came to live as one of us. He obeyed the Father in all things—the way we should (although we fail).

Neubauer said that Jesus was not omniscient on the earth. If not, then how did He see Nathanael under the fig tree (John 1:47-48)? How did Jesus know what men were reasoning in their hearts (Mark 2:6)? How did He know about the temple tax situation before Peter ever broached the subject (Matt. 17:24-27)? Jesus did not surrender His omniscience.

In fact, He did not relinquish His Deity. How often do we show to Jehovah’s Witnesses the truth of this claim? Jesus knew that only God can forgive sins, yet He forgave the sins of the lame man lowered through the roof in Mark 2:1-12. We also know that ONLY God can be worshiped and that neither men nor angels would permit it (Acts 10:24-25; Rev. 19:10). Nevertheless, Jesus allowed people to worship Him. He did not stop or criticize a leper who did so (Matt. 8:2). Neither did He prohibit the ruler from doing so in Matthew 9:18. John makes the case for the Word being Deity in John 1:1-3 and then says, “And the Word became flesh...” (John 1:14). Jesus, when He came to earth, brought His Deity with Him.

What verse says the Father and the Holy Spirit absorbed His Deity? Did they each test out at 150% apiece until Jesus returned? Such is the absurdity of the notion. If Jesus was not God in the flesh, then John had no business recording all the miracles that Jesus did to prove that He was (John 20:30-31). The church is built on the very fact of Jesus’ Deity (Matt. 16:13-18). It is what distinguishes Christianity from every other religion! Yet if all His Deity was absorbed by the other two, then the church was begun by a mere human being.

What an awful doctrine! Surely the Realized Eschatology coterie did not think this teaching through before they stated it in the debate. However, they developed this teaching to defend their main proposition. What we are seeing here is where this false doctrine leads. Any doctrine that implies a false doctrine is itself false. Brother Denham called attention to it a few times, but Neubauer did not comment on it at all the last two nights of the debate. It would seem that Realized Eschatology is entering the realm of Mysticism, where it should lose all credibility with those who are examining the theory. Neubauer has opened a can of worms here—one which he may not be able to shut again.

Those who do not know what they are saying shouldn’t be: