Church of Pensacola
Church of Pensacola

Unbiblical Trinity teaching part 1

Chapters 21 - 37

 

21) Let's back up and investigate

22) The council of Nicea vs the Apostles' creed.

23) The Nicene Creed.

24) We are all participants in responsibility for the current mess.

25) Are you joined with modern day Pharisees? Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees! 

26) The Athanasian Creed, (fourth-fifth centuries A.D.)

27) Jesus is Lord!

 

28) LORD or Lord?

29) God and Jesus are not significantly different or seperate.

30) The abandoned scriptural test of orthodoxy.  

31) “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”.

32) The Pharisees were sure that their beliefs were orthodox. 

33) Some of the dangers of these false teachings. 

34) Jesus is divine as the man that He is, as the Son of God. 

35) Men are called 'God' by God Himself!  

36) Why doesn't the Bible read differently to support these new doctrines?

37) Truth that violates sacrosanct beliefs of majority is always taboo.

 

Chapter 21) LET'S BACK UP AND INVESTIGATE

 

I want to now go back and start again from where the church deviated from the apostolic truth first taught by Jesus, and that is still contained in Scripture. I will then more fully explain some of the things I have touched on up until this point, to try to further substantiate the truth on these matters. I know how hard it is for most who have not been studying and praying specifically about these issues to immediately embrace this teaching, for it is so contrary to current popular doctrine on the subject. One of the things that will one day amaze us all is how so many who have studied and taught the Bible never even paid enough attention to this most important subject, to notice how obviously incorrect the popular doctrines were. So few even notice the many blatant contradictions of the ‘Trinity’ doctrine, and the less obvious contradictions of the ultimately sacrosanct doctrine of the supreme and ultimate ‘deity of Christ’. Or, when they do notice, so few care enough to seek God and study through to a conclusion worthy of our God.

 

Furthermore, few preachers seem to have any compunction at all about reading scripture after scripture that show that Jesus cannot literally be God, and then still teach that Jesus is God, period. I have sadly already had seemingly sincere Christians, some of them 'leaders', tell me that this isn’t a very important subject. Concerning a subject so ultimately serious, you would think that if the church had deviated this much from the scriptural truth Jesus and the apostles taught, it would have been the cause of a major stir. In fact  It was a major event in the history of the church, which severely crippled the church up until today. We have yet to see the unity, power and miracles of the early church, even though there have been numerous millions of Christians who have preached countless sermons and built many buildings, collectively working very hard and spending huge amounts of money.

 

The absolute deification of Jesus (and later to a certain extent even Mary) BECAME A SUPREMELY NOBLE AND SACROSANCT BANNER under which to consolidate Rome’s power over the church. And any who dared question it were easily labeled heretics who dishonored Christ, and excommunicated, or worse. Few in the ensuing years of the crippled church have been able to effectively refute the error, and few of those few have dared to brave an attempt. The consolidation by Rome took two major convocations and about 60 years to gain the ascendancy, which progressively allowed ‘the world’ to gain control of the ‘church’ in many ways. We have not yet recovered. It was much easier for Martin Luther to have finally initiated a partial correction in his day than it will be for us to finish the job of complete reformation in a church now mesmerized by the mass media, it's comfortable affluence (in the 'West' at least), and the immorality that most of us have either blatantly and actively succumbed to, or at least have learned to tolerate and condone. It will take the soon coming final severe persecution from the ‘Beast’ (Rev.13:7) to purge the majority of us out of our contented complacence and apathy.

 

Chapter 22) THE COUNCIL OF NICEA VERSES THE APOSTLES’ CREED

 

The original church creed was a unified confession of the faith based upon clear scriptural principles. It is called, FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, ‘THE APOSTLES’ CREED’. It starts, “I BELIEVE IN GOD, THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, AND IN ONE LORD, JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON OF GOD...” Notice how this creed is completely compatible with the whole Bible, especially the definitive scriptural doctrine about God and Jesus found in 1 Corinthians 8:6. Then during 325A.D. the Nicene Council was convened. The only reference book on the bookshelf at our home that listed it has a very interesting way of defining The ‘Council of Nicea’. It states: “The first Ecumenical Council, summoned by the Emperor Constantine the Great to crush the Arian Heresy; it issued the Nicene Creed defining the mystery of the Trinity and affirming the consubstantiality of the Son of God...”{1} This reference explains that this council was ordered by Emperor Constantine with the set purpose of crushing the credibility of the teaching of Arius and those who taught similarly, while bringing the church into ‘unity’. Arius was a highly esteemed church elder who was speaking out against the new teaching that had recently evolved from some, including church ‘father’ Ignatius (we will see him later) and a teacher named Athanasius, that Jesus is ’very God‘. The rest of the church, for the most part anyway, was not yet teaching these things. Arius and the truth, to whatever degree he taught it, became victims of early church politics, for he was not with the popular constituency. It does not leave much room for fairness and objectivity when the Emperor himself summons a grand council to “crush” your teaching. The doctrine of ‘the Trinity’, as we know it, appears to have begun being formulated around the time of this council, apparently in the attempt to try to explain their verdict that Jesus is absolute God.

 

Everything that follows in this paragraph is quoted from a book trying to prove that Jesus is literally God, even Jehovah God of the Old Testament, written by Josh McDowell and Bart Larson. “After three months of painstaking deliberation, the deity of Christ was affirmed by that council. Arius and his two remaining supporters were expelled as heretics... Arius and his followers believed in the pre-existence of Christ and that Christ was the creator of the world. The question of Jesus’ being “only” a man was not an issue at the Council of Nicea; rather, the question was 'Was Jesus "God" or a "god"?' Despite his expulsion, Arius still swayed much of the church off and on for many years after the Council of Nicea. During that period, Athanasius, leader of the orthodox view and later bishop of Alexandria, was exiled five times by Arian leaders. Not until A.D.381, at the Council of Constantinople, was the opposition permanently silenced. The Nicene Creed, forged in turmoil and controversy, is still a theological cornerstone for the church.” {2}

 

Now, I say that the church leaders of that time would not have undergone “three months of painstaking deliberation” if Arius’ assertions were groundless. Their book states, “Some argue that Constantine forced the orthodox view on those at the Council of Nicea, that out of fear the Christians succumbed to his wishes.” {3} I believe that those who argued that way either knew what they were talking about or were right in their inferences, although I believe that the motivation to succumb to Constantine’s wishes at the time was a mixture of fear, self interest, human error and deception growing out of three months of clever politics. Surely there were also the influences of seducing spirits utilizing this mixture of motives behind the scenes that helped to cause more and more of the church leaders to abandon Arius. Arius taught that Jesus was a created being by being begotten, which I believe (that is why He calls God His God), but I don't believe He was created out of nothing, ex nihilo, as some argue. Arius may have believed and taught this, and probably taught some other things wrongly as well, which is easy to do when arguing such deep issues, and which would have contributed to the other leaders ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater’. I don't believe anything was created out of nothing, but by God's Word. And certainly the Logos was not part of this creation, but was begotten by God and was the agent through whom God created everything.

 

Jesus and Paul were both abandoned by the Christians who had accompanied them (2Tim.4:10). So although I am not even hinting that everything Arius taught was true, I do realize we took a wrong turn by adopting the foreign teaching his opponents introduced, which is now considered to be the ‘orthodox’ view. YOU CAN DETERMINE THESE DIFFERENCES YOURSELF BY COMPARING THE SCRIPTURES AND THE APOSTLES’ CREED TO THE NICENE AND ATHANASIAN CREEDS. The historical records indicate that Arius, and apparently his other supporters at that council, believed in Christ’s pre-existence, His active agency in creation, and that He shares God's divine nature. He and his last followers at least did not sell out on this basic truth and foundation of the church. Even if they may not have had everything perfect, we must remember that this is a very deep subject. We can assume that most of the men at this council were trying to act on the truth as they understood it, to whatever degree, but these were the ones who believed their convictions to the point of being excommunicated, risking their lives and the ability to minister the gospel freely. They were obviously men acting on their principles of the love of the truth as they understood it, and they didn't buckle to pressure and profit. The two who didn’t abandon Arius were expelled with him as heretics, I believe because they all recognized and loved the truth that God is the Father and Jesus is God's Son, the Lord, daring to stand firm for those basic facts of the true faith, no matter the cost.

 

Many of those in the church who agreed with Arius valiantly fought for the truth as they saw it for fifty six years during and after the Nicene Council, but had become outmaneuvered and were finally quashed. It is interesting that the Council of Constantinople is said to have “permanently silenced” the “opposition”, as if enforced silencing of any opposition was the proper duty of the genuine Christian church!

 

It also seems an extremely significant fact that it says, “Despite his expulsion, Arius still swayed much of the church off and on for many years after the Council of Nicea. During that period, Athanasius, leader of the orthodox view and later bishop of Alexandria, was exiled five times by Arian leaders.” Now remember, this was a church that off and on had endured about two hundred and fifty years of severe persecution, that now continued to follow Arius even though he had been expelled by an official church council as a heretic. It seems to me that could only have been because “much of the church” had always believed as he did, to whatever degree, and also because of his godly character, example and teaching. There was obviously no pressure from the Emperor forcing “MUCH of the church” to still be “swayed” by Arius for “MANY years after the Council of Nicea”, as I have quoted above from this same book.

 

A couple dear brothers in Christ read this book of mine in an early draft and gave me some good constructive criticism. Both of them said they embraced much of what I had written, yet one of them also objected to my sympathy with Arius, and did not choose himself to go out on a limb to embrace what I believe to be the fact that Arius was much more right than those who erred into outright heresy. He also says he believes the Nicene Creed as long as it is understood properly, even though it teaches that Jesus is God and that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are to be worshiped as being God. I will stand with Jesus, but I will also publicly take my costly stand with the so called heretic Arius, regardless of any of his imperfections of belief, and I look forward to the great privilege of meeting him in the New Jerusalem soon. Both of these two dear brothers also counseled me to write separate works on the other matters of holy living I mention in this writing,, including the issue concerning the worldly television watching habits of the modern church. I place a high value on being correctable, teachable, and of considering very carefully advise from others, especially believing elders. They had good points in one respect, for many people will find these truths I am teaching even more unpalatable when combined, and they may possibly detract from the focus of the one main subject at hand.

 

But after careful consideration I wrote to them that my book is not only concerning this one disjointed issue, but that it has become to me a major foundational concern involving the whole life in Christ. I wrote to them that to isolate this teaching from the balance of the full spectrum of the truths of the gospel is to miss my intended goal, to help to restore the church to the original apostolic foundation of the church, settled on Christ Jesus, our corner stone, the Christ and Son of God. The Lord will ultimately decide what was best concerning these issues, but I mention these opinions, for one reason, so that each of the readers themselves can also decide what they think.

 

Returning to our study of this historical record of the church as related by the authors of this book written to actually prove that Jesus is God, Yahweh Himself in a body, we see that after Arius’ expulsion, many church leaders later still agreed with Arius, and even expelled Athanasius,, who was at least a key player for the Emperors side, five times, even though he had been 'victorious' at the Council of Nicea. Athanasius was eventually given the bishopric at Alexandria, the same city where Arius originally lived, probably as a reward for his loyalty and help in the Roman victory over the ‘Arians’. Arius was eventually so disgraced by the successive very negative historical accounts that painted him as a heretic, written by the victorious Church of Rome after his death, that the ‘Arian Heresy' is today still anathema to most who are familiar enough with church history to have even heard of him.

 

Chapter 23) THE NICENE CREED

 

The Nicene Creed, which was birthed by this council, CHANGED THE "APOSTLES’ CREED", we are told by the ‘winners‘, in order to defend the church from ‘the Arian Heresy’. Later, others changed some of the Greek manuscripts of Scripture for the same reason, some of many such examples I will soon cite. This new creed starts out this way: “I believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God...” So many people at that time knew the truth that the deviation of the Trinity teaching could not be introduced too obviously. This clear foundational truth that God is the Father Himself, and that Jesus is God's Son whom God made Lord was left intact to start with, in accord with 1 Cor. 8:6, but then the sometimes contradictory changes from Bible words to man’s words inevitably come: “...begotten of the Father before all worlds, light of light, VERY GOD of very God, begotten, not made, BEING ONE SUBSTANCE WITH THE FATHER... And in the Holy Spirit, ... WHO WITH THE FATHER AND THE SON IS WORSHIPED...”

 

Concerning a subject of such importance as this, it is so vitally crucial to employ words and concepts taught us by the Holy Spirit to keep us in scriptural accuracy! Notice that they claimed belief in one God, the Father, and said that they believed in one Lord Jesus, as the Scriptures say, but then they turned around and claimed that Jesus is very God. The doctrine of the ‘Trinity’ contained in the Athanasian Creed that was conceived from this council to try to explain these contradictions only created many more contradictions. It did not state that God was the Father any longer, as their Nicene Creed originally purported, but rather it taught that the one God is comprised of three Gods: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, all three being co-equal. When modern day proponents of these doctrines are confronted with the lack of scriptural basis for this belief, and its sheer absurdity in view of much Scripture to the contrary, many resort to shrugging their shoulders to sheepishly explain that it is a ‘mystery’ which we cannot expect to begin to understand.

 

The Nicene Creed is still used today in the worship services of Roman Catholic, Anglican. Episcopal, Lutheran, and Orthodox churches, denominations now among those most depraved, and experiencing the greatest decline in all Christendom. This marked attrition rate is not merely a numerical lessening, but it is a qualitative problem that is finally catching up with the oldest of the corrupted denominations, despite extra pandering to special interest groups and other means of bolstering membership. Denominations are unbiblical and are against God’s will anyway. “...there should be no division in the body...of Christ." (1Cor.12:25-27) According to First Corinthians 3:1-4, denominations are the result of our own carnality and worldliness. Jesus prayed that we would all become completely united (Jn.17:21-23), even as He and the Father are completely united. All of us who are in Christ are all one body of Christ, members of one another. “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be PERFECTLY UNITED IN MIND AND THOUGHT.” (1Cor.1:10, see also Phil.2:2) And we must now all come together in the unity of the Spirit of truth, though not in the compromise of the modern ecclesiastical movement, which I believe is controlled by the similar worldly spirit and principals as the first one in Nicea.

 

Chapter 24)  WE ARE ALL PARTICIPANTS IN RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CURRENT MESS

 

To whatever degree we have deliberately sinned, indulged our bodies in laziness, overeating or lust, indulged our hearts in the fictitious entertainments from the world, or have caught ourselves exaggerating the truth, to that same degree we have opened ourselves up to being corrupted and deceived away from the pure truth of the word of God, and the corresponding pure devotion to the real Messiah and His teachings. The pure truth (1Pt.2:2) becomes VERY distasteful, and even unbelievable in certain places to those believers who love the taste of even the mildest of the modern movies and sitcoms. Righteous Lot was very grieved by the lawless deeds he saw and heard around him, he certainly didn’t deliberately make even the mildest of it his entertainment. By God’s definition, true religion requires us to "…keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (Jms.1:27), and to "…purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." (2Cor.7:1)

 

We should make sure to repent of any kind of sin or worldliness, and strive to love the truth with an honest objectivity, especially ' when it hurts'. We must fast and pray, even a prolonged fasting and praying when necessary, to regain that purity and ‘singleness’ of spiritual insight necessary to understand these most important of the controversial issues. “You have not because you ask not.” (Jms.4:2) “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” (Mt.7:7) Remember, God greatly rewards "…those who DILIGENTLY seek Him." (Heb.11:6)

 

We must be careful that the light within us hasn’t become darkness. If that is happening, WE WILL PROBABLY NEVER KNOW IT, FOR “…HOW GREAT IS THAT DARKNESS!” (Mt.6:23) It can happen while you still have great illumination and understanding and knowledge. This can happen to you no matter who you are, if you are not very careful to watch your own life and doctrine closely to see if there is anything you are letting yourself get away with, while rationalizing it in some way. "Do not merely listen to the word, and SO DECEIVE YOURSELVES. DO WHAT IT SAYS!" (Jms.1:22). We have to distrust God's word and believe lies in order to deliberately sin. This often ends up causing us to lie to ourselves in order to sooth our conscience, as Adam and Eve did before God when they blamed their sin on anyone other than themselves. We must confess every sin and recognize our ticket to great blessing by humbling ourselves and embracing the love of the truth in these things.

 

Chapter 25) ARE YOU JOINED WITH THE MODERN DAY PHARISEES? WATCH OUT FOR THE YEAST OF THE PHARISEES!

 

Jesus warned us all when He warned His disciples to be on guard against the “yeast”, or the "teaching" (Mt.16:12) of the Pharisees and Sadducees. We must double check any teachings that have been handed down to us through the modern church that may have been changed, regardless of the reasons offered for those changes. We also must be ever vigilant against hypocrisy in our own lives, to make sure that we don’t individually become the modem day equivalent of a Pharisee. Remember, they were the devoted 'Christians' of their day, never dreaming that their very name would become a term of derision. They also held the ‘power’ in the 'church'. They enjoyed the agreement of most of the ‘important’, wealthy and influential members of God’s people and sinners alike.

 

They were not noted for admitting when they were wrong about something, not because they were rarely wrong, but because THEY RARELY DISCOVERED THEMSELVES TO BE CURRENTLY WRONG ABOUT ANYTHING SIGNIFICANT. They ruled with popular acclaim, usually being careful not to offend the wrong people, loving money and the praise of men. Today it is much the same with many of us who talk about righteousness, holiness, and loving one another, yet sit in front of our television set watching all sorts of wickedness and perversion as our entertainment. Yet almost always, in our thinking, it is someone else who is a hypocrite, never me. It is always someone else who is wrong, deceived, or a heretic, never me. The Scriptures tell us to “watch your own life and doctrine closely." (1Tim.4:16) We have been clearly warned that “…the time will come when MEN WILL NOT PUT UP WITH SOUND DOCTRINE. INSTEAD, TO SUIT THEIR OWN DESIRES, THEY WILL GATHER AROUND THEMSELVES A GREAT NUMBER OF TEACHERS TO SAY WHAT THEIR ITCHING EARS WANT TO HEAR. THEY WILL TURN THEIR EARS AWAY FROM THE TRUTH AND TURN ASIDE TO MYTHS" (2Tim.4:3,4) And we are now deep in the heart of that very time which this prophecy predicted. To what degree may you be allowing your desires to deceive you and cause you to argue and fight against sound doctrine? (Jms.4:1-4)

 

“The disciples came to Him and asked, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?’ Jesus replied, ‘Every plant that my Heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides…’" (Mt.15:12-14) When the blind follow blind guides, they both end up falling into the ditch. Exhortation like this will not permanently offend God’s humble sheep, who will recognize their Shepherd’s voice, and the need for the concerns I am expressing. But the proud may be offended, for none of us is excluded from the danger of pride or error. The cocky self confidence which allows a person to boldly become more and more angry against someone they consider to be teaching heresy is the same wickedness that has often led to the persecution and sometimes murder of God’s people. This is the same evil root that caused the deaths of many of the prophets, and even Christ Himself. Although many have become enraged by satanic hatred while presumably being concerned for God's honor, Jesus did not overly concern Himself with trying to prevent those who preached error. We must make sure we believe, live and to whatever degree teach the truth, while patiently trying to help others who seem to oppose the truth as we understand it. (2Tim.2:23-26,4:2) We should, of course, make sure that we ourselves have properly studied the related facts on any important, yet controversial issues. And we must always be checking our own degree of honesty before trying to teach anything, or especially before correcting those who have may have demonstrated both diligent, objective study and the ability to properly analyze and discern the Word of Truth with integrity.

 

I am not saying that if someone does not agree with me on this subject, that they are necessarily modern day Pharisees. But the time has come for all Christians who consider themselves to be abiding in Christ, to recognize the hitherto neglected issues which God brings to our attention and to respond properly. Furthermore, we must all seek God, pray and study to the degree that each issue deserves, to show ourselves to be approved, for we will each truly reap exactly what we have sown. Concerning the basic truth I am teaching about God and Jesus, I am convinced that “…all of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you". (Phil.3:15)

 

Let us first look at the foundation of the modern day Pharisees’ teachings about God and Jesus, and then by comparing it to Scripture we should be able to see how utterly different the two teachings are. Again I clarify that I am not saying that all those who believe in the ‘Trinity’ are automatically like the Pharisees, but I am saying that in my opinion this next creed epitomizes man’s religious teachings independent from the Holy Spirit, and can be recognized for what it truly is if analyzed with discernment. It is very important for us to recognize the different spirit of this writing when compared to Holy Writ, and the ever more obvious error of its conclusions to those who honestly seek the truth concerning these things. I am not saying that it is all wrong, for error is almost always based upon truth, and is rarely all wrong. Just as “Satan himself appears as an angel of light, is it any wonder that his servants masquerade as ministers of righteousness?” (2Cor.11:14,15) Is it therefore any wonder that error is disseminated in the following manner? I will now scrutinize the creed named after one of the heroes of the Nicene Council, who according to the official version quoted in this book, prevailed against the so called ‘Arian Heresy’, and who insisted that Jesus is “very God”.

 

As you read this remember that we can learn much from studying this creed which birthed and outlines the original official Trinity doctrine, which has never been officially rejected by the majority mainline Christian denominations that I know of, and therefore still remains the definition of the Trinity doctrine for “orthodox” Trinitarian Christendom. This creed was named for the man who was an active participant at the Nicene Council, who fought for his arguments against Arius that had originated on their home turf in Alexandria, Egypt, but the creed itself was probably taken from Augustine's writings long after Athanasius. The doctrinal maze called the ‘Trinity’ is here defined within this creed. This creed which bears Athanasius' name was written and completed quite a while after his death. I pray that we will come back to believing and teaching exactly what the Bible says. I pray that we will study and let the Holy Spirit teach us concerning any apparent biblical contradictions, without continuing to change apostolic doctrines to fit a few sometimes ambiguous scriptures, combined to complement each other to the exclusion of the rest of Scripture. Because of our collective indoctrination, much of this creed may sound right to many. Please notice the completely different language of the ‘Athanasian Creed’ when compared to the New Testament writings, and to the original Apostles’ Creed:

 

Chapter 26) THE ATHANASIAN CREED (fourth-fifth centuries A.D.)

 

1. Whosoever will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith:

2. Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.

3. And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.

4. Neither confounding the Persons: nor dividing the Substance.

5. For there is one Person of the Father: another of the Son: and another of the Holy Spirit.

6. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is all one:the Glory is equal, the Majesty coeternal.

7. Such as the Father is: such is the Son: and such is the Holy Spirit.

8. The Father uncreated: the Son uncreated: and the Holy Spirit uncreated.

9. The Father incomprehensible: the Son incomprehensible: and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.

10. The Father eternal: the Son eternal: and the Holy Spirit eternal.

11. And yet they are not three eternals: but one eternal.

12. And also there are not three uncreated: nor three incomprehensibles: but one uncreated: and one incomprehensible.

13. So likewise the Father is Almighty: the Son Almighty: and the Holy Spirit Almighty.

14. And yet they are not three Almighties: but one Almighty.

15. So the Father is God: the Son is God: and the Holy Spirit is God.

16. And yet they are not three Gods: but one God.

17. So likewise the Father is Lord: the Son Lord: and the Holy Spirit Lord.

18. And yet not three Lords: but one Lord.

19. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity: to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord:

20. So are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, There be three Gods, or three Lords.

21. The Father is made of none: neither created, nor begotten.

22. The Son is of the Father alone: not made, nor created: but begotten.

23. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son: neither made, nor created, nor begotten: but proceeding.

24. So there is one Father, not three Fathers: one Son, not three Sons: one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.

25. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after another: none is greater, or less than another.

26. But the whole three Persons are co-eternal, and co-equal.

27. So that in all things, as aforesaid: the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshiped.

28. He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity.

29. Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation: that he believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

30. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess: that our Lord Jesus Christ, the the Son of God, is God and Man;

31. God, of the Substance of His Mother, born in the world.

32. Perfect God: and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.

33. Equal to the Father, as touching His Godhead: and inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood.

34. Who although he be God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ.

35. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the Manhood into God.

36. One altogether; not by confusion of Substance: but by unity of Person.

37. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ;

38. Who suffered for our salvation: descended into hell: rose again the third day from the dead:

39. He ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the right hand of the Father God Almighty.

40. From whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

41. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies;

42. And shall give account for their own works.

43. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.

44. This is the Catholic Faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he can not be saved.

 

With this kind of rhetoric, and the fear it instilled, most sincere seekers of truth throughout church history would be easily discouraged from earnestly seeking God to find out if these things were truly so or not. With all of life’s other problems, it is so easy to give in and just give up. Like every believer, they would have already been battling the normal inclinations to indulge the flesh and compromise with the world. I believe that one of the main reasons the Bible was not allowed to be translated into the language of the people is that many would have asked questions about teachings like these that were so unscriptural. One reason that false teachings are referred to as “yeast” (Mt.16:12), is that when we are believing and teaching wrongly about something, and God tries to correct us through imperfect human channels, we often argue and find fault with the messenger and become “puffed up in pride”, being so sure that we are ‘right’. Just as a little yeast works its way through the whole piece of dough, so this kind of being ‘sure we are right’ can be an infectious thing, if, in fact, we are all wrong about the issue.

 

The fact remains, “. . .THERE IS NO GOD BUT ONE. For even if there are so called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed THERE ARE MANY GODS AND MANY LORDS, YET FOR US THERE IS BUT ONE GOD, THE FATHER, FROM WHOM all things came and for whom we live; AND THERE IS BUT ONE LORD, JESUS CHRIST, THROUGH WHOM all things came and through whom we live. BUT NOT EVERYONE KNOWS THIS...” (1 Cor.8:4-7) To overlook or treat lightly this succinct, paramount scripture when studying this particular subject, can amount to overt negligence, especially once it has been brought to your attention by the Holy Spirit. To willfully refuse to consider the clear implications of this verse after it has been pointed out within the context of our discussion would seem to amount to deliberate stubbornness. We should see that for us there is only one God who is the Father, not some Trinity and not the Lord Jesus either. We can also see that although the Son IS God (not another God, but sharing God’s divinity) to a certain degree, as I will soon address, He is not OUR GOD, because "FOR US THERE IS BUT ONE GOD", only the Father. And we should see that for us there is now only one Lord, Jesus, designated thus by God the Father, Himself being hitherto known as the LORD. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting...” (2Tim.3:16)

 

Even though the Jews rejected and crucified Jesus, they still often had enough revelation and understanding to know better than to argue with established truth from even only one clear scripture. They knew that even one clear scripture is absolute proof. In Matthew 22:41-46, Jesus uses one scripture to prove that the Messiah cannot merely be David’s son, for David calls the Messiah “my Lord”. Jesus sums up the correction by saying, “If then David calls him ‘Lord’, how can he be his son?” Today many would answer this contradiction by saying, “We can’t understand the mysteries of God“. Or, “We shouldn’t try to be logical or reasonable with such spiritual things“. But the Jews of that day usually tried to be properly reasonable, logical, and to not contradict clear Scripture lightly. “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.” If people who were that sensible in their arguing ended up crucifying Jesus, how might some of us respond today to someone who rightly rebukes us for our sins and errors, like our television watching habits, and our false teachings like the ‘Trinity’? We probably won’t repent and elect that person as our bishop, to put it mildly! People really do become so enslaved to their sins, the love of money and their comfortable lives in this world, that they get downright angry and even hateful when they feel someone is insinuating that they are wrong and compromised as believers. Pride’s deceptions are impulsively powerful! Jesus did the same thing in John 10:34,35, when, as I pointed out earlier, when He corrected the Jews on their mistaken understanding of who He in fact was, with one clear passage. I re-emphasize that He established the fact that men are called “God” in Scripture, so why not He as a man who is set apart as being God‘s very own Son, specially sent by God as the Messiah. This is a major key to understanding Jesus’ true divinity as the God He really is, while still understanding that He is not literally God, or our one true God.

 

In the process, I again repeat, He reminded them that the Scripture cannot be broken. Likewise, Paul uses one letter of one small word from Scripture to prove that Jesus, not each individual Jew, is the rightful heir of God’s promises to Abraham in Galatians 3:16. Semantics is the study of the meanings of language, and doing that properly is sometimes very important in studying these matters, as long as you are not needlessly arguing about words. Jesus exposes a primary root of our erroneous beliefs when He told the Sadducees, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures...” They ‘knew’ many scriptures, but they did not really KNOW the Scriptures by learning about Christ from God properly. They didn’t understand the sacred writings in their full context. They often did not understand the proper application of the scriptures they did partially understand. The apostate Jews at least occasionally accepted some degree of correction from properly reasonable logic, at times through even one scripture, but many similar proofs from Scripture don’t seem to even phase many modern believers. “Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” (1Cor.5:6)

 

Chapter 27) JESUS IS LORD

 

Of course God is still the Sovereign Lord, but unto us now only through Jesus, His Son. He has made Jesus to be our Lord. God does not abrogate what He institutes, without doing so formally and for a very good reason. We have just seen in holy Scripture that for us there is now only one Lord, Jesus Christ, clearly contrasted with our one God, who is the Father. If God is the Sovereign Lord, and He declared that Jesus is now our only Lord, why would we not accept that? And if God made Jesus to be Lord, gave Jesus everything He has, begat Jesus, and is Jesus’ God and head, then how, according to Trinitarian belief, can Jesus be completely equal with God “as touching His Godhead”? If Christ is OF GOD, and God isn’t of Christ, where is the full equality? And how can Jesus be “inferior to the Father as touching His manhood” if the man Jesus is very God? In fact, the Trinitarian error forces its more honest adherents to separate Jesus into two parts, human and divine. Therefore, those who believe the doctrine of Christ's absolute deity have to insist that the 'part' of Jesus that is man is not God, in order to be true to the Scriptures, and to maintain any semblance of logic, while at the same time insisting that Jesus is fully God WHILE BEING fully man! That is very contradictory.

 

That means that many don’t really believe that THE MAN Jesus is God, and the more honest ones admit it. Ironically, I do believe that the human part of Jesus, all of Him, is of God, in God, indwelt by God, divine, the Son of God, and in these ways ‘God’ in the proper biblical perspective. Gods who are not literally God can possibly die like mere men (Ps.82:6,7), just like the God Jesus did. Even Jesus’ flesh was of God, indwelt by God, holy, sinless and did not deserve to suffer or die. The Word BECAME flesh. God prepared Jesus’ body. If you say that you believe the man Jesus is fully God, then please consider and recognize the many extreme contradictions that this position entails. Please bear with me as in the context of the light of this paragraph I reassert, if Jesus is FULLY man, he could not for that exact reason be fully God! And if Jesus is Lord because He is God, then there is no way that He could ever be anything else but Lord. He would be Lord because of the attributes inherent to His full deity. He would automatically be Lord by right, for no one could correctly deny that God is the Lord. But we do not anywhere find that Jesus is now Lord because He is God, rather we find the exact opposite. We find that He is Lord because His God made Him Lord. We find that God gave Jesus all things and all authority, putting all things under His feet, of course excepting God, who made Jesus to be Lord (Ac.2:36, 1Cor.15:27). We find God exalting Him to the highest place next to Himself, similar to Pharaoh exalting Joseph, a type of Christ, to the highest position possible. “…Pharaoh said, ‘Who could do it better than Joseph? For he is a man who is obviously filled with the spirit of God.‘ Turning to Joseph, Pharaoh said, ‘…you are the wisest man in the land! I hereby appoint you to direct this project. You will manage my household and organize all my people. Only I will have a rank higher than yours.‘ And Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I hereby put you in charge of the entire land of Egypt.‘ Then Pharaoh placed his own signet ring on Joseph’s finger as a symbol of his authority. He dressed him in beautiful clothing and placed the royal gold chain about his neck. Pharaoh also gave Joseph the chariot of his second-in-command, and wherever he went the command was shouted, ‘Kneel down!‘ So Joseph was put in charge of all of Egypt. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I am the king, but no one will move a hand or a foot in the entire land of Egypt without your approval.‘” (Gen.41:38-44) God did this similar thing for Jesus because Jesus humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of dying on the cross, not because He is God (Phil.2:9-11, Ac.2:36, Rev.5:9). JESUS IS LORD NOW AS YAHWEH WAS LORD THEN!

 

Observe again more of the unequivocal proof that Jesus is not very God (who has no God), even though He is now again glorified in heaven as Lord: it says, “Then the end will come, when He (Christ) hands over the kingdom to GOD THE FATHER after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For He ‘has put everything under His feet.’ Now when it says that everything has been put under him, it is clear that this doesn’t include GOD HIMSELF, WHO PUT EVERYTHING UNDER CHRIST. When he has done this, then THE SON HIMSELF WILL BE MADE SUBJECT TO HIM WHO PUT EVERYTHING UNDER HIM, SO THAT THEN GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL.” (1 Cor.1 5:24-28). If God were a Trinity of three persons, that would mean this and so many other scriptures wouldn’t make any sense. Far from complete parity between the three members of the so called Godhead, God will not again be “all in all” until His Son’s God given authority is made subject unto Him. This is a remarkable truth! Here again we clearly see “GOD HIMSELF” in contradistinction to Christ, “THE SON HIMSELF”, who hands the Kingdom back over to God, who had subjugated everything under Him in the first place. And it doesn’t say the “Father himself” and “the Son himself”, it says, “God himself” and “the Son himself”. Nor does it say that the Father would then be all in all, but it says “that then GOD may be all in all”, very clearly differentiating between God and Jesus. How can we ignore “the Son himself” being clearly distinguished as not being “God himself’ again here? Throughout Scripture we see that God, in the NORMAL LITERAL SENSE of the word, ALWAYS means the one person of the Father, who has no God, and is never applied to Jesus without the context showing He is not God in the ultimate sense of the word.

 

This is why throughout Scripture we always and only see “God the Father”, NEVER ONCE ‘God the Son’, ‘God the Holy Spirit‘, or ’God the Trinity‘. The apostolic truth is: “God has made THIS JESUS (“A MAN” - prior context in vs. 2:22), whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Ac.2:36). So YAHWEH God has now made His Son YESHUA to be Lord for the purpose of reconciling all things in heaven and on earth back to Himself. Then the Lord Himself WILL BE MADE SUBJECT TO GOD HIMSELF again, of course willingly and gladly, so that then God can be all in all again. Jesus will lose no status nor honor in the process, but rather it will be to His great glory and honor.

 

I will now show yet another completely clear proof that Jesus is not “very” God, but that only the Father is absolute God. “There is one body and ONE SPIRIT...ONE LORD, one faith, one baptism, ONE GOD AND FATHER OF ALL WHO IS OVER ALL and through all and in all” (Eph.4:4-6). We see here again the one Lord, Jesus, being distinguished as someone other than the one God, who is clearly defined as the Father. Remember, “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (lTim.2:5).

 

Chapter 28) LORD OR Lord?

 

One of the reasons that many are so sure that Jesus is ‘absolute God’ is based upon an easily made mistake concerning the word ‘Lord’, which young believers make in their ignorance, for most are not taught properly. We hear of God being called 'the LORD' in the Old Testament, and we learn that Jesus is Lord primarily from the New Testament. God is also called 'Lord' in the Old and sometimes in the New Testament, and some people assume that this confirms that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, come to earth in a body, as is often taught or implied. By the time some of us learn any differently, we are so indoctrinated we often fail to adjust our thinking accordingly. Because of the seeming ‘overlap’ of Lordship, many just find it easier to sail along with the prevailing popular wind of doctrine that capitalizes upon this common misconception by actually incorporating the error into the doctrine of the absolute deity of Christ. Those who propagate this false doctrine are usually totally unaware of its falsity. They make Jesus out to be God at times, and then sometimes contradict themselves, claiming the doctrines of the Trinity and Christ’s ‘dual nature’ to be great mysteries when trying to explain the contradictions. They sometimes pray to Jesus ‘in Jesus name’, often substituting ‘Father‘, ‘Lord‘, ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ indiscriminately. Because He is one with God, because He is Lord, and because He is the exact representation of God to us, Jesus is, can be spoken of and prayed to as God is in many ways. But our present confusion is inexcusable and must be seriously addressed by all concerned, especially teachers, by each of us becoming careful to seek God about these important issues.

 

The Hebrew word often translated LORD in the Old Testament, ‘YHWH’, meaning “The Self Existent One Who Is and Was and Is To Come”, is not even similar to the other Hebrew words for ‘Lord’. In His anger against Israel‘s rebellion and idolatry, God at least once declared that Jews who had gone to worldly Egypt to live would not even speak His name any more (Jer.44:26). It may have been a judgment and a mercy since to speak God’s name when living sinfully only compounds guilt and is similar to using His name in vain. This explanation may be one reason why God allowed the Jews to eventually interpret Leviticus 24:16 to necessitate avoiding pronunciation of His name, ‘Yahweh’. Instead, they substituted the term ‘Lord’ in place of God’s name (YHWH), which they still today consider too sacred to speak from tainted human lips. They also stopped using the sacred name of God, denoted by the four letters YHWH, today called the ‘Tetragrammaton’, in the writing and copying of Scripture. Many Bible translations distinguished this substitution by writing “LORD” in all capital letters, to differentiate it from when Lord really meant “Lord”. In some places this substitution caused problems for translators, because sometimes the Scripture speaks of Yahweh as being ‘the Lord Yahweh‘. So the alternate name/title, 'Sovereign LORD', was inserted where the Hebrew text speaks of 'Lord Yahweh', to accommodate this substitution (instead of translating it, 'Lord LORD'). Most English translations of the Bible still follow this custom today.

 

Up until Old Testament times, God was ruling the universe as its owner, according to His will, until He made Jesus Lord. Now He is still Sovereign as the Ultimate Grand Ruler, but He has truly given all things, authority and power to Jesus. Jesus rules as Supreme Magistrate, as God, over every spiritual structure of authority and power, and every physical thing in the universe. This God’s throne will last forever, even after He is made subject to God and God becomes all in all. He is currently trying to bring us, our souls, into subjection to God before it is too late. It can be said that God is still Lord, through the one Lord, Jesus. But Jesus is now sustaining the entire universe as God would and did. The most amazing thing about all of this to me is that Jesus is doing all of this as the new man that Scripture proves Him to be. So, when Jesus is recognized as being Lord, His God given position and title, it in no way infers that He IS God, Yahweh Himself, but rather that He is exactly who He and all Scripture says He is, the Son of God, the Holy Servant of God, the image and revelation of Yahweh who came in His Father’s name. Certainly Jesus being designated by God as Lord is proof that He is as the LORD Yahweh to us in that He is the direct representation of Yahweh to us, and He is ruling the whole universe as Lord in every way as Yahweh's total representative.

 

Chapter 29) GOD AND JESUS ARE NOT SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT OR SEPARATE

 

In emphasizing that Jesus and God are separate and different persons, I must be clear to explain that God and Jesus will never be really ‘separate’ or ‘different’ in the way we think of those two words. God and His Son Jesus are inextricably one in perfect unity, and they are exactly alike in every possible way. Their purposes, words, names, identities and deeds, are tied up in one another, so that we do not have to overly fear about making a mistake when distinguishing between the two (Jn.8:16). I am highlighting the truth that most have overlooked to show that we cannot accurately say that Jesus is God, period, in the ultimate sense of the word. We must also be careful not to go to the other extreme and fail to give Jesus the honor and glory due Him. But there are no scriptural grounds for the common compromise that says, ‘Well, of course Jesus is not the Father, but He is God by nature, while also being fully man.” That apparently sounds good to many, but it is clearly impossible to be truly God and truly man at the same time!

 

According to the Bible, there is only one literal God, and any other God can only be a God to the degree that they share in that one God’s divine nature (as I will soon quote Origen as saying), and that does not change the fact that God is still their God. Jesus has the fullness of God’s divine nature living in Him bodily (Co.2:9) and He fully lives in God. But He still calls God His God. And after we become like Jesus when we finally see Him, we shall still know that God is our God (1Jn.3:2,Rev.21:7). There is no place in Scripture that anyone but the Father is called God in the context of having no God over them. In other words, there is only one “self existent One”, “who was, and who is, and who is to come”, “who independently lives forever and ever”. He is not ‘the Trinity’, but God the Father, Jesus' God and Father, and ours. The Bible says, “All things are of God”, “Christ is of God”, “God is the source of my being”, “one God the Father, from whom are all things”, “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

 

Chapter 30) THE ABANDONED SCRIPTURAL TEST OF ORTHODOXY

 

The true test of whether a person believes or teaches the truth about Jesus is whether that person has a revelation from God that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Son, whom God sent into the world as a real and complete flesh and blood human being, who died on the cross for our sins, has been raised from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of God. I have shown that sometime during or after the Council of Nicea the church leaders decided that God was no longer only the Father Himself, but the one God was now a perfectly united group of three persons who are also each individually God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, co-equal, none of whom are God without the others. This group of one they named the 'Trinity’. And most of us now subscribe to this fallacy, many of us wholeheartedly. This doctrinal tragedy is not even noticed by most of us today, it has so long now been considered the ‘orthodox’ truth. Anyone who dares teach the real truth about the subject is treated as Arius was, in one way or another. Our test of whether a person has orthodox beliefs has now become whether or not that person believes in the ‘deity of Christ’. According to Trinitarian teaching that means that if a person does not believe that Jesus is absolutely, fully and literally God, then that person is a heretic, or believes like ‘a cult’ member. A ‘cult’ is often loosely defined as being any group that believes differently than ‘us’ in what we consider to be a major difference. Jesus was crucified and Paul was severely persecuted, both as being declared ‘cult leaders’ by the top religious leaders ’serving’ Yahweh God Himself. Also, belief in the doctrine of the Trinity is also now considered a part of that same standard of orthodoxy.

 

According to many Christians, and as the ‘Athanasian Creed’ makes clear, if a person doesn’t believe in the ‘Trinity’, that person is irretrievably hell bound. Of course these teachings are found nowhere in Scripture, and they are very different from and ironically are diametrically opposed to the standards that the New Testament gives for us to determine whether someone believes the truth about God and Jesus. Let us look at God’s standard of orthodox truth concerning Himself, and especially His Son Jesus, the true Messiah.

 

Please keep in mind that when correcting such a widely accepted major doctrinal error concerning our dearly beloved God and Lord, the kind of things that need to be said when “speaking the truth in love” (Eph.4:15) will provoke and offend many. But we need to know the truth about this issue so that we can be awakened and restored to our original apostolic purity, and grow up in our knowledge of the Son of God. If a pastor, or any other person who considers themselves spiritual, can read these things and still insist on conveniently clinging to their preconceived error without much prayer and study, then I believe they need to hear the straight truth before they go on influencing the church wrongly. We are so conditioned to believe that if anyone denies the “deity of Christ” as it has been taught for the last seventeen hundred years by Trinitarians, then they are heretics. Not one scripture truly supports this modern dogma. This is a major error that seems so right, so please reconsider and look into these things carefully. This doctrinal change is the major reason why the Christian church has fragmented into approximately 2,000 denominations since it’s inception, and is today worse than ever, although there is a remnant.

 

Chapter 31) “YOU ARE THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD”

 

Here comes another crystal clear precedent setting scripture that speaks volumes concerning who Jesus really is, what God teaches about Him, and therefore what we should believe and teach. Please notice how important it seems to Jesus that we believe and declare correctly concerning who He is. Also note that getting the answer right is a very important matter of receiving the right answer from God. Peter did not understand rightly about Jesus just because he was a real disciple, but he was given revelation from God, and NOT by following the crowd pleasing crowd. Paul confirms this phenomenon: "...BUT NOT EVERYONE KNOWS THIS” (1Cor.8:7). In other words, don’t be so sure you and the majority already have it right. And, don’t be so surprised if you wait to find out one day that God wisely allowed an issue like this to be misunderstood by the majority. His ways and wisdom are so high that He is using these errors for His great glory, with one of His reasons being that we would all have the opportunity to humbly seek Him for revelation and truth, and thereby becoming more completely ‘approved’. JESUS "ASKED HIS DISCIPLES, ‘WHO DO PEOPLE SAY THE SON OF MAN IS?’ They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.' 'BUT WHAT ABOUT YOU?’ HE ASKED. ‘WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘YOU ARE THE MESSIAH, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD.’ Jesus replied, ‘BLESSED ARE YOU, Simon son of Jonah, FOR THIS WAS NOT REVEALED TO YOU BY MAN, BUT BY MY FATHER IN HEAVEN.’” (Mt.16:13-17). These truths about Jesus cannot be revealed from one man to another, or delineated by man’s creeds. They must be spiritually transmitted and discerned by the Holy Spirit.

 

Many of today’s Christians would have answered Jesus’ question, “You are God in the flesh, God the Son, the second member of the Blessed Holy Trinity!” That is because most of us modern Christians learn our concept of who Jesus is from listening to WHO PEOPLE SAY Jesus is, although most of us would deny it. Since we now already ‘know’, there is no desperate need to seek God by diligent study, prayer and fasting. Or, when some do pray and study, they allow themselves to rest content when contradictions continue unresolved, because the clarification from God didn’t come easily or immediately. God does not approve us just because we learn what is considered to be truth by those who seem to be ‘good Christians’, or because we did 'good' in Bible College, Seminary, and at the church where we’ve been pastor for years. We must continue to pray, seek God, study and apply the Scriptures to our everyday life by the Spirit to become approved.

 

As this happens, our teaching will become different in some ways from that of the ‘status quo’ Christians. We should not try to be different, but to foster unity and agreement anywhere possible. But if we teach the truth that Jesus and Paul taught, we will often be misunderstood and falsely accused at the very least (2 Tim.3:12). We must continue to love. For it is written, “No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval” (1Cor.11:19). If Jesus’ own disciples saw His miracles and listened to His teachings, and still didn’t understand, how much easier is it for someone today to read a teaching like this and still miss the revelation of its truth. Although as born again believers in Jesus who have the 'Old' and 'New' Testaments, and who should have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are responsible to recognize the truth and respond accordingly. It is not merely a matter of hearing the right sermon or reading the right book, but of getting your heart right to recognize the Spirit of Truth when Jesus comes knocking (Rev.3:20).

 

I am not trying to be provocative or offensive in what I am about to say. I am only trying to make an important point to help us understand that we all have much to learn about God. As a Gentile (yet true spiritual Jew) myself, I sincerely believe that it takes a Gentile mentality to be able to know what the Bible says concerning this subject and still fall for the error that Jesus is literally God. The faithful Jews of old would never have imagined that anyone with revelation from God could be so sure that God could possibly become a man who has a God, much less die. The Jews had a certain revelation of the absoluteness of the lofty, holy, almighty and unchanging God. We Gentiles have a spiritual history of being "without God" and those who "did not know God" (Eph.2:12,Gal.4:8). We are described as being by nature “wild olive shoots”, some of whom have now been grafted into the “olive tree” (Rom.11:17). The Jews are the “natural branches” that belong to the olive tree, though many have now been “cut off” because of their unbelief. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “You Samaritans worship what YOU DO NOT KNOW, WE WORSHIP WHAT WE DO KNOW, for salvation is of the Jews” (Jn.4:22). That is one reason why the doctrine of the Trinity has never been nor is it now a teaching of Judaism. It wasn’t until the church became a predominantly Gentile institution that we fell for these changes. There are some Jews who have become Christians and who have adopted Trinitarian beliefs, and who along with others try to teach that the Judaism of the Old Testament did teach the Trinity, but this is false.

 

You cannot learn enough about who the Lord Jesus really is from men, even from reading the Bible, apart from the revelation from God that Jesus is His Son, the promised Messiah. Before you read any more of this book, please pray earnestly for just that, an accurate revelation of Jesus as God’s Son, the Christ of God. Then believe you receive as you thank and praise God for His revelation to you concerning Jesus, because it is God’s will that we know Him and His Son experientially. Then don’t stop, but let it become a life long consistent pursuit, even as Paul longed to know Christ. Please notice that the proof that Peter was orthodox in His beliefs was not that He claimed that Jesus was God, nor because He claimed that God is a triune God. Jesus called Peter a blessed recipient of God’s revelation knowledge because he claimed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. God Himself doesn’t even hold the so called ‘orthodox view’, for during the rare three very short times God is recorded as having spoken out loud to men during Jesus’ days on earth, He doesn’t mention that Jesus is God. In fact, two out of those three times, at Christ’s baptism and ‘transfiguration’, the one and only God says that Jesus is His Son. This has always been the true and original orthodox view of the church about Jesus according to the Holy Spirit, until the Nicene Council (and later the Council of Constantinople) officially changed it. It says, “It is the Spirit who testifies (that Jesus is the Son of God- vs.5), because the Spirit is the truth.” (1Jn.5:6). This same verse, (verse 6) is amazingly the very scripture that precedes the manufactured verse that was infamously inserted into the Latin Vulgate, and later the King James Bible, that was an apparent attempt to validate the unbiblical doctrine of the ‘Trinity’, today called the ‘Johannine Comma’, which I shall discuss shortly. The Spirit’s testimony that Jesus is God’s Son is the testimony of God Himself, again confirmed in verse nine: “...God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son…” (1Jn.5:9-12).

 

Scripture is replete with proof that Jesus is emphasized as being God’s Son rather than being God. "Then Nathanael declared, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.’ Jesus said, ‘You believe…” (Jn.1:49,50). Martha testified, “‘Yes Lord’, she told Him, ‘I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”’ (Jn.11:27). Those who emphasize that Jesus is God rather than God’s Son may be ignoring the secret sin and love of this world still ruling in their heart that should warn them that they are candidates for deception, for “Who is it that overcomes the world? ONLY HE THAT BELIEVES THAT JESUS IS THE SON OF GOD” (1Jn.5:5). That is because this is the truth concerning who Jesus really is, and only the truth can set us free (Jn.8:31). Again and again we have the constancy of Scripture declaring the bedrock of the gospel truth, that the Father is the only literal God and Jesus is His Unique Son. There can be no completeness of our personal holiness (1 Thes. 5:23) without embracing these truths about God and Jesus, as Jesus said, “Sanctify them by your truth…”

 

As the Bible says, “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true - even in his Son Jesus Christ. He (him who is true) is the true God and (His Son is) eternal life.” (1Jn.5:19,20). Because of their own error, poor reading comprehension, bad teaching or a lack of scriptural integrity on the part of some teachers (often a combination of the four), they have capitalized upon the wording here to claim that this scripture teaches that Jesus is the true God. Jesus had just been identified as being “the Eternal Life which was with the Father and has appeared to us.“ (1Jn.1:2). The next verse talks about “our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ.“ The context throughout the whole book of First John is about God the Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, who is identified as being “the Eternal Life”. With our current text under discussion it is merely the same God and the Eternal Life, His Son Jesus Christ, and I remind you it is the same context as is consistent throughout the whole New Testament. If anyone reads the verses in this true context, they may be able to see that the text clearly ascribes “him who is true” as being the one whom the Son of God has enabled us to know by coming and giving us understanding. This passage very clearly identifies “him who is true” as being the one whom we are in, by being in "His Son" Jesus. Twice this scripture clearly identifies the one who is “TRUE” as being God, and twice this scripture also clearly identifies Jesus as the Son of the one who is TRUE. Then because it says, “He is the true God...” immediately after employing the words “Jesus Christ”, the unscrupulous (or ignorant) among those who are desperate for scriptural proof of 'Christ's absolute deity' seize upon the opportunity to twist the scripture, without looking too deep. How about you? Are you TRUE?

 

Chapter 32) THE PHARISEES WERE SURE THEIR BELIEFS WERE ORTHODOX

 

I realize that all who consider themselves Christians think that they believe that Jesus is the Son of God, even if they believe that somehow He is also God, or one third of God. It is a fact that is spelled out in Scripture so clearly that everyone must incorporate it into their beliefs if they have any spiritual understanding at all. It is the same with the fact that Jesus ‘was’ a man. But you can’t be believing correctly about the Son of God if you are believing that He is literally God, for whether you yet realize it or not, that would have precluded Him from becoming a real man who had a God, and would mean that He cannot now have a God, as the Bible clearly says. Most who teach that Jesus is literally God have to admit that He was also a real man, but they often reveal their lacking knowledge of the Scriptures, or of their relationship to the God of truth, by not being able to acknowledge that He is still a man NOW. WHETHER OR NOT ONE ACKNOWLEDGES THIS HUMAN ASPECT OF GOD’S SON, THE MESSIAH, IS A TRUE BIBLICAL TEST OF ORTHODOXY, as I will now demonstrate! Many false teachers can say that they believe that Jesus is Lord, or that He is the Son of God, but IS IT THE SAME JESUS they are talking about, and what is their definition of ‘Lord’ and ‘Son of God’? Some Bible versions change the original Greek to say that Jesus “was” a man in Acts 2:22, but the Greek says it in the present tense, after His ascension. And 1 Tim. 2:5 says that Jesus is now a man, again after His ascension.

 

Amazingly, the truth is often the exact opposite of what at first seems to us to be absolutely true. Instead of the biblical test of orthodoxy being contingent upon whether or not the spirit inspiring the teaching acknowledges that Jesus is God, it is the exact opposite. The Scripture says, “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge (this) Jesus is not from God” (1Jn.4:2,3). Kenneth Wuest’s Expanded Translation New Testament explains the full meaning of the original Greek text this way: "In this you know experientially the Spirit of God. Every spirit who agrees (to the doctrinal statement) that Jesus Christ has come in the sphere of the flesh (i.e., in incarnation) AND STILL REMAINS INCARNATE (IN HUMAN FORM) is of God; and every spirit who does not confess this aforementioned Jesus (agree to the above teaching concerning him) is not of God.” If you recognize that Jesus was and still is a man (Jn. 8:40,1Tim.2:5) who was and still is incarnated in a human body, new and glorious spiritual body that it now is, then you cannot truly substantiate that He was or is literally God. Or even if you recognize that Jesus had and still has a God (Mt.27:46,Jn.20:17,Rev.3:2,12) who is His head (over Him - 1Cor.11:3), then you will realize that He cannot possibly be absolute God, who of course, I repeat, is one and has no God over Him nor Father who gave him life.

 

So, “What does the Scripture say?” (Rom.4:3). It says, “And we have seen and testify that THE FATHER HAS SENT HIS SON to be the Savior of the world. “IF ANYONE ACKNOWLEDGES THAT JESUS IS THE SON OF GOD, GOD LIVES IN HIM AND HE IN GOD“ (1Jn.4:14,15). And, “EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES THAT JESUS IS THE MESSIAH IS BORN OF GOD…ONLY HE WHO BELIEVES THAT JESUS IS THE SON OF GOD” (1Jn.5:1-5). THIS, THEN, IS THE TRUE, BIBLICAL AND APOSTOLIC STANDARD AS TO WHAT IS ORTHODOX CONCERNING CHRIST’S PERSON AND IDENTITY, JUST AS PETER LEARNED FROM GOD.

 

Anyone who finds himself getting angry over these assertions should make sure he is not becoming a modern day Pharisee who may one day persecute God’s faithful saints while being certain he is right and honoring God, just as the originals were. Agur, son of Jakeh, had the humble attitude necessary to learn the elementary basics that God is THE Holy One, and that this Holy God has a Son. He wrote, “I am the most ignorant of men; I do not have a man’s understanding. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One…What is his name, and the name of his son? Tell me if you know?” (Prov.30:2-4) Do you know?

 

Chapter 33) SOME OF THE DANGERS OF THESE FALSE TEACHINGS

 

Many people who consider themselves true Christians have mistakenly, yet very self assuredly, believed in a different Jesus other than the One that the true gospel declares Him to be (2Cor.11:4). It says, "Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!’ (Gal.1:7,8). It is such a serious thing to teach the wrong things about Jesus that Paul uncharacteristically repeats this same extremely stern condemnation again in the next verse for an additionally ominous emphasis. Because Jesus is one with God and fully represents Him, the error of teaching that Jesus is literally God and of teaching that God is a ‘Trinity’ doesn’t amount to what some refer to as ‘damnable heresy‘, but why teach any serious error at all, especially about God and the Lord Jesus? These teachings lead people to many wrong understandings about God and Jesus, and give many the excuse they are looking for to reject the Good News, because they know these teachings do not make sense. Many well meaning Christians have, in doing so, changed the gospel to whatever degree, from what the Scriptures say concerning God and His Son Jesus. For example, we may preach John 3:16 until we are ‘blue in the face’, but if we are also preaching, in essence, that God so loved the world that He became a man and died for us on the cross, we have radically changed the gospel.

 

The Corinthian church had been hand taught by Paul and other godly men, and they were not yet filling their hearts with worldly filth and lies from the television, yet they were easily deceived into tolerating foreign teachings about Jesus. “If someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached.. .or a different gospel from the one you first accepted, you put up with it easily enough” (2Cor.11:4). How much more are those who daily indulge in the worldly fiction on the TV set susceptible to believing error without even realizing it, and how much more circumspect should you endeavor to become, that you may “be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position”? (2Pt.3:17). The immediately preceding scripture sets the context by warning us that ignorant and unstable people twist the Scriptures, some of which are admittedly hard to understand, to their own destruction (2Pt.3:16). So, be very careful not to be carried away by their error so as to lose your full reward which you have worked for (2Jn.8), for sin and pride can subtly warp anyone’s perspective.

 

To sum up this matter of what standard we should use to determine who believes and teaches the truth concerning Jesus, let us be very careful how we look down upon others with less revelation than us, for we all only know in part, and only have what we have been given. Our priority must be on truly loving God and one another rather than ‘knowing’, for knowledge without loving one another properly puffs us up, but learning selfless Christian love builds us up into a real maturity in Christ. The man whose focus in life or ministry is that he knows this and that, without the priority of the love of Christ towards others, does not yet know as he ought to know (1Cor.8:1,2). Our mindset and focus should not be that WE KNOW so much about what others don’t, even though we should if we are abiding in Christ properly for any length of time. We are of ourselves no better than someone else if we know the truth others lack about any subject.

 

The truly astounding irony is that now days almost all of us are part of the last days majority of people who are wrong in one major way or another about who Messiah Jesus was and is. Let us be careful about how we respond toward those who we think believe or teach falsely about Jesus. We, like Saul, may find ourselves to be persecuting Jesus Himself, if they are right and we are wrong. The more you seek God concerning our Lord Jesus, you could easily find yourself, again like Saul, believing and being used by God to teach that which you once mistakenly opposed ‘for God’s glory’. You could thus become one of those who God will use in these last days to restore this very apostolic truth about Jesus that so contradicts the current popular majority view, receiving the same persecution you may now be tempted to think against me. Occasionally you will find that the most hated and persecuted believer is the one who is most clearly teaching God’s truth and reproving God’s people of their sins, the very thing most hypocrites and apostates hate. Some believe and teach that because Jesus is God, that we are now the Body of God. The Bible doesn’t teach that the church is the Body of God anywhere, although as the Body of Christ we may one day function as if we are the Body of God. Teaching that Jesus is completely equal to God is a very dangerous teaching that makes some believe that we will one day be just like God, an error that Jesus never taught.

 

Chapter 34) JESUS IS DIVINE AS THE MAN THAT HE IS, AS THE SON OF GOD

 

Most who deny Christ's deity deny His divinity completely, and His pre-existence. On the other hand, many who believe that Jesus is absolute God believe what men have taught them because they know He is not just the best of ordinary men, but rather is uniquely one with God, like God and fully represents God, and they often haven’t looked into the issue much because they don’t want to be guilty of diminishing His honor. Let’s now look at Christ’s divinity from God’s perspective. Since Jesus was and is a real man who claimed that God was His God and Father, then HE CANNOT BE A GOD APART FROM BEING THE MAN CHRIST JESUS WHO HAS A GOD OVER HIM. Trinitarians often try to get around this fact by saying that Jesus is both God and man at the same time, by virtue of two opposite natures mysteriously composing the nature of the one person named Jesus. The first problem with that theory is, who is that one person? Is the one person named Jesus God, or is He man? The Bible says He is man, but because of His God like original state of being, many of us teach that He was and is literally God, thus negating His complete humanity and teaching very serious error. As God’s set apart very own Son, the essence of His person is fully of God, in God, filled with and just like God. He is completely in union with God. Jesus was divine, existing in the form of God, before He became a man in His person, nature and mode of existence, yet He retained His original divine personal identity while He was a man of flesh on this earth. Now He has been restored to His glorious divine existence as a resurrected, heavenly and spiritual man, the Lamb of God.

 

God now dwells in me and I in Him, because I am in Christ. That doesn’t mean that I’m God. God fully dwells in Christ, and Christ fully dwells in God. That means He’s just like God in His perfected person. Those who are “connected to the Head”, the spiritual body of Christ, known as the church, also share in the same fullness of God’s divine nature that dwells in Christ bodily (Col.2:9,Eph.3:19,4:13,2Pt.1:4), though we don’t yet fully experience our position in Him. Jesus is God, different from the common Catholic type teaching of the ’deity of Christ’ or ‘the Trinity‘, which seems to me to be exactly the same as the Protestant version, which of course originated from the Roman Catholic Church. God clearly distinguishes to what degree Jesus is a “God”, by showing that He Himself is THE God and Father of the Son He calls “God”, and sets above His companions. JESUS SAID, “THE SON CAN DO NOTHING BY HIMSELF.” (Jn. 5:19) THIS PROVES THAT THE TERM, ’SON OF GOD’ CANNOT DENOTE ABSOLUTE DEITY!

 

Let us look again and see that Jesus is God to the greatest degree possible for one who has a God and a Father: “But ABOUT THE SON He says, ‘Your throne, O GOD, will last for ever and ever...THEREFORE GOD, YOUR GOD, HAS SET YOU above your companions by anointing you...” (Heb.1:8,9). This is the same reality that fulfils Isaiah 9:6, “And his name shall be called… ‘Mighty God'...”, which I will address later. In calling Jesus “God”, God is careful to give us the proper context, and we will do well to give this context weighty consideration when contemplating the definition of Christ’s true divinity. Here, as well as throughout the rest of Scripture, God is identified as Jesus’ God, and clearly distinguished as being the one who calls His Son “God”. He is also revealed as the God who set this God above His companions. So in this context Jesus cannot be absolute God, for absolute God has no God above (1Cor.11:3), nor before (Is.43:10) nor greater than Him (Jn.14:28). I will soon unfold very clearly why I believe the correct translation of Jn. 1:1 includes, “...and the Word was divine” (as some translations render it), sharing God’s divine nature and existing in the form of God. This Logos became flesh, fully human, in whom the fullness of DIVINITY (rather than the obscure ’Godhead’ of some translators-see Strong‘s Concordance) lives bodily (Col.2:9-look up the original Greek word in the Strong’s Concordance). Notice the fullness of divinity currently lives in Christ, it does not say ‘lived’, past tense. The fullness of divinity is not said to live in God bodily, because God is fully God intrinsically, He does not need to be filled with the Spirit of God. He is God - period. It is today considered anathema to say that Jesus is ‘A’ God, but it is true. Christ’s divinity is OF GOD. He taught that His life, power and all things are given to Him by God. Remember, Jesus said, “I came forth of God” (literal original Greek), or, “God is the source of my being.” (Jn.8:42). Christ is OF God (1Cor.3:23). When Jesus said, “I and my Father are one”, He was trying to teach us the intimate unity of His identity with God, and we have later misunderstood this to mean that He is literally God.

 

When the author of the book of Hebrews goes through great detail in proving that Jesus is very superior to the angels, the Holy Spirit shows us Christ’s pre-incarnate oneness with God in Hebrews 1:10-13, but this does not mean that Jesus is literally God the Father Himself. If Jesus were literally God, the author of Hebrews could have avoided a lot of unnecessary words by just saying so. Isaiah and Moses saw revelations of the invisible God when they saw Christ’s glory, but that doesn’t mean that Jesus is literally God, but that Jesus is the image and exact representation of the invisible God. God is one, not three, and Jesus is in complete unity and identity with that God.

 

Therefore the man Christ Jesus is a God, because as God’s very own set apart Son He fully shares the Father’s divine nature. One of the figurative definitions of the word for “God” in the Greek is “Magistrate”, as you can find in “Strong’s Concordance”. Jesus is God’s absolute magistrate, God’s designated Lord, Christ and King. The Bible says God was pleased that in Christ should all His fullness dwell (Col.1:19). Furthermore, we ourselves shall be like Jesus when we see Him (1Jn.3:2). Christ’s divinity is of His Father, His Source, His God, who gave Christ everything, and who is the only true God. Since this is all true, we should be able to find biblical proof that man can be called “God”. Jesus does exactly that when dealing with this same subject, while answering an accusation of blasphemy for claiming God as His Father, which would infer a kind of God given equality with God. Of course as God’s exquisite Son, Jesus has been given an ultimate (not absolute) equality. Yet just as Pharaoh said concerning Joseph, who was a well known type of Christ, “…only in the throne will I be greater than you”, God has made Jesus Lord and given Him all possible equality, yet He will always be Jesus’ God and Father, obviously greater than He. Jesus Himself answers this accusation by defining, and in doing so admitting His true divinity, not as claiming to be God, but as being God’s Son, set apart by God and for God as His very own uniquely special Son.

 

Chapter 35) MEN ARE CALLED ‘GOD’- BY GOD HIMSELF!

 

We shall now see proof that God has called certain men, ‘Gods’. And since this is true, why cannot this man Jesus, whose God is our God, also be called the God that He is as God’s Son (as in Heb.1:9 and Is.9:6), without being mistaken as THE GOD, something He never claimed to be? In this next scripture passage the Jews asked Jesus for the plain truth, but were not ready for it. Is your heart is ready for the plain truth in this matter? Jesus tells us plainly who He is, that He is the Messiah of God, the Son of God, admitting his humanity and His divinity of oneness with God. The Jews asked Jesus, “‘If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ Jesus answered, ‘I did tell you, but you did not believe. The miracles I do in my Father’s name speak for me... I and the Father are one.’ Again the Jews picked up stones to stone Him, but Jesus said to them, ‘I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?’ ‘We are not stoning you for any of these’, replied the Jews, ‘but for blasphemy, because you, BEING A MAN, make yourself a god (or ‘as God’, “Theos“ without the definite article).’ Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, “I HAVE SAID, YOU ARE GODS?” If HE CALLED THEM “GODS” TO WHOM THE WORD OF GOD CAME - and THE SCRIPTURE CANNOT BE BROKEN, WHAT ABOUT THE ONE whom the Father set apart as His very own and sent into the world? Why, then, do you accuse me of blasphemy because I SAID, ‘I AM GOD’S SON’?“ He then goes on to explain His divinity further: “...that YOU MAY KNOW AND UNDERSTAND that THE FATHER IS IN ME, AND I (AM) IN THE FATHER” (Jn.10:24-38,Ps.82:6NIV,NEB).

 

The Jews knew with absolute certainty that a man cannot be God, yet misunderstood what God had accomplished by making His Son human and sending Him to them as His direct representative. You can see in vs. 38 that we are able to partially “know and understand” the mystery of Christ (also Eph.3:4,Col.4:3). Jesus does not deny His humanity when they remind Him that He is a man, nor does He deny the true nature of His divinity, but instead He clarifies it by saying, and I paraphrase, “God calls men ‘Gods’ in Scripture, so why do you accuse me of blasphemy because I say, ‘I am the Son of God’.” These men being called 'Gods' were mere mortal men, sons of God, magistrates, judges of Israel. This reality demands that we recognize that a created being can be a god, and that there are gods who are not literally God. These ‘gods’ also represent some of the “many Gods” the Bible says there indeed really are (1Cor.8:5), and the same “companions” of Jesus whom He has been set above, mentioned in Hebrews 1:9, including us, His brothers, who will soon be like Him! Now, although in Christ we are sons of the living God, it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment. So some of us, though sons of God, shall like those magistrates of Israel, die like mere men (Ps.82:7). Yes, the Bible confirms that, "...INDEED THERE ARE MANY 'GODS‘…” (1Cor.8:5), but they are not our one true God, who is the Father.

 

The Greek word used when calling these men “Gods” in John 10:34 and 35 is the same word “Theos” that is usually translated “GOD”, usually meaning the Father God Almighty, throughout the New Testament. But here in John and in 1 Corinthians 8:5, the definite article is not used, so the rule of Greek grammar dictates that the context must determine if it is saying that these men are literally GOD, or Gods. (Similarly, the Word was called Theos, “God” without the definite article in John 1:1, as I will soon address.) This word “God”, which Jesus quoted from the Old Testament passage is the word written in Hebrew, “elohim”, which is THE SAME EXACT WORD USED FOR GOD ALMIGHTY HIMSELF throughout the Old Testament. This is a plural word often used as the singular word for the one God Himself. It was originally the pagan word for the supposed pantheon of Supreme Beings, before God revealed Himself to Abraham as being the One True God. These first Jews merely continued using the same name for God that meant God in their language, while making it clear that ‘Yahweh our ‘Gods’ is one Yahweh” (Dt. 6:4). So please understand that ‘Elohim’, the plural word used for the one God does not indicate a Trinity of persons as is commonly taught. We see that God is never called ‘Gods’ (in any real kind of plurality) by the Jews, Christians (or Muslims) of any time period.

 

Concerning the common mistake to seize upon this plural form of the name of God as being ancient proof of a so called ‘Trinity’ in the Old Testament Scriptures, I again introduce the ’hostile witness’, Doctor R. C. Sproul, the great intellectual defender of the Trinity doctrine and the doctrine of the (absolute) deity of Christ. In section two of his DVD called “The Mystery of the Trinity”, he states: “I don’t think it (the Biblical use of the plural term for God - ‘Elohim‘, and the statements ‘Let us…’ ‘… like one of us…’) necessarily indicates the Trinity, because it could simply be a literary form, similar to what we call ‘the editorial “plural“’, or ‘the editorial “we“’, when a writer will assume the plural form to communicate a point, or we see a ‘plural of majesty‘, where kings or popes, people in high office, preface their comments by saying, ‘we decree‘, or ‘we declare‘, and so on, and it could be that, but MORE TO THE POINT IS A HEBREW LITERARY DEVICE CALLED ‘THE PLURAL OF INTENSITY‘, and that ‘plural of intensity’ calls attention to the depth dimension of the very character of God, in whom resides all elements of deity and of majesty, and so I would say, at the very minimum, the name ’Elohim’, is compatible with the doctrine of the Trinity, and MAY IN FACT BE HINTING IN THAT DIRECTION, BUT THE WORD ITSELF DOESN’T DEMAND THAT WE INFER FROM IT THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.”

 

An ardent Trinitarian does not usually admit such easily obscured truths, especially while desperately trying to prove the doctrine of the Trinity on a DVD video production in the face of all the massive facts to the contrary. Those who believe in the ‘Trinity’ will one day realize that whatever Scriptural integrity they had accrued in this matter often betrayed their false beliefs when they talked about God as being the singular God and Father (instead of a trinity), while also distinguishing Jesus as being other than God in their speech, prayers, and sermons, such as calling the Father 'God' and God 'the Father', or praying to God in Jesus’ name, although they don't apparently notice now.

 

So then, getting back to our discussion of John 10 with Psalm 82, God called these men who were magistrates 'Gods'. Now, we have changed the one God into a God who is three God’s in one to accommodate the fact that Jesus is a God, since we all know Scripture is clear that there is only one God. Should we now find out how many men constitute this group of 'Gods', and say that God is a pantheon of many 'Gods' who all constitute one God? Or do we say that "...indeed there are many trinities..." (1Cor.8:5)? Why not just recognize that the One God has shared His divine nature with His sons, beginning with The Beginning Himself, The Firstborn, by giving Him, and us in Him, the fullness of His Spirit forever (Col.2:10)? Jesus is the firstborn of many brothers (Rom.8:29), and He has the supremacy in all things (Col.1:18), as I will soon cover in more depth. He's "the author and completer of our faith" (Heb.12:2).

 

It is not wrong to recognize the great and precious promises of the Lord, to believe them and look forward to their fulfillment. It is not wrong to acknowledge that Jesus has called us His brothers, and that therefore we are in fact His brothers. It is the same concerning being called sons of the Almighty God. It is not exalting ourselves to look forward to the promise that we shall be like Christ, or to acknowledge that we are partakers of God’s divine nature as sons, if it is with a proper heart that we do it. It is merely false humility that says, “I don’t ask God for anything for myself”, if He has told us to ask for the things we need or properly want. And it isn’t wrong to expect His affirmative answer if He has promised it, provided His conditions are met and our motives are pure. It is none other than insidious false humility that says we shouldn’t want to be rewarded, or to be great or rich in God’s Kingdom. It is wrong to aspire to these things here and now in the wrong way. If the Lord promises that those who overcome will sit with Him on His throne, then it is not necessarily selfish ambition to look forward to ruling and reigning with Christ one day, provided that our heart is right. Now is the time for true humility, generosity and meekness, so that God can exalt us in due time. We should love, trust and obey now, and leave the exalting to God, but be careful not to judge a brother who may have a glimpse of our future inheritance of sharing in Christ‘s glory. Some people have no reality of the hope of eternal life, or of sharing in the soon coming Kingdom of God, because they are not yet heading for it. Father God doesn’t give false hopes to those who embrace false hope, they must get it from Satan and his children through their own deceptive hearts.

 

To truly be one with God you must live in Him and He in you. The Jews understood the implications of divinity contained in Jesus’ claim to be one with the Father, though they knew this could not possibly mean that He was claiming to be 'very God'. That should be very obvious to anyone who studies the Scriptures with even a basic understanding. Jesus prays that we all might be one, even as He and the Father are one (Jn.17:21). In this same verse of Jesus’ prayer, He explains, in exact accordance with John 10:38, how He is one with the Father: He says, “...the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” Jesus is saying, “God is in ME”, and I AM in God. HE DIDN’T SAY, “I AM GOD THE SON IN THIS BODY”. Jesus has given us the same glory that the Father has given Him, so that we can all be one in Christ as they are one: Christ in us, and God in Christ (Jn.17:22,23). In Gen. 44:18, the Jews said that Joseph was “as Pharaoh“, yet we know that Pharaoh was greater than Joseph in the throne, and as being Pharaoh first, and as being the one who exalted Joseph to his position. In John here the Jews said that Jesus was making himself out to be deity (there is no definite article with Theos here either, so they were not accusing Him of claiming to actually BE God!), and elsewhere they accused Him of making himself to be equal with God when He called God His Father. The Jews accusations do not establish true doctrine. Let us only listen to Christ’s teachings, and that of the Apostles.

 

Chapter 36) WHY DOESN’T THE BIBLE READ DIFFERENTLY TO SUPPORT THESE NEW DOCTRINES?

 

If Paul believed that Jesus was equally God with God the Father, why didn’t he ever say so even once? Why did he call God Jesus’ God? Why doesn’t Scripture resemble the writings of Ignatius, an early church father who was one of the pioneers of this new teaching. Notice how different his writing is to Scripture:

 

“Ignatius to the Ephesians i, greeting- ‘Jesus Christ our God...’

Ignatius to the Ephesians i.1 - ‘...by the blood of God...’

Ignatius to the Ephesians vii.2- ‘...who is God in man...’

lgnatius to the Ephesians xviii.2- ‘For our God, Jesus the Christ…’

Ignatius to the Ephesians xix.3- ‘...for God was manifest as man...

lgnatius to the Romans, greeting- ‘Jesus Christ, our God’ (twice)

lgnatius to the Romans iii.3- ‘...our God, Jesus Christ.’

Ignatius to the Romans vi.3- ‘...suffer me to follow the example of the Passion of my God.’

Ignatius to Polycarp viii.3- ‘...our God, Jesus Christ.”’ {4}

 

And likewise, if God is truly comprised of three Gods, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, then why doesn’t it fit in Scripture. Forgetting for a moment that there is nothing at all mentioned of this major doctrine in Scripture, just look at its total incompatibility with the Scriptures, where it should be right at home if it were true. Any algebra student should learn that if 1 =a+b+c, then a+b+c should always numerically fit anywhere 1 is used, because the sum of these three variables will always in this case be equal to and therefore synonymous with the constant. If the doctrine of the ‘Trinity’ is true, then ‘God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit’ should fit everywhere that the literal one true God is spoken of. But it doesn’t fit in Scripture. In fact, the definition of the ‘Trinity’ is completely incongruent with the sacred Scriptures, including God’s own definition of Himself. Let us insert the [triune God] into a few places that speak of the one true [God], the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, while considering what it is like watching a child try to force a square block into a round hole: GOD IS ALWAYS SPOKEN OF AS “HIS“, “HIM” AND “HIMSELF”, ETC. HE IS NEVER SPOKEN OF AS “THEY” OR “THEM”. IF THE ONE GOD IS TRULY A TRINITY OF GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON AND GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT, WHY DOESN’T IT FIT. HOW COULD THIS DEFINITION OF GOD FIT IN THESE SCRIPTURES?

 

If God is a trinity, let's insert the trinity for God in just a few places to see how silly it is:

 

“That they might know you, the only true [Trinity], and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (Jn.17:3), or, “That they might know you, the only true [God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit], and [God the Son], whom you have sent.

 

“For [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit] so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten son...”, or, “For [The Trinity] so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…”

 

 “...For us there is but one [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit], the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom...” (1 Cor.8:6), or "...but for us there is but one [Trinity], the Father, ...and one Lord, Jesus...” (1 Cor.8:6).

 

“There is one [Godthe Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit], and one mediator between [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit] and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim.2:5).

 

“My [Trinity], my [Trinity], why have you forsaken me?” (Mt.27:46), or “My [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit], my [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit] why have you forsaken me?” (Mt.27:46).

“...I said that ‘I am the Son of [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit]” (Jn. 10:36), or, “…I am the son of [the Trinity]”.

 

“I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit], and to your [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit]” (Jn.20:17), or “...to my [Trinity] and your [Trinity]” (Jn.20:17).

 

“Praise be to the [God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit] and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1Pt.1:3), or, “Praise be to the [Trinity] and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ“.

 

This preposterous list could go on and on. It seems completely clear to me that the almost universally agreed upon doctrine of the Trinity is totally incompatible with the logic and truth of the Scriptures. Why have so few noticed? And why do so few care when it is pointed out? Please consider the next section that is such an important understanding for us to realize why so few will recognize the error they have made.

 

Chapter 37) TRUTH THAT VIOLATES SACROSANCT BELIEFS OF MAJORITY IS ALWAYS TABOO

 

The absurdity becomes completely clear to the honest and unbiased seeker of truth when exposed like this by the light, but how many ministers would want to jeopardize their job by switching on a major doctrine like this in midstream, only to have to face the prospects of fighting the tidal wave of popular church opinion. Not many elders or pastors want to lose the honor of family and friends. Those who earn a living from their church associations have to consider the possibilities of having to wash dishes or dig ditches for a living in mid-life or beyond, especially after being dishonorably defrocked. And to completely trust God and publicly declare the obvious truth after reading something like this book is too much for most to even consider, so many having a sin devastated, television infected faith. So most will not look into it to get that far. There are a hundred reasons to not pursue something so potentially costly. Yet there is no other truly viable option for the shepherd who doesn’t want to be judged for neglecting one of his most sacred duties, that of learning and feeding the living truth to the sheep. In the light of God’s great commandment to love Him with all our heart, and to love one another as Christ loved us, it is the responsibility of every Christian to find out the truth on this and every important issue, and to make a public stand for that truth. When we consider the extreme intensity of the spiritual conflict for the few ministers who would even seriously consider the truths of this teaching, it should be no wonder why the church has never returned to the apostolic teachings about this subject as a whole, but we will soon. Those leaders who are ‘Sauls’ will one day soon be deposed, and the ‘Davids’ will be given to shepherd the sheep in truth (Jer.3:15). As it has always been throughout history, it is still so easy to be sure you are ‘right’. In that all too common state of supreme confidence, we humans have a colossal capacity to overlook or rationalize any contrary fact we may encounter. After all, “It‘s a mystery!”

 

Continued at part 2

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© Tom Heiden