Is God a Trinity?
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God is so amazing that it seems like there are more than one Person to do it all. But Jesus handles it all by Himself.
First published on the 10th of February 2019 — Last updated on the 3rd of February 2021A very deep question. Human beings try to puzzle out God.
II SAMUEL 7:22 Wherefore thou art great, O LORD God: for there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
This verse touches on a deep mystery. There is no God beside God.
After the year 200 AD the apostles were dead and the church was going to move away from Abraham’s One-Person Jewish God and embrace the Trinity ideas of the ancient pagans. With some clever Greek philosophy of three Persons being co-equal and of the same substance, the church would emerge with a three-in-one God. You see three Persons who are each God, but there is only one God. Very puzzling. Nobody really understands it.
Jesus had flesh, bone, and Blood. God the Father did not as He was just Spirit. So they obviously were not of the same substance.
Isaiah reinforces this idea that only one Person is God.
ISAIAH 43:11 I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.
If you have a picture of the Father and the Son like this in your mind, you have misunderstood the Bible.
So there is no Saviour Jesus standing beside God.
Yet Jesus is God. This was clearly stated by the disciple Thomas.
JOHN 20:28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
But Steven saw a vision of Heaven as he died. There he saw Jesus standing beside God.
ACTS 7:55 But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,
Consequently, you do not discuss the Godhead for long before you run into difficulties.
Atheists rattle Christians by saying, “Is Jesus God?”.
Christians answer, “Yes”.
Then they ask, “Did Jesus die?”. Answer, “Yes”.
Then comes the awkward question. “How does God die?”
For that question, there is no answer.
The atheists then ridicule the Christians.
We now have to search for an idea of the Godhead that can answer these questions.
I Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
So the Godhead is a great mystery.
The Godhead today, presented as a Trinity, remains a controversial and poorly understood topic.
Top evangelists and TV preachers openly confess that they cannot understand it. No surprise here.
If three separate Persons, each of whom is God, combine to somehow only make one God (and not three Gods) then you have a doctrine that cannot be understood.
Where did this Trinity belief arise from?
This is an approximate picture of the Trinity as the Holy Spirit (in red) is never spoken of as sitting on a throne.
At the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD the Roman Catholic church officially introduced the idea of a Trinity. Then for the next few hundred years the concept of Trinity was revised and polished up by using Greek philosophy.
What made the Trinity controversial, right from the beginning, was the unscriptural statements that were, and still are, used to explain the Godhead.
The words
“Trinity” and
“Triune” are both unscriptural words.
“One-God-in-three-Persons” is unscriptural and comes straight from Greek philosophy.
“Three-Persons-in- one-God” is also unscriptural and also comes from Greek philosophical ideas.
“Father and Son are co-equal” is unscriptural and contradicts Scripture. The Father is greater than the Son.
JOHN 14:28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.
“Father and Son are of the same essence” is unscriptural. “Essence” is not a Bible word, it comes from Greek Philosophy.
A puzzle:
"God the Father" appears in the Bible but only in the New Testament, never in the Old Testament.
"God the Son" and
"God the Holy Ghost" are unscriptural.
“First Person of the Godhead”,
“Second Person of the Godhead”, and
“Third Person of the Godhead” are unscriptural.
“Jesus is in the Godhead” is not just unscriptural, but the statement contradicts Scripture. The Bible says that all of the Godhead dwells inside the Body of Jesus.
COLOSSIANS 2:9 For in him [Jesus Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
This gives us a different picture.
The Holy Spirit in Jesus had both human and Supernatural manifestations.
Jesus could behave like a man and sail over the water or behave like God and walk over the water.
Speaking of God, Job says
JOB 9:8 Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea.
Jesus, the Son of God, was a Man in Whom dwelled the fullness of the supernatural Spirit of God.
God is a Spirit. God is not flesh and blood.
That is why Jesus is not God the Son. God is not flesh and bone.
But you are everything that is within you. So because the supernatural Spirit of God lived within His Body, Jesus was God as well as being the Son of God, a Man.
When Jesus died, the Holy Spirit within Him left Him. Death is the separation of the Spirit from the body.
But nothing happened to the Spirit as the Holy Ghost took our sins down to hell to dump them on the Devil.
“God the Son” and “God the Holy Ghost” are never found in Scripture.
Yet Christians regularly say, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost” which is an unscriptural statement.
But ‘God the Father’ is Scriptural, though only in the New Testament. There is no mention of ‘God the Father’ in the Old Testament. Trinitarians cannot explain this.
This picture of a Hindu statue with three heads on one body shows an ancient attempt to depict a trinitarian idea of three people somehow making up one god.
The ancient Egyptians had many trinities. This triune godhead of Osiris and his wife Isis with their son Horus.
These ancient trinities evolved into the Trinity of “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost” of the Roman Catholic church which the Protestants accepted in the 1500s when they broke away in the Reformation.
The Holy Spirit as the third Person of the Godhead remains a mystery figure as He has no name in Scripture and has no mention of a throne.
This is an artist's idea of the Trinity.
So some artists prefer to show Him as a dove.
But the Trinity Godhead sometimes created more problems than it solved.
Try finding a single name for the Trinity God.
You cannot find one name for three people.
So the Christian God lost His name.
Church-goers repeat the formula, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” but they cannot tell us what that name is.
The three titles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not names.
Sinners will tell you the name of God because they use God’s name to blaspheme.
Sinners never swear in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
They swear in the name of Jesus Christ which is the human name of God, when God became a Man.
GENESIS 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image,
This Scripture seems to be easily solved by calling God a Trinity.
Admittedly, “us” does not have to be three People but it sounds like more than one Person. Or does it?
The three Men in the Godhead created two people on earth. Not an accurate image.
And one of the two people was the woman Eve.
A man and a woman are simply not the image of three male Persons in Heaven.
Daniel saw the Judgement Day.
The Judge is the Ancient of days. His hair like white wool.
But in earlier days, a judge wore a woolen wig to show that he was under submission to the law of the land.
This is a picture of a white woolen wig.
Church goers claim that the Ancient of Days is “God the Father” even though that term never appears in the Old Testament.
They say that He is old and has white hair, a sign of age.
But God lives in eternity where there is no time and nothing ages.
DANIEL 7:9 I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.
:10 A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.
DANIEL 7:13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.
This looks just like Jesus coming to the Judge, Who is God the Father.
But that is incorrect because the Father is not the Judge, Jesus is the Judge.
JOHN 5:22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:
So does Jesus wear the white woolen wig of a Judge? Yes.
REVELATION 1:14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
Our only Judge will be the Word of God. The Bible.
JOHN 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
People are mistaken when they claim that the Bible has mistakes.
The Bible is going to judge us and a faulty Book cannot judge us.
But Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is Jesus in Word form.
So if you claim that there are mistakes in the Bible then you are saying that there are mistakes in Jesus. That is not a good idea.
But if Jesus is perfect, and He is, then the King James Version of the Bible must also be perfect.
JOHN 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
JOHN 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
God’s thoughts were expressed through His Word.
So if Jesus, the Word, has been around since the beginning then He certainly qualifies as the Ancient of Days.
Ancient denotes wisdom because God never ages.
Thus the picture above is not of two People.
It is an example of personification.
We picture characteristics as if they are separate people.
The attributes of God as a Judge Who strictly applies the Word as well as the attributes of an Advocate Who is also a fellow Man and understands us, are both found in Jesus.
Only Jesus can be a strict Biblical Judge as well as being a humane Advocate.
The same kind of event happens in Revelation Chapter 5.
Jesus is seen as the personification of Saviour and Creator.
REVELATION 5:6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
REVELATION 5:7 And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.
God, sitting in the throne, holds the title deeds of His creation that Adam lost when he fell.
The Lamb, Jesus is the only One Who could come and take the Book in order to redeem the lost creation.
But where was the Lamb? In the midst of the throne.
So the Lamb never travelled through space as He was already in the midst of the throne.
The Lamb had travelled through time.
This agrees with modern science. Scientists have discovered that light travels through time and not through space. That is why space is dark.
Jesus is the Light of the world.
Jesus as the Lamb or Saviour had gone right back to the beginning to check that every detail of the Word of God had been fulfilled. He had checked that every soul who had repented had been saved. There must be no loopholes left for the Devil to exploit.
So as a Lamb He sat on the throne as the Saviour.
But as God He sat on the throne as Creator with His title deeds of creation, the Bible.
Only by believing the Bible can we be part of His eternal creation.
ISAIAH 43:1 But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
Isaiah again confirms that God is both our Creator and Redeemer.
The first martyr Steven saw Jesus standing on the right hand of God.
JOHN 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time …
So if you cannot see God you obviously cannot see His right hand.
JOHN 4:24 God is a Spirit:
A Spirit does not have hands.
God the Father has no shape. Thus He cannot have hands.
JOHN 5:37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.
So the right hand represents something. The power of God.
MATTHEW 26:64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
As Steven died from the stoning he saw Jesus standing on the power and glory of God. Although Steven was being killed, Jesus still had full power of the whole event. The Devil was not winning. As Stephen died, Jesus would give Stephen eternal life. Stephen thus gained a great victory. His struggles were over.
You can only see the Body that God dwells in. And Jesus is the Body that God dwells in.
JOHN 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
The behavior and words of Jesus display the nature of God Who lived inside His Body.
Going back to the creation of Adam.
GENESIS 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Create means to make out of nothing. God does not create a physical body as He makes it out of dust.
God is a Spirit. So the image of God will be a small spirit.
In the next diagram, the big red shape represents God. Inside the Spirit of God is His human attributes (represented by the black circle) that He is longing to bring forth in separate bodies as His Bride or true church.
So He creates a small male spirit called Adam but in that male spirit are feminine attributes (represented by the small black circle) that God wants to bring forth in a separate feminine body as Adam’s bride.
The spirit of Adam was in the image of God, not his body which was later made from the dust.
Let us look at Genesis 5:2 which is a verse that people like to change or ignore because they do not understand it.
GENESIS 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;
:2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
While Adam and his feminine attributes were one spirit, they were both called Adam.
Thus we saved humans were always part of God’s Spirit right from the beginning. Much later we would be separated from Him into separate physical bodies. But because we came out from God, we would always have the desire to return back to Him.
God put Adam to a deep sleep and took out of his side, near his heart, the rib from which He made the woman.
God put Jesus to the even deeper sleep of death on the cross so that out of His Body came water, blood, and Spirit from which He makes the Bride, the true church.
At no time is a Trinity of three Persons seen in the Bible.
God had three manifestations.
He was above the Jews as the Father.
He was with the Jews as the human Son, Emmanuel which means God with us. God’s human name was Jesus.
Then God returned to live in the hearts of His born again people as the Holy Spirit.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the three manifestations of God above, with, and in mankind.
The closest we get to seeing three Persons is at the water baptism of Jesus.
LUKE 3:22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.
Who is the Father of Jesus?
The Person Who placed the Seed of Life in the womb of Mary.
That Person was the Holy Ghost.
MATTHEW 1:20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
So the Holy Ghost is God the Father because no baby can have two fathers.
Thus the Holy Ghost spoke from Heaven calling Him "Son" as the Holy Ghost descended upon Jesus. This was a public supernatural anointing because the Spirit did not go into Jesus but rested upon Him.
Jesus could now enter on His public ministry as the “Anointed One” which is translated as “the Christ”.
You cannot limit the operation of the Spirit.
The Holy Ghost was in the supernatural Dove.
The Holy Ghost was in the Temple as Jesus called the Temple His Father’s House. God only left the Temple when the veil was torn.
John the Baptist had the Holy Ghost from 3 months before he was born.
John cannot be superior to Jesus. Jesus had the Holy Ghost from conception.
The supernatural Spirit was just performing a public anointing of His physical Body. The Dove was going to guide the Lamb.
So the Scriptures that look like God is made of more than one Person can always be revealed as actually just being one Person, as Samuel originally said.
A great promise was made.
REVELATION 10:7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.
For the mystery of God to be finished it means that at the end (Bible events tend to finish on number 7) we would receive a revelation of the mystery of God that is reasonably understandable.
Jesus Christ is Almighty God.
The supernatural is not limited to His human Body and can spread out anywhere. But that does not make Him two People.
Just like ordinary light. It behaves like a particle that is in one place but also behaves like a wave that can ripple out everywhere. But it is not two lights. It remains just light, with that mysterious behavior.