Who God Is; Who God Is Not

God is not a genie. Genies are spirits mentioned often in the Islamic Quran as Jenns. They are not only spiritual beings but material as well. Some are good and some are evil, having free will just as humans do. Genies can possess humans, and even have sexual intercourse with them. We are all familiar with genies in bottles, which when rubbed three times, give the person three wishes. That is what fantasy has made them out to be, just as the devil has been made into a red-horned creature with hooves.

Of course, the West does not look at God as an evil person, but Gnostics did. The Creator God, for them, was a demiurge which means "craftsman", but because in Gnosticism material is evil, the demiurge was an evil side of God. Let's return for a moment to genies, though.

Many use God as a genie. He is kept in a symbolic bottle until someone needs something. Then people endeavor to rub Him just the right way, and poof, their wish is His command.  The only faith they have in God is that since every luxury desired before, will be provided again, He is a god who always turns water into wine, so to speak.

Many use their created genie God in times of trouble. As people sin, they get themselves in a jam. They pray to God to fix things for them. If things don't change, then their genie god is not God. If they get their wish, they thank the genie then put him back into the bottle. A genie God is for human's use and misuse. He does good things for "his children" because he is a benevolent genie! God is not a genie, not even a good one!

Now back to God as a demiurge. George Costanza in the sitcom Seinfeld blamed God when things went wrong. Jerry said, "I thought you didn't believe in God," to which George replied, "I do when bad things happen!" For George, and people like him, God is a demiurge who can only do bad things. He causes famine, natural catastrophes, social ills, sickness, death, and hate. Their God is responsible for even Trump being elected! We saw this yesterday when a Tampa professor said that hurricane Harvey was bad karma on Texas for voting for Trump. This professor pulled his demiurge god out of his bottle, and relegated evil to him.  God is not a demiurge, although he is Creator! What he created is good.

At the end of each day of the creation scripture says that "it is good". At the end of the sixth day He said this:

Genesis 1:31 "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day."

All that God created was very good!  All is not good now. What happened to the Creation? Man came along, sinned, and recreated what was good, into a sinful world. Of course, we were only doing what Satan tempted us to do, but we still did it. Mankind made the world evil, at Satan's behest, then turned this evil world over to him as prince of this world. God is not an evil God. Man is the evil god. We became as gods, and polluted what was good. George should never blame Jehovah, but can accept part of the blame himself!

On the other end of the spectrum is the gnostic spiritual god. He is "good" just as He is described in scripture but from him no type of negativism originates. This God is a Monad - the One, and the light which comes from Him is Pleroma - the spiritual side of God. Gnosticism was a competitor to Christianity early on, in that for them Jesus did not die on the cross, but only a phantasm - spirit. Isa, Islam's version of Jesus, is much like that.

In Gnosticism, God's traits are called Aeons. They are all part of the Monad but they are male and female, good and evil.  Positive Christianity has adapted the Aeon of Pleroma as their God. What is positive Christianity? Much of it is what is practiced by Joel Osteen. He preaches only on what the world considers the positive aspects of Christianity - salvation, hope, eternal life, and so forth. Osteen never preaches on Hell nor punishment. That god is not the God of the Bible. He is an invention, and he is derived from Gnosticism. 

Christ is not the Christ of positive Christianity. God is not the Monadic Pleroma of Gnosticism either! We've looked at Gnosticism, now let us examine positive Christianity.

That type of "Christianity" is heresy. It comes from evil itself - Nazism! It was not dependent on Christ nor even the Apostle's Creed. Christ was created according to the ideals of National Socialism. Since Jews were hated, the entire Old Testament was discarded!  We must remember that Hitler several times said that he was a Christian. However, his "Christ" was not the Jesus of Holy Scripture, but a demiurge from Nazism! His Jesus taught that Jews were to be hated, and that the white race is supreme.  Hitler always sought "secret knowledge" from those like Madam Helena Blatvasky, a theosophist wo helped usher in the New Age Movement. In other words, positive Christianity comes from evil forces, and anything not good comes from Satan.

Of course Osteen's positive Christianity is not like Hitler's since it is wrapped in love. His is more neglect of one side of God's teachings - the hell and brimstone part, and is as such, is half a gospel. It has much truth within but lacks fully revealing truth.  God is not half-truth; God Is Truth! All the gospel message must be presented because part of the truth is that God is a just God.

Isaiah 45:21 "... there is no other God besides Me, A just God and a Savior; There is none besides Me."

We may not like God's justice because we are unrighteous, but that doesn't mean that God is not just! We should never take out the parts we don't like just because we disagree with them or believe them to be untrue! The Jefferson Bible took out the miracles of Jesus, essentially because he failed to believe that Jesus Is God! All those miracles were in fact positive, but Jefferson's Deist Creator God wasn't able to do even good things!

God's word is truth. We cannot fabricate our own God in our own image. Remembering that God created us in His image, if we turn that around, it is heresy. God is not like us; we are to be as He Is. The focus here is on God, not on "self". We will never be Gods, but try to be "as gods". Designing God in our manner is the ultimate pride. God is Who He Is. He just Is, and we can't change Him! Thank God for that because Hitler created a mean-spirited God!

In actually, positive Christianity is negative since it is hateful. On the other hand, Osteen's version of Christianity is positive and loving, but it is still only half the gospel. He indicated that those from India worship the same God. No they don't! To believe that is univeralist thought, practiced by Unitarian-Universalists. Indeed, their brand of Christianity is positive, but it is also heresy! The other gods worshiped are not the One True God. For instance, Allah, meaning God in Arabic, is not doctrinally the same God as the Judeo-Christian God JHVH. He is more the demiurge of Gnosticism.

Equating other gods with God is evil. God is a jealous God (Exod 20:5), and by worshiping other gods, those who do are fornicators against God. They call themselves a "church" but we must ask, "Whose church?" Other gods are not Gods!

God is not a "multiple choice" God. We cannot pick and choose what we wish to believe. That would make us as gods, which we are not, although by our actions, we think that we are! God's Word is Truth whether we like it or not:

Psalm 31:5 "Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth."

People don't care much for the Lord God of Truth! They desire God designed with their limited knowledge. Those who deny the Word of God as Truth, deny Jesus for He Is - the Word (John 1). As such, Holy Scripture is the very Word of Jesus who is God With Us. That Is God; anything less is not! He didn't come to save the world from despair, but from sin. It's not that he doesn't care about poverty, illness, and hatred; but His mission is to keep us from dying an eternal death. Of course, if we have faith in Him, he will answer our prayers, but again, He is not a genie God!

In fact, God doesn't answer the prayers of those who are Satan's, save one: the sinners prayer of repentance:

John 9:31 "Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him."

If selfish prayers are answered, it is not God who answers them! What is prayed for must be the will of God. Of course, His will is that you repent. Each time we pray we must ask for forgiveness in the pattern of the Lord's Prayer -  it is His will that be done, and we must ask for forgiveness of our sins. God is not a god who honors those serving another master!

God is not a female and has no feminine side. Indeed, God is physically not a male either. He just Is!  As Creator, He is our Father, as He is in dominion. Out of respect we call Him our Father. He is Father because he sired the Son. To remold him as female or feminine is the ultimate disrespect because he has dominion over the universe. Some may not like it, but God created the male to have dominion over His Creation. As such, relegating Him as a Her is heresy! God does not have a male side and a feminine side. He just Is. Those who claim to be Christians need to get out of the "God Designing" business. It will fail because God the Father Was before we ever were!

God is not really three "persons". God is One. Persons are mankind's feeble attempt to describe God's homeostasis - or substance. God is One with the three aspects - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not "God and Jesus" or even "Jesus and the Holy Ghost"! It is God when speaking of the Father, Son, or Holy Ghost. Christians do that in carelessness, but it is actually irreverent to seemingly create multiple Gods. For instance, it was God who died for us, and God who came back to Comfort us. He just appears to us in different likenesses. To create new Gods is what the First Commandment tells us not to do!

Matthew 28:19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..."

Essentially this says, "Baptize in the name of the One True God" because God was called Jesus and called Emmanuel, but he remained I AM THAT I AM.  Being baptized in "Jesus Name" is equivalent, lest we forget that Jesus Is God!

There is importance in Jesus name. The Jews worship the One True God  but fail to recognize His entire identity. He is more than Creator. He is Savior! They recognize Him as a coming Messiah but fail to accept Him as having already come and saved! Recognizing that God has already died for mankind is essential doctrine. God is not one who has yet to die for the sins of mankind. JHVH is missing part of His assets, in he views of Judaism.

John 14:6 "Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

People don't like that because they see it as narrow and intolerant of other beliefs, but Jesus Is God (John 14:9), and salvation is only by Jesus!  God is not the Father who had no Son. This may confuse some, but by being born of a virgin was God's vehicle for becoming flesh. He is no less God because of his flesh than he was before. Because of His omnipotence, God created us, and manifested himself in the same manner. With Jesus birth, another God was not created, but God came to us in the flesh. As such, Jesus was God's Spirit and Mary's flesh. He was the Son of God and the Son of Man, but he Is God, and not just a man! Therefore, God is not three "persons" but three aspects.

God is supernatural. His manifestation in Jesus is the supernatural revealed in the natural. However, God is not of nature, but of Himself. What that means is that God wasn't created as all nature was, but always existed! The One True God was not created, but Created. As such, Jesus is not created but was the Creator because He Is God! (John 1). If you think of the Father as the Creator only, it was God who created, but he used different aspects to create. Think on it this way: God planned it, the Word (Jesus) spoke it, and the Holy Spirit with Power made it come about! A lesser God is not God! Those who believe in "God" but that he didn't create, believe neither in the Father, Jesus, nor the Holy Spirit; who are all the Creator!

God is not the God who can't create, because if He can't create a place to live for a time, He certainly could not create a place to life for eternity! It is essential that Christians believe that God created it all, and that Jesus - who is the Way, created us, as well as died for us! God is not the one who did not die for us!

God is not a lot more than what I have listed. Those are examples. People have invented all types of gods. Indeed, there are a pantheon of gods people created, but none of them are God. God has many characteristics but all of them are love. Even if He allows us to choose wrongly, he cries, but one thing God does not do - He doesn't send people to hell. Satan does that. God only gives the liberty for those to choose their own destiny. With free will, people are masters of their own fate. Choose wisely - choose the real God!