The following question was asked in a Facebook Group I'm in.
How would you respond to this argument?
We can't know for sure that Yahweh isn't a junior God who has been given part of the universe to run by the Supreme God and he has claimed more about himself than is actually true.
The following was my brief answer with working and added links:
Before I do some apologetics, ultimately, as James Anderson has said, the CHRISTIAN acquires certainty of the truth of Christianity when the external testimony of Scripture (or Scriptural truth) is coupled with the infallible internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. Or as Van Til said (alluding to the WCF), "I believe in this infallible book, in the last analysis, because 'of the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in my heart.' "
The Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit by James N. Anderson
https://www.proginosko.com/2017/01/the-internal-testimony-of-the-holy-spirit/
We have no positive reason to think that's there is a God above Yahweh. We do have positive reason to think that Yahweh is the true God [see basic apologetical works]. These type of scenarios are often posited hypothetically because, allegedly Yahweh is an unjust God. But if another God [let's call him Ultimate God or UGod for short] higher and more powerful than Yahweh were "more" just, merciful and powerful, why isn't that God preventing Yahweh from committing the [alleged] atrocities he's doing? Why isn't UGod judging Yahweh and/or preventing Yahweh from allegedly making a mess of our universe? UGod must then have a similar sense of justice and mercy as Yahweh in his allowing the suffering/evil/sin in the world that he does and in delaying justice to a future eschatological Judgment Day. As non-Christians often say, justice delayed is justice denied. Yet, UGod is delaying justice in the same way as Yahweh is. And so, there's no rational reason to postulate a higher God above Yahweh. We might as well stay with Yahweh as per the principle of Occam's Razor/parsimony whereby we ought not to multiply entities beyond necessity.
If the argument about UGod were being based on the virtually universal Semitic conception(s) of a Divine Council, why couldn't Yahweh be that supreme God? Even Mike Heiser suggests this, and conservative Christians like Darrell Bock and Doug Wilson [et al] think there's some truth to Heiser's Divine Council thesis. Baal is arguably the most widely worshipped Semitic God previously, yet Baal worshippers have dwindled to insignificance.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionnow/2016/06/do-people-still-worship-baal/
The fact that those other Semitic gods have been virtually discarded and thrown into the dustbin of history such that very few people worship them any longer, while the three largest monotheistic religions on earth [Judaism, Christianity and Islam] are all Abrahamic should be telling. That Christianity is the most popular religion on Earth would be an inductive data point of evidence [not proof] that that the Christian God might be the true God. Christianity is the largest world religion. With 2.3 BILLION professing adherents. Add to that the 1.8 billion Muslims and the 14.7 million Jews and that's over 4.11 billion people out of 7.75 billion people who claim to follow Abraham's God. That's over half of the world population.
Judaism and Islam are clearly false conceptions of the God of Abraham when one does the apologetical investigation. BTW, the Roman Pantheon of gods, and the Greek Pantheon of gods are also for the most part forgotten. But admittedly, inductive inference doesn't get to certainty. There was also a time when Christianity was a small insignificant religion. Hindu gods are still being worshipped.
But Christianity is only still growing and making progress. Christianity is growing as expected given postmillennial interpretations of prophecy. As Daniel 2:35 states, the rock that was carved without hands is progressively growing to fill the whole earth/land that was once occupied by the former kingdoms which were represented by the image of Nebuchadnezzar and destroyed by that stone. Just as Jesus predicted that the kingdom of God is like leaven that eventually leavens the whole lump of dough. Or like the mustard seed in Jesus' parable that grows to be " larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." Which is a clear allusion to the tree representing Nebuchadnezzar's widespread kingdom in his dream [Dan. 4:10ff.].
See these related blogs:
An Orthodox Jew Questions Two Comings of the Messiah Answered by Dr. Michael Brown
What Do You Think About The Messiah?
Did the New Testament's Prophecies and Predictions Regarding Jesus' Soon Return Fail?
