Man paints over heretical billboard to read ‘Jesus is God’

Is it vandalism or evangelism? 

A viral video making its way across social media shows a man painting over a heretical billboard campaign in California, altering the message to read, “The Bible says … Jesus is ___ God.”

The undated video shows an unidentified man atop a billboard platform with the Los Angeles skyline behind it as he paints over the word “Not” in the ad’s “Jesus is Not God” message, transforming the billboard into a proclamation of faith. 

World’s Last Chance, the group behind the billboard, claims the message is part of “four billboard themes that dare to shatter the chains of long-held misconceptions.” In addition to the Jesus billboard, which adds the text, “Jesus did not pre-exist in Heaven,” the group’s website lists three others, including one that attacks Trinitarian theology and another promoting the so-called “flat earth” theory.

According to the group, the messages are “not mere slogans” but rather a “clarion call to awaken hearts and minds to the radiant truth of Scripture.” In addition to the billboard campaign, the WLC website features several videos purportedly “debunking” the deity of Jesus and the Trinity. 

While it’s not clear when the viral video was recorded, the billboard campaign has been reportedly spotted in California, Georgia and other states.

Author and Living Waters founder and CEO Ray Comfort responded to the billboard remodeling job with a stark warning about the impact of false teaching in the public square.

“These signs have been erected by a strange sect that claims to believe the scriptures yet openly denies the deity of Christ — a contradiction the Bible doesn’t permit,” Comfort said in a Jan. 21 video. 

Despite the group’s claims, Comfort said Scripture “plainly teaches that God was manifest in the flesh and that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God and the express image of his person.”

“Jesus himself said, ‘I came down from heaven and before Abraham was, I am’ — a direct claim to deity that is here understood clearly,” he added. “He is not merely a moral teacher or a created being, but the Creator himself, for all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made.”

He also pointed to the various other teachings on the World’s Last Chance website as further evidence for his description of the group as a “strange sect.” 

“They not only deny that Jesus is God, but they reject his name in English, promote a flat earth view, and add lawkeeping as a requirement for righteousness,” added Comfort. “Scripture warns us that whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. That’s why this matters.”

Known as Arianism or the Arian heresy, the claim that Jesus was a created being rather than the Creator was rebuffed at the Council of Nicaea, an ancient city located in modern-day Turkey in the fourth century AD. The Nicene Creed was originally written in 325 and later revised at the Council of Constantinople in 381.