The Doctrine of Election Part II

There are grave consequences in ignoring the Doctrine of Election. We can go back and forth citing verse after Bible verse on the merits of what is known as cheap grace or cheap salvation (false eternal security), or the lack of the same thereof; meantime, the body of Christ apparently
will continue to be divided until kingdom come. Praise God, though, that He gives us the promise that one day we will come to the unity of the faith: 11) And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12) for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13) till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14) that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting (Eph. 4:11-14). Let us now proceed to examine this passage, which tells us the following:
1) Jesus Christ Himself gave us five ministries for the specific purpose of ministering the Word of God to the Church for the instruction and edification of the saints. Important note: These five ministries are the "basic" ministries. In 1 Cor. 12:28 are added healings, helps (diverse kinds), administration, tongues, interpretation of tongues (and whatever others may be found necessary to meet each congregation's specific needs). Some make a distinction between gifts and ministries. There is no such distinction. The ministries listed in Ephesians 4:11 should be regarded as basic or fundamental, but they are all gifts as well as ministries for the simple reason that they all proceed directly from God.
2) Through the aforementioned gifts or ministries and more diligent search for the unifying truth that some day will set us truly free, we will at long last become one single body--as opposed to multiple bodies usually called denominations, sects, religious organizations or societies. How distant that day is depends on how soon we stop ignoring or sidestepping the issue of the election of the saints. This issue is not a "pauline" issue, as many seem to suggest. With a few exceptions, the New Testament writers in general speak of the elect, the chosen, the saints, the body of Christ, the born-again believers, the Church of God, etc., all conveying the same distinctive idea. Even James, the practical Christian thinker par excellence asks: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? (v. 2:5).
3) The purpose of this unity, not just physical, but very especially a unity of doctrinal understanding, is precisely to prevent us from falling into irreconcilable heresies and eventual apostasy (into which more than just a few of us have already fallen). So far our multiple differences may be dismissed, downplayed or excused by some as unessential or as differences of form but not of substance, and so on, but they still constitute a real danger nevertheless. Unfortunately, it seems that instead of seeking that unity, the people of God are more interested in remaining perfectly and chaotically fragmented than in PRAYERFULLY seeking it. There is no doubt in my mind that all preachers should start studying this election "business" in earnest and focusing less on such secondary concerns as prosperity and miracle-healing among others. No one that I know of ever preaches or teaches election anymore, and those who might, which I seriously doubt, probably associate it with this false notion that once an individual has accepted the Lord, his salvation is assured, since God has predestined him to enjoy eternal life even if he loses his faith and becomes a profligate and an apostate. This is another good reason why the doctrine of the election must be studied diligently and in dead earnest.
Let us make it quite clear that unity of the body of Christ with the full agreement and understanding of the election as one of the leading doctrines of Christianity would be no guarantee of universal agreement. There will always be recalcitrant spirits who will oppose sound doctrine regardless of what they read in the Bible. This universal agreement was not the case in the apostolic era, it never was and it never will be. But one thing is certain: In due time God will expose them as antichrists (1 John 2:18), as it is written: They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us (1 John 2:19). One final word: It takes more faith to believe that God has chosen some of us for everlasting life in His kingdom, so that everything we need for our salvation was foreordained for us by divine decree, than to be sure to be saved for the time being but still uncertain of our final destiny, and that in spite of all the assurances that Scriptures give us to that effect. Below are just a handful of many such scriptures. Those of you who truly love Jesus, who is the Truth personified, please look them up in your Bibles and judge for yourselves whether or not the Word of God teaches random election or the predestination of the saints and its corollaries, such as eternal security, unconditional salvation, the law of cause and effect, etc.

God In Three Persons?

Section I: The Father, the only true God?
In his well-known prayer to the Father in John 17:1, 3, the Lord Jesus Christ said, “FATHER, the hour has come…And this is eternal life: that they may know YOU (the Father), the ONLY TRUE GOD, and JESUS CHRIST, Whom you have sent. As if that were not enough, Paul almost repeats the very same words in 1 Corinthians 8:6 (NKJV) when he says,… yet for us THERE IS but ONE GOD, THE FATHER…and one LORD, JESUS CHRIST.” Most certainly Jesus was not speaking to three persons in His prayer, which He should have if each one of them were the same God, but to the Father alone, the only true God in His own words. Paul, on his part, did not say, “There is one God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” but only the Father. In response to this shocking discovery many will say something along the lines of, “but the Bible says in many places that the Son and the Holy Spirit are God as well.” There is no denying that it certainly does. What it does not say or teach is that the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are three distinct persons and one true and only God. Inevitably, the next argument is, “true, the words are not there, but the concept certainly is.” It is precisely the search for the concept, if indeed it is there, what has prompted this dissertation and which search, in the author’s humble opinion, is definitely and unquestionably a necessary undertaking. For, if according to the preceding quotes, only the Father is God, then it is a matter of the utmost urgency to conduct a much more exhaustive investigation of the dogma of the Trinity and a more thorough and careful examination of the scriptural content related to the subject.

To more fully and clearly understand the deity’s true nature and personality it is an indispensable condition to begin with the correct description of the following terms: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all the same God and the same person with different names or titles. Other names for God besides Elohim and Adonai are Jehovah or Lord, The Almighty and the Word. All of them are the same and only divine person. If this is not true, then the two Bible references first quoted above are wrong—one of which quoted verbatim from the Master Himself—and cannot possibly be word of God. On the other hand, if they are word of God, which I am sure no sincere Christian would dare doubt, let alone deny, then the Trinity is but one more false teaching. It is up to us to choose between one and the other once we have become familiar with what the Bible actually teaches about God’s personhood.

Section II: Facts often overlooked about the true nature of the Godhead
It is also of vital importance to recognize that Son of God is but another way of identifying Jesus as the Word or God incarnate (John 1:14; 1 Timothy 3:16). While the title Son of Man stresses Christ’s humanity, Son of God represents His two natures, one fully human and another totally divine. Even though Trinitarians recognize those two natures, it is rather unfortunate that they equate Jesus’ Sonship with His presumed pre-incarnate self existence (an obvious inconsistency), thus making Him divine all the way without the slightest attention to His incarnation. Or do they suppose that Jesus was already fully God and fully man from eternity? If so, it is a most regrettable error, for Paul clearly calls Jesus the second or last Adam, not the first, and he goes on to say that the spiritual is not first, but the animal or carnal; then the spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:45, 46), meaning that the man Jesus first had to be perishable flesh before that corruptible flesh would become a glorified body. Additionally, Paul also writes in the next verse that the first man is from the earth, but the second man is the Lord (Jehovah God, the Word and Holy Spirit) from heaven. This could be interpreted as Jesus being that second person of the Trinity who existed eternally as a heavenly man, but only in a heavenly body. Supposedly, this means that He did exist as a man before He incarnated into an earthly man (v. 48). The problem once again is: How do we fit that interpretation into the second-man Pauline assertion? If Jesus is the second man, what difference would it make whether His body was heavenly or not, anyway? He would still be the second man if our arithmetic does not betray us. As the second man, however, He did not change into a heavenly man until after His resurrection. Furthermore, the idea of the pre-existent heavenly man, besides not being supported by any other scripture, is completely annihilated by 1 Corinthians 15:42-54, if we bother to read that lengthy passage with the attention it deserves.

Another matter that deserves our most serious attention is that such popular expressions as “God the Son” and “God the Holy Spirit” are nowhere to be found in the entire New Testament. The significance of this observation is that in the case of the Father the exact opposite occurs. In almost every introductory section of the epistles we read about God our Father, God the Father—or the God and Father—of our Lord Jesus Christ, etc., giving the Father the imprint of His sole and exclusive right to divine status. Now if indeed God were three persons, all of the three would have to be the Father if we are to bring them into conformity with the statement already cited that there is no other God than the Father. This option automatically eliminates the presumed triunity of God, remaining only one other option: Father is just another word for God, and Son and Holy Spirit are alternative titles of the Father (God) which merely describe specific functions and roles of the same. Such being the case, those titles acquire a meaning quite different from that which has been given to them in the course of nearly two millennia, and it is precisely that meaning what we have proposed to bring to light in this modest exegetical effort. Besides, at no time are we instructed to pray to all three persons, but to the Father only (Matthew 6:9-13) and only in the name of the Son (John 15:16; 16:23).

Neither are we ever encouraged to worship the Holy Spirit even though He is the third person according to Trinitarian doctrine. If He is God, why can’t He be worshipped? And if we worship Him without divine sanction, would we not incur in idolatry? These are questions that scream for an answer, but which we shall consider further in the course of our study. Suffices to say for now that the mere fact that we are not directed to pray to all so-called persons is abundant proof that God is not three but one single person; also, when we worship the Father we worship the Father in the Son (John 10:38 and 14:9-13) and the Father as the Holy Spirit as well, for God is Spirit (John 4:24), so there is no need to pray to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But so much for what is biblical; extra-biblically, a sort of divine hierarchy or chain of command has arbitrarily been instituted: the Father is the first person, the Son is the second and the Holy Spirit is the third one, only because that is the order in which they appear in Matthew 28:19. In reality, that order is neither proof that God is three persons nor does it refer to a sort of divine hierarchy, but it is only Jesus’ way of teaching us that God can perform simultaneously three different functions while playing three different roles (Father, Savior and Sanctifier) all by His own awesome self. By the way, none of those titles signifies order of rank, for all three titles are so equally important that it is impossible for God to assume any one of those titles without assuming one or two of the others. On the other hand, no one would deny that it is just as impossible to list them with all of them occupying first place in the list.

To make matters more complicated still, it is asserted that the Son proceeds or comes from the Father while the Holy Spirit proceeds or comes from both the Father and the Son (as per both the Athanasian and the Nicene Creeds as adopted in the fourth century of our era). Poor Holy Spirit, relegated to the position of a third-string divine person! Yet, according to Trinitarian doctrine, they are all equal, but at the same time not so equal that any one of them could not be differentiated from the other two. Curiously enough, though, this obvious contradiction is not acknowledged at all, let alone challenged. The difficulty does not necessarily rest on the words (proceed or come from) themselves, for the Bible does use them properly in the sense of the Son and the Holy Ghost passing from one place to another, one of which is the point of origin or departure and the other the point of destination. The Word, in effect, left the bosom of the Father in heaven to come to the world (John 8:23; 17:5) and the Holy Spirit came from heaven to dwell in all the believers (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19; Romans 8:11; 2 Timothy 1:14; James 4:5). All of which is perfectly scriptural and perfectly plausible since God is omnipotent as well as omnipresent, as we all know. However, if we are to use those same verbs or verbal forms to prove the three persons’ self-existence, a truly thorny problem arises. For in that sense said words never denote eternity but origin, so that according to their true meaning the Father is before the Son (which is quite logical) and if so, they (the Father and the Son) cannot possibly be coeternal with one another. The Holy Spirit in turn, still following the Trinitarian misuse of the words, originates in both the Father and the Son, an utterly impossible proposition, for as we soon shall see, the Holy Spirit is the Father Himself (God or Jehovah) and without Him there is no God, as, again, God is Spirit (John 4:24) and the Lord is the (Holy) Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17). Naturally, the Father is before the man Jesus, in whose human body abides the true Spirit of the very God of heaven (the Old Testament Jehovah) in all His fullness, yet He does not cease to be as fully human in His physical form as He is fully divine in the spirit nonetheless. Paul quite clearly states this truth in Colossians 2:9: For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

Section III: Legitimate water baptism: in the name of Jesus only or in the name of the three persons?
It never ceases to amaze me how Trinitarian Christians so readily point to Matthew 28:19 as proof that God is three persons…and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. How about Acts 2:38 and 10:48, which record the baptism of new converts in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ only? Trinitarians are always hard put to explain this apparent inconsistency, while refusing to find the answer in, or simply ignoring, Colossians 2:9 [For in Him (Jesus) dwells ALL THE FULLNESS OF THE GODHEAD, BODILY], all for the sake of perpetuating the Trinitarian myth. Since all the fullness of the divinity resides in the man Jesus, doesn’t it make sense that it makes no difference whatsoever which mode of baptism is practiced? And again, even Trinitarians interpret Colossians 2:9 to be a reference, not to the three persons, but to God’s nature or essence. Then, why not apply that same reasoning to Christ’s baptismal ordinance and conclude that He was not talking about three persons but about God’s essence, the essence of our faith and the three roles played by the Godhead in order to carry out His redemptive work? These three roles are: Father, which suggests authority, the Son, who is the Savior and in the body exemplifies wholehearted submission to that authority, and the Holy Spirit, who is the Father Himself and whose nature, which is holy and perfect, He bequeaths on His adopted children (2 Peter 1:4). After all, isn’t water baptism a publicly tacit confession that Christ is the Son of the living God, thus echoing Peter’s declaration of faith in Matthew 16:18? When we make such a confession, are we not automatically attributing to God the status of Father, first of our Lord, and next of us, His newly adopted children (John 1:12; 2; Corinthians 6:16-18; Ephesians 1:5), in whom the Holy Spirit of the Father comes to dwell, and through whom we are born again or born of the Spirit? (John 3:5-8). Isn’t it also true that this is in essence what believing in and accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior entails? Isn’t this what is required of every person to believe in order to receive water baptism in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?

For that is exactly what Philip told the eunuch when he asked what prevented him from being baptized: If you truly believe, you may, Philip said, to which the eunuch responded, again, like Peter: I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of [the living] God (Acts 8:36, 37). In sum, what Jesus intended was nothing more than to impress upon us the need we all have of understanding the ideal Father-Son relationship we must seek to establish, with the help, counsel and favor of the Holy Spirit, in order to consummate our blessed hope. For it is not enough to claim to believe in God to obtain His pardon and become reconciled with Him (2 Cor. 5:18-21); it is condition sine qua non to also believe in His Son, the only one through whom this reconciliation may be brought about (John 3:16 and 18; 2 Cor. 5:18; Acts 4:12; also, John 14:1: You believe in God, believe also in Me, which is the same as saying, If you do not believe in Me, you do not believe in God). Besides all of this, water baptism symbolizes both the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ as well as the death and burial of the old man in us and our new birth in Christ (a sort of spiritual resurrection: Romans 6:1-11). This is in sum the Creed par excellence, the Creed of all creeds, the foundational message contained therein none of the other existing creeds takes into account.

In conclusion, to baptize in the name of Jesus Christ is simply and exactly tantamount to baptizing in God’s name in all three of His manifestations, functions or operations (not persons). As for baptizing in the name of each one of the three persons, we must begin by determining the meaning of the phrase in the name of. All that is implied by that phrase is the idea of acting on behalf or on the authority of something or someone. That is precisely what the baptizing ministers do: They act in representation of God and on His authority, but as one single person—not three—who plays all three roles: that of Father,` Savior, and of the believers’ spiritual Guide, Teacher and Helper (John 14:16, 17 and 26). Next we must treat the word God with the reverence it deserves. God, in order to be God, must be a person. If not, what is He then, an inanimate object or thing? So then, if He is already a person, that is to say, an intelligent or rational being, why make Him three persons when one is more than sufficient? And would not three divine persons be three gods in that case? Because not only all three persons are the one and only God, but each of the three persons is God individually too. Moreover, if Jesus actually intended to have His disciples baptize in the name of three divine persons, we would have to conclude that they were commanded to literally baptize in the name of two spirits—the Father and the Holy Spirit—in spite of God being just one Spirit, one Lord, and one God and Father (Ephesians 4:4-6:…there is one body and one Spirit;…one Lord…; one GOD AND FATHER of all). Do not all these comments make plenty of food for thought?

Section IV: The allegorical meaning of the titles Father and Son
Now if you can believe that the Son of God is both man and God, and that God is omnipresent you should have no difficulty accepting and understanding the Holy Spirit’s double role as Father and the believers’ Great Comforter and Advocate. Finally, and more than anything else, the titles Father and Son allegorize the unchallengeable authority of the Father and the unwavering obedience of the Son, through whom those of us who have surrendered our will to that of the Father also become His adopted and faithful children. All evangelicals understand the need all earthlings have of establishing and maintaining a personal relationship with God our Father through Jesus Christ the Son. What they have not fully absorbed is the reason why Jesus called God His Father and why He was the Son of God. The reason is that there is no other personal relationship more complete than that of an ideal father-son relationship. We understand, of course, that there is nothing more intimate than a marriage relationship. Aside from that, however, no other person is charged with as many responsibilities as a model father does: He is not only a child’s begetter (spiritually, God does beget us when we are born again: John 3:5, 6; 1:12; 1 Peter 1:23), but, additionally, he must be his offspring’s main, if not their sole, provider, as well as their protector, guide, and instructor; he must also correct, discipline, forgive, restore and raise his children to become worthy citizens; he rewards them for their good and honest efforts; he wishes them the best and goes to all lengths to give them the best. For all this trouble and expressions of love, all his children must do in return is reciprocate his love by showing him due and well deserved respect and obedience. That is what God is to us, our beloved Father; that is what we must be to Him, His beloved children. As God has said: “I will dwell in them (doesn’t the Holy Spirit dwell in us? 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19) and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people.” Therefore: “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean. And I will receive you. I will be a FATHER (the Holy Spirit who dwells in us) to you, and you shall be My SONS and DAUGHTERS, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:16-18). Now notice that He who promises to become a Father to those who answer His call to repentance is the same who also promises to dwell in them and make them His temple. To wrap it up, let us say it once more: Every time the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Bible, reference is always made to the one and only God there is, not in His role as Father, but in that of the executor of His own will, although He continues to be the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. The Son, in turn, is nothing other than the Word, Mind or Spirit of God turned man. Without a doubt, viewing the Father-Son relationship in an allegorical light rather than literally undeniably makes it infinitely easier and is definitely more logical to in turn understand how Jesus Christ can be both God and Man at the same time. After all, isn’t that what we, as believers deeply rooted in Scriptures that we are, vehemently desire to prove to so many rejecters of Jesus’ divinity, who reject it precisely because the literal interpretation of that relationship sounds so far-fetched to them? To revert to the old traditional beaten path of the literal interpretation only fogs up the concept of the two natures, with the resulting contradictions that were originated by others from the earliest antiquity and were never rectified or challenged by later generations. In short, the sad reality is that a doctrine so intricate and so flawed cannot but make many an inquisitive mind reel in confusion whether one is willing to admit it or not.

* According to the Athanasian Creed, the Son proceeds (or comes) from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, resting their argument on John 15:26 and other passages. In the same breath it is alleged that none of them is inferior to the ot
her two in any sense, except that the Son is inferior to the Father but only in His humanity (no argument from us there). What is interesting about this assertion, however, is the arbitrary and capricious use by the authors of the Creed of the word proceed, which happens to be an antonym and not a synonym of self-existence (the condition of not proceeding from anyone). To this writer’s knowledge, not even the most prestigious Bible-rooted theologians have ever questioned such a quirky statement. All on the contrary, those who favor the Trinitarian dogma have always applauded and venerated the entire document as a masterpiece of theological truth.

Section V: Neither the Master and only authority nor His disciples ever taught the Trinity
In addition to the foregoing comments, neither the Lord nor His apostles ever taught anything about a triune God, not even implicitly as erroneously alleged. Were by any chance the churchmen that convened at Nicaea invested with greater authority and deeper understanding of the Trinitarian mystery (if indeed there is such a mystery) than the Master and His closest associates themselves? Is it possible, or even conceivable, that they should have opted to let future generations of half paganized believers conduct such a complex and delicate task? Should we expect such unlikely procedure from the perfect God who sternly warns us that we must neither add to nor subtract from what He has already fully revealed to us in His sacred word? (Rev. 22:18, 19; Prov. 30:6; Deut. 4:2). For by A.D. 325, when the dogma was officially proclaimed, the church’s apostasy was already in full swing. In fact, the church had already entered into concubinage (compromise) with the reigning half-pagan, pseudo-Christian Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, a dozen years earlier. The questions we have just raised on this account are perfectly legitimate and deserve equally legitimate answers, no matter how disturbing. Regrettably, no one raises them, possibly because many, although perhaps quite conscious of such discrepancies, would rather suppress their doubts on the subject and keep them hidden in their hearts for fear of being held in contempt by their fellow believers. Whatever the case may be, the sad truth of the matter is that all those obvious discrepancies leave the Trinitarian doctrine exposed to the most severe scrutiny, as the supposed equality of the three persons is rendered ruefully crippled and in ruinous disrepute in light of so many inexactitudes. Or more accurately, it would be so rendered if someone among us dared to expose them, for if the three persons are not perfectly equal, as equal in fact as the sides of an equilateral triangle, the idea of a triune God then becomes quite a challenge to some, if not all, of us.

Section VI: Are Jesus as the Word and Jehovah the same person?
In the debate over the Trinity the Old Testament Jehovah does not seem to have any part in it. However, just about any “orthodox”* Christian would affirm without the slightest hesitation that Jehovah and Jesus are the same person without even realizing that in so doing he is contradicting his own obsessive aberration with the divine “trichotomy.”

* By orthodoxy it is meant right or sound doctrine. In actual usage, though, what the term really seems to denote is simply belief in the Trinity, practically about the only doctrine truly held in common by the major branches of Christianity . For that reason alone, the exact meaning of orthodoxy is extremely difficult to determine. For those of us (Evangelicals) who believe in the sole authority of the Bible in matters of faith and practice, and the only source of divine revelation, orthodoxy would be strict adherence to biblical truth. Unfortunately, there are wide areas of biblical divergence even among us, God’s triple personhood being among the most flagrant examples.

As a matter of fact, Jesus’ Hebrew name, Jehoshua means Jehovah saves. From the premise that Jehovah and Jesus the Word are the same person, as we shall prove further on, the following conclusion is drawn: If Jehovah is God, and God is Jesus’ Father, it logically follows that Jehovah is Jesus’ Father. We could also formulate the following corollary based on John 17:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Ephesians 4:6 and others: Only the Father is Jehovah God; the Word is also God according to John 1:1; therefore Jehovah and the Word are God the Father and the same person.

Section VII: Is the Son coeternal with the Father?
Aside from the messianic psalms and other scriptures that make reference to the Son and to the Father in a futuristic or prophetic sense, nowhere in the Old Testament is the slightest insinuation made that the Son coexisted with the Father from eternity. The error consists in the unfortunate fact that the Word is literally and wrongly identified with the Son, with no attention to the historical reality that the Son was not the Son nor the Father was the Father until the Word became flesh (John 1:14). For example, when the Bible says in Micah 5:2:…“Yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler of Israel(a), whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting(b).” Although part (a) of the reference to the Ruler of Israel is indeed a direct reference to the Son, part (b) does not allude to the Son properly speaking, but to the eternal Word, that is, to Jehovah God Himself before He became Jesus the Son, the Word made flesh (John 1:14), as has already been indicated. Furthermore, to say that Jesus is the Word without qualifying the statement is not the same as to say that Jesus is the Word incarnate, as opposed to the eternal living Word. To insist that the man Jesus is the Word or God would be as much an error of semantics as to say that Mary is the mother of God, a widely held Roman Catholic contention, for that virtually amounts to suggesting that she gave origin to God. On the other hand, substituting God in the flesh for just plain God makes all the difference in the world. Likewise in the case of the Son of God: Jesus is the sinless man, not the Word per se; He is, more correctly, the Word incarnate or God in the flesh, which is plainly different. I hope the reader can see for himself how an incomplete or incorrectly built sentence can obscure or twist the legitimate meaning of the intended thought, although at the same time I realize it may be considered a petty technicality by some. Even if it is, the correctness of the conclusion cannot be disputed.

To attribute eternity to the Son becomes a colossal nonsense since His presumed eternity necessarily generates a violent clash with the mystery of the incarnation and Jesus Christ’s double nature, a clash that must be avoided in dead earnest. Otherwise one may quite rightly ask: Was the Son already a man before the incarnation? If He was, what was His function? Was He something like Jehovah’s primer minister or its equivalent? The Bible registers nothing of the sort. Even if it did, the incarnation, in such a case, did not take place in Bethlehem a little over two thousand years ago, but in eternity instead; in other words, it never took place. Can the reader see the incongruity between self-existence and the incarnation? Since we feel forced to dismiss this possibility, what in all truth was Jesus before He became flesh? According to John 1:1, He was, and will always be, the eternal Word. That eternal Word was part of God’s Holy Spirit or Jehovah God as has already been pointed out. Before we probe more deeply into the subject, though, let us examine the following scriptures to verify the singular identity that Christ as the Word shares in common with Jehovah.

Jehovah—” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14).
Jesus—“Before Abraham was, I AM (John 8:58).”
Jehovah—I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God (Isaiah 44:6).
Jesus--“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” (Revelation 1:11 and 17).
Jehovah—He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91:1).
Jesus—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8).
Jehovah—In the beginning God (Jehovah) created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).
Jesus—In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. /All things were made through Him (the Word), and without Him nothing was made that was made (John 1:1, 3). Writer’s comment: This means that the Word already existed at the time of creation, He was part of God (God through His Word merely spoke everything into existence), therefore He was God Himself, no more, no less.

Section VIII: There is no equality in distinctness
There are many other scriptures that prove that the Old Testament Jehovah in his pre-human condition is the Word John speaks of in his Gospel’s opening statement. Consequently both Jehovah and the Word are one and the same person. In due time, though, the Word came to be Jehovah (God the Father) in the spirit as much as He was Jesus Christ in the flesh. The two natures together in Jesus are what makes Him the Son of God. Although Trinitarians do acknowledge the two natures, they stubbornly insist that the title Son of God is not indicative or descriptive of the two natures but rather identifies the eternal second person of the Trinity instead, something we have already demonstrated to be both illogical and unbiblical. This opinion is pivotal to their contention that all three persons are perfectly distinct, even though one would expect them to know that there is no possible equality in distinctness. The problem arises from the sad fact that they are in the unfortunate habit of interpreting everything that appears to favor their position too literally. For example, the fact that the Father sent the Son (John 17:3 and others) is supposed to mean that the Father and the Son are two equally divine but distinct persons. The question is, how are they distinct? Two very significant details are overlooked in relation to this question: One, if the Father and the Son are in fact two persons, the Father must be greater than or superior to the Son, for only one with the required title, rank or office has the authority and power to send an emissary, officer, ambassador or whatever (always a subordinate) on a specific mission or assignment. Besides, in the analogy of the divine order with the earthly father-son setting, a father is not only before his son, but he is also above him in authority, so how can the Son be equal with the Father and at the same time inferior to Him? The answer lies in the fact that even though the Lord Himself admitted that the Father was greater than He (John 14:28), it is evident that He was talking about His human side, not about His entire person. Any Trinity adherent would agree, yet none of them will admit that He was speaking as the Son of God; instead, they will say, He spoke only as the human Jesus, for the Son is an entirely divine person from head to toe. However, He is not the first and only person as God should be, but only the second divine person.

The second problem arises when it is obstinately alleged that the Son is coexistent with the Father. This assertion not only is not supported by Scripture; it complicates matters in a way that, from all appearances, modern Christians do not even imagine. The saddest part is that Trinitarians do not insist on Jesus the man’s self existence to prove His deity only, but especially to prove that He is the second person of the Trinity besides; only in that manner can they find fodder for their convoluted ideas about a triune God, in spite of which they have achieved phenomenal success in incubating so abstruse a dogma in people’s minds. Even so, the literal meaning of the word “send” can only result in the obvious absurdity that the Son was already a man before He was born; yet He was God together with the Father even though the Father had unchallenged authority over Him? Wouldn’t it be a more sensible interpretation to say that figuratively speaking “to send” means what the gospels of Matthew 1:18, 20 and Luke 1:35 literally declare? That interpretation is that what God (the Holy Spirit in His role as Father) sent was not the pre-existent Son, but that part of His immaculate self that was conceived by Mary in the form of a human child, first named Jesus (later identified by the apostle John as the Word) and known as Jesus the Christ, or simply Jesus Christ, after He was supernaturally anointed at the Jordan River (more on this in Section XXV, pp. 21 and 22). In that manner, we can establish the Son’s equality with the Father with all assurance, provided, of course, that this equality is restricted to the spiritual part of Jesus only.

Section IX: Literalness: A Trinitarian lethal instrument of confusion
Jesus’ promise to His disciples that the Father and the Son also would send the Holy Spirit to them (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13) presupposes a definite hierarchical, functional and positional distinctiveness about each of the three persons. As has already been suggested, however, cannot the word send have a further secondary meaning, as so many other words do, that would preserve scriptural coherence and conceptual harmony? To this end I propose one other possible meaning for the word send in a figurative sense. I submit that send, as contemplated here, is used in the New Testament in the sense of to share. God indeed did send His Word, that is, Himself, to fill with Him those who receive said Word (John 1:12), and share Himself, so to speak, with them also, that they be made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) [We neither know nor understand the mechanics of it. Suffices to say that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and also spirit, none of which, needless to say, we are. All we know is that with God all things are possible (Mark 10:27)]. After all, isn’t sharing His kingdom with us what constitutes the essence of both the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit’s message and their primary mission? At any rate, I more than welcome any other suggestions, hopefully as good as or better than mine, as long as the necessary harmony between concepts and the spirit of Scriptures is maintained.
On the other hand, those key verses that point to God’s single personhood are either not considered at all or are interpreted figuratively. Suddenly the Trinity advocates’ need to literalize vanishes into thin air when they fear that God’s triunity is threatened. Here is scriptural proof, for instance, that the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son are exactly the same, no more, no less: The Father and I are one (John 10:30). Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?/ Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works./ Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.” (John 14:9-11). In the Trinitarians’ view, the “Father and I are one” does not mean that God is a single person: the Father; it simply means that the Father and the Son (both His human and His divine side) share the same substance, essence or nature, never mind the fact that God’s essence is all spirit and totally pure, while the Son was both spirit and matter, and corruptible matter at that, which alone made Him inferior to the Father, that is, to the divine part in Him . Yet Jesus is the eternal God, though His human side prevents Him from being exactly the same person as the Father. In attempting to liberate the reader from this gem of a brain twister, we can sum it all up and make it much more digestible as follows: When Jesus said, The Father and I are one, he was literally talking about both the person and the substance, for it is the substance that makes the person, and in God’s case, that person is the Father. To put it another way, the person cannot be separated from the substance simply because they are one and the same thing. What we must not lose track of is that the Father and the Son are God and the same person in the SPIRIT ONLY; in the flesh, Jesus is only the exemplary man the Father intended Him to be and consequently another (distinct) person. It is not this distinctness what makes the Son equal with the Father; that only makes Him another person (human). It is the Father in Him, that is, the Father’s Holy Spirit, who anointed Him, what makes both the Father and the Son equal, one person and the same God. Again, we repeat, there is no equality in distinctness.
Section X: Theophanies, visible manifestations of the Deity
Theophanies are another phenomena used in support of the eternality of the Son. A theophany is a term not commonly known to lay persons but which is defined by theologians as a visible (but not necessarily material) manifestation or appearance of the Deity to a human person. Although scriptural information on theophanies is rather scanty, supporters of the Trinity have presumptuously assumed that it is Jesus the Son of God who manifests Himself in them. One of the best known theophanies is found in Genesis 32:24-30, where Jacob wrestles God in the form of a man. When Jacob asked the man what His name was, all he obtained by way of a response was, Why do you ask my name?(v. 29), and then He blessed Jacob, who called the place of the struggle Peniel because he saw God face to face. There is nothing in this or other theophanies indicative or suggestive that such a man was the Son of God. Therefore we can safely surmise that those apparitions were visible manifestations of Jehovah Himself, the invisible God. There is little more we can add to this without running the risk of incurring in error or producing unnecessary and unsubstantiated material except that in these theophanies Jehovah conceivably took the spiritual (vs. carnal or fleshly) human form of what was to become the future incarnated Word according to John 1:1. Another even more familiar of these apparitions is found in the narrative of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-14). Again, nothing in the context indicates that it was the Son of God who appeared and talked to Moses; it was the Holy Spirit of Jehovah God Himself or the Word in human appearance who did. The Son was not yet born.
Unfortunately, there is also a Bible passage that has been disturbingly mistranslated in the Authorized Version: Daniel 3:25, the account of Sedrach, Meshach and Abednego and a fourth man walking around the fire in the furnace. As may be recalled, to King Nebuchadnezzar the fourth man resembled the Son of God in the King James Bible or a son of the gods (reportedly the literal translation) in most other versions. Which of the two will we have? Well, if we apply rigorous logic to the passage, the super-pagan king Nebuchadnezzar could not possibly have had any acquaintance with the expression, concept or image of the Son of God, but in contrast he was very well acquainted with the many gods of his heathen religion, so, judging from the preceding information, which of the two renditions sheds more credibility? Still, I reiterate my uneasiness in light of the disparities Bible translators so often incur in. If the literal translation is a son of the gods, by what whim of the imagination would anyone feel moved to change it to the Son of God, which only complicates matters unnecessarily? My answer to that question could only be the result of my own conjectures, so I will let the matter rest and be content with my own private conclusions.

Section XI: Begotten, yet eternal?
On the other hand, the fact alone that the Word turned man was called Son is indicative that He was begotten or brought into being; in other words, He had a time and place of origin; the event occurred about two thousand years ago, and the place was called Bethlehem. As a matter of fact, the word of God clearly words it thus: You are My Son; today I have begotten You.” And again:“ I will be to Him a Father, He shall be My Son” (Hebrews 1:5). As we can see, these words were written in the future tense. If the Son were eternal, the logical wording would be, You are (or have been) my Son from everlasting; and, I have always been His (eternal) Father and He has always been my (eternal) Son, without the slightest mention of having been begotten, for “Today I have begotten You” only means one thing: If begotten, the Son had a beginning*, therefore He cannot possibly be eternal. Not only that, but the adverb today, like most adverbs of time, also denotes origin or beginning, and that beginning is known as the incarnation.**

Note: The word begotten in the Bible has two basic meanings: 1) One is literal only in connection with the incarnation as set forth above. The affirmation that the Son was literally begotten in eternity, however, clashes violently with both the incarnation and the Son’s dual nature as well as with plain logic and common sense; 2) figuratively, begotten has only one conceivable and plausible meaning: Given God’s foreknowledge of all things, which no genuine believer would dare refute, the future Messiah was self-existent only as God’s mental image of the human person that eventually was to become the deliverer of lost souls (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3). As such, the eternal Father could regard that mental image as His Son, given the fact that He looks into future events as though they were present to Him. Let us not forget that, unlike us terrestrial beings, the Almighty is not limited by time or space. He could thus speak of His Son, yet to be born by our own timetable, as though He had already been born (He calls the things that are not as though they are: Romans 4:17). Hence, His use of the plural forms us and our in Gen. 1:26, 3:22 and 11:7. In due time God in His sovereign will opted to reveal Himself as the Word to John, alone of all His disciples, and make known the eternal Word’s eventual incarnation to the world through him (John 1:14). Incidentally, there is another controversial issue closely related to the incarnation that deserves our most earnest consideration. That issue revolves around our Lord’s status as God’s first-born, which those who reject His double nature use to reinforce their arguments against His divinity. To this effect, what follows should help clarify this point: In Colossians 1:15, …the first-born over all creation, first-born has the meaning of the first-born in God’s mind. In God’s mind, but only in His mind, the Son of God was the first human being ever and after whom Adam was eventually modeled. The preceding scripture tells us that the Son is the image of the invisible God and again Hebrews 1:3 declares that He (the Son) is the brightness of His glory (God the Father’s) and the exact (express) image of His being (person, substance, etc.). More plainly perhaps, what those Scriptures reveal is that Jesus is God Himself made visible to men, but who prior to His physical manifestation existed as the imaginary man that He Himself later intended to become in order to accomplish His purpose. Since imagination is one of the most experientially active features of man's intellect and creativeness, the reader should have no trouble understanding this idea of a mental image of something or someone. Whoever still chooses to remain skeptical, does so at his own risk.

* The fact that begotten denotes a beginning does not mean that the Son of God was created, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses vociferously claim. Since they reject the supernatural outright, their cryptic explanation (normally hidden from the public) of the incarnation is the perfectly natural union of the divine Jehovah with the human Mary. Only through this sacrilegious doctrine can they have Jesus in their pseudo-Christian belief system. They just cannot conceive of an all-powerful God—the same God who made the first man out of the dust of the earth—who can miraculously become a man without recourse to the "crude" methods He designed for His creatures. Curiously enough, though, they grudgingly acknowledge the mind-boggling act of creation as well as that of the resurrection. In all likelihood their acceptance of those events, as recorded in Scriptures, is not so much a matter of faith as it is of their total inability to explain them in a more natural or sophisticated manner, which would be something more in tune with their theological preferences.

** The composers of the Athanasian Creed coined the word in-created in reference to Jesus Christ in an attempt to explain the incarnation and signify that God created a man within Himself who would assume both the divine and the human natures required for Him to play the double role of Lord and Savior. To the author of this work the man born out of a virgin woman was in-filled or anointed (God within the man instead of the man within God) by the Holy Spirit of God the Father rather than in-created (Matthew 3:13-17; Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38). All dogmatism aside, though, the Watchtower Society, probably unwittingly, borrowed the term to simply mean created, which makes the Lord Jesus Christ no more and no less a creature of God than any other ordinary living being on earth. Why the hyphenated preposition in was appended to created is anybody's guess. Presumably, this is a feigned effort to set Him apart from other creatures, thus pretending to honor Him (reluctantly, we might add). If so, rather than honoring Him, they belittle Him by stripping Him bare of His divinity.

Section XII: God is spirit (John 4:24)
This is another of many powerful scriptures that Trinitarians do not even consider. The disastrous result is a highly confusing and incredibly flawed doctrine. More incredible yet is the amazingly wide acceptance it has enjoyed among an equally incredible proportion of Christians of all persuasions in all ages. That the vast majority of Christians are not in the least troubled by so many incongruities does not mean the problem does not exist. But that should not surprise us. Human folly has cheerfully accepted evolution, a false Christmas date and celebration, atheism, racism, the Inquisition, the persecution and execution of Christians by other Christians in Christ’s name as well as the inhuman treatment of slaves by the same Christians, and multiple other extremely popular beliefs, practices and religious observances that simply go against men’s better judgment, so powerful is the influence of traditions and prejudices. Well, so is the blatant indifference with which the above biblical reference is treated with respect to the Trinity. No one takes it into account in the Trinitarian debate. But what does the text tell us? No more and no less that if God is spirit (not matter like man), and the Father is God, the logical conclusion is that the Father is spirit also. Now, what spirit is that? It cannot be the Holy Spirit, for, following the Trinitarian line of thinking, the Holy Spirit is another person, distinct and separate from the person of the Father. This leads us to the assumption that God is two spirits, the Father and the Holy Spirit, if indeed they are two distinct persons.

To compound the problem, the Son must also be a spirit (since He is all God), something that is neither affirmed nor denied, but how else would He be the eternal Son of God? And if that is true, how is it true? Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians that there is one Spirit and one God and Father of all (4:4-6). He did not say there are two or three spirits, but one only. Neither did he say that God is three persons, but, again, one only: the Father. But even if God were three spirits, one of them would be holy, and what kind of spirits, pray tell, would the other two be? Profane spirits such as the human spirit, maybe? Or perhaps neutral, neither profane nor holy? No way possible, for a spirit is either good or evil, never in between. How about three Holy Spirits? None of the above, of course, so what is left? This method of proving what is correct by proving the absurdity of what is incorrect is known as the method of reduction to the absurd (reductio ad absurdum). And such absurdity leads us to the conclusion that God is one single spirit, which spirit is holy, for holiness is what first and foremost characterizes God’s substance and total personality. After all, is not Jehovah God the Holy One of Israel who urges us all to be holy as He is holy? (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Peter 1:15, 16). Is it not the Holy Spirit who gives God His moral character, His awesome attributes and His immense power, just as our own human spirit also determines and shapes our own personality and human attributes? For God so made us, in His image, according to His likeness (Genesis 1:26). In sum, then, it is far more logical and biblical to believe that the Holy Spirit or Spirit of God is one person with the Father than to believe that God is two (or three) spirits and three distinct persons, as has already been abundantly demonstrated.

Section XIII: The Fatherhood, Deity and Nature of the Holy Spirit
Although it is true that the word of God does not teach the paternity of the Holy Spirit explicitly and textually, it does so declare it implicitly and contextually in the scriptures already cited and many others. As long as we remember that God is spirit and that the Father is the only true God—as opposed to the Trinitarian formula: Only one true God in three divine persons—we should have no difficulty whatsoever absorbing this resounding truth. Here follow some examples:

Matthew 1:18 …….After His mother Mary was bethroted to Joseph, …she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 1:20 ……Joseph…do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.
Luke 1:35 ……….. And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God (future tense).

By whom does a woman conceive? Isn’t it by the father of the child? Well, all these scriptures indicate that Mary conceived of the Holy Spirit, so it logically follows that the Holy Spirit was the Father of that Holy Being she bore. Will anyone deny the Holy Spirit’s fatherhood after having read these scriptures with the carefulness, thoroughness and diligence that evidently he or she had never read them before? Not if one is sincere and honest with God and oneself as a true Christian should be.

Section XIV: Why, how, when, where and by whom was the Christ anointed?

Luke 4:18; Isaiah 61:1: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor…

It is abundantly well known of all that the word Christ means the Anointed One, but not all know who anointed Him, how, when and where? Here in His own words, the Master Himself gives us the answer: the Holy Spirit, that is, the Father (further proof of the Holy Spirit’s fatherly status), anointed Him. How? Certainly not by pouring oil on Him or any other such procedure, but by actually descending upon Him to endow Him with all the power and attributes of the Deity. When did this glorious event take place? The day when John baptized Him in the Jordan river. There His Father the Holy Spirit empowered Him to begin His wondrous ministry and reveal God’s truth to humankind (Acts 10:38, 42, 43). Acts 10:38 reads thus: How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power…If any Trinity devotee were to object that the proper reading of this verse does not imply that the Holy Spirit and God the Father are the same person, then we could counter that if by proper reading is meant exact wording, the said verse says this: The Holy Ghost was God’s instrumental force or energy (not a person) He used to anoint Jesus. In that case, our dear brother would be making matters worse for himself, because he unwittingly would be saying that the Holy Spirit is not a person, but just an active force in the hands of God, which is exactly what a Jehovah’s Witness would say. That this verse, properly interpreted, reaffirms what we have already established there should be no doubt whatsoever in any one’s mind. The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me is exactly the same as simply saying God or the Lord is upon Me, for The Lord is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17), a point we shall discuss more at length as we go on. On this same day and at the same time that same Holy Spirit made the official announcement that the Christ was His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased! (Matthew 3:16, 17). This anointing episode is another favorite of Trinity supporters, although the event is never associated with Christ’s supernatural anointing. Instead, they imagine that all forms of the Godhead as here mentioned prove beyond all doubt that God is three persons. It has never occurred to them that the one omnipotent and omnipresent person of the Majesty on high is sufficient to perform all these activities all by His own glorious and wonderful self. Prior to this eventful occasion Jesus was not yet known as the Christ, because He had not yet been anointed (compare Matthew 3:11 with Matthew 16:13-17, 20). It was not until the Father or Holy Spirit deemed it timely to raise Him to equally divine status with Himself that Jesus began His brief and astounding ministry. So putting two and two together, does it not make a world of sense to believe that the Father and the Holy Spirit are one and the same person only under different identity labels? This is no different than our customary way of addressing a human person: We can call him father because he has children, husband because he has a wife, and a medical doctor because that is the title given to anyone whose occupation is to cure people (or try to, anyway), but he is still just one and the same person. Ah, but with God some of us have to trisect Him without consulting Him or securing His permission (through the Bible). And all because far too many of us find it too difficult to believe that, while we loudly proclaim that nothing is impossible for our God, we also feel that He needs to divide Himself up three different ways in order to perform multiple functions that—apparently—He could not carry out otherwise. Isn’t that ironical?

Section XV: He who promises to make us His temple (the Holy Spirit) is the same who promises to be our Father

1 Cor. 3:16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God (the Spirit of the Father, the Holy Spirit) dwells in you?
1 Cor. 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?
2 Cor. 6:16 For you are the temple of the living God (the temple of the Holy Spirit). As God has said, “I will dwell (the Father and Holy Spirit) in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
2 Cor. 6:18 I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty (the Lord is the Spirit: 2 Cor. 3:17).

Once again we feel compelled to recite the above Bible references that confirm and establish beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt the paternity of the Holy Spirit. The logical reasoning for us to follow is in the form of this very clear-cut syllogism: The temple of the Holy Spirit is the temple of God; God is the Father; therefore, the Holy Spirit and the Father are the same person, not two, and the only God. But of course, if we choose not to pay attention to John 4:24; 17:1-3 and 1 Cor. 8:6 among others, besides a well-considered examination of Christ’s double nature and His incarnation, admittedly the idea of a triune God will have a tremendous appeal in spite of its numerous pitfalls. In fact, on the surface it may even seem to be the only possible solution. And true enough, the alternative we offer that God is one single person and not three is not without its difficulties either. However, if we make it a habit of turning our attention to the scriptures and observations previously discussed, we will be careful not to interpret those verses that appear to sustain or support the Trinitarian dogma too literally, for it is precisely that careless literalness one of the factors that gave rise to the three-person myth in the first place.

Section XVI: The Lord is the (Holy) Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17)
There are scattered groups of evangelical Christians (although labeled cults by some) that are collectively known as the “Jesus Only” movement or Oneness Pentecostalism. Instead of three persons, they strongly assert, God is only one person: Jesus Christ, the embodiment of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Although I believe there is a real sense in which this viewpoint may be true (more about this later), the problem I have with it is that Jesus as the incarnation of the Deity could not possibly be the Father—who is also the Holy Ghost, as previously ascertained—because the Father is all spirit. True, Jesus’ resurrected body is a glorified body (Phil. 3:21) as opposed to a mortal body (1 Cor. 15:44), but that body is still matter, incorruptible, imperishable matter to be sure, but matter nevertheless. He said so Himself when He first appeared to His disciples after His resurrection and assured them that He was not a ghost, for a ghost (a spirit) does not have flesh and bones as they saw He had. Not only that, He asked for food and ate (Luke 24:39-42). Yet I agree with them on almost everything else (that I have knowledge of, that is) that they teach on the subject. Before I go on, though, I must make it clear that my newly formed ideas about God’s nature and personhood, which I am putting forth in writing for the first time in this doctrinal analysis, had already begun to take shape in my mind at least two years prior to my knowledge that such a movement even existed. Neither have I ever read any of their literature nor have I ever visited any of their churches, so what little I know of them I have only recently learned second-hand from one single source: the book entitled Challenge of the Cults, of what I shall speak more later. Understandably enough, I find it amazing that so many of these concepts and hermeneutical principles as have been unraveled to me are so akin to their teachings despite my absolute lack of contact with them. This singular circumstance prompts me to say with Paul in Galatians 1:11, 12 that what I am unfolding here I have received or heard from no man, but directly from the Holy Ghost. In good conscience I cannot attribute it to any other source.

I make mention of this peculiar circumstance in light of a particular detail that strikes me as being rather comical. In his book, Challenge of the Cults, Dr. Ron Rhodes, a well known cult expert and staunch defender of the Trinity, objects, among other things, to the Oneness people’s contention that 2 Corinthians 3:17 is ample proof that Jesus is the Holy Spirit: here follows an excerpt of his rebuttal:

“The adherents of Oneness Pentecostalism, as previously indicated, often quote 2 Corinthians 3:17 to ‘prove’ that Jesus is the Holy Spirit: ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ Of course the verse does not say that Jesus is the Holy Spirit. That is what Jesus Only Pentecostals read into the scripture. The text says: ‘the Lord is the Spirit.’ The interpretation rendered by the majority of Bible expositors is that the Holy Spirit is ‘the Lord,’ not in the sense of being Jesus, but in the sense of being Jehovah (the Lord God)” (p. 266). (Parenthesis mine).

I find that rebuttal amusing for the simple reason that our distinguished scholarly friend so vigorously insists throughout his entire chapter on Oneness Pentecostalism that the Father is a person apart from the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit. But in the same breath he tells us that Jehovah God (the Father) and the Holy Spirit are the same person. In attempting to demonstrate that the Son is not the same person as the Spirit,* apparently without realizing it, he brings Jehovah the Father and the Holy Spirit together into one person: the Lord. By this contradictory statement he unwittingly lends inadvertent support to my thesis that the Father and the Holy Spirit are one single person and not two. Whatever the reason for his slip-up, it is obvious that the Lord is the Spirit can only mean one thing: both the Father and the Son are routinely addressed as the Lord in the Bible, so in consequence, the Lord is the Spirit must inevitably mean both, for Paul tells us in no unclear terms that there is only one Lord (Ephesians 4:4). Or perhaps more accurately, Jehovah God is always the Lord in the Old Testament while Jesus is always the Lord in the entire New Testament. On the other hand, Paul also wrote in the same verse that there is only one Spirit, which means that the Father and the Holy Spirit are the same such Spirit, as we have already pointed out. Since the Spirit of the Son is the Spirit of the Father, and in that capacity the Son is a life-giving spirit according to 1 Corinthians 15:45, we cannot but conclude that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all one and the same Lord, which, like Father, is just another word, for God. The Bible says so.

* The opinion that Dr. Rhodes shares with his colleagues contradicts both the Bible and the Athanasian Creed, which says: Thus the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord, yet they are not three Lords, but only one Lord. The problem with the Creed, on its part, is that even though the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all but one Lord, they are all not one and the same person but three.

Section XVII: In Jesus dwells, bodily, all the fullness of the Deity (Colossians 2:9)
On that same page (266) Dr. Rhodes raises another objection: In his opinion, the Bible reference that is now the object of our consideration does not prove that Jesus is the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (as taught by the upholders of the Jesus Only doctrine). He maintains that it is not the three persons but the divine essence or substance, with all its attributes, that dwell in Jesus bodily. Since we have made no secret of our displeasure with the Trinitarian point of view, we must admit that we have no quarrel with Dr. Rhodes’ assertion on that account. Unfortunately, our minds part when he separates God’s person from His substance. To him, as it is to all Trinitarians, the person is, in reality, one thing, while the essence is another, so they separate one from the other because they must have their three persons no matter what. They do not seem to realize that God’s essence is what makes Him God as well as a person, and that it is precisely that divine essence what Jesus called His Father, a mere title or designation whose sole purpose is nothing more than to identify and allegorize a particular feature of the divinity: His paternal love for His human creatures. In consequence, John 10:30 and 14:9-11 can only be interpreted one way and one way only: literally. If the Lord Jesus said, I and my Father are one; the Father is in Me and I am in Him; or He who has seen and known Me has seen and known the Father, that is exactly what He meant (see Section IX, pp. 8 and 9). Our Lord could not have been any clearer than that. If we think of the Father as just another word for God or Holy Spirit, we will discover how surprisingly easy to understand those statements are. Also, the already established fact that the Father is the only true God there is becomes so much more evident.

Section XVIII: Duality or Dualism
The extraordinarily active and repetitive role that the number two plays in both the temporal and spiritual realms is simply utterly fascinating. To begin with, God in His fathomless wisdom created all living beings in pairs to fill the earth, including human beings. Male and female He created them. Two are the powers that wrestle each other for the souls of men: God and Satan; two are also the spiritual forces that are always at endless war against one another: good and evil, right and wrong; two are the classes all sinners are spiritually divided into: repentant or forgiven sinners and impenitent or condemned sinners (John 3:18; Matthew 25:31-46); one of two is also our final destiny: heaven or hell; divine justice demands that there be rewards and punishments. To every quality there corresponds one which is the exact opposite of it; in all wars there are always two fighting sides, and they are both mutual enemies; at the same time that mortals and the immortal God can be two, they can be two in one if they are at harmony with each other; otherwise, they still can be two, but in separation, not in unity. And so we can go on and on ad infinitum. The number two has the unique quality of symbolizing, paradoxically, two diametrically opposed ideas: unity and division, agreement and disagreement, depending on the factors involved.

This condition of uniting two aspects, elements, proprieties, qualities, or features in one single being, object, phenomenon, occurrence, etc. is called dualism or duality. As we shall shortly see, both man and God are characterized by their dual nature. God in particular is not a triune God, which is the prevalent viewpoint, but dual. I know this observation is bound to provoke an extremely violent emotional explosion, but I trust a good number of my readers will manage to exercise enough self-control to read this article through. That is the only way my work can be done justice and be properly evaluated. Once these concepts are fully comprehended and well digested, I am absolutely certain that the reader will experience a blissful sense of relief and the joy that always follows the discovery of an astounding truth. This particular truth is getting to know and understand our God infinitely better, which might help the faithful draw ever nearer to Him.

Section XIX: Divine duality
There is, therefore, dualism in God’s person: In His omnipresence, He is the Father in heaven and the Holy Spirit on earth dwelling in His temple, which is the body of every believer (1 Corinthians 3:16, 19; 2 Corinthians 6:16) and convicts the world of sin (John 16:18). In addition, He anointed and endowed the Son of God with the fullness of the same Spirit’s divinity (Matthew 3:17; Colossians 2:9), as explained above (Section II, p. 2 and Section III, pp. 2 and 3). In the Old Testament the Spirit of God would invest certain men with power to accomplish their God-given mission among other men and supernaturally help His people fight their battles, protect, rescue or heal them. In the book of Job (33:4), Elihu, the youngest of Job’s friends, says, The Spirit of God has made me. The breath (Spirit) of the Almighty gives me life. Paraphrasing, this verse declares that the Holy Spirit is the Creator and the one who gives us all our human spirit, which drives us to the logical conclusion that there is only one author of life and creation in toto, not three: Jehovah God the Father and Holy Spirit, or the Word (John 1:3), all one single person. Incidentally, there is also duality in the Holy Spirit Himself: He is the Mind or Word of God as well as God’s Soul, Will or Character. This character or nature of God, together with His wondrous Mind, is what theologians frequently call the divine essence, substance or nature. All of this also constitutes His person or Spirit. If we keep the true meaning and definition of words and concepts straight we should have no difficulty learning to differentiate between title, name or designation and person, being, substance, essence, nature or spirit. All of which leads us to yet another case of duality.

XX: The Son of God’s dual nature
Then there is duality in the Son of God, whose human spirit, while remaining embodied in His human constitution, becomes one with the Holy Spirit of God. By virtue of this dual condition, His whole person is both divine as well as human. But one day, when all His enemies are put under His feet and all things are made subject to Him, the Son Himself will return to the bosom of the Father, Whom He came from, as the eternal living Word that Jesus the Man was before He became flesh. Below follows the scriptural proof of this largely ignored truth:

Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power./For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet./The last enemy that will be destroyed is death./For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted./Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).

Dr. Rhodes, while rejecting this passage as proof that the Son of God is not eternal, fails to address it altogether, not bothering to offer even a passing explanation of it. How other Trinitarians may interpret this portion, I do not know. What I do know is that the passage is quite clear and self-explanatory. The first thing that should capture our attention is the fact I have insisted on so repeatedly: The Son had a beginning and will have an end, as evidenced by the statement that: 1) Some day, when all things come to an end, He will deliver the kingdom entrusted to Him to GOD THE FATHER; 2) At that time all rule, authority and power will cease; 3) All His enemies will be destroyed, the last one of which will be death (Rev. 20:14):

Now if God is three persons, why does the text quoted single out the Father? It says nothing of the Son handing all things over to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which would be ridiculous to begin with. On the contrary, the implication is that the Son’s role was never meant to be of an indefinite nature; once God’s purpose is fulfilled, He will take charge of all things to once again reign supreme over His entire universe all by His awesome self as He did before delegating all authority on the Son (Matthew 28:18). Since the Father is the Holy Spirit, what will become of the Son at the end of all things? He will simply return to the bosom of the Father as the precious Word to enjoy the glory that He once shared with Him before the world was (John 17:5). The Word will cease to be a man altogether except as Jehovah’s mental image as in the beginning. God the Father in turn will no longer be a dual person in Jesus, but one single person, the Holy Spirit, Jehovah God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe He created.

Which, incidentally, reminds us of the duality of Christ the Son of God that most Protestants, Greek and Roman Catholics and their offshoots (Maronites, Coptic Rite, Russian Orthodox, Anglicans or Episcopalians, etc.) embrace without question. Unfortunately, the foggy understanding that throughout the ages they all have had of Christ’s dual nature is chiefly what gave birth to the three-person misconception of God in the first place. We have noted this misconception a number of times already, and I very much fear that it still begs repeating. It all results from their definition of the title Son of God and their total disregard for the Word, the pre-incarnated Jesus. According to this definition, Son of God is both the human child that Mary brought forth at Bethlehem as well as the eternal, invisible, incorporeal God; not the Christ who was anointed with the full nature of the Father or Holy Spirit (an event with no meaning other than the presumed evidence that God is a triune God), but the second person of the Trinity called the Son. This means that Jesus was already the Son of God before He was born even though He was not yet flesh. It seems that, in line with Trinitarian thinking, God by Himself is not a person. Only when each and all of the three persons are considered, both individually and collectively, is it licit to speak of the one and only God. If the reader fails to make sense out of all this poppycock it is only because that is exactly what it is: pure and unadulterated poppycock. Also, this incredible mishmash should sound the alert that the Trinity is nothing less than a hoax. Compare it with what the word of God actually says: The Word (God) became flesh (John 1:1, 3, 14; 1 Timothy 3:16); this body of flesh was to be called Jesus (Matthew 1:21, 25), the Son of God (Luke 1:35), at the time of His birth, not before; He repeatedly referred to Himself as the Son of Man, meaning that He considered Himself a total man or to be made of the same fragile physical nature as that of other men. On the other hand, His spirit, as contrasted with His body, was fully divine (Matthew 3:16; John 10:30; 8:19; 12:44, 45; 14:9-11; Acts 10:38; Colossians 2:9 and many others). As such, His divinity is naturally eternal, but not so His humanity, and this is what Trinity adherents need to keep straight. Instead, while they affirm all of the above, they also stubbornly insist on the Son’s eternality and God’s triple personhood (as opposed to His triple role), thus denying on the one hand what they affirm on the other. In short, if God is more than one person, He is only two such persons, not three. One is God, the divine Spirit and Father, and the other is God in human form, the Son, whose name is Jesus. Before we go on, though, I believe it is only fair that we understand Jesus Christ’s unique condition. Even though He is every inch of His physical being a man, although totally sinless, He is neither a demigod nor a minor god as many suppose (notably the Jehovah’s Witnesses), but a totally divine person in His own right and by virtue of His divine spirit. Taken in this context, and in this context only, Oneness Pentecostals may be right in asserting that Jesus is simultaneously the embodiment of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If He is only the Son, that is, only the second person of the Deity, He cannot possibly be God, especially since the Father—or Holy Spirit—is the only true God as per the Scriptures previously quoted throughout this essay.

Section XXI: Created in His image, according to His likeness (Genesis 1:26)
Finally, man, too, is a dual person, one part of whom being matter and the other spirit, as opposed to God who is all spirit. With the exception of a relatively few nonconformists who either deny the reality of a material world or that of the spiritual realm, this dual condition of all human creatures is almost universally accepted at least in the Western Hemisphere. To my knowledge, Genesis 1:26 has never been explained either correctly or at sufficient length. That is because God and man have never been studied as persons individually, and being persons is precisely what makes us not only like God, but it is our personhood what differentiates us humans from other earthly creatures. Most certainly it is not our body that makes us like God. In fact, even though our body is markedly different from that of other subhuman living beings, it is still a body, and in that respect, our body makes us like them, not like God. One of the most fitting definitions of the word person is that which identifies a man or a woman as intelligent living beings. As God has a mind, so we do also. Because we have a mind (God and we), we cannot only think, but we can also reveal our thoughts through words, that is, we are able to speak or communicate with one another in a coherent and intelligent manner precisely because we are thinking individuals. After all, what are words if not audible or written thoughts?

Other classes of persons are angelical: good angels and bad angels; the word of God identifies the bad or evil ones as demons and often as unclean spirits, too. Thus we can recognize three classes of perfectly distinct persons: 1) Two divine persons: God the Father, who is one person with the Holy Spirit, and the Son of God, whose spirit is the selfsame Father or Holy Spirit in Him in a human body; 2) Angelic persons, as previously described; 3) Human persons (see the next section). Upon receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), the believers are made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), but in a measure, of course, not even remotely approaching that of the Son of God, who more than partaker of the divine nature is absolute possessor of the same in its entirety (Colossians 2:9). Moreover, man, due to his fallen nature, cannot be fully one with the Father, as Christ Jesus was and is, in spite of being the recipient of the gift of the Holy Spirit once he believes.

Section XXII: Understanding our inner nature
As human persons, we have a visible part which is our body and an invisible part which is our spirit as already noted. Our spiritual part is as real as the material or physical one. Our spirit in turn is divided into mind (or reason) and soul (or will). I am quite aware that many will object to this unusual structural arrangement, but I also know that they will object, not in unanimity of consensus, but quite the contrary: in absolute lack of the same. To some the soul is one thing and the spirit is another. There are those who make no distinction between one and the other; then we have those who believe that the soul is an integral part of the spirit while others believe it is the other way around; still others contend that all is matter while more than just a few take the opposite view: there is no such a thing as matter, for everything is spirit; to both one is reality and the other is an illusion. Popular among Christians is the notion that the soul contains our feelings, thoughts and actions whereas the spirit is the force that makes man cognizant of God. The Bible itself is not clear on this. At times there seems to be a distinction between soul and spirit and at other times there is a fine line between one and the other or even no dividing line at all. Also, soul in the Bible is often synonymous with a human person. This is just as true in ordinary speech when we say, Hundreds of souls packed the stadium awaiting his arrival. And so on until we stumble upon the overwhelming majority of evangelical Christians who, based on 1 Thessalonians 5:23, forcefully maintain that man is divided into body, soul and spirit (as opposed to simply body and spirit). This tripartite condition is often referred to as the “human trinity.”

My reason for believing that our spiritual part is divided into mind and soul (or will) is a matter of pure, uncomplicated common sense, as I shall immediately proceed to demonstrate. With relatively rare exceptions, at least in Western society, no one in his right mind can deny that the things of the spirit differ widely from corporal things. Similarly, the things of the mind (memory, imagination, analytical power, understanding, etc.) and the things of the soul (the emotions, desires, inclinations, intentions, attitudes, intuition, instinctive behavior or reactions and such) mutually exclude each other. The mental processes are the exclusive domain of the intellect and demand effort, quite often arduous and tenacious, whereas the emotional experiences, manifestations of the will and the execution of the same are automatic, mechanical, spontaneous responses. No one needs to figure out why or whether or not he should cry, laugh, or desire something beyond just feeling sad, cheerful, or seeking satisfaction in or for something; those are just outward expressions of his inner experiences. In other words, nothing is required of us, but our feelings, desires and/or natural instincts occur spontaneously and effortlessly. Contrariwise, to solve a problem, engage in creative work, to study, memorize and figure out difficult matters, etc., a great deal of thinking and no little sacrifice are often required. In addition, emotions and other characteristics of our soul are not always, not to say rarely, helpful to our thought processes. For this reason a sound mind is necessary to overcome not only temptations and falsehood, but also those feelings that interfere with our better judgment (2 Tim. 1:7).

Without a doubt my fellow believers, especially the better informed of them, will protest that my classification clashes with that of Paul in 1 Thes. 5:23: May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. For my part, my humble recommendation is that they refer to the Savior’s own words in Matthew 22:37: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Here the Lord omits the words body and spirit and seems to distinguish between soul and mind, such as I have. He also said, with all your heart. It is said that the heart is the seat of our emotions, just as our brain is the seat of our intelligence. If this be so, then our precious Lord just repeated the soul idea (heart and soul), perhaps for emphasis, as we so often do ourselves in normal speech as well as in writing, and in place of spirit He might have opted for soul and mind. Since Paul, too, wrote under the direction of the Holy Spirit, what could be a reasonable and safe solution is that neither of them intended to give us a strict or formal breakdown of our personal conformation. In fact, Christ’s words are an almost exact quote of Deuteronomy 6:5, only that instead of with all your mind we read…with all your strength (or might). Be that as it may, what really matters is that we must love God with all our being (all we have) so that we may be properly prepared to receive our precious Lord at His second coming, as Paul himself so advises at the end of the very same verse under discussion.

In sum, we are made in God’s likeness as far as His personal and spiritual make-up is concerned, with the difference that He is all spirit and consequently does not need a body as we do. For that very reason, all of His attributes are supernatural, pure and perfect, unlike ours, which are the exact opposite. Therefore we can safely say without fear of error that the Mind or Word of God is as much an integral and inseparable part of His Spirit as is His Soul, for God does have a soul (emotions, etc.), else He would not love us so dearly or we would never incur in His wrath; and of course, we must not forget that He has a will, absolute and sovereign. By the way, I equate the human soul with the will—perhaps more accurately I should say, the will is part of the soul—because more often than not our will is governed by our feelings and desires, and our actions (our volitive acts) are our response or reaction to the same. Taking a closer look at ourselves, in fact, isn’t it true that when we speak of the spirit or soul of a person we are often thinking of that person’s inner being or to the particular traits that mark his or her personal character or typical behavior? Why can’t we then accept the reality that the divine person is spiritually structured in the same manner as the human person He created? What is then the need for dividing Him in three persons when we do not do the same with ourselves? No one speaks of a man as being two or three persons because he is made up of body, soul and mind, does he? Why not? Simply because he is not an entire man or person unless he has all of those parts functioning in good working order. Likewise with God; without the Mind and Soul that form His Spirit He cannot possibly be a person, therefore He cannot be God.

Section XXIII: Origin and definition of the Logos
Logos is the Greek for our English Word, or so has been rendered in virtually all English versions of the Bible. In relation to the pre-incarnated Jesus, the Logos is translated the Word in all five of the European languages I am familiar with: the Word in English, el Verbo o la Palabra in Spanish, la Parola in Italian, la Parole in French and Das Wort in German. However, the Word is an imperfect rendition at best, for it fails to convey the full extent and intent of the idea contained in the word Logos. For in the original Greek that the New Testament was written in, the word logos has a much broader meaning than just the oral and/or written expression of a person’s inner self. It also includes his thought processes with all their intricacies and wonders. Likewise, in God’s case, the Logos is more appropriately the Reason or Mind of God as well as His Word, which makes a great deal of sense, as I am quite certain my readers will agree. As a matter of fact, our English word logic (that is, that which follows rational thought and/or behavior) is derived from the Greek logos.

The readers also will easily note how tightly interwoven are the faculties of reasoning, knowledge, understanding and creativeness with the written and/or spoken word. Definitely, our mind is useless without the ability to communicate. Conversely, without a mind, we cannot even hope to utter the intelligible sounds that voice our opinions, feelings, desires, hopes and plans or intentions, of which our mind is the chief and indispensable channel. We would just make grunts, growls, roars or other noises, just as lower animals do. Like God, man too has a mind and the power to communicate his inner workings to others. Once again, God is not God without His Spirit (His Word or Mind working in perfect harmony with His Soul or Will). Otherwise John would not have written that without the Word nothing was made that was made (John 1:3). With this understanding we should be somewhat better disposed to disallow the Trinity in favor of a more sensible one-person-God concept as we will soon discover, if some of us have not yet done so by now.

Section XXIV: What was the Son’s role before the incarnation?
There is what may be considered a minor detail that I believe is worthy of our notice and that should arouse our curiosity. That particular detail is the Old Testament’s absolute silence about the role the “eternal” Son of God played before He made His entrance into the world’s scene. Surely, He should have had something to do if He existed side by side with His Father from eternity. Since I firmly believe in our divine Maker’s wondrous and perfect wisdom, that silence is not surprising or intriguing to me at all. I strongly believe that everything that God has revealed to us in His word is sufficient for our general well-being and that there is a reason and a purpose for everything He reveals to as well as for everything He hides from us. Someone might say, “all true-blue” Christians believe that, so what’s the big deal?” If that is so, why is it that practically all “true-blue” Christians believe the lie that Christ was born on December 25th when the Bible is totally silent about His birth date? And why do they all talk about His “virgin” birth—in contrast to His virginal conception—when His birth was perfectly natural (Luke 2:6) and therefore could not be virginal? And why does everybody say that He died on a Friday evening and rose from the dead the following Sunday—only one day and maybe not quite two nights in between—when He said He would remain buried in the heart of the earth three days and three nights (Matthew 12:39, 40)? There is an answer for all these questions, but answering them would carry us too far off our subject. The reason why the Bible is silent about the role of the Son of God before He descended from heaven, though, is that the Word (the pre-incarnated Jesus) was not yet the Son of God and, in consequence, He had as yet no role to play. It is that simple. Having the Son lying around completely idle is just not God’s way.

By contrast, the Word did play a major and active role, always has and always will. It was through the Word (John 1:3; 2 Peter 3:5, 7; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:3) that God created everything by just speaking the words, Let it be done!, and it was done. He then later spoke to men through the prophets, and once incarnated, He spoke to them in the form of a human person (Hebrews 1:2 and 3); now He still speaks to us through His written Word and His spokesmen and spokeswomen (pastors, teachers, evangelists). After His resurrection He was given all authority and power over all things, the power and authority only Jehovah (without the Son) had before then (Matthew 28:18; John 17:2). Whenever Jehovah spoke in the Old Testament it was as the Word that He spoke. When He executed His will it was as the Spirit that He did. Similarly, the Holy Spirit is spoken of as descending upon the prophets and certain other men (Samson for example) for a particularly definite purpose. Furthermore, we also read that the sons of Israel would provoke the Holy Spirit to anger (Is. 63:10), that the Spirit of the Lord created man (Job 33:4) and anointed Him who was to be the Son of God in order to empower Him to preach the good news to the poor, set the captives free and heal the sick (Is. 61:1; Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38); we also read that no one ever taught Him anything nor gave Him any advice, which He does not need in the first place (Is. 40:13), and many other passages that plainly reveal that the Holy Spirit is a person, but it is just as obvious that such a person is Jehovah Himself and no other, for it may be worth repeating that Jehovah is spirit, and that said spirit is only one and holy. Let us also remember that the ancient prophets would alternately exclaim: “The Spirit of the Lord came upon me,” and “Word of the Lord came to me,” or “Thus says the Lord,” which gives us further evidence that God’s Spirit and His Word are one. But of the activities of the Son nothing is said. Isn’t this a very significant omission? Could it be that there was no Trinity in the Old Testament era? Then where is the eternality of the Son? Neither did the Old Testament writers ever make the slightest insinuation that Jehovah’s words or Word were to be identified as the Son of God.

Section XXV: The true meaning of Father and Son of God
The reader will observe that much of this material is repeated insistently throughout our entire discourse. The repetitions are mostly deliberate in view of the fact that some of the concepts and facts here discussed are foreign to the vast majority of Christians in general. As we all know, repetition is unquestionably the most effective learning method known to man. One of those repetitive or recurrent themes is the true meaning of the titles Father and Son of God. We need to begin by establishing that it is not the names or titles Father, Son and Holy Spirit what make God who He is, but His person, which is all spirit, with all His characteristic attributes and functions, exclusively and distinctly His. Notice that in Hebrews 1:3 the Son of God is described as the exact image of God’s person in some versions of the Bible, while in others person is substituted by substance, nature or being, all of them exact synonyms of one another. Then also, as the saying goes, what’s in a name? A name is just a way of identifying something or someone so that an object, person or subject can be distinguished from another or from others. In God’s case, the distinction is between Father and Son, terms that, according to the meaning that has been accorded them, are merely descriptive of the substance they express but do not constitute the substance itself. Thus the word Father points out to God’s fatherly qualities; the title Son represents the ideal of reverence, obedience and loyalty a loving father is well deserving of; Holy Spirit is the Deity’s person properly speaking, that is, God’s character or personality and all that it entails: His attributes, prerogatives and infinite power. To put it more plainly, the Holy Spirit is God Himself, no more, no less, which means that Holy Spirit is more than just a title (such as Father, Son, Lord, the Almighty, etc.) and undoubtedly the main reason why Jesus said that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin. In short, what theologians commonly term the essence, nature or substance of God, and just as man’s essence or nature is dual (physical and spiritual), God’s essence, nature or substance is monophysitic (one single nature), that is, all spirit, holy, pure and perfect; hence the synonymy between God, Father and Holy Spirit. Regrettably, those same theologians have made an undue and unnecessary distinction between God’s person and His substance, nature, essence or spirit; in so doing, they have committed the equally regrettable error of grafting the names or titles Father and Son into synonymy with the spirit, person, nature, essence or substance of God, a synonymy that does not exist and an error that they would do well to acknowledge.

Father and Son, then, are terms of a rather allegorical nature, which is nothing to be mystified about given the fact that our Lord was so fond of such literary licenses as metaphors, parables, hyperboles, etc. The whole Bible, as a matter of fact, is loaded with all types of allegorical, symbolic or figurative language, as we all may well be aware of. It is precisely the faulty comprehension of this vital feature of the Word of God, along with the inexplicable separation that is generally made of the person from the spirit, nature or substance that we have already discussed, what gave birth to the Trinity myth. For while it is true that God is more than one person, it is just as true that He is not three but two persons only, as has been previously indicated. And God is only two persons because He, who is all spirit (and all powerful besides), made Himself a man, and that man, who lodged both the divine and the human substances in the same body as the Christ, became the Son of God, which made Him another divine person. That is the reason why Jesus was known as both the Son of Man and the Son of God, which appears to be an incongruity—how can a man be the son of man and the son of God at the same time when God is not a man?—if we ignore or brush aside His duality for one thing, and for another, if we choose to equate Son of Man with son of a man. For Son of Man, properly interpreted, simply means “of human stock,” or representing the whole of mankind, or being made in the fashion of a man, not the natural offspring of a man. We will recall that as the Son of Man Jesus would speak and act like a man, and eat and drink like a man, but as the Son of God He would speak and act as the revelation and perfect image of the invisible God that He legitimately is (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3).

Section XXVI: The important difference between the names Jesus and Christ
John 5:18 (NIV): For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
John 10:33 (NIV): "We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."

It is often argued that the Jews’ reply to Jesus in both of the two verses above speaks volumes in favor of the Son’s coexistence with the Father, being that both persons are the eternal God. The opposite is true. What prompted that reply was His claim to be God being a mere man, a claim that to them amounted to a monstrous blasphemy. Undoubtedly they understood that anyone legitimately proclaiming Himself the Son of God had to be God Himself. What they found repulsive was the idea that a simple mortal, a mere man, would have the nerve to make such an outrageous claim, for as far as they could discern, the Son of God could not possibly be corruptible flesh, but another spiritual being, perhaps an angel, but by no means a human soul, a notion borne out of their own lack of understanding or their rejection of the Lord’s double nature. Then as much as now, the incarnation or Jesus’ Sonship was a most abhorrent doctrine to Jewish minds. Interestingly enough, Islam takes the same view; to the followers of Mohammed Jesus is nothing more than another one of God’s many true prophets, not the Messiah, and least of all, God Himself in the flesh. This attitude, shared by such mutual archenemies as Israelites and Moslems (a veritable paradox), makes 2 John 1:7 much more comprehensible as it denounces the denial of God (Christ) coming in the flesh as the spirit of the antichrist. He is antichrist, too, who denies that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah: 1 John 2:22) as well as those who have forsaken the true Church, either in apostolic or in post-apostolic times. As John puts it, they went out of us, but were not of us, because if they had been of us they would have remained with us (1 John 2:18, 19, 22, 23; 1 John 4:3). These are all the apostate and heretical Christians of all ages who have departed from the truth of Christ (the Gospel). Included among them are those who honor the heaven-descended Messiah (Christ) with their lips (Matthew 7:21-23; 15:8 and 9), but deny His first advent in the flesh in actual practice. How? By continuing and perpetuating His once-for-all, never-to-be-repeated self-sacrifice in the form of the so-called Mass (Christ’s bloodless sacrifice, so called), thus rendering His entire work of redemption insufficient and ineffectual; in other words, His bloody sacrifice at His first coming and its purpose have been in that manner so utterly nullified that it might as well have never occurred in the first place (read Hebrews 9:22; 10:10-12, 14, 18). Three other notorious forms of such a denial are the extra revelation (besides that which Jesus Christ Himself personified) that Mormons claim to have received through the creation of their own Book of Mormon; the overwhelming preeminence that the still-in-the-future physical kingdom of God occupies in Jehovah's Witnesses minds, in practically total disregard for and deliberate oversight of the Son of God's redemptive work and resurrection, as well as their blatantly open rejection of His divine status; and finally, the so-called Christian Science, which is neither Christian nor science, to which physical healing, since bodily infirmities are the only form of sin there is, takes not even just precedence over Christ's self-same redemptive mission, but in essence constitutes the entirety of its message and about only preoccupation.

A large percentage of the Bible-believing population knows that Jesus means Savior and that Christ means the Anointed. Yet no one, at least to my knowledge, seems to have ever wondered how and why, having been christened Jesus as a baby, He later became the Christ in early adulthood all of a sudden (Matthew 16:16-18). Neither does anyone seem to be curious enough to investigate when, where and how He was anointed and what for. This apparent lack of curiosity is understandable enough in view of the fact that such an event, at first glance, does not appear to be recorded in the whole Bible. What happens is that where the occurrence is related the word anoint is nowhere to be found; instead, it says that the Holy Spirit descended upon the Lord like a dove, which constituted the anointment as explained in Section XIV, page 11. As the reader will recall, the anointing episode is clearly described in all four gospels almost exactly the same way (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32) and corroborated by Luke 4:18 and Isaiah 61:1, 2 (see Section XIV, p. 11). Those last two scriptures also give us the reason why Jesus was anointed: To announce the gospel of salvation and assume all the fullness of the Godhead (Acts 10:38; Col. 1:19 and 2:9).

Some may contend that Jesus was fully divine the moment He was conceived, but there are no biblical grounds for such an assumption. No doubt He was born sinless, just as Adam was sinless in the beginning. In that state, Jesus had to have been a model child and also amazingly precocious as He so demonstrated it when He visited the temple in Jerusalem at the tender age of twelve years old (Luke 2:47). Nothing, however, is said about Him having supernatural powers and divine attributes in His childhood. Why not? Because the time was not ripe for Him to possess and exhibit them according to the messianic prophesies. He was to attain full maturity of age in order to suffer on the cross in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, for instance, in which He is depicted as a man (not as a child) of sorrows, acquainted with grief, etc. Also, He had to be a fully grown man to fulfill what Isaiah predicted and John the Baptist repeated: Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight (Is. 40:3; Mat. 3:3). When the time came to begin His meteoric ministry, Jesus Christ, completely filled with God’s Spirit, was led by the same Spirit into the wilderness, perfectly prepared to face the guiles and powers of the devil. All in God’s time, not a minute too soon nor a minute too late. His experience in the desert is a perfect model for us to follow in order to combat the powers of darkness, always brandishing the sword of the Spirit (God’s Word) as He did, girded with the truth of the Gospel, wearing the breastplate of righteousness and protected by the shield of faith, etc. (Ephesians 6:14, 15).

The name of Christ (or Messiah) then represents our Lord’s divinity, whereas the name Jesus reflects His humanity. Together they complete the twofold nature we have insisted on so repeatedly, and both of them convey the idea of deliverance or salvation: Jesus Christ is therefore our Savior as the immortal God as well as our Savior as the fragile Man despised and put to death by His own people, a ransom for their own selves and the whole world. Our salvation would have been impossible without the full embodiment of both the divine and the human fully present in one single person: Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God.

Section XXVII: Does 1 John 5:7, 8 prove the Trinity?
7. (a) For there are three that bear witness (b)* in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. 8. (a) And there are three that bear witness on earth: (b) the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.

At first glance verse 7 appears to be telling us that God is indeed three persons, but is it really? It clearly says that there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost. Aren’t those the three persons that God is said to be? After all, only persons can literally bear witness of anything, can’t they? If that reasoning is correct, then the Spirit, the water and the blood are three persons also, for they, too, bear witness (on earth) and agree. It so happens, however, that of those last three (v. 8) only the Spirit is a formally and universally recognized person. Certainly no one in his right mind would say that water and blood are persons, would he? As a matter of fact, some argue that water refers to water baptism while others claim that water is a figurative way of speaking of the Word of God (as water quenches physiological thirst, so the word does quench one’s spiritual thirst for the truth and righteousness: Matthew 5:6), and most certainly water does not mean person in either sense. I personally favor the argument that water here means the Word of God, a conclusion I base on two powerful factors: 1) The Word of God itself: 1 Peter 1:23:…having being born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and abides forever, and corroborated by John 3:5:…that unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of God; 2) Simple logic: Water baptism is only a ceremony, a ritual, a symbolic act, and we all know that any kind of symbolism or ritual is of no value if the intention or the attitude is wrong; therefore, it cannot bear effective witness in and by itself. As for the blood, there can be no other blood than the blood of Christ, which bears witness in every soul that has believed in His atoning sacrifice and experienced His redeeming power and love in his life. At any rate, definitely neither blood nor water is a person. Therefore we can discount the meaning of persons and apply the same logic to verse 7, asserting that said verse makes no reference to three divine persons, but to God in His three roles (and these three are one God and one person), as we have so reiterated so many times, possibly even to the point of boredom.

NOTE: The Spirit appears in both verses, meaning that God is spirit, is omnipresent, and plays a dual role as previously stated: the Father in heaven and the Holy Spirit in both heaven and on earth. Interestingly, however, the most ancient manuscripts omit part (b) of verse 7 and part (a) of verse 8, so later additions cannot be very reliable. In those ancient manuscripts verses 7 and 8 are rendered thus:

7. For there are three that testify: 8. the Spirit, the water and the blood; and these three are in agreement (NIV and many others). The aforementioned additions that are missing in these two verses were first found in the late versions of the Latin Vulgate (translated from the Greek to the Latin by Jerome in the late fourth century A.D.), the official and most authoritative Roman Catholic Bible. Several translators of other modern versions of the Bible have copied those verses either directly from the aforesaid Vulgate or from more recent manuscripts than those we have referred to. If the idea was to submit irrefutable proof of the Trinity through said additions, that effort was futile, for the sentence those three are one (7b above)* can just as easily be interpreted as those three are one person. This unfortunate circumstance only makes the better understanding of the one-person God unnecessarily less clear and simple than it really is. Unfortunately for Trinitarians, however, even with those additions (not to say manipulations), the triunity of God fails to be established. Therefore, the case for the Trinity loses credibility once again.

Section XXVIII: Why does God sometimes speak in the plural?
It is the popular belief that it is God who is speaking in Isaiah 9:6: Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. A closer look at the whole chapter will reveal that it was the prophet Isaiah who was talking. It is ridiculous to even think that a Child was born or given to the Trinity (the Son given to the Son?). What the prophet meant was that through him Jehovah was making the promise that the Son of God was to be born in the land of the patriarchs to dwell among the people of Israel. Since Isaiah was a son of Israel, he included himself as a recipient of that promise, the reason why he said unto us, meaning among us. As for Isaiah addressing the coming Messiah as Everlasting Father, Jehovah God was merely saying through him, in the plainest language possible, that He Himself was to come to visit His people in the form of a human child and adopt the title Son of God. We will recall that Father is just another word for God, so when we acknowledge the Son’s divinity we automatically recognize Him as the Everlasting Father also, although tacitly so, as further evidenced by the prophet’s reference to Him as Mighty God. This completely eliminates the need for anyone to explain God’s substance in terms of the mysterious Trinity. Also it will be well to remember that Jesus is the Father only as far as His divinity is concerned, but remains the Son as the embodiment of both natures, the human and the divine. And so we could go on and on, but do we need to quote the whole Bible to get at the bottom of the “Trinity” mystery? Have we not had enough? I believe we have, but I will not end my discourse without first citing two more scriptures: Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26); and Then God said, “Come, let Us go down, and there confuse their language.” (Genesis 11:7). This time there is no doubt whatsoever that it is God talking on these two separate occasions. The explanation can be found in Section XI, pp. 9 and 10, Begotten, yet eternal?

Suffices to say that when God uses the object pronoun us and the possessive our He is speaking as the dual God that He is, only two persons, the Father and the Son not yet manifested according to our own timetable, but present in God’s mind according to His timeless calendar. It is probably worthwhile to add that when the scripture refers to Jesus as the exact image of the invisible God in Hebrews 1:3 that image is not only the mental image of God manifested in human form, but His moral, spiritual and overall image as well. Notice, moreover, that whenever Jehovah spoke directly and personally to men like Adam, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses and all the prophets, He never said “we” or “let us,” but always spoke in the first person singular. Jehovah was and will always be both the Word and the Spirit, and these two are inseparable and identical, never distinct and separate. Finally, there still remains one more portion of Scriptures that has been or might be invoked in fruther support of the Trinity: Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil" (Genesis 3:32). There are those, opposed to the triune God theology, to whom the object pronoun Us in this text refers to God and the angels, both good and evil, not to a three-person God. My personal opinion is that it is only a matter of common sense to suppose that angels also were in on this knowledge, for even the angels of Satan, who once rebelled against their Lord, had to have been good before they went bad. The difference between my way of thinking and theirs is that, besides the angels, the other Us' were the same Us' that I have insisted on throughout: the two-person God, in man's timetable later revealed as Father and Son, which together constitute the divine quality of Duality, not Trinity.


Section XXIX: So what if God is only one or three persons? What of it?
Indeed, what of it? While the word of God does not appear to make it a requirement of salvation to believe in the Trinity or not, John 17:3 does say the following: And this is eternal life, that they may know You (the Father), the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. That statement is somewhat frightening, because our Lord’s definition of eternal life is to know the Father as the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Since eternal life is the end result of our salvation, which begins with the forgiveness of our sins upon believing and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then the quoted verse sounds alarmingly damning. Does that scripture mean that those who do not believe that the Father is the only true God there is (but instead believe that there are two other persons that are also considered God) do not have or will not attain eternal life? And if that is not what it means, what does it mean? To know the Father is to know that He is the only true God, and that is part of what eternal life is all about! How the cleverest mind can possibly get around that solemn and sobering declaration is hard to imagine. If what I suspect is true, then the number of those we have always considered to be saved, including many of the most illustrious Christians of all time, will be drastically reduced, for almost all of those Christians have most vehemently preached and defended the Trinity. Well, here is a comforting thought, I hope. First of all, since they have confessed Jesus as Lord and repented (Romans 10:9, 10; Acts 2:38, and others), they are saved or forgiven. Second, perhaps the Lord will overlook their faulty concept of His personhood on the basis of their undeniable conviction that the Father is indeed God, although not exactly the only true God (the three persons are the only true God, or so they say). Undoubtedly too, He will take into consideration the multiple limitations and erring nature that all human beings are plagued with. Thirdly, it is quite evident that these men and women have truly and completely put their trust for their salvation in Jesus Christ and Him alone, as none of the many pseudo-believers who have taken cover under the umbrella of Christianity have. Instead, the latter have entrusted their lost souls to their church or religious organization, having imagined that through church membership they have thus purchased eternal life—or whatever it is that they believe in—depending on the dictates of the apostate institution they are affiliated with. As I see it, anyone who believes that Jesus paid it all for him and lives righteously has to be saved. In the final analysis, though, the Lord is the ultimate judge as we all know.

I have good reason to suppose that there will be those who might rightly ask: if one can attain salvation irrespective of whether he or she believes in the Trinity, what is the point of insisting on holding one viewpoint or the other? After all, the whole debate can be narrowed down to two simple words: person vs. role. All that really matters is that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, all three are the same God regardless of whether we consider them three persons, or the same person with different identity labels. That sounds reasonable enough until we discover the true definition of the word person and the dual role of each of the so-called divine persons as previously explained. For when this happens, those three persons are nothing more and nothing less than three gods, whether we like it or not, and what makes them three gods is precisely the presumption that they are three persons. If those persons were all perfectly identical, which they are not as we now know, the Trinity would be a much easier pill to swallow; the problem then would be, though, why the need for three identical persons when one alone is all that is needed, particularly when that one lone person is the Almighty God, the author of so many things of unparalleled magnitude, beginning with the prodigious work of creation? The three persons doing exactly the same identical kind of work could be likened to an employer who hires three accountants to do exactly the same job at the same time. That would be worse than duplication or double work. As a matter of fact, it would be more than simple chaos; it is an absolute impossibility. At all events, wouldn’t it be better to play it safe and go with the one-person God in His three different roles? We can’t possibly go wrong that way, plus the added benefit that is derived from the joy of knowing God better, which is no small matter.

The Trinitarian problem presented by the question that heads this section is similar to other points of doctrinal divergence that have raged between believers of truly evangelical convictions for ages. The difference is that while these differing views and practices tend to fragment the body of Christ, the dogma of the Trinity has emerged triumphant as the one solid bastion of unity, not just for Bible-conscious men and women, but also for liturgy-oriented “Christians,” an inexplicable paradox. Still and all, the answer to the question under examination at this juncture can be turned right around to focus on any of these points of divergence. Take infant baptism for our initial example. The same question can be asked of those Protestant believers that still practice it: If I have confessed Christ as my only and sufficient personal Lord and Savior I am saved according to Romans 10:9, so what if I was baptized as a baby and not as a believer? Others can in turn ask: And what if I am still glued to the diabolical doctrine of transubstantiation even though I am a Lutheran? Or will the Lord reprove me on judgment day for not believing in miracle-healing or speaking in tongues? So what? I have received Jesus, I am born again, the Bible is not just my main spiritual guide; it is my only guide. What better credentials can anyone present? And so on and so forth. I must confess that I myself do not have the answer to those questions. What I do know is this: These issues are more important than we may care to believe and consequently well-deserving of our consideration. Why? Simply because such concerns as believer’s baptism, faith-healing, tongues, etc. are all indisputable biblical truths, and as such, I boldly declare that they are in the Word of God for a reason, therefore our Lord can in no way be pleased with our neglect or contempt of them, especially when we have received new light and yet, having ears we do not hear and having eyes we do not see (Matt. 13:15; Mark 8:18)

But apart from the dilemma of whether Trinitarian Christians are downright idolaters or not, there is an equally—perhaps more—worrisome matter to be considered yet. That is the fact that monotheistic religions other than pro-Trinity Christianity reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ outright mostly on the basis of that misleading dogma. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Moslems and Jews all believe (and rightly so) that God is one person, and all of them also believe that to make Him three persons instead is out and out blasphemy and heinous idolatry. This unfortunate fact largely explains why it is so difficult for Christians to evangelize those peoples. To them the Trinity is nothing less than sheer insanity, which it is except to Christians, most of whom profess to believe in it without understanding nearly as much as half of it. Unlike Christians, however, all adherents to those religions receive thorough indoctrination against the Trinity as well as intensive instruction on a one-person God. Why? Because they have understood the meaning of the word person, at least with respect to God, far better than the overwhelming majority of us, and it is the first thing they like to rub on our faces, delighting in how ignorant and dense we are. Of course, there is no denying that they cling to many absurdities of their own that they would never acknowledge as such, but when it comes to God’s single personhood—barring both their ignorant rejection of Jesus Christ’s double nature and their blasphemy against the Holy Spirit—they are absolutely right.

Another point of interest that may come as a surprise to many readers is the much touted historical report that the Mohammedans conquered all the lands we now know as the Middle East by the sword. While mostly true, it is not entirely so. At the time those lands—with the exception of Iran—were all Christian territory for the most part, but much of its Christian population, dissatisfied with the growing paganization of its faith as well as fiercely opposed to the three-person God idea, more than welcomed Mohammed’s uncomplicated and pure monotheism. Those did not have to be won over to the new faith by force, given the fact that the founder of the Islamic religion and his succesors spared the lives and goods of those who willingly submitted after given a choice. The ones that initially were compelled to convert were thoroughly paganized Christians, not the heirs to the first century’s pristine, uncorrupted believers which breed had by then practically ceased to exist. To be truthful, neither were those who embraced Islam so readily, for they were nominal, disgruntled and disillusioned Christians anxious for a change, who, had they had a truly apostolic leadership, would more than likely have gone underground, an era of Christian martyrdom would have been born anew and the history of the world would have had to be written all over again for sure.

Section XXX: Duality vs. Oneness
I have already made known my objection to the Oneness teaching on the grounds that it contradicts the incarnation and Christ’s double nature as well as our Lord’s anointing by the Holy Spirit. I also made the observation that the Oneness theology leaves out, in all appearance, Jesus Christ’s humanity (Section XIII, p. 16), although in actual practice said humanity, as well as all of the other aforementioned features, is fully recognized (no more and no less than do Trinitarians). Theoretically, however, the Oneness viewpoint is passionately defended, with the inevitable result that it creates the same crisis originated by the supposed eternality of the Son. Since any discussion concerning Jesus’ personality must always, of necessity, include both His divinity and His humanity, the Oneness contention must also be summarily dismissed.

I am well aware, of course, that human limitations, such as shortsightedness, prejudices, preconceived notions, insufficient objectivity and insight, and carelessness account for our deficient understanding not only of God’s single personhood but of other scriptural realities as well. I am equally aware that these limitations constitute a roadblock to the work of the Holy Spirit even in those in whom He dwells. How much more resistant to the same can you, dear brethren, imagine a false believer or a non-believer to be? I am just as certain that a merciful God will take our shortcomings into account, but will He be as benevolent to the stubborn and stiff-necked? Uncircumcised of hearts and ears! Like your fathers before you, you too have always resisted the Holy Spirit! (Acts 8:51).

With the Oneness option out of the picture, we can now concentrate on God’s duality. Speaking from my own experience I venture to suggest that people in general, whether they are lay persons or ordained ministers, accept the Trinitarian myth mechanically, superficially, the same way they accept many other things that, if they took the time and trouble to analize them, would not make sense to them at all. One of the first things that intrigued me was the discovery that the three persons were not equal (…the Father is greater than I—John 14:28;…the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name—John 14:26). Yet I continued to be a staunch defender of the Trinity because I was convinced that the three persons were God, even though I could not understand why, if they were the same God, they were not equal in rank, authority and function (not even in existence, for the Son only came after He was conceived in Mary’s womb). How could I reconcile so many contrary ideas, I kept asking God in prayer. I floundered in this sea of confusion for years until I reflected on the true definition of person, of which I have spoken in depth and at length in the foregoing sections.

But the real clinchers were 1 Corinthians 8:6, John 17:3 and Ephesians 4:6, where I made a shocking discovery: Of the three persons the Father was the only true God! Those scriptures definitely convinced me that God was not three persons. It is amazing how easily all the pieces of the puzzle fit into place after that. It is all a matter of plain, almost mathematical logic. Once I put all the scriptures together as I have in this essay, I further discovered that the only way Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit could be God was by making them both one with the Father (John 14:9-11; 2 Corinthians 3:17). When Jesus said, He who has seen Me and known Me has seen and known the Father, it was easy for me to understand the Son’s double nature, the Father-Son relationship and God’s duality. At last, the us’ and ours' that make God sound like He is more than one person shed their aura of mystery. Since by then I had come to realize that the Father and the Holy Spirit were the same person, the only one who could logically be another person had to be our Lord Jesus Christ. By contrast, with the Trinity dogma we do not know which end is up. The rest of it, I hope, has been covered thoroughly enough.



Expanding on John 17:1-3
Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that Your Son also may glorify You,/as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him./And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

The more one goes over this passage, the more intrigued he or she will be, if the scripture is read with the firm purpose of trying to really and truly get at the heart of it in earnest search of the truth. If this is done, one thing that will surely have to strike the reader as being rather peculiar is to read that the Father is the only true God, as was my own experience! It cannot be helped. It cannot be avoided. If at this juncture the reader shakes it off, saying, “Ah, so what,” or goes, “Hmm…oh well,” and keeps on going pretending that nothing has disturbed him or her, it can only mean that deep down, he or she does not really want to face the truth. And what is that truth? That God is not three persons, but only one, the Father! But hold on. There is one other thing that will seem very odd to the reader, and that is the not too pleasant discovery of learning that he thought he knew what eternal life was but he did not after all. Now if he were asked to define eternal life he would go anywhere from Duh, or, I dunno to whatever else he has heard about it but what he had just read in John 17:1-3. Yet Jesus said it very clearly: Eternal life is to know the Father, the only true God, AND Jesus Christ the Son of God whom the Father sent. And that is about the best definition of eternal life we can have, because it is the definition given by the Lord Himself, the very giver of eternal life (John 17:2, quoted above; John 4:14; 6:54; 10:10).

More than likely every true Bible-rooted Christian would immediately jump to his feet and protest, but I do know my God, I know whom I have believed! I do have as personal and intimate a relationship with God in Christ as anybody can have! I am a born again Christian if there ever was one! I know my Bible right and left, from cover to cover, inside out, and therefore I have everlasting life as my dear Lord Jesus promised, so who can accuse me of not knowing God the Father and His Son only because I believe in the Trinity? Alright sonny, simmer down and listen. In the first place, let us determine what knowing means. I’ll put it as simple as I possibly can. If we don’t know somebody there is no way possible we can trust him, can we? Because, to begin with, to trust someone we do not know is foolish. I knew you were going to say right. This means that to know God is to believe Him, that is, to trust Him wholeheartedly in and for everything, and why. Right again, eh? OK, now, to believe in God in turn means to believe in Christ also. Why? Because Jesus Himself said so in John 14:1, remember? If you believe in God, believe also in Me. And that is the key to understanding what eternal life is all about. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you don’t believe in God, simply because you don’t know Him. Not any better than His closest disciples did when they asked Him to show them the Father. As He Himself said to them on that occasion, if we know Jesus we have known and seen the Father, which means that He (Jesus) is God the Father in the flesh (John 10:30; 14:9-11 and 1 Timothy 3:16), which in turn also means that in Him dwells ALL the FULNESS of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9), not only because it so pleased the Father (Col. 1:19), but also because He has received ALL the authority of the Father over ALL FLESH (John 17:2; Matthew 28:18; Col. 1:17, 18; Ephesians 1:20:23). Therefore the only way anyone can claim to know both the Father and the Son is by believing what God the Father and Holy Spirit dictated in all those Scriptures (please read 2 Tim. 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:21). And that is the other astounding truth: the Father and the Son are two clearly distinct but not separate persons. Nor is the Holy Spirit the third person of the Godhead, but the first and only divine person there is together with the Father and the Son, as has already been proven throughout. The difference is that one is all spirit and the other is all man and all God, but God, our sovereign Lord, decided to assume a human body that He may fulfill His purpose (according to the prophecies) the best way He saw fit. That is why Jesus said not only that the Father and He were one, but also that the Father is (dwells) in Him as He is (dwells, again) in His Father.

Now if after all this evidence the individual still persists in attempting to give these Scriptures an interpretation more suitable to his three-person-God lunacy—I honestly do not see how, but then I know that men always find ways to distort the truth and still sound convincing, at least to some—all I can say is that he might have blown his chance to become priest and king (possibly meaning ruler or leader) to reign with Christ for a thousand years (1 Peter 2:9; Rev.1:6; 20:4, 6). He will be saved if he truly loved the Lord, I am sure, but for refusing to accept God’s Oneness despite the new light received, will he be among the ruled instead of with the rulers during the millennium and/or the new earth afterward? Or will He have forfeited his opportunity to achieve immortality? If nothing else, that is something to consider very seriously, given the gravity and solemnity of the matter. It is my earnest recommendation to all my brethren to read Revelation 20 and 21 as thoroughly and repeatedly as possible.

The historical background of the Trinity
What’s been exposed above is almost all the scriptural ammunition that can be used to destroy the Trinitarian myth. It is not all that there is, but hopefully it should be a little more than just enough. Outside the Bible, we have the historical witness that adds much more fuel to the fire. Unfortunately, that is something that requires extensive research in order to document the rest of the subject, an endeavor that naturally requires a considerable amount of time, but also one that we are not properly or fully prepared for. For the moment, I would just like to make two plain comments: 1) It does not take a genius or an erudite to logically deduce that what is not recorded in the Bible has to have been fabricated by unscrupulous men to suit their own whims, religious or otherwise; 2) The reader will find nothing in this section that cannot be attested to and verified by any Christian of character and integrity, whether it be a Church historian, a Bible scholar, any serious lay Bible student, or even an ardent ecclesiastical history enthusiast for that matter, of whom, I am afraid, there are not very many, Christian or not.

Nor must our readers entertain any illusions that all the history of the early Christian Church is as glamorous and sublime as most of us have grown accustomed to imagine, her shameless unbiblical tradition being her most flagrant characteristic. Almost immediately after the last of the apostles left the scene of the world, infant baptism and the doctrine of baptismal regeneration were introduced into the Church. Within a very short time, the vocational priesthood was revived. A number of other unscriptural doctrines and practices followed culminating with the seduction of the Church by the half pagan Emperor Constantine (A.D. 306-327), whose questionable conversion and offer to end the persecutions were the bait that lured the church into compromising the Gospel much more openly than ever before. Added to that was her consequently and subsequently disgraceful record of worldly concerns and practices such as political ambition, material wealth, highhandedness, treachery, simony, venality, murder and the suppression of the most elementary forms of freedom of conscience and expression. It was in that milieu that the Trinitarian dogma evolved and prospered. To add insult to injury, Christianity, or the Catholic Church, as it was already known by then, and which at the time included both the Roman and Greek varieties, was splintered into a great number of sects just as modern-day Christianity is today, only under different labels: There were the Monophysites, the Modalists, the Arians, the Sabellians, the Nestorians, the Apolinarians, the Docetists, etc., etc., many of whom were unitarians (one-person God believers) of one modality or another. As a matter of fact, the Trinitarian party won mostly thanks to the eventual support it received from Emperor Constantine and from that of successive emperors thereafter. Yet the emperor, who ended up favoring the Trinitarian formula, had Eusebius, an anti-Trinitarian (Arian), as his chief aide and counselor. Such was the extent of his theological zeal as well as his abundantly liberal religious tolerance, which he extended to all the pagan religions then in existence. Tolerance here, though, must be understood, not as the exercise of forbearance or self-restraint toward others of different persuasion, but as total indifference toward doctrinal orthodoxy. So if he ended up leaning in favor of the divine triunity, it was only because that happened to be the most influential and dominant faction in all Christendom and the circumstance that best suited his own personal agenda besides.

The emperor, perhaps the shrewdest and most insightful statesman the world has ever known, and whose major concern was to maintain peace and unity in the empire, joined forces with the Trinitarian party, as he perceived and envisioned the Catholic belief system to be the world religion of the future. In his capacity as pontifex maximus (the empire’s head priest and minister of religion), he (not the pope, whose office did not even exist then) called and presided over the first great ecumenical council in history (Nicaea, A.D. 325), which the emperor packed with Trinity-minded bishops. About fifty years later Emperor Theodosius I completely wiped out Arianism (the forerunner of today’s Watchtower Society), the most vocal and strongest opponent of Trinitarianism. As a matter of fact, Theodosius outdid all former emperors in his savage attack on all dissenters from the established Church, which he proclaimed and established as the state's official and only religion. In that manner the once persecuted Church, now with the fanatical support of the emperor, suddenly became persecutor.

We have no written records on how and when the three-person God viewpoint originated. From the above, however, it is easy to suppose that all anti-Trinity documents and manuscripts were suppressed and eventually utterly destroyed, although Trinity apologists will undoubtedly have us believe that such teaching was of apostolic origin. What little we know of the established Church’s critics and detractors we have learned almost wholly from the biased information handed down to us by far from impartial sources. This is not to say that the opposition was necessarily right on the mark either, but some came closer to the truth than others, at least insofar as God’s personhood is concerned.

One is your Father, Who is in heaven
Other than these historical developments, there are easily observable pitfalls in Evangelical religious speech and practice that are not biblically based. Everyone knows that to this day Lutherans, the original Protestants, have never shaken loose of the transubstantiation lunacy or from the infant baptism practice of Romanism. Everyone, including the most eminent of Protestant scholars, speaks of mere fallible men as Church Fathers with the utmost admiration, respect and reverence, even though the Master Himself expressly, and in no unclear terms, prohibited us from calling anyone Father, but our Father who is in heaven (Mat. 23:9). By way of justification, among other inane examples, it is argued that Paul referred to Timothy as son (2 Tim. 1:2) and that John called his disciples little children (1 John 3:7). This is tantamount to saying that Paul and John are right and their own Master, Teacher and Savior, the incarnation of God Himself, is wrong, as suggested by the contemporary believers' attitude of tolerance rather than compliance.

First of all, the apostles, when they used those terms, they used them sparingly and as terms of affection, pretty much in the same way that older people sometimes call younger persons son or child today. Secondly, they used them also in the sense of being spiritual fathers to spiritual children, a usage and meaning not at all uncommon to us. However, the issue here is not the words son, child or children, but the title Father. There is no record whatsoever, scriptural or historical, that those sons or children ever intended to call the apostles Father Paul or Father John as permanent titles. And that is precisely what Jesus was alluding to. As the greatest and truest of all prophets, He predicted that in the not too distant future men would be giving corrupt mortals the permanent title of Father with capital f, just as we give a professional the permanent title of doctor, or a pastor that of Reverend, or the ruler of a nation that of king, majesty, president, chancellor, premier, or whatever else. In the absolutely spiritual sense, though, the title of Father belongs to God alone, and the appropriation of that title by mere men is a usurpation of God’s exclusive title, a horrendous blasphemy, and an act of open and deliberate disobedience. He is our only Father, not just on account of the fatherly qualities that He obviously possesses, but also because He is our Maker. Furthermore, in Christ He is the ruler of the universe, the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), in other words, the author of the Gospel of salvation as well, and finally, He is the foundation and only foundation of the Church (2 Corinthians 3:11).

There may be other possible reasons why we must not call anyone else Father. Nonetheless the ones given here should suffice to disqualify all of those supposedly great theologians and exemplary men of faith from that divine prerogative. In all fairness, though, it is more than likely that they are not to blame. Most certainly they were never called Fathers in their lifetime, but subsequent generations were so impacted by their exegetical ideas that they supposed their thoughts were as good or better than God’s (reread Isaiah 55:8, 9), thus feeling that their "great wisdom" had earned them their privilege to be called Fathers posthumously.

Is one Father not sufficient for the Church?
But back to Matthew 23:9. Our Lord did not tell us we need more than one Father. These so-called fathers are not just a handful of them, but legion. Exactly how many is hard to say, but there is much more than a score of them. Here are some of the best known: Tertullian, Irenaeus, Origen, Justin Martyr, Policarp, Ignatius of Antioch, Augustine, and others that are just too many to list here. The odd thing about it is that even Protestant thinkers, awestruck, often quote them in their writings as examples of wisdom and holiness to reinforce their arguments, as if there were a scarcity of Spirit-filled, saintly and fully committed men and women among their own kind. This they do or have done apparently without recalling, knowing or considering the fact that they all expressed, for the most part, ideas contrary to typical Protestant thought. In fact, almost all of them, if not all, should be considered heretical by either Rome or Protestant Christianity, for all of them deviated from either belief system in a good number of points of doctrine. Augustine, for example, was a champion of predestination, the distinctive mark of traditional Presbyterianism or Calvinistic denominations and now harshly condemned by Rome. Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor so-called, and as much admired a saint as Augustine, was, on the other hand, the originator of the free will doctrine that he formulated in opposition to predestination. Yet both are distinguished members of the Roman Church’s long list of saints, and both of them are equally revered by both Catholic and Protestant clergymen.

NOTE: Another thorny question: Why are they called fathers or in what sense? Our founding fathers are thus called because together they laid the foundations of our nation, which did not exist until they decided to build a demographic and geographic entity separate from the fatherland. Mohammed is the acknowledged founder of Islam as are other celebrated religious leaders. There have been many other men and women who have initiated and formed movements, organizatiions, political parties, philosophical schools and what not, and they are not called fathers. In the sense of founder, creator, initiator, etc., the word father could be applied to them more appropriately because father in such a case can be regarded as a begetter in a figurative sense, but in what pertains to the foundation of the Christian Church none of its "fathers" figured in it. God Himself founded it on the Day of Pentecost in a supernatural manner, the first leaders of which were the twelve men divinely appointed by Jesus Himself. Furthermore, these so-called fathers contritributed nothing to the furtherance of the Gospel or added any new revelation that could have been more beneficial or necessary to the already finished work of Christ, the perfect work of God Almighty Himself. On the contrary, they deviated from Scriptures in a way that would have rendered their rather philosophical concoctions--as opposed to biblical veracity--outrageously unrecognizable by the apostles. Finally, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 3:11 that there is no other foundation [of the Church] than that which is already laid, Jesus Christ. Founder or creator, therefore, is the only logical sense in which the word father could be applied, figuratively, to a human male (yet not even the apostles have ever been so honored), so where does the apostate Church get the idea of Father that we have been discussing from?

What is the origin of the Catholic priesthood?
Then we have, in our own time, men that wear strange garb who call themselves and permit others to call them Fathers and priests, while at the same time dishonoring the true Father, first by usurping His exclusive title, and second, by perpetuating the professional priesthood that the Son abolished on the cross. This latter activity is also a usurpation of our Lord’s exclusive priestly status, as He is the only priest we now need, and the Great High Priest at that, as the following passage demonstrates: For such a High Priest (Jesus) is fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens;/ who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself./ For the law appoints as high priests men who have weaknesses, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son, who has been perfected forever (Hebrews 7:26-28) [(Jesus (as the Word) was indeed perfected forever, the work of perfection in Him having first taken place at the time of His anointment and completed at His resurrection)]. This passage, in fact, the book of Hebrews, more than any other part of the New Testament, is a thunderous condemnation of the Satan-induced doctrine of transubstantiation, the spuriously designated continuous and bloodless sacrifice of the Lamb of God. This is taught with utter disregard for the scriptural injunction that without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Hebrews 9:22) and for His self-sacrifice (not offered by the hands of false priests), unrepeatable, efficacious, complete and consequently perfect (Hebrews 5:9; 7:27, 28; 9:22, 25-28; 10:10-12, 14). The eucharistic and transubstantiation travesty (the Mass) then had to be the justification for the new priesthood's practice of offering the endless, ineffectual, unnecessary and therefore superfluous sacrifice of the Son of God. Without it, popery and its elaborate priestly apparatus would have no reason to be, which in turn would mean no Catholicism. Undoubtedly, said priesthood had its origin precisely in the fact that some of the Jewish priests who converted to the Christian faith, finding themselves out of work, invented the aforementioned transubstantiation farce in order to preserve their lost office and all the privileges that went with it. Somehow or other, they found a paradisiacal home in pagan Greece and Rome, where they fostered their pestilent practice. Although Acts 6:7 only says that many of the priests embraced the faith, human nature being what it is, and having biblical proof that there were no priests, no pope, no mass, no sacraments, no ridiculous vestments, and no priestly rituals ever performed by God’s ministers in the New Testament Church, I invite anyone who is not a priest (for a priest’s testimony will always be understandably biased) to challenge my conclusions through plain logical reasoning in the obvious absence of biblical or historical evidence regarding the origin of Romish priestcraft.

Is there such a thing as a sacrament, and what is a sacrament?
Then we have the sacraments, a term that Evangelical clergymen and writers use quite freely and without compunction. They either do not even seem to know the origin and true meaning of the word, or if they do, they brush it aside, ignorance being, however, the most likely factor. In the first place, sacrament is not even a biblical term, and this every single Evangelical minister knows for a fact; it was retained precisely from the age-old Roman liturgical vocabulary. Moreover, these ministers generally recognize only two of the seven sacraments. If they knew what a sacrament really means they would certainly, I hope, erase that word from their vocabulary. In the second place, therefore, they should familiarize themselves with the original definition of the word before using it. That original definition, in the plainest English possible, is as follows: Sacrament is a rite instituted by Jesus that confers sanctifying grace [on the believer] (American Heritage Dictionary, brackets mine). The Bible says that grace is the gift of God manifested by faith in His Son’s self-sacrifice, complete, efficacious and perfect, whereby the believing sinner is saved, justified or forgiven notwithstanding his past merits or lack of them (Ephesians 2:8, 9; Titus 3:5). In that case, faith, and not rites of any kind, is the channel of God’s grace (Hebrews 10:19-22). By the way, there is only one kind of grace, and that grace is always sanctifying. Consequently, sanctifying grace is a redundant phrase. All these observations are made with the writer’s loving intention of warning those God-fearing brethren not to borrow anything that is not strictly scriptural from any other source, lest they find themselves unwittingly blaspheming God’s name. To conclude this section, these historical data are not intended to prove God’s Oneness. Rather it is an attempt to impress on the reader the necessity the people of God have to wake up to the distressing reality that the dogma in question is not the result of conscientious and diligent scriptural research. It is, in fact, just one of a set of religious principles, creeds and practices inherited by Evangelical Christianity from a Church that fell into apostasy since the most ancient times. Unlike Luther and others, we must repudiate or at least reexamine them, lest we renounce our ultimate reward. The dogma of the Trinity is one of such unscriptural religious creeds whose pernicious influence must be avoided at all costs.

CONCLUSION: As long as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit continue to be recognized as the same and only true God, the Trinitarian dogma does not represent too great a threat to the integrity of our faith. But with the constant relaxation of the most elevated principles of decency and decorum in our modern society, added to the growing ecumenical sentiment in religious circles, the three-in-one God can very easily become three gods to accomodate certain other belief systems foreign to Christianity such as Hinduism and others. If you don't believe this very real possibility, check out what the great Billy Graham recently stated not too long ago. Asked whether he believed that, since Jesus died for all men, His salvation could extend to people who have never embraced His Gospel, He expressed baffling uncertainty by saying that in the final analysis God was the only one who was qualified to answer that question. And the saddest part of it is that he is not alone in this uncertainty about the answers to these questions the Bible and Jesus Christ unequivocally give us.

Now if the three-person God is not plainly changed to three gods, it could be changed to whatever else, e.g., to just a one-person God but without Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit, again to accomodate such one-person-God believers as Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews and Muslims. Also, the Trinity, although still considered a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith, is rapidly becoming one of those non-essentials that can be negotiated and sacrificed away in exchange for a more "universal" and "unifying" principle, such as those we have already mentioned. Without the firm knowledge, understanding and acceptance of the divine duality concept, and God's triple role, fundamentalist Christians run the now no longer remote risk of being swayed away from their faith, just as Mohammed did with ancient Mid-eastern Christianity. This possibility is especially disturbing in view of the deficient understanding Trinity adherents have of their own flawed and, when challenged, faltering doctrine. In conversations I have had with more than a handful of fellow believers on the subject of the Trinity, none of them showed even a weak conviction or the slightest desire to present arguments in its defense; it is as if the best they could do were to still cling to their belief that the three persons are God but without feeling the feeblest urge to explain their position. History has repeatedly shown us that the easily impressionable nature of the human spirit has made possible the rise to power of madmen like Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, and more recently, Chavez and Ortega, only to seal the eventual doom of the peoples they have ruled as a result. It is no different with religion, very especially with our own Christ-centered religion, which is the only existing menace to Satan, the adversary of all of mankind, but more particularly of God and His adopted children (read Matthew 24:24 for scriptural enlightenment on this matter).