In a recent Instagram post, Reno said,

‘Let me shock you. Yeshua (Jesus) came to show us the Way to God because He, Yeshua, is the ONLY Way to God. He is the everlasting Melchizedek High Priest. The Mediator between God and man. But He is NOT the Almighty God. That is a European concept’.

ME: Reno acknowledges that Jesus (Yeshua) is the ONLY Way God and that He is the everlasting ‘Melchizedek High Priest’ but He is not the Almighty God; calling Him God is a European idea. By saying that Jesus is not God, Reno Omokri is saying that Jesus is just another man who only functions as the way to God.

Stripping Jesus of His divinity disqualifies Him from being the perfect Saviour that He is. Thankfully, the Bible is unequivocal in its claim of Jesus being God. The prophecy that announced the coming of the Son of God declared Him to be mighty God. Let’s read it,

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

So, according to scriptures, Jesus is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God and Everlasting Father. But Reno does not agree, he insists that the Son of God is not God. Scriptures call Him Mighty God and Everlasting Father but Reno says he is none of the above; He is not more than the Way. Let us look at another passage: – (Hebrews 1:8-10)

But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. (Here, the Son is referred to as God – ‘to the Son He says, ‘Your throne o God…’’)

You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” (This verse shows that this God, the Son was anointed by His God. He is called God in verse 8 and verse 9 says that God anointed Him. This shouldn’t confuse anyone. It only shows that the Godhead consist of more than one person. Here, it says that the Father God anointed the Son God. But that does not make the Son lower in might. The next verse confirms this).

And: “You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. (Here, God the Son is said to have laid the foundation of the earth and that the heavens are the work of His hands, meaning that He made the heavens as well. If that does not qualify Him to be Almighty, I don’t know what will)

I will share one more passage that show that Jesus the Son of God IS Almighty God. This next passage reveals the reason people like Reno Omokri are able to put Jesus down from His Almighty position, it shows why they mistakenly think that He is below the person that can be called Almighty God:

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.

And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:5-8 ).

Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation and came in the likeness of men. Jesus, being God and being equal in power and Glory with God (the Father), left His glory as God and became an ordinary man in order to be the perfect sacrifice for the sin of man.

Jesus reached down to lift us up, He descended to our level that we might be lifted to His level. He descended to man’s level; He took man’s nature; He endured man’s temptations; died in man’s place; conquered man’s foe; achieved man’s victory; and secured man’s salvation! All these He could do because He left the glory He had with the Father and took the form of lowly man.

Unfortunately, most people cannot see beyond that Man of Galilee who taught on the streets of ancient Israel and who was opposed until He was killed on the cross. But that Man was not an ordinary man, He was not like the other men. He was not born of the seed of any man. The Seed that gave the conception of Him was of God. He is not the Son of God by title, He is the Son of God in actuality and literally. God’s Seed fertilized Mary’s womb to produce His flesh.

He is a Man but He is more than a man. His life did not begin with His birth; it was His life in the human flesh that began with His birth. As for Him, He had been from everlasting to everlasting as God. Another prophecy about His birth says,

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting. (Micah 5:2)

So, that Baby (Jesus) who was born at Bethlehem is from everlasting; an Eternal Person who took the form of a Man and was born as a Child.

Before His birth, He was the everlasting One, equal in every way with the Father. Then He laid down His eternal glory and took the form of a man. The Father, thorough the Holy Spirit then took that ‘form’ and fertilized the womb of Mary with it as Seed. When he was born, He became the Son of God. Read this:

And the angel answered and said to her (Mary), “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:35)

In His eternal glory in the eternal realm, He is the Word of God. But after he was born as a man, He also became the Son of God. So, right now, He is both the Word of God and the Son of God at the same time. He is God’s beloved Son, the Word in the flesh.

This leads me to another aspect of Reno’s post. He says the following,

RENO: ‘Many Christians read John 1:1 in The Bible (not the Scriptures) and use that to claim that Yeshua is God. I will urge you to get the original Greek Scriptures (see the attached picture) and even if you can’t read Greek, just study that verse.’

ME: He wants to talk about John 1:1 but instead of going straight into what the verse says, he needed to first create confusion for the gullible. He insinuated that the bible is different from the scriptures and then urged his followers to get the original Greek scriptures to study. His original Greek scripture happen to be a part of an old scroll which he showed in a picture. He is simply trying to discourage people from reading and studying of the bible. He wants them to believe that the scriptures that can be relied upon are beyond the reach of normal people and that only ‘scholars’ like him has them. Utter nonsense!

Now, let’s hear what Reno has to say about John 1:1: –

RENO: ‘This is the verse in pure Greek (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος). Although you may not be able to read the Greek, what John 1:1 says when translated without changing the words used for God is this “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with Theon and the Word was Theos”. The original Scriptures did not use the same word for the first mention of God and the second mention. The word used in the first mention is THEON (which refers to the Almighty. The word in the second mention is THEOS which is what is used to refer to Yeshua.’

ME: This shows that my brother Reno does not have any understanding of the Greek language. Any Greek speaker who reads his submission will surely laugh him to scorn. He just demonstrated a catastrophic level of ignorance of the Greek language.

I am not a native Greek speaker but I am a current learner of the language. I have taken some lessons in Greek but I still I have a long way to go before fully mastering the language. However, I know enough to see the error in Reno’s submission.

The Greek words Theon and Theos are not different; they are the same word in different cases. In Greek, a word can present in different forms based on where it is in a sentence. In this case, Theon is God in the accusative case while Theos is God in the nominative case. The same word in the Genitive case is Theou (used of God in Mark 1:1).

The accusative case of a word is used when that word is the object of a preposition or when it is the direct object of a transitive verb. A general rule in Greek is that any word preceded by a preposition is presented in the accusative case. In John 1:1; the word ‘Theon’ is preceded by the preposition pros (with). That is why it is written in the accusative case, Theon. ‘The word was with God’ in Greek literally reads, Kai (and) o (the) logos (word) in (was) pros (with) ton (the) Theon (God).

The nominative case of a word is used when it is the subject in the sentence. It is also called the subjective case. It is the noun doing something (subject) in a sentence while the accusative is the noun to which something is being done (object). In John 1:1, God becomes the subject of the sentence in that part that says, ‘God was the word’. This is why we have the word presented in the nominative case, Theos.

In Greek, there are other cases like the dative case and the genitive case but I cannot talk about all in this short write-up.

Contrary to what Reno says, Theon and Theos are not different words where one is the word for the Almighty God and the other is word for the lesser Yeshua (Jesus). Both words are accurately translated in English as God and they refer to the Almighty God.

The rules of English grammar are different from the rules in Greek. But sometimes in English too, words change based on whether it is the object or subject of a sentence. That rule is only stricter in Greek.

If I say in English, ‘I kicked him’. ‘I’ is the subject of that sentence; ‘kick’ is the verb while ‘him’ is the object. Let us turn the sentence around to ‘He kicked me’. You will notice that when ‘I’ became the object of the sentence, it turned into ‘me’ while ‘him’ turned into ‘he’ when it became the subject. This is the kind of interplay that happened between Theon and Theos in John 1:1.

It is not enough to know isolated words in a language; we must also take time to study what they mean and the rules that guide their usage.

Finally, the divinity of Christ is not subject to debate. It is an affront for anyone to say that He is not THE ALMIGHTY GOD when He himself says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8 )

Jesus Christ is the Almighty. He did not speak for God, He spoke AS God for He is God. In fact, His blood that redeemed us is not ordinary human blood, it is the blood of God. The scriptures show us that the church of God was purchased with the blood of God – the blood of Jesus!

Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. (Acts 20:28)

Jesus is God! He is the Lord of Glory (1 Corinthians 2:8 ); the King of kings and the Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16). Anyone who rejects this truth does so to his or her own detriment.

https://justjesus.ng/index.php/2019/08/14/jesus-is-god-responding-to-reno-omokri/