Do you believe in the Trinity; God in three “Persons”? Or the Oneness of God?? WHY?
I have a few excerpts in regard to three Gods, One God doctrines, and a link to the Biblical reference to the truth. What I want to know is what do you believe?
our A: “Trinity” is a term that is not found in the Bible but a word used to describe what is apparent about God in the Scriptures. The Bible clearly speaks of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit…and also clearly presents that there is only one God. Thus the term: “Tri” meaning three, and “Unity” meaning one, Tri+Unity = Trinity. It is a way of acknowledging what the Bible reveals to us about God, that God is yet three “Persons” who have the same essence of deity Excerpt from http://everystudent.com/index.html
.Acts 5:4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. (This is the scripture for deifying the Angel of the Lord—the Holy Spirit.)
The Bible clearly states that there is only one God. Deuteronomy 6:4 states, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” Isaiah 44:6 states, “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides me.” Clearly, these verses reveal that there is only one God. Yet, there are three separate persons in the Bible who are called God and have the characteristics only God can have. The Trinity is a difficult concept to grasp, because we are finite beings trying to explain an infinite God who is beyond our understanding.
From our research on this subject, we have come to three conclusions which we discuss in this chapter. 1. As far as we can tell, the early Christian leaders in the days immediately following the apostolic age were Oneness. It is certain that they did not teach the doctrine of the trinity as it later developed and as it exists today. 2. Even after the emergence of the trinitarian doctrine in the latter part of the second century, the doctrine of the trinity did not replace Oneness as the dominant belief until around 300 A.D., and it did not become universally established until late in the fourth century. 3. Even after trinitarianism became dominant, Oneness believers continued to exist throughout church history http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pentecostal/One-Ch10.htm
Are their actually three members of the Godhead? Or, is their only one God with three personalities? How many are there, one, two, or three? Where should we search this out? Should we ask our pastors and rely on what he says? If he is a type of pastor that says, “there are this many or that many,” without showing you in the Old and the New Testaments find some one else and ask them the question….http://www.theisraelofgod.com/iogtrinity.htm
Hey Shirley, I finally got to you. And as usual, the word of God gets interesting. But I enjoyed my visit and I will try an check in from time to time.
Peace and Jesus name!
By: Fred P. O. on October 20, 2007
at 09:55 pm
I wrote about this on my blog – it’s called Evidence of the Trinity.
http://thebiblethumperssoapbox.blogspot.com/2007/09/evidence-of-trinity.html
By: carol on October 23, 2007
at 03:13 am
I don’t think my response went through. Trying it again. I wrote about this on my blog called Evidence of the Trinity
http://thebiblethumperssoapbox.blogspot.com/2007/09/evidence-of-trinity.html
By: carol on October 23, 2007
at 03:15 am
“As far as we can tell, the early Christian leaders in the days immediately following the apostolic age were Oneness. It is certain that they did not teach the doctrine of the trinity as it later developed and as it exists today.”
That is untrue. The oneness doctrine, modalism or modalistic monarchialism, emerged early in the second century, and was pronounced as heresy by the early church. Tertullian denounced the oneness doctrine as “claiming that the Father died on the cross.” Tertullian lived from 155 to 230 BC, long before the period that they claim that Trinity became normative.
Look, Jesus Christ said “I and the Father are one.” Jesus Christ constantly referred to “My Father in Heaven” to His disciples, He prayed to the Father in the presence of His disciples, and some of them were present when the Holy Spirit descended on Christ and the Father spoke from Heaven during His baptism. Most of the disciples and apostles were with Christ when He told them that after He went away the Holy Spirit would come upon them to take His place to comfort, counsel, and embold them, and that the Holy Spirit could not come until He left. He also told them that He would be in Heaven with the Father while the Holy Spirit would be with them on earth. Jesus Christ also told them that no man had seen the face of the Father at any time, that He had seen the face of the Father, and that one could only come to the Father or so much as see the face of the Father through Him. John the Baptist was present when Jesus Christ asked the Father why he had forsaken Him while He was dying on the cross.
Claiming that the early church was oneness would have meant that claiming that the apostles were oneness. The only way for that to be true would be that the apostles denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. Why? Because at every point during His ministry Jesus Christ made it clear that He was NOT the Father (even telling people that did not recognize His divinity and thought that He was merely a man to not call Him good, saying that there was none good but the Father and that they should worship only the Father), and that He was subject to the Father, that His role was to glorify the Father, and that the Father would glorify Him because of His obedience and submission to the Father. Christ also told that the Holy Spirit’s role was subject to Him AND the Father, that the Holy Spirit would not so much as speak for Himself but rather only speak what He heard the Father speak.
I mean, you do recall Thomas falling down and worshiping the risen Christ as “my Lord and my God”, don’t you? Yet they KNEW that it was not the Father, because their own doctrine had taught for thousands of years that no man could see the face of the Father and live. That was why the “man” that wrestled Jacob told Jacob to let Him go before day broke and Jacob could see His face (people who claim that it was an angel ignore that Jacob named the place “Peniel”, I have seen the face of God and lived) and that God did not allow Moses to see His face, but only His hinderparts as He passed by.
And then there was Revelation. It depicted the Father sitting on the throne, and “the lamb as it had been slain” as coming forth and being the only one able to break the seal and open the book. That Revelation scene reminds you of Daniel’s vision, where “the Son of Man” is presented before the enthroned “Ancient of Days.” And so on.
Please keep in mind: the apostles SAW Jesus Christ. They HEARD Him speak of Himself with respect to the Father as the Father being DIFFERENT from Himself and HIGHER than Himself. They HEARD the voice of God speak from heaven, calling Jesus Christ His Son. Claiming that the apostles adhered to a oneness view is claiming that they did not recognize His divinity, and that Christ’s divinity was an invention later on.
Seriously, the only people that claim that the early church was oneness are A) oneness pentecostals and B) liberals who deny the deity of Christ. Both groups do this despite direct evidence that is A) in the scriptures and B) documents by first and second century church writers.
Perhaps the best refutation of this lie is in Acts. It is ironic that the oneness people use Acts 2:38 to justify their view while completely ignoring what Peter said earlier in verses 29 – 35, where he expounded upon the Psalm 110:1 “My LORD (the Hebrew word there is Adonai, which means God the Father) said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Now the Jews believed that the second instance of Lord in that Psalm, the one where only the “L” is uppercase in the King James Version, referred to King David. Peter was telling them that the verse referred to Jesus Christ.
That demonstrates that the Jews interpreted Psalm 110:1 to refer to TWO DISTINCT PERSONS. Please note that in Acts 2 and in the many other places that Psalm 110 is quoted in the New Testament (the most quoted verse in the New Testament) AT NO TIME DOES PETER, JAMES, THE WRITER OF HEBREWS, JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF, OR ANYONE ELSE THAT QUOTES THAT VERSE CORRECT THE JEWS BY SAYING THAT IT REFERRED TO THE SAME PERSON. AT NO POINT DO THEY SAY THAT THE FIRST PERSON QUOTED IN THAT VERSE WAS NO OTHER THAN GOD THE FATHER. THE ONLY THING THAT THEY DO IS CORRECT THE IDENTITY OF PERSON THAT SITS AT THE RIGHT HAND, CORRECTING THE MISTAKE OF REGARDING IT AS DAVID TO THE TRUTH OF IT BEING JESUS CHRIST.
Another Messianic Psalm: Psalm 16, especially verse 10, which says “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” Now Psalm 16 is a song of praise to GOD THE FATHER. So who is the Holy One that will not remain in hell? Again, Jews believed the Holy One to be a reference to how David or some other prominent Old Testament figure would be resurrected from the dead. They understood it to be someone APART from the Father, not a relationship to or manifestation of the Father. Again, the New Testament does not correct this, but in Acts 2:27 and Acts 13:35 they reveal the second figure to be Jesus Christ rather than David, Moses, or any of the other figures that the Jews of that era were conjecturing it to be.
There is no way around it. If the early church was oneness, then the early church did not believe that Jesus Christ was deity at all.
By: healtheland on November 1, 2007
at 12:00 am
Hello HTL,
I have been on your site also. Thank you very much for your comments. I agree 100% there is the Father God, and Jesus, the God of Israel, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
Peace and blessing
By: kingskid49 on November 1, 2007
at 09:30 am
@Carol
I notice that you stated that everyone that believes in the “Trinity” can cite Jesus’ baptism as evidence of the “Trinity”.
Well let’s take a look at this scripture and many more to see just what is being said. Turn to
Matthew 3:16-17.
We see Jesus being baptized and a spirit in the form of a dove descending on Him and a voice from heaven speaking as though this is the Father’s voice.
First let’s look at the spirit that descended upon Him. Turn to
Isaiah 11:1-2.
We see that this spirit is wisdom and understanding, spirit of counsel and might and the knowledge and fear of the Lord.
Now, let’s look at the voice that came from heaven. Turn to
John 5:37,
Jesus tells us that we have neither heard His voice nor seen His shape at any time. So, Whose voice was heard? It was an angel, in this comment
Click here
I wrote and showed that angels speak in the first-person. The dove that descended was an angel that came to minister to Him.
Read
Matthew 4:1-11,
it has always been Jesus and the Holy Angels that have dealt with man.
If will you look at
1 John 5:7.
you see that there are three that bare record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.
Now turn to
Revelation 1:1,
we read that the Father gave to the Son, (the Word) and He gave it to His Angel (Holy Ghost) who came and gave it to John.
So you can see that there are two (2) Gods, the Father, the Word, and one(1) angel in Revelation 1:1. This explains the three that bare record in heaven.
All the scriptures that you quote referring to the Spirit of God are talking about His Word. For His Words are Spirit and Life,
John 6:63.
So when you have His Word in you, you are full of the Spirit. The word spirit covers many forms, such as the Word, breath, thoughts, angels, Son, Father, and wind/air. However, there are only two Gods: Jehovah (Son) and Jesus (Father. NO, I did not misquote who the Son and the Father are. More, on this, if you would like.
Peace,
Tyrone
By: Brother Tyrone on November 16, 2007
at 09:42 pm
People who really want to know the truth have to seek it from God, not from creeds. Isn’t the Bible enough? Please people, don’t believe something just because the majority believes it. Jesus said that the path to destruction is wide and many there be that go in that way, but narrow is the path that leads to life and few there be that find it.
I Timothy 2:5 says, “There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” Can anything be clearer than that?
In the book of John, Jesus said that he was one with the father JUST AS his disciples were one with him. If that proves that Jesus is God, then the disciples must be God too. Of course that is rediculous.
Emperor Constentine was a pagan. He saw a cloud in the shape of a cross after he won a battle and then he became a “Christian” making all of his officials into “Church leaders.” Read your history.
By: Sharon on June 28, 2009
at 02:18 pm