Ex-Mormon "What is the Trinity?"

Hi there, welcome to Reformed Ex -Mormon. I am Pastor Brayden. I hope you're having a blessed and wonderful day today.

Today we're going to be attempting to define something that in its totality is completely undefinable.

And that is defining our triune God. What is the

Trinity? And it's important that we define terms because there are many that would claim they believe in God, but yet they have a completely different definition of who

God is. I want to give you an example of something very quickly. Because the Christian's definition of God would be that God is one being who exists in three persons or subsistences.

And that they are co -equal, co -eternal, undividable, but distinct in their persons.

Each one being fully God, but yet there is only one being, one essence that is truly

God. And going to an example of the LDS, their definition of who

God is comes from the first article of faith. And it says in there, we believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the

Holy Ghost. And according to LDS .org, it says in there, on their doctrinal study of the

Godhead, it says that these three beings make up the

Godhead. And so they view that these three beings, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are three separate, divided beings.

That they're one in purpose, but they're not one in essence. In fact, they would go on to say on that same article that their view of God is very, very different than what

Orthodox Christianity teaches. And I completely agree with that. It is completely different.

And I would argue that according to the Word of God, it is absolute heresy to be believing that there are three beings or three separate gods in that regard.

And so today, I want to also compare maybe a great quote from this book that I would highly suggest.

If you are an LDS person wanting to understand the Trinity, or you are coming out of the

LDS religion and you're trying to understand the Trinity, or if you're a Christian that wants to share the

Trinity with your LDS friends, I would encourage you to go and pick up this book by James White.

It's called The Forgotten Trinity. Absolutely wonderful book that does a great systematic approach on how to define the

Trinity using the Word of God. And in here, he gives a very basic definition. Dr. James White says,

Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three co -equal and co -eternal persons, namely the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we can see that there are these definitions that have been given from Dr.

James White, myself, comparing it to the LDS. These are two drastically different gods that we're talking about in here.

And so the difficulty when we define the Trinity, something that the

LDS or any person that denies the Trinity will throw out, well, the Trinity is never found in the

Bible. That word is never found in the Bible. And that is absolutely true. But I would remind that person that neither is the word

Bible ever found in the Bible. But yet we still use the word Bible because we have a clear definition of what the

Bible is. And it's an okay thing to be using. And so the Trinity is what would be called a tota scriptura approach, using all scripture to define something, using all of the books of the

Bible, all 66, from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, looking out there about how

God describes himself and then coming to a conclusion, using the word of God alone as the means of that description.

And so the first place I would go to is found in Isaiah chapter 43, verses 10 through 13.

And in here it says, And so we see in here that this

God that is speaking in Isaiah 43, the one and only God, he says that there are none before me, nor shall there be after me.

And the same God uses in the very first sentence, verse 10, it says, You are my witness, declares the

Yahweh, Yahweh. So we can make some assumptions, very clear assumptions in here, that one, he calls himself this

Yahweh figure that we see all throughout the Old Testament and the New. And we also see that he says there is no savior besides this one and only

God. And that's very important when we talk about who Jesus Christ is with being our savior. So there is only one savior, one

Lord, one God, according to this text. And that word Yahweh, that word

Lord that is used here in verse 10, comes from Exodus 3, 14, as it is the explicit name of God given to Moses.

And in verse 14, he says, I am that I am. This is God's name. He says, I am that I am. Yahweh, Yahweh, this

I am statement, Lord, that we see here in Exodus 3, 14.

He says that I am that I am. And then that you shall go down to the children of Israel and tell them that I am hath sent you.

And so God gives Moses his explicit name found in Exodus 3, 14, and that is I am. And that is the same exact word that we would see here, as translated as the word capital

Lord here in verse 10, Yahweh. And the significant and important reason for this is that it is very clear throughout the entire

Old Testament and the New Testament that there is only one God, especially according to Isaiah 43, and that his name is

Yahweh. And so now I would say, let's now look a little bit further into, and this is just taking a short, quick look at this.

And I want to go to one person of the Trinity that shows an example of this. Jesus in John 1, 1, it says,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He then goes on to make several

I am statements, ego emi statements, that is calling back to that word Yahweh that is found in Isaiah 43, verse 10 in Exodus 3, 14, as well as over 6 ,000 other places in the

Old Testament for the name of God. And so we see Jesus say that unless you believe

I am, ego emi, ye shall die in your sins in John 8, verses 23 through 24.

And then he goes on to say again later on in that same chapter in verses 54 on to 59, he talks about how

Abraham was glad to see his day. And the Jews would say, well, you aren't even this old.

How can you say that Abraham was glad to see your day? Abraham died years ago is what they're saying in that text.

And Jesus says in there, in verse 58, he says,

And Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.

And what do the Jews then try to do? They try to stone Jesus because he committed blasphemy. In John chapter 10, it then goes on to say in John chapter 10, verse 30,

Jesus says the statement, I and the Father are one. And so he speaks of these two different persons, himself and the

Father. And he says they are one. And because Jesus said this, the Jews picked up stones to kill him.

And Jesus says, For what work are you stoning me for? And the Jews say,

Not for a work, but for blasphemy, because you being a man have made yourself out to be

God. And the Jews accused Jesus of this many, many times all throughout the New Testament. They did it in John chapter 5,

John chapter 8, John chapter 10 here. And we would even see that when he is on trial before Pilate, the

Jews say, No, Pilate, we don't crucify him. We don't want him to be crucified for any other reason than he being a man has made himself out to be the son of God.

This son of God being God, being equal with God is interchangeable for the Jews because they understood it as Jesus claiming to be

God in flesh, divine in his nature. And so the important part that we can make from this is that there are three persons that is found throughout the

New Testament and the Old Testament. As we would see the name of Yahweh being used. We would also see the angel or the messenger of Yahweh that claims to be the one and only

Yahweh. We also see the spirit of Yahweh also claiming to be that one and only God as well.

So we see three persons even found in the Old Testament. And we see explicitly three persons used very clearly in the

New Testament. And that is the father claims to be God, the son claims to be God, and the Holy Spirit claims to be

God. And according to Isaiah 43, as well as many other chapters all throughout the Old Testament, there's only one

God. And so from that, we can say, since there is only one God who is eternal, who has created all things, who exists in and of himself, that doesn't depend on anybody else, that he exists in three subsistences or three persons.

And there's some people that would have a hard time using the word persons. And the reason that we use the word person is because it comes with it and carries the weight that these persons have a will, can talk with each other, can demonstrate acts of love, so on and so forth.

When we say persons, I'm not saying that there's a physical hand involved. It's speaking of that nature of what persons means.

And so I prefer to use often the word subsistences for describing the

Trinity. And so we see that since God is one in being, that there's only one

God, one essence that is God, that there are three subsistences that all claim to be that one and only

God. Now, this is difficult for people to understand.

I would like you to imagine trying to describe, if you drew out as good of a drawing as I have done here, a stick figure, and you tried to describe to a stick figure on a 2D plane what even a cube is, if you tried to do that, it would be very, very difficult to show what a cube is to a stick figure drawing.

Now, and the complexities of that come with being three dimensional. Now, imagine trying to do that with flowers, with some tulips.

Could you try to show a 2D stick figure what a tulip is?

You'd have a difficult time doing that. Now, let's make that even more clear. Let's say I try to sell myself being three dimensional to this two dimensional being that I have drawn here.

I would have a difficult time doing that. Now, how would the two dimensional person come to know me being a three dimensional being?

He would have to take my word for it. He would have to take my word for it. And so that is what it is with the

Trinity, that all the way throughout the entirety in the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, God has made it clear that there is only one

God who is perfect, immutable, all loving, all righteous, all these different attributes that we see throughout the entirety of the text, and yet he has described himself as being three persons, not three gods, not three beings, not one person, but three persons that exists in one being, co -equal and co -eternal.

This has been the orthodox view that has been found throughout the last 2 ,000 years and beyond of who the

Christian faith is to proclaim God as. And this would fulfill

Jesus saying that upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

The church in the last 2 ,000 years has always had a correct view of who God is.

And then we start to stray away from the scripture and say that there are multiple beings, multiple gods.

We are no longer Christian. We are now heretical. We have gone outside the bounds of scripture.

We have added to it and we've taken away from it that which we want to describe God with. But God is clearly shown in the scripture as being a triune

God, three persons, one being, co -equal, co -eternal, undividable, one in essence, not one in purpose, but that they are co -equal and co -eternal.

So I hope that this blesses you as a Christian that's wanting to share the Trinity with your LDS friends and showing the clear contradiction of the

LDS belief according to Articles of Faith 1 and the LDS website, comparing that to scripture, that there is only one

God, yet they are claiming that there is a plurality and a polytheistic God. Christians are monotheistic by nature that we proclaim that there is only one

God who exists in three persons. So once again, I hope that this blesses you. And I would encourage you to go and share the gospel with your neighbors if you're a

Christian. And if you're not, I would ask that you be born again, repent and believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the one and only

Savior, the one and only God who became flesh, died upon a cursed tree, so that when we believed in him, we would also be raised with him in his resurrection, at which time he validated all his previous claims of being that one and only