Response to False Teacher #Gino #pastorjennings #falseteacher #apologetics

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and I'm really happy to be here to discuss something very interesting with my good friend,

Dr. Tony Costa. He is going to be addressing the errors and heresies of a very popular preacher that has been making rounds on TikTok and other areas in social media, a man by the name of Apostle Pastor Gino Jennings.

Okay, and if you don't know who that is, you look at the thumbnail on the YouTube link here.

Hopefully you'll recognize his face, but be that as it may, if this is the first time you've heard of him, and we're gonna play some video here and you recognize his face, you know to beware.

False teachers come in many different flavors, let's just say, and sometimes they can say really good things in certain contexts, and oftentimes within those good things, for example, this particular person that we're gonna be interacting with has said lots of things that we would, as Christians, agree with in terms of social issues, like homosexuality and abortion and all these sorts of things.

We might find agreement, but baked into some of the things that sound good is some very dangerous false teaching.

Those who are seasoned in the area of apologetics will be familiar with this topic that we're gonna be discussing, but I think those who don't know,

I think it's important to understand because as Dr. Tony Costa's gonna interact with Gino Jennings, you're going to learn some important, basic, essential

Christian theology. For example, you guys know that I do presuppositional apologetics and I talk a lot about philosophy and there's a lot of ambiguous philosophical terminology, but when all is said and done, some of the most important and vital and repetitious information that I constantly return to is really the basic doctrinal truths of the

Christian faith. I don't talk about transcendentals and preconditions of intelligible experience with the guy in the street.

It's usually debating issues of the Trinity, justification by faith alone, the deity of Christ and these sorts of things.

So those basic essentials are gonna become important here, especially the issue of the deity of Christ.

So without further ado, to help me interact with this particular false teacher,

I have Dr. Tony Costa, who has been on my channel before. He received a

BA in a specialist program in religious studies at the University of Toronto. I won't say the years, brother, so people don't, you know, it's like, oh, that's a long time ago.

So we'll keep your age ambiguous, right? You still look young.

You look the same when I first saw you, so. He received an

MA in biblical studies at the University of Toronto as well, and his PhD at Radboud University in the

Netherlands. And he is a professor of Islam and apologetics, or is it

Islamic apologetics? Both of them, yes. Okay, so that's his area.

He's also knowledgeable in a bunch of other areas as well. He's also an adjunct professor at Emanuel Bible College, and he does some teaching in other areas as well.

And he's a preacher and a teacher, and he loves the Lord. And he has been super insightful for me, both through watching his videos, which

I highly recommend folks check out his channel. And he actually came on a few times to discuss

Eastern Orthodoxy. So super helpful brother, and it is an honor and a privilege to have you on with us today.

Why don't you share a little bit more about yourself and what you're doing, and then we'll jump right into our topic for tonight.

Yeah, I mean, I think you've covered most of it, my academic work with Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I also teach as an instructor at the University of Toronto, and I've written a couple of books.

My last book was our early Christian creeds and hymns. I've got a new book coming out shortly called,

No King But Christ, The Bankruptcy and Collapse of Second World Views. And so that should be out shortly.

But other than that, keeping busy, doing the Lord's work, because I'm busy with teaching, speaking at conferences, speaking at the

Strong Tower Conference this fall, is September in Southern California. And yeah, keeping busy, just doing the

Lord's work. Awesome. And people might be interested to hear too, that you've engaged in quite a bit of debates with noted

Muslims. I know that you did maybe a few debates with, what's his name?

Oh, now it's... I'm sorry? Shabir Ali. Shabir. Why did I forget that? As I'm very familiar.

So Shabir Ali, and what are some other folks you've debated as well? Yeah, I've debated Shabir Ali at least 12 times, and I've debated other

Muslims, Shadid Lewis, Osama Abdallah.

There's quite a number of them. They're all on my YouTube channel. Nadir Ahmed. I've also debated with Mormons, the

Mormon president of the Toronto East Mission here, up here in Toronto, Canada.

And I've also taken on atheists as well. Excellent. Very good. Well, let's jump right into our topic.

Before we play the video, I think a couple of basic definitions need to be established. So some of the things, some of the important things that need to be playing in the background of our mind when we're especially interacting on like this very, which people are gonna see a very theologically important topic.

Can you define for us biblically the doctrine of the Trinity? What is the

Trinity? What isn't the Trinity? And then we'll go into another question, then we'll jump right in so that people have some context here.

Right. The doctrine of the Trinity basically is the biblical teaching that there's only one true

God. And in the being of that one God, there are three distinct persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

There are three distinct persons, eternal, co -eternal, co -substantial. And these three persons are of the same nature.

They share the same essence. And that these three persons also work together to accomplish creation, the redemption of humanity, the incarnation involved the triune

God. The life of Christ was Trinitarian. His resurrection was Trinitarian. And so the biblical doctrine of the

Trinity is so fundamental that to deny it is to deny the full deity of Jesus Christ.

It's to deny the very person of God himself.

And so the Trinity is not three persons in one person. The Trinity is not three separate beings.

It's not three gods. The Trinity was not invented at the Council of Nicaea. Are you sure?

Are you sure? Yeah, Dan Brown got it wrong. But Constantine is always in the doghouse when it comes to these theories and these things.

So the Trinity is an essential doctrine and it is fundamental.

That's why it always begins first in the creeds. It's always with the confession of God, the Father, Son, the

Holy Spirit. So the Trinity does not mean that Jesus is the Father. It doesn't mean that God has three modes where he is the

Father and then he becomes the Son and he becomes the Holy Spirit. That's not the Trinity. And the

Trinity is not pagan. It's not a pagan derivation. The pagans did not believe in the idea that there were three eternal persons and one

God. Paganism has always been polytheistic. So the Trinity then, once again, is that in the one being, the one substance of God, there are three persons.

And so it's been described as three who's and one what. Three who's,

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, one what, one God. And so that is absolutely central. And that language is incredibly important because in medicine,

Eli, if a doctor doesn't know the difference between appendicitis and tonsillitis, it could be a matter of life and death.

Yes. And in a court of law, if a judge doesn't know the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor, you could be going into jail for life or a parking ticket and being let off on murder.

And so language is important in medicine. It's important in law. And it is equally important in theology.

Excellent. Now, if you could define for us now, so we have the Trinity that's playing in the background of our mind.

And then now, of course, which is also an essential feature of the Christian faith, what is the doctrine of the deity of Christ?

And then perhaps you can speak a little bit about the hypostatic union. What does it mean to say that in the person of Jesus, there is two natures, both human and divine?

Right. And so in Christology, we believe, the Bible teaches that the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal

Son of God. Now, this is essential because this is exactly what Geno Jennings will deny, that the

Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and that He is one with the

Father and the Holy Spirit in nature. And so we're talking about a distinct person.

So the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who was sent into the world. And then in the incarnation, the

Son of God or God the Son took on an additional nature. He took on flesh. And so the word becomes flesh.

He dwells among us. And in that union, in the incarnation, what you have is one person, not two persons.

That's the heresy of Nestorianism. You have one person with two natures, divine and human.

And it's important to note that Jesus Christ is not 50 % God, 50 % man.

Jesus Christ is 100 % God, 100 % man, fully God and fully man.

And we also need to understand that He will remain the God -man for all eternity.

He will never relinquish His humanity because He was made like unto His brethren and He will forever be identified with His people as their federal head.

In Oneness theology, and Geno Jennings doesn't believe this point here about the eternal incarnate

Son, they believe that a time will come when He will slough off His humanity at His second coming, at the end.

And so it's important to realize that the hypostatic union means that in the union of the one person of the

Son, there are two natures, the divine and the human. And so in this case, we've got one who and two whats.

One who, the Son, and two whats, divine and human. Those natures do not intermingle.

They are distinct, but yet they're united to the person. And so the hypostatic union is absolutely essential because it undergirds the redemptive work of the

Son that He took on flesh so that He could become, He can make atonement on behalf of His people.

And then He would be the representative, a real representative, a real mediator, who is truly

God and truly man. And therefore He can represent both God and man and unite them together as the great mediator.

Excellent. And all of this is, I mean, this is Christianity 101. Yeah. This is why it's important.

I know you mentioned the term Nestorianism with respect to a particular heresy. Those are historical terms that the church has known about and has condemned explicitly, right?

Various heretical views with respect to the nature of God and the nature of Christ. And so it's very important that Christians be in touch with the history of their own faith.

And so I know a lot of what you're going to say is going to be right in line with what Christianity has taught.

And people like Pastor Geno Jennings needs to be marked.

I know people who are familiar with theology will already know this, but those who find his little snippets that we see on the internet, they find it convincing and persuasive.

We need to be very careful to separate, right? The things that sound good and the things that are dangerously false.

They're not just, you know, coincidentally like, oh, I disagree with that. These are essential, essential things.

This man is not a Christian. No. He's not a Christian, flat out. I mean, he's a false teacher.

He is someone who is the object of gospel preaching. You would share the gospel with someone like this because this person is not a believer.

We have as Christians, and I know Dr. Acosta will agree, we have the authority to declare certain individuals outside of the faith in as much as they explicitly deny what the

Bible teaches as essential to the gospel as the apostle Paul speaks about in the book of Galatians that someone who brings to you another gospel or even another

Christ, right? Let that person be anathema. So these are really, really important issues that I think are really vital to understand.

Now, before we jump into the video, Dr. Acosta, I wanna now, now that you've laid out the theological foundation, the kind of the theological backdrop that we need to be paying attention to,

I wanna now shift gears to now talking about the power of rhetoric and persuasiveness.

Now, this guy is a very, at least within the Pentecostal context, is a very persuasive speaker.

Now, he might not be persuasive to the scholarly type that doesn't really cater to the yelling and the theatrics, but to the average person or the person who's looking for those quick little snippets, like, oh man, that was great.

There is a persuasiveness to how he speaks. I grew up in a Pentecostal context. I grew up within the assemblies of God denomination.

Now, we need to make a distinction that what he teaches is not what the assemblies of God teaches, right? I might have disagreement with the assemblies of God and a bunch of other issues, but they affirm the

Trinity and they affirm the deity of Christ, whereas Pastor Gino Jennings denies that, so we wanna make that distinction.

But when Pastor Gino Jennings speaks and Dr. Acosta responds,

I want you to allow these video clips to be a training for your mind. Try to look beyond the rhetoric, the theatrics, and look for the substance of what's being said.

So not only is Dr. Acosta gonna help us with how to respond, but also allow this to kind of be a training to see through persuasive theatrics that is often seen from Pentecostal pulpits, more specifically, but this individual, you'll see, and he's got his little stage hands that help him read the scriptures and he's looking, he's having a conversation.

It's kind of fun to watch actually. It's really engaging. But anyway, let's jump right in.

I'm gonna put the quote here. Now, for folks who don't know, when I play this video, this video is not original.

There's not the original recording. There's some response. I guess there's some explanation. It clips away to another person, but it's very brief.

And so I'll let that play and then it'll get right back into the main point. So you're ready to jump in?

Ready. All right, let's do this. Okay. That's right.

What's over there? But some man will say. What's on YouTube? Some man will say. Some man will say.

That's right. What's over there? But some man will say. Amen.

You find me a flesh and blood Jesus in heaven, I make you lick it up. Oh, that's right. I said

I'd make anyone lick it up that believe flesh and blood is in heaven. Anyone. Anybody. That's right. Even Paul said flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

Welcome. No, we can stop there. We can stop there. Yeah. Yeah, so he says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

And he's referring to 1 Corinthians 15, 50, which is the resurrection chapter. And so he's taking that phrase flesh and blood and he's saying, well, that means that you can't have a, and I'm assuming by flesh and blood, he's talking about a bodily person.

But the problem with that is that he isolates that one verse and if you continue to read, the

Apostle Paul equates flesh and blood with corruption. And so the phrase flesh and blood usually is used in the

New Testament to refer to our fallen human nature. So for example,

Ephesians 6, 12, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. We're not wrestling against a fallen human nature.

We're wrestling against the spiritual powers Paul says. In Matthew 16 and 18, when

Peter confesses Jesus as Messiah and son of the living God, Jesus says flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father, which is in heaven.

So notice how Jesus contrasts human fallen nature with God. And that flesh and blood language,

Paul uses in Galatians 1, where he met the risen Christ. And he says, I did not confer with flesh and blood when he met the risen

Christ. And so Paul goes on to define what he means by that. Because he goes on to say that we shall be changed.

I tell you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye. And then he says, this corruptible must put on incorruption.

This mortal, referring to the body, must put on immortality. In other words, the body has to be changed into an immortal state.

So the only person we know who has a glorified, incorruptible, immortal, resurrected body is the

Lord Jesus Christ. He's the first fruits among them that have slept, the firstborn from the dead.

And therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ was bodily raised from the dead. Now he describes that resurrection in Luke 24 as flesh and bone,

Luke 24, 39 to 43. Look and see, touch me and see, a ghost or spirit does not have flesh and bone as I do.

And so there is no doubt about the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ, the God -man

Jesus Christ is right now, as you and I are talking right now, Eli, he is right now, as the old hymn says, there's a man in the glory.

So 1 Timothy 2, 5 is crystal clear. There is one God and one mediator between God and man, ho anthropos

Jesu Christu, the man, the human Christ Jesus. And so Paul tells us that right now, when he uses the present tense, there is one

God, there is one God in the present tense. And this is after the ascension. So he's already in heaven.

30 years after the ascension, remember the pastoral epistles are written near the end of Paul's life towards his death.

And so 30 years after the ascension, Paul is calling Jesus Christ, the mediator, the man, literally the

Greek word anthropos means the human, it's generic, the human Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus.

And so you've got 1 Timothy 2, 5, Colossians 2, 9, for in him dwells the fullness of deity in bodily form.

Paul, again, is using the present tense. Right now, Jesus Christ is, he says, teis theotetis somaticos, the fullness of deity and the word theotis there, the word we translate deity or Godhead in the

King James Version. It's a hypoxyl gomenon, which means it only appears once in the New Testament. And it means, theotis means the state of being

God, Godhead. And so, but he is that in bodily form. So right now, the

Lord Jesus Christ is the incarnate one, God, the Son, enfleshed in heaven as a man mediating between us and the

Father. And then of course, there's Acts 1, 9 to 11. As the Lord ascended, he ascended visibly, personally, bodily.

And as he went, so shall he come again. That's good stuff. I remember when I first read that passage in scripture where it says that he's the first fruits of the resurrection.

And as a kid, I remember reading that in a Spanish Pentecostal church. So I couldn't understand

Spanish. So I was just reading my Bible all the time. And I remember thinking, I was like, well, Jesus wasn't the first person to ever rise from the dead.

I mean, he raised a little girl. He raised the man at Nain in the Gospel of Luke. Until I realized that he's the first person to ever rise from the dead with a glorified body.

And in that sense, he is the first. I thought that was really helpful. And again, coincidentally, it's actually a very important theological truth to know.

So. All right. Well, let's continue on. Please. You see,

God come along being the king. He made a prince. God is not a prince.

Okay. Yeah, so God is a king and he made a prince and God is not a prince.

Well, the problem I find with Geno Jennings is that he betrays any knowledge of Hebrew and Greek.

Now he has no knowledge of the original languages as far as I can tell. Because if he had known that, he would realize that Isaiah 9, 6, the

Messiah is, the birth of the Messiah is predicted there that unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.

So that becomes very important in the New Testament. The son who was given, God sent forth his son in the fullness of time.

And so the child that is born, he's born, he's a physical human baby, but he's also a son who has been given.

So here you have the son who was given and then he is a child. He is incarnate. But notice that Isaiah goes on to say, and his name will be called

Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, El Gabor. And then he calls him

Sar Shalom, the Prince of Peace and the Everlasting Father, or in Hebrew it's

Ab Ad, meaning the Father of Eternity. But right there, Pastor, Dr. Acosta, what happens when someone says,

I mean, if Gino Jennings is right here, he's like, but he's called the Everlasting Father.

You see, the father is the son. You know, he doesn't have to follow the rules. Yeah, that's right, brother.

I sound like the Wolfman. Slap your neighbor and then tell somebody to get ready. You know? That's right. So how would you respond to that?

Where they say, that's a really bad, I did a really bad impression, I apologize. But what happens when someone says, well, he's called the

Prince of Peace, but he's also called the Everlasting Father. So there's kind of this Unitarianism that's here.

Yeah, so the first thing we need to realize is that the word Prince is applied to the God -man, Jesus Christ.

So El Gabor there in Isaiah 9 .6 is the Mighty God. And if someone says, well, that means like a

Mighty God. In the next chapter in Isaiah 10 .21, Yahweh is called El Gabor.

He's called the Mighty God, the Redeemer of Jacob. And so you can't have two El Gabors.

You can't have two Mighty Gods. That'd be polytheism. So the child that is born, the son who was given is the

Mighty God. He's also the Wonderful Counselor. These are only titles used of God in the

Bible. Only God is called Wonderful. And only God is called the Wonderful Counselor. And only

God is called the Eternal One, the Father of Eternity. So when they quote Everlasting Father, they take that term to mean the first person of the

Trinity. The problem with that is that the Hebrew doesn't really say Everlasting Father.

It says Ab -ad, it means the Father of Eternity. And in Hebrew, when you wanna say that you possess something, you usually are described as being the father of that thing.

So for example, you have in the Hebrew Bible, it talks about Abraham being the father of so many hundreds of years or being so old.

And so when in Hebrew you wanna say that someone possesses a certain quality, you usually refer to them as the son of that thing or the father of that thing.

So the Hebrew word Ab -ad means that this one who was born, the son who was given is the

Father of Eternity, meaning that he is the Eternal One. And this coincides with Micah 5 ,2 that prophesies that the

Messiah will be born in Bethlehem of Ephrathah. And then it says, whose goings forth have been from the days of antiquity, or the

King James says, his goings forth are from everlasting. And so the child born in Bethlehem, he's truly born in Bethlehem, the city of his ancestor,

David, but he is also, his goings forth, his origins are from everlasting. So there you have, again, the hypostatic union, the

Eternal One becomes flesh in the child, in the incarnation. Excellent, excellent, very good.

Let's continue on. To the old man, a prince is one that inherits power.

Actually, I'm gonna stop here. I have a question. So, okay, so I kind of jot this down. So he says,

God being a king, he made a prince. God is not a prince, he'll say.

A prince is one that inherits power. God didn't inherit power. God said all power that he, he says that he will say,

God has all power. God made a prince and that which was made was the express image of the personality of the father.

And then he goes on to say that God is not a Jew. When you see me, you see the father,

Jesus said that. And he's like, how can this, my question is how can, well, he says this, how can this be since Jesus had skin and hair, right?

What does that mean? Where is he inserting the false doctrine there where he says that if Jesus inherited a name, how can he also be

God? God cannot inherit a name. Yeah, yeah. Well, he gets the inheritance part wrong because the name that Jesus inherits, and remember, we're talking post incarnation, after the incarnation.

The name that he inherits is not Jesus. You see, the one is Pentecostals are also known as the Jesus only movement.

They think that the name of God is Jesus. And that is not the name that he's inherited.

And they base this on Philippians two, that God gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow, et cetera.

The problem with that is that Jesus is not the name above all names. Jesus is, it was a common

Jewish name, right? From Yehoshua, Joshua. And it was truncated to Yeshua.

And you know, if you watch baseball, Eli, there's a lot of Jesus out there, right? A lot of Jesus.

I have an uncle. I have an uncle named Jesus. There you go, Jesus, right? So that's not the name that the incarnate

Christ inherits. The name that he inherits is the divine name, Yahweh. And that is why in Philippians two, it says every knee will bow and confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord. Kudios, that he is Yahweh. The backdrop to Philippians two, nine to 11, is

Isaiah 45, 23, where Yahweh says, to me, every knee will bow. And to me, every tongue shall confess.

And so what Paul is saying is that the exalted Christ takes the name of God himself.

And that is why all the cosmos worships him. So we got to get rid of those hymns. You know those hymns,

Jesus, name above all names. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Those hymns are, they are anathema.

You know, they're not true. They're just not true. Because that's not the name above all names.

The name is Yahweh. But he confuses the name. The word prince in Hebrew actually means ruler.

It means a ruler. You know, he's thinking of medieval kings and princes and princesses.

But the word sar in Hebrew also means a ruler, right? So Jesus Christ is called, in Revelation 1 .5,

he's called the ruler of the kings of the earth. Now the Greek word there could also mean, and King James, I think, has it as prince or something.

Or Satan is called the prince of this world. But it also means the ruler of this world.

So I think the idea that, you know, when Jesus says, whoever sees me sees the father, well, of course, because he is the image of the invisible

God, Colossians 1 .15. And he says, the father is in me and I'm in the father.

There's this, in Trinitarianism, we call this co -inherence. The father, the son, the

Holy Spirit, they co -inhere in each other. We also call this perichoresis, which is a big word that means that they, it literally means to dance around, but it means that the persons of the

Trinity share in the glory. It's not that one is deprived of glory from another.

They share in that glory. And when he says that he is the express image of his personality, he's actually going to a piece of scripture that devastates his position.

Because he's, in Hebrews 1 .3, it says that Jesus Christ is the express image, the express imprint of his apostoseos, is the

Greek word there. It means nature or substance or being. The King James, unfortunately, translated it the express image of his person.

And King James does the same, but the Greek word apostoseos means being or nature.

And Paul, the writer of Hebrews is using that example of taking a dye and pressing it on wax so that the copy that is on the dye is impressed on the wax.

And what Hebrews 1 .3 is saying is that Jesus Christ is the exact representation of his nature.

The nature of God is imprinted in the wax. What is the wax? It's humanity,

God himself incarnate in humanity. And then in Hebrews 1 .2, it says that it's through the son that God has created the worlds, the universe.

And then in Hebrews 1 .6, it says, God says to the angels, worship him. Let all the angels of God worship him.

And then in verse eight, the father is talking to the son and says, your throne, oh

God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a righteous scepter and you loved righteousness and hated wickedness.

And then in verse 10, the father addresses the son as Yahweh, as Lord. And you

Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth. The heavens are the work of your hands. They will all wear out, but you endure forever.

Your years shall have no end. So in Hebrews 1, the father addresses the son as God, as Lord, the two divine titles,

God and Lord, and that the son is the creator of the universe and the universe will perish, but he will remain forever.

So here's the distinction between the father and the son that Jennings denies. The father and the son are two distinct persons and the father is calling the son,

God and Lord. And so - And that's not polytheism because they share the same nature.

Exactly, so in Oneness theology, the son is the humanity of Jesus. It's the human

Jesus. The father is his divine nature and the son is his humanity.

And here's the problem. And the problem here is that they confuse being with person.

They take the nature of something and they treat that nature as if it's a person.

And philosophically, those two words are different words. They're not the same at all.

Excellent, now, before I press play, you did say something that I would imagine someone who is sympathetic to Gino's position is you said that the name that Jesus inherited is not the name

Jesus, it's Yahweh, and then you said he's called Lord, and then you said

Lord or kurios refers to Yahweh. Now, there's some background to that.

So I would assume that the word in Greek kurios, which is translated English Lord, can you explain a little bit about the backdrop of the

Septuagint's use of that term and how it actually supports the idea that to call Jesus kurios is to call him

Yahweh? Right, yeah, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament was it started around 250

BC. It started with the Torah first, then it expanded to the prophets and the writings. But what we find in the

Septuagint is that when the Jews translated the Hebrew into the Greek, this again was after the exile, obviously, and what they did was they refrained from writing out the divine name.

Now, there are some Greek manuscripts by people like Aquila and Theodosian. These are

Jews who translated the Hebrew into Greek, and what they did was they tried to insert the divine name by using what's called paleo -Hebrew letters, old

Hebrew letters. Some of them actually tried to pronounce it like Yahweh in Greek, but the

Septuagint proper, the Septuagint that was used by the early church, they used the word kurios because the

Jews came to regard the name of God, Yahweh, to be so sacred that it could not be uttered.

And so what ended up happening was that the Jews began to use what we call substitutes or circumlocutions.

That is words to substitute for the divine name. And one of the words that the

Jews came up with was the word Adonai, and Adonai in Hebrew means my lords or the

Lord. And sometimes they would refer to it as Hashem, the name. And so after the exile, the

Jewish people became very safeguarded about the name of God so that it would not be blasphemed among the

Gentiles. They would refrain from uttering it. And so the Jews would come to the divine name,

Yod -Heh -Vav -Heh in Hebrew, and they would see it, and the vowel markings would point out that it's to be pronounced Adonai.

And so when they gave the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, they continued that tradition by using the

Greek equivalent of Adonai, which is kurios. So we know that kurios in Philippians 2 .11

is Yahweh because the backdrop of that text is Isaiah 45 .23, where Yahweh is saying, to me every knee will bow, to me every tongue will confess.

And also the fact that Yahweh passages are attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. So Romans 10 .13,

whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, that's a quote from Joel 2 .32, whoever calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved.

And so it's very common for the New Testament writers to apply

Yahweh passages to Jesus as the Lord. Okay, all right, excellent.

All right, let's jump right in. Didn't inherit power. That's right. God sent all the power he had.

Made a prince. Amen. And that which was made was the express image of the personality of the father.

Amen. And when he came here, when you saw Jesus, he said, when you see me, you see the father.

What you mean, Jesus? That's what I mean, that's what I mean. Attributes, attributes, one with his father. What do you mean?

God is not a Jew, he don't mean that. That's right. That's what the question is. That's right. Am I right?

Yeah. You may wanna pause that. What were you saying? What was that?

Yeah, I just wanted to say, he goes, well, God is not a Jew, but we're not saying God is a Jew, but what we're saying is that in the incarnation,

Jesus came as a Jew. He came from the tribe of Judah as a son of Abraham.

So some of the people are bewildered in the audience. And when he talks like that, we all go, yeah, yeah, okay.

We understand that. There's no shock value here, Eli. When I'm hearing him talk, it's like, yes.

Well, what else is new? Tell us something new here. There's nothing surprising by what he's saying here.

Right. So of course, in the incarnation, Jesus had obviously flesh and bone and he wept and he got hungry and he got tired.

And yes, he had to go to the bathroom. He was a full human being. So when he talks like that, it almost sounds like self, it's almost like it's self -aggrandizement.

Like he's trying to make - Self -aggrandizement. He's grandstanding. Exactly. He's grandstanding. Yeah. He's like, am

I right? I'm like, no, you wrong. Okay, let's go. See me, you see the father.

But Jesus, you got skin. Right. You got hair. That's right. You got a complexion, you come out of a tribe.

That's right. Amen. You got descent. That's right. God don't have no descent. So what do you mean when you see me?

You see the father. When you see my works. That's it. Because the work that I do,

I can't do it by myself. That's right. But as my father dwelleth in me, he doeth the work.

So everything you see me do, I'm not doing it. That's right. Because I can do nothing of myself.

Okay, let's stop there, Eli. Let's stop there. See, what he just said there,

I can do nothing of myself. And of course he's quoting there John chapter five and verse 19, but he doesn't go on and read the rest of the text.

So in verse 19 of John, it says, truly, truly I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing.

For whatever the father does, that the son does likewise. For the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing and greater works than these he will show him so that you may marvel.

For as the father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the son gives life to whom he will.

The father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the son. Here it comes, verse 23, that all may honor the son just as they honor the father.

So when Jesus says, I can do nothing of myself, he's not saying that I'm a weakling,

I have no power whatsoever. What he is saying is he does not work as a rival against the father.

He works in concert with the father to bring about the redemption of his people.

And that is why he says, just as the father gives life to whoever he wills, so the son also gives life to whoever he wills.

And then Jesus says that all must honor the son just as they honor the father.

Equal honor is to be given to the son just as much as honors to be given to the father.

In other words, the son receives the same honor that the father does. But when he quotes

John 5 .19 in isolation, of course, it sounds like, well, Jesus is totally dependent.

He has no authority of his own, but if you just read the next verses, he tells you that he does whatever the father does, but he works in concert with the father, not as a rival against the father.

All right, excellent, good stuff. Hand credit the flesh.

Get me, viewer, get me. The Bible's clear that there's only one God and the father is God, but Jesus the son is also

God. The son is also God, the son is also God, the son is also God, the son is also God. Get me, viewer, get me.

You can't credit the son of God for nothing. That's right, that's right.

Get me? That's right. Oh, that statement just stirred the devil up a little bit. That's right, that's right.

I wanna stir up your pastor. The devil's probably cheering, actually. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

He's probably like, keep it going, keep it going. Yeah, he's got pom -poms and everything. Go, yeah. That's right.

That's it. I said, you can't for nothing.

That's right, that's right. The son is God, the son is God, the son is God. Go ahead, brother.

That flesh was the express image of God and it was the example.

That's right. You see, God was a tailor, you know? Yeah. And he wanted you to know how you function.

That's right. So he went to David's house and tailored the suit that consists of flesh and blood and called it a robe.

And then he got in it and put it on. When he put it on, that body that he put on act out, get this, it act out and demonstrated the behavior of God.

That's right. You get me? Go ahead. Excellent, Pastor. It act out the behavior of God.

That's right. I ain't gonna got letters coming in now from Jamaica and through America about this son of God subject.

That's right. Is Jesus Christ the son of God now? That's right. Yes and no.

That's right. But he's also the son of the father who is also God. But he's also the son of the father who is also

God. But he's also the son of the father who is also God. I say he is the son of God and he's not the son of God.

Let's stop real life. Okay. So I want our viewers to pay very close attention.

He is the son of God and he's not the son of God. So what that immediately tells you is he does not believe in the eternal son of God.

What he means by son of God is that in the incarnation, that's when the son of God language is used.

It's post incarnation. He's not the son of God before the incarnation. He's the son of God from the incarnation forward.

And so the term son refers to his humanity, right? This is very important for us to understand.

And when he talks about God taking on this robe of flesh, remember there is no Trinity. There's no three persons.

This is a uni -personal God. A uni -personal God. That's his position. That's his position.

He's assuming the false view of Unitarianism. Correct, correct. So Unitarianism means that there's only one person in God, not three persons, which is

Trinitarianism. So remember when he talks about God taking on flesh, he's talking about one person.

There's only one person in the Godhead and that's the premise of Unitarianism. Okay. All right, good stuff here.

The son of God did not originate in heaven. All right, let's pause there.

The son of God did not originate in heaven. In other words, there's no pre -existing son. There was no son of God in eternity past.

This is very important. And yet, what does the scripture say? What does the scripture say in Galatians 4 .4?

That in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, born of a woman, born under the law.

Yeah. The language there clearly presupposes that if the son is sent, then obviously you don't send something that's not there.

Oh, preach it. The son, listen brother, you don't send something. See, because if he wasn't sent, right, then he'd have to be created.

So you're not sending, you're creating. But send means that you are existing and then you're being sent forth to do something else.

Correct. So, you know, you don't send someone that is not already there.

Right. And so Romans 8 .3, God sent forth his son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And so the

New Testament clearly shows us that this son pre -existed with the father.

I mean, even in the Old Testament, Proverbs 30 verse four asks the question, what is his name and what is the name of his son?

That's in Proverbs 30 verse four. It's asking the question about God and his greatness.

And then it asks, what is his name and what is the name of his son? And so the son of God, remember

Jesus said, I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me.

But notice Jesus says, I have come down from heaven. And even his hearers would say, how can he say

I've come down from heaven when we know his parentage, we know his mother, we know where he's from, from Nazareth.

And that very language of Jesus saying, I have come down from heaven, shows us very clearly that he is cognizant as the son, he is cognizant of his pre -existence with the father, which is highlighted in John 17 five.

Give me, glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world was made, before it was created.

So this idea that he denies the eternal sonship of Christ, this is the earmark of heresy.

This is the earmark of heresy. And so I just want people to be aware of this. They do not believe in the eternal son of God.

Now, prior to the incarnation then, we say that God is triune from all eternity.

When the Bible says from everlasting to everlasting, you are God, that's the triune God. From everlasting to everlasting, the triune

God is triune. In what sense prior to the incarnation is the son the son and the father the father?

Why are those familial terms father and son used if the son and the father are equally eternal as well as along with the

Holy Spirit as well? Right, because of the relationship between the person. So that the first person of the

Trinity is a father to the son, not in a temporal context.

Don't think of ourselves as fathers and our children are begotten of us. The father is described in scripture as the one who begets and the son is begotten.

The fact that the second person of the Trinity is begotten shows that he is the son of the father.

Now, this is what we call in, this is very deep systematic Nicene theology, but we refer to this as the eternal generation of the son or the eternal begetting of the son.

As the Nicene creeds, eternally begotten of the father before all ages. And so the relationship of the father to the son is that the father eternally begets the son, the son is eternally begotten of the father and the

Holy Spirit eternally proceeds. Now, the Eastern Orthodox Church will say, only from the father.

The Western Church maintains it's through both the father and the son. And the reason why the Holy Spirit proceeds is because the spirit of God is spirated, he is breathed out.

And so that's why we use this language of father and son, but this is an eternal relationship, right?

The son is an eternal person who is begotten eternally by the father.

And that is why scripture can speak of the son as begotten or only begotten. He's one of a kind.

Jesus says, I've proceeded out from God, I've come forth from God. And this is the language of begetting, but it's not to be confused with the human conception of begetting because we beget our children within time.

We have temporal begetting. And so this language of father and son shows the unique relationship, the intimacy between the father and the son.

But remember, these are eternal persons, they're not temporal. Okay, all right, thank you. Let's continue.

God did not come from heaven. No, no. The son of God came out of a tribe of Judah. That's right.

Okay. Can you just pause that, Eli? Right against what the Lord Jesus says, I have come down from heaven. And you just heard what he said, he did not come from heaven.

And yet he said, I have come down from heaven. Yes. And he says in John one to Nathanael, he says, what would you do if you saw where the son of man came from?

And he says, you shall see the heavens open and the angels descending and ascending upon the son of man. And of course, he's alluding to the dream of Jacob, Jacob's ladder, where he sees the angels coming up and down and the

Lord is at the top of the ladder. Jesus identifies himself as that ladder, the connection between earth and heaven.

And so when Jesus says, what would you do? And he says, no one has ascended to heaven, but he who descended.

And John three 13, he tells Nicodemus, no one has ascended to heaven except the one who descended.

And so who is the one who descended? It's the son, the word who became flesh and dwelt among us.

Very good, good stuff. The seed of David. That's right. Who are the son of Jesse, who come from the generations of Shem, the brother of Ham and Japheth, who are the sons of Noah and the grand boys of Terah, the

Lameech. Now here come the son of God with the predestinated men. There's only one thing about the son of God that always was.

The Bible's clear that there's only one God and the father is God, but Jesus, the son is also God. The son is also

God. The son is also God. Get me, get me. I said, it was only one thing about the son of God that always was.

First Peter chapter one. And that was the predestination of his arrival. That's right. First Peter chapter one.

And at verse 19. And then I get the letter that I just want to split this atom and show you how the molecules work in it.

That's right. Hit this. First Peter one and at verse 19. But with the precious blood of Christ. With the precious blood of Christ.

As of a lamb without flemish. As, as, as of a lamb. You see, Mary had a little lamb here.

That's right, that's right, that's right. He got his title little because the words say he was made a little lower than the angels.

God, the eternal spirit wasn't made. No, God is not lower. He's called the highest.

That's right. That's right. I want to show you a separation between the human and divine. Where did the son of God get his name from?

Go ahead, brother. The son is God. The son is God. The son is God. He got his name from the heavenly father.

Heavenly father, that's right. He inherited his name. That's right. It was passed down from heaven. That's right.

Then he crossed it in the arms of an angel. Go ahead. And the angel conveyed it to Mary. Go ahead. Give me the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews chapter one and at verse four. What is it? Being made so much better than he ain't. Being made so much better than he ain't.

As he hath by inheritance. As he hath by, as he, as he, as he hath by inheritance.

Obtained a more excellent name than the very angel that he created. That's right.

See the name Jesus is an inherited name. That's right. Okay, we need to stop it there, Eli. Okay. So he's quoting verse four of Hebrews one.

And of course the author of Hebrews here is referring to the post -resurrected

Christ here where he becomes superior to the angels as the name he has inherited. And this is the backdrop to this again is

Isaiah 45, 23 and Philippians two, nine to 11. But notice that he conveniently leaves out verse two where the son is the one who is appointed heir of all things and through whom also he created the world.

Well, obviously that the creation of the world that was before obviously humanity existed and so forth but notice how it places the son there as the one through whom

God has spoken. And it's also through him, the son that God has created the world. And then in verse three, it tells you who the son is.

He's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Notice this, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

That's the son of God. And that mentions how he made purification for our sins obviously the incarnation.

And then he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. That's the ascension. And then of course the inheritance of that name is the name

Yahweh. But notice he leaves out verse six that all the angels are to worship the son.

He leaves out verse eight where of the son, the father says your throne of God is forever and ever. He leaves out verse 10 to 12 where the father addresses the son as Yahweh or as the

Lord, which is taken from Psalm 102, 25 to 27. And so this is what happens with cult leaders.

As you know, Eli, they cherry pick passages of scripture here and there.

They isolate scripture passages. And you see a text taken out of context becomes a pretext for anything you wanna teach.

And that is why he's so dangerous. He has a very winsome character, but that's the silver tongue.

That's the deception you gotta be careful about because he isolates the scriptures and simply builds theology out of them by ignoring the context.

Very good. You want to know me? I'll tell you, I come. That's right. And my father's name.

And my father's name, amen. You want to know who sent me? I come. That's right. And my father's name.

That's right. You want to know what name that the apostles function in? He said, I gave them thy name.

Thy name, that's right. And the name that he gave them was the name he came in. So God almighty will get all the recognition.

Amen. The Bible's clear that there's only one God and the father is God, but Jesus, the son is also

God. The son is also God. Skip it, but it's so short. Yeah. That's right. That flesh and blood that Jesus had.

That's right. That was Jesus' work. And being found in fashion. Listen at this. In Philippians chapter two, when we'll begin at verse six.

When you ran upon him, how did you discover him? Who's being in the form of God? Who being in the form of God? But in not being.

When you ran upon Jesus, how did you discover him? In the form of God. God form was God image.

That's right. God image was God fashion. That's right. God fashion was God figure. Amen. All right. Let's stop there.

That's right. Yeah, Eli. There you could see his abject ignorance of the

Greek language. Notice how he says the form of God is God's image. It's God's figure and so forth.

And Philippians two, six to 11 is a beautiful portion of scripture. It's called the Carmen Christi. It's called the

Christ hymn actually. Some believe that it's pre Pauline and that it was actually sung by the early

Jerusalem church. And it's chock full of theology. And in verse six,

Paul says that, he says about the Lord Jesus Christ, he said that who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

So the word that he uses there, and by the way, when he says who though he was, it's actually a present participle.

It's a present active participle. It's the participle hoparchan, which means always being.

It's an ongoing action, an aspect of ongoing time. Who was always in the form of God.

The word is Morphe Theou. And the form of God means the very nature of God.

If you look at the NIV, the NIV translates it this way. Who was by very nature God. That's the

NIV trans, it's a dynamic translation. Now, how do we know that Morphe Theou form of God means

God? Because in the following verse, Paul contrast that by, he emptied himself by taking the

Morphe doulo. He took on the form of a slave or a servant.

Now, did he just have a form of a servant or was he truly a servant? Was he truly the servant of the

Lord? Yes, he was truly the servant of the Lord. And so what Paul is saying is, he was in the form of God.

He was God by nature, very God of very God, but he emptied himself.

He set aside his divine prerogatives by taking on the form of a servant and then being found in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on the cross.

And so what you have in Philippians 2 is, think of the V shape. You know, Christ is up here and then he comes down to the bottom of the barrel.

He goes right down to the bottom. And then as a result of his obedience unto death, he is highly exalted.

He goes back up again. So think of that V shape to understand the Carmen Christie. And so the form of God means that Christ was by essence, by nature,

God. And he did not count equality with God, something to grasp after. You don't grasp after something you naturally have.

And so Morphe Theou, if Geno had done his homework and read up on what the

Greek word Morphe Theou means, he would realize that it's saying that Christ Jesus was always

God, in the form of God, by nature God. And he became a servant, a slave in the incarnation.

But again, this is what happens when you ignore the language. The original language is important to understand what the original writers were trying to convey.

He obviously does not understand what form of God means. Very good. God made that similitude, he just stepped in it and did a temporary work.

That's what he did. The work of that body was not a eternal work because the son of man is not immortal.

That's right. Let's stop there. Wow. The son of man is not immortal.

And yet in Daniel 7, 9, Daniel says, I saw thrones.

Now notice he says thrones in the plural, not one throne. I saw thrones. And he said, he saw the ancient of days sitting and his throne was a fire.

But then he mentions a second figure and he's called one like a son of man. And he comes with the clouds of heaven.

So notice where he comes from. He's a heavenly person. He comes with the clouds of heaven.

Now, do you know in the Old Testament, Eli, do you know the only person that is described as riding on the clouds?

It's the Yahweh. Behold, I ride on a cloud upon Egypt coming in judgment. Yeah. Yahweh throughout the

Old Testament, it is Yahweh who rides on the clouds of heaven. And in fact, even in the neighbors of Israel, the

Canaanites, one of the titles of Baal was the cloud rider. He was called cloud rider.

So when you use language of someone coming with the clouds of heaven, in the ancient Near East, this was the equivalent of saying that this was a

God, that you're talking about a God who is coming. And so when Daniel describes the son of man, the son of man is the only other person said to come with the clouds with Yahweh being the other person, that is to say in the other

Old Testament passages. So Daniel says, I saw one like a son of man in Israelic, Kibar Enoch, one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, which immediately tells you this is a defined person.

And he approaches the ancient of days and he is given a kingdom. Now, if you have a kingdom, well, then you're a king and kings don't sit on couches and sofas, right?

Kings sit on thrones. That's why Daniel sees thrones in the plural. But this son of man is going to destroy the beasts, the antichrist governments of the world.

And it says that he will establish a kingdom that shall have no end. And then it says, every nation, every people, every tongue will serve him, the son of man.

Now in Aramaic, which Daniel 7 is written in Aramaic, the word serve in Aramaic is the

Aramaic word palak. And palak, if you look at any lexicon of biblical

Aramaic, the word palak is always used to denote the worship of the gods.

That is to say, it is a word that is the equivalent of the Greek word latria, which means devotion to the divine, which means the nations are going to worship the son of man.

In fact, the NIV translates it as worship. In other words, do you know of any one today who is worshiped by people of every tongue, every tribe, who has brought them into the knowledge of the

God of Israel? There's only one Jew I know of, and that's Jesus of Nazareth. Why do you think Jesus employed that term son of man to himself?

He was identifying himself with the son of man of Daniel 7, not

Ezekiel. Son of man in Ezekiel means just a human being. Jesus is pointing to Daniel 7, because in his trial before the high priest, the high priest put him under oath and said, are you the

Christ, the son of the blessed? And Jesus said, I am, and you shall see the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven with great glory.

Now, just stop for a minute. There's nothing blasphemous about saying you're the Messiah. There was a lot of messianic pretenders in the first century, but what got the high priest to stand up and rip his garments and say blasphemy is because Jesus said, you shall see the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.

And at that time, Dr. Alan Segal has shown this in his great book, The Two Powers in Heaven.

At that time, there was a view among the Jews that there were two powers in heaven.

And they called the first power, the invisible Yahweh. The second was the visible Yahweh. He would appear throughout the

Old Testament. He was called the angel of Yahweh. He was distinct from Yahweh, but yet he was also Yahweh. And so when

Caiaphas heard Jesus say, I am the son of man who is coming with the clouds of heaven, why do you think he brought the charge of blasphemy?

Because they knew that that son of man was a divine person who shares the throne with God.

And that is why today our Jewish friends, the rabbis don't want

Jews to read Isaiah 53, but also Daniel 7, they say is dangerous theology.

It's dangerous because it talks about these two powers. So when this false teacher says that the son of man is not immortal, he's not reading the

Bible. He's not reading Daniel 7, because notice where the son of man comes from. He comes from heaven, comes to the earth.

So - Dr. Costa, if I can interrupt, I do apologize. So, okay, so you said something that he's a king, but he's given a kingdom.

So I guess a person from Pastor Geno Jennings' perspective, he said, well, if Jesus, how can

Jesus, if he's God, be given a kingdom? We should, we think in terms of that V that you're talking about?

Yes, yes. He comes down and as a man, he's given a kingdom. Absolutely. Because of how he lives, the active obedience of Christ, the passive obedience.

Absolutely, because he has, he must be the son of David. In order to be the Messianic king, he must become incarnate.

And therefore he must become the son of David. He must come from David's tribe.

And that is how he's given that kingdom, as the incarnate one. Okay, excellent.

All right, let's continue on. We're making good time. I think we're, there's not too much time left.

Let me see here. I say the son of man is not immortal. The son of man is mortal.

But the identity of the son of man is immortal. That's right. If you could just pause that.

Yep. So what he's trying to do there, if you notice, he's being very clever. He's trying to say the son of man is just his humanity.

But the identity of the son of man, because remember he says that that's God dressed up in human flesh.

But what he doesn't understand is that the son of man is the title of the divine person in Daniel 7, who is the son of God himself.

That's where he's playing semantics with the words here. Okay. That's it, sir.

When you talk about God, you better know what you're talking. That's right. But he's also the son of the father, who is also

God. But he's also the son of the father, who is also God. But he's also the son of the father, who is also

God. Father, glorify thine me. How you want it done?

I want it done with thine own self. Thine own self. That's right. Don't use nothing else. And don't use nobody else.

That's right. Glorify thine me. That's right. How do you want it? With thine own self. With thine own self.

With the glory. With thy head. That I. Had with thee. Had with thee. Before the world was. Before the world was.

That's right. Okay, we can stop there. So real quick though, he's gonna pull a fast one here because when

Trinitarians try to make the distinction between the father and the son, we will go to that passage where it says, where Jesus says, you know, the glory that I had with you, implying that the son is with the father prior to being sent, before the world began.

And now he's gonna interpret it in a very interesting way that a lot of Trinitarians tend to do. So why don't you unpack the direction he's going in.

Yeah, he's gonna redefine that to mean that Jesus existed with the father, not in actuality, but in his mind.

That Jesus was a thought in his mind. Yeah. And so that will bring us to John one, but yeah, let's keep going.

Okay. What was the son of God before the world was?

He was a nothing but a thought. That's right. He was a thought. That's right.

What was the son of God before the world was? That's right. Just a thought. Just a thought.

A predestinated thought. Well, there you go, Eli. A predestinated thought. Just a predestinated, but so are you, right,

Eli? And so am I. So what makes us any special? What makes Jesus any special?

We were all in God's mind. The angels were in God's mind before he made them.

So in what respect are you and I different than Jesus Christ? Not by much. Yeah.

Chapter one. 1 Peter 1, 18. 1 Peter 1, 18. Come on, y 'all. As much as you know that you were not the deed.

Jesus, pray. Hallelujah. I said, father, glory, father, I am me with thine own self. Thine own self. With the glory I have of thee before the world was.

That's right. Mary was before the world was. That's right. Oh no. So flesh and blood wasn't there.

That's right. Son of God wasn't there. Son of God wasn't there before the world was. I'm a man. Man. There's no man in heaven.

No man. Wasn't no man there but flesh and blood. So now we're not saying that Jesus existed with flesh and blood or flesh and bone before the world began.

That's not Christian theology. When we say that God is triune from all eternity, we're not saying that there's the father and then there's the son with a body that takes up space.

No Trinitarian has ever taught that. And so he's working on a bit of a straw man there. He's building up a straw man and then tearing it down.

Yep. That's right. But it was a man in God's mind. He was a predestinated man.

That's right. That's right. See, all this was just a scheme that God worked up to give him a reason to redeem man.

That's right. Let me show you this. Come on, son, go to work on the book of Peter. The son is God. The son is God. The son is God. But he's also the son of the father who is also

God. But he's also the son of the father who is also God. Jesus, the son is also God. The son is also

God. The son is also God. What did the word of God call him? Thou fool. Fool. Fool. Fool.

That's right. You fool that looking at me now. That's right. Thou fool. Go and take God, you fool.

That's right. I think you may have missed a part there. Did I? I'm sorry. I think you did.

I was trying to get through the little robotic AI voice that you see here.

The son of the father who is also God. But he's also the son of the father who is also God. But he's also the son of the father who is also

God. The Bible's clear that there's only one God and the father is God. But Jesus, the son is also

God. The son is also God. The son is also God. I'm gonna play something. What did the word of God call him? Thou fool. Fool.

That's right. That's near the end. You fool that looking at me. Maybe if you take it a couple, just a couple of minutes before that.

Right here? Yeah, I think there, yeah. Right there. But give him a reason. To the redeemed man. That's right.

Let me show you this. Come on, son. Go to work on the book of Peter. The son is God. The son is God. The son is God. But he's also the son of the father who is also

God. But he's also the son of the father who is also God. It's like there's like AI. But he's also the son of the father who is also

God. The Bible's clear that there's only one God. I'll let it play because it's really short. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. The son is also

God. The son is also God. The son is also God. What did the word of God call him? Thou fool. Fool.

Fool. That's right, fool. You fool that looking at me now. Get this, fool. Thou fool. Glory to God, you fool.

That's right. Okay, so let me just add something here. He was making reference to 1

Peter 1, 18. And I want you to see again how he plays the gymnastics, semantic gymnastics.

So in verse 18, 1 Peter says that you were ransomed, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

Now, this is what he wanted to get to was verse 20. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you.

Through him are believers in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.

So what they try to do, Elias, they'll take verse 20 and say that he was foreknown before the foundation of the world.

Well, who was foreknown? Well, the lamb, the Christ, the Messiah, the one who would atone for our sins.

Of course, the promised Messiah in the person of the son was foreknown.

The coming of Messiah is what the prophets were talking about. But what this is saying is no different to what we read in Revelation 13, eight, that he is the lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world.

And therefore, all Peter is saying is that the atonement of Christ, his incarnation and his death on the cross was something that was foreknown by God.

There's nothing that violates the deity of the son or the preexistence of the son.

But what I find very odd is that in the very same book in 1

Peter 3, verse 15, and you know this very well, Eli, our famous apologetics passage, 1

Peter 3, 15, but in your hearts, honor Christ, the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason of the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.

And you know that Peter here, I don't know if you know this, Eli, but Peter is actually quoting from an

Old Testament text here. He's actually quoting Isaiah 8, where it says, it is

Yahweh that you should regard as holy. It is Yahweh that you should fear and revere.

And so what is interesting is that Peter talks about Christ as the Lamb of God being foreknown.

And then in 1 Peter 3, 15, he identifies Christ as Yahweh. That's interesting.

I always found that interesting because when people often speak or preach on 1 Peter 3, 15, they always use the Greek backdrop of like Plato and, oh no,

Socrates and the court, right? So actually infused in 1 Peter 3, 15 is the Hebrew scriptures.

I like how it's not explicit, but it's just interwoven in what he's saying. You can kind of see where it traces back.

So yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, and the other thing, maybe we could end with this and then take questions, but in John 1, 1, their argument is this, the word, the logos, is a thought in God's mind.

So in the beginning was the word. Well, yeah, the word was in God's mind and the word was with God in his mind.

And the word was God because God would take on human form in the incarnation. But here's the problem with their interpretation of John 1, 1 and that is that they ignore the

Greek content, the Greek language, the syntax, because it says in the beginning was the logos, the word.

And then John says this, is he says that, he says the logos was, he says, pros ton theon.

And that phrase, that preposition pros ton theon, meaning literally means towards, towards God.

It is used when it's used of God and someone, it always denotes personal relationship.

And the word pros, the preposition pros is where we get the word pros upon for the face in Greek.

And so when it says the word was pros ton theon, the word was with God, it means the word was face to face with God, meaning eternal relationship.

And yet the word is God. So it begins with the word always existed.

He uses the third person imperfect, ain from ain me, the verb to be. He uses the third person imperfect, which means continuous action in the past.

So the word always existed. The word always was in a face to face relationship with God.

And yet the word is distinct from God, but he is of the same essence as God. He is

God. And then he goes on to say, the same was with God in the beginning. All things were made through him.

He is the agent of creation. Through this word, all things were made. Without him was nothing made that was made.

And then verse 10 says he was in the world. And even though the world was made by him, the world did not know him.

So there's the creator walking incognito amongst us, and we did not know him. And then verse 14 says the word, remember who's the word, the eternal one face to face with God, who's truly

God, the word became flesh and he dwelt among us. And we saw his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth.

And then verse 18 says this, the oldest Greek manuscript says, no one has seen God at any time, but the monogamous theos, the one and only

God who's in the bosom of the father, he has exegeted him.

The Greek means he has exegeted, explained the father. He's brought out the father to us.

And the language, the Greek language will not allow a modalist and a

Sebelian interpretation. You can only get a Trinitarian exegesis out of John 1, 1, 3, 14, and verse 18.

That's excellent. Brother, this was super helpful. I'm gonna go back and listen to this again.

I don't often have time to go back and listen to my own. When I do it, when I'm a hero myself,

I don't go back and listen to myself. When I have a guest, sometimes I have to go back and like, oh, that's great.

I gotta jot that down. This has been super helpful because I think you've been able to respond to kind of this heresy of Unitarianism.

Denial of the Trinity, all these sorts of things, giving us kind of basic Christian doctrine.

I think everything always goes back to the fundamentals. So hopefully this encourages people to kind of not only be in their

Bible, but to also pick up a good systematic theology and just reacquaint themselves with Christian doctrine.

So I think that's super helpful. I really appreciate it. And as always, you always have great insight and responses.

So now I didn't say that it's at the beginning, so I will repeat this now, but if you have some questions, please preface your question with question and either

Dr. Costa or myself, if it's directed to me, I'll try my best to answer. If it's directed to Dr. Costa, he'll answer.

You can send those in. So I didn't say at the beginning, so I don't see a lot of questions now. I do see a super chat from Coren's Chandler.

Thank you so much for the super chat. And here is a question. Feel free to keep them coming, but if not, we'll wrap things up.

So I think it's Beniamin. I think I'm saying that right, Beniamin, okay.

This person asks, how many can be approximately globally, those heretics who believe in such heresy and in what countries they are dominant?

I'm trying to read it just as they wrote it. I guess they're asking what countries are these folks,

Unitarians, the people along the lines of like a Pastor Jennings. Are you familiar with the parts of the country or parts of the world where these views are prevalent?

Yes, well, I would say they're predominantly prevalent in North America. I mean, the one is

Pentecostals. And again, Geno Jennings, he's actually the

Pastor and the founder of the First Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ Incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

That's where his main church is. So they were a break off from the Azusa Street Revival, which began the

Pentecostal movement in the early 20th century, around 1910 and thereafter. And so the one is

Pentecostals were a break off from the Assemblies of God, which are

Pentecostal, but are Trinitarian in confession and the deity of Christ. So the one is

Pentecostals are predominant in North America. So that would be the United States, primarily the United States, Canada, and anywhere they missionize.

So anywhere in the world where they go to, whether it be in Africa, there's a lot of one is

Pentecostal churches in Africa as well in the continent of Africa. They've gone down into South America as well through their missions.

And so it is predominantly a North American phenomena, but it has gone out into the various parts of the world.

So I'm thinking after the United States and Canada, definitely many countries in Africa, in South America, and also in Central America.

Now, can you suggest some resources, like what are some good books people can get to defend the

Trinity, which by extension would be defending against Unitarianism and a bunch of other views and the deity of Christ?

Are there specific websites or blogs or books that you would recommend? Yeah, I mean, I would recommend any good book on systematic theology, like Wayne Grudem's systematic theology.

I mean, even some of the old ones like Millard Erickson's Christian theology is quite good as well.

And I would check out, in terms of the

Trinity, I mean, Dr. James White has a good book on the Trinity. It's not too long,

The Forgotten Trinity, it's called. And Henry Bavnik has some good stuff on the

Trinity, some of these classics. So any good systematic theology book should have a good section on the

Trinity. I had one on Robert. Robert Raymond, he had one on the deity of Christ. I don't remember. It's called Jesus, Divine Messiah.

There we go, it's somewhere there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Robert Raymond is a good one. That's with PNR Publishing.

And even the late Robert Morey, I mean, I knew Robert Morey very well. He wrote a book called The Trinity Evidences and Issues.

Do you recommend his work? I've read a couple of things, but he seems to be a controversial person.

Yeah, he is controversial, but I've read his book on the Trinity, Evidences and Issues. And that one is quite sound.

It's quite good. Yeah. All right, thank you for that. Okay, so Benjamin has another question here.

Who are other examples of popular preachers that are doctrinally aligned with Geno Jennings and that particular church?

Yeah, so any groups that are United Pentecostals, groups that identify as oneness,

TD Jakes, for example. I did a video a couple of, about a month ago with Dr.

Ed DelCore on TD Jakes and his modalism.

So one of the words that I should have mentioned earlier was that the view that Oneness Pentecostals like TD Jakes and Geno Jennings promote is a word called modalism.

And there's different types of modalism. There's a modalism called successive modalism, which was the view that Sibelius in the early third century held to.

That means the father becomes the son, the son becomes the Holy Spirit. And some Christians have used these heretical examples, right?

You know, like the ice cube, water appears in three different forms. It can be ice, and then it can be water, and then it could be steam.

Please don't use that. That's modalism. Then it can be heresies. You gotta be careful. That's modalism. And no,

God is not like an eggshell and a white in the yolk. That's partialism. That's the heresy of partialism, that God is made of parts.

And so you need to realize that the Oneness Pentecostals, they're not successive modalists.

They are what we would call simultaneous modalists or static modalists in that the one person who is divine is the father, and he is the son only in terms of the incarnation.

He's also the Holy Spirit. So their view would be more of a static form of modalism. So once again, any group that is identified with Oneness, the

United Pentecostal Church, the Church of Jesus Christ, churches that are called the

New Apostolic Churches, all of these churches are all Oneness or Jesus only. Okay, thank you for that.

Let's see, here's another question from Born Again RN. How would Geno Jennings respond to clear passages that seem to affirm the

Trinity, like Matthew 28, 19, and Matthew 3, 16 through 17, that demonstrates the

Trinity, the one name, but also distinct at different places, I guess at the same time they're trying to say?

Yeah, so what they would do is they would play semantic gymnastics and say, well, the name in Matthew 28, 19, what is the name?

What is the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit? The name is Jesus. And that's why you need to be baptized in the name of Jesus according to the book of Acts.

And so they will take the name of Jesus, and that's how they started. Their heretical group started by somebody having a revelation that the name of Matthew 28, 19 is the name

Jesus. So Jesus is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Now, Matthew 3, 16 to 17, one of my favorite places where they actually say that it was the divine nature of Jesus that was talking from heaven to the man who was in the water and the

Holy Spirit descended. So that's a pretty good ventriloquist feat where Jesus is being baptized and this is my

Son in whom I. That's a pretty interesting feat. That is. Now, how do we refute that?

Matthew 28, 19, back to the language again. So in Greek, when you wanna distinguish between persons, what you do in Greek is you have a definite article and then you have the name and then you have the word and, and then you have another definite article, the, and then the name.

And so if I wanted to say in Greek that Eli and Tony are talking, what I would say in Greek is the

Eli and the Tony are speaking. So if I talk to a Greek person and they will say, hey, have you seen the

Joe today? And that's because in Greek, proper nouns, proper names are usually preceded by definite articles, but that's done to distinguish persons from one another.

And so in Matthew 28, 19, you have the definite article of the three persons distinguished from one another, but they have one name.

Why? Because the one name is God, God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 3, 16 to 17, you have clearly three persons. The Son is baptized, the

Father speaks, the Holy Spirit descends as the dove. Clearly distinction, but yet unity in essence.

All right. Excellent. Very good. R E Souls asks, how do

I download this video for study purposes? Well, actually R E, this will go up on my podcast.

So all of the episodes that you see here on YouTube, we'll transfer over to iTunes within a couple, like within a day or two,

I have to actually do it. I do everything, this backend stuff by myself and I'm a full -time teacher. So I get to it when

I'm able to, but I will try my best to transfer this audio to the podcast on iTunes.

So you'll have an opportunity to do that. And I'm not sure if people know about this, but I feel like I work for Apple now.

iOS just had an update. Now you can listen to podcasts and it will, through AI, transcribe the entire podcast.

And as you're listening, it'll highlight the text and you can copy the text. You can quote, there's a search function.

So it's perfect for studying, you know, podcast material and things like that. So hopefully that is useful to you.

Born Again RN says, how would Jennings respond to Jesus calling himself I Am, quoting Exodus 3, and why the

Jews threatened to stone him in Acts 5, stating the Holy Spirit is also God? Yeah. So in the terms of the

I Am, they would say that that was the father speaking in him. So remember, Jesus is the father and the son.

The father is his divine nature and the son is his human nature. So what they would say is when he said

I Am, that was the father speaking, not the human Jesus. So here's the problem.

You got a bit of a, almost like a split personality disorder here. Because what you have is you got the father and the son together.

And the other problem here is that when Jesus is praying, they will tell you that it's his human nature that is talking to his divine nature.

Now here's the philosophical problem. A what is not a who.

Right. I mean, this pencil has nature, but it's not a who. It doesn't have personality.

It has nature. It's made of wood. There's carbon in there and so forth. A rock has nature, right,

Eli? But if I hit you on the head with it, you'll know that it has being. It has true being. But it's not a -

All existing things have ontos, but not all ontos has personality. So it's not natures that talk, it's persons that talk, right?

So Eli and I are two persons, but we are human beings. We are human beings, but what is talking is our person is talking to another person.

So when they say that the son is the human nature talking to the divine nature, that is nonsensical.

That's absurd. Nature doesn't, nature does not talk. It is persons that have a mind, intellect, and a will.

And so when they talk like this, what they're basically saying is that Jesus is really, he's got two persons in him, essentially, and that is

Nestorianism. And that's a heresy. Exactly. There you go. All right.

Well, brother, that was the last question. We had a good audience too. There were some people listening and got some good comments, and this has been very helpful for folks.

This accomplished exactly what I wanted to. Now, folks, if you enjoyed this content and you think it's very useful, you can participate in fighting false teaching by sharing good teaching.

You fight the false things with the truth. So if you found this helpful and you think someone might benefit from this video, please share this video, as well as Dr.

Tony Costa's channel. He has another video that he put out. I think it was a short video, it was like a half hour.

Yes, about an hour. Yeah, interact with Pastor Gino Jennings as well. And of course,

Dr. Costa has a whole bunch of awesome resources on his YouTube channel, as well as he offers from time to time courses that I would highly recommend people sign up for, okay?

He is a very knowledgeable man, has lots of experience, debate, theology, and he is very pastoral too.

So I think you're a great mix of not just the head, but also the heart and why this is important for folks.

And if I can also add, Eli, if I can also add, I do have, there is a course that I taught on the Trinity that is about a seven hour course,

PowerPoints, I mean, keynote slides and so forth. If people are interested, that course is available for purchase.

And if they're interested, they can always contact me. Yeah, and that's so key right there is, it's not like, oh,

I wanna take a course on how to defeat Unitarianism or how to talk. No, no, no, no. If you get the basics of the

Trinity, that will equip you to respond to a whole host of perspectives. So a whole course dedicated to the

Trinity, that is, I would highly recommend someone do that. And there's so much more value in not just doing your own personal research, but having some kind of structure.

It's really expensive. I mean, I have two master's degrees, seminary degrees.

I'm still in debt, okay? If you can get proper, good quality, seminary quality education at a cheaper price, and you're supporting a ministry that is blessing you,

I highly recommend you sign up for Dr. Costa's courses or some of my courses or anyone that you think is putting out good material that will benefit you in your day -to -day walk with Christ as we seek to always be ready to give an answer to those who ask us for the reason for the hope that's within us.

Pastor Costa, or Pastor Costa, Dr. Costa. Well, I guess, pastor, doctor.

You have no idea. I'm not a pastor. Almost everywhere I talk, doesn't matter where I am,

I'm always called pastor. And even after I tell people I'm not a pastor, they'll be like, okay, I'm sorry. We'd like to welcome

Pastor Ayala. It's like, I'm not a pastor. So I'm sorry if you get that all the time, but. Yeah, I'm known by many other names, but yeah, yeah.

Okay, well, thank you so much. I appreciate your knowledge. I appreciate your friendship, and you always come clutch.

I remember one time, a guest that I was gonna have couldn't make it, and I was like, Dr. Costa, he's always, you're always willing to help me out and to come on and to share your knowledge.

So I really appreciate that. It's a pleasure, pleasure. All right, brother. Well, that's it for this episode, guys.

Until next time, oh, I just wanna make this quick announcement before I close. I am taking a break from YouTube for one month, one month.

So this is my last video for this month, and then in April, I will come back with a vengeance.

So while I'm taking off, I am going to spend some time with my family to focus on my physical health as well.

There's nothing wrong with me. I'm not sick or anything, but you know, when you get into the busyness of life, you're like, I actually have to slow down and kind of refocus myself.

And so I'm gonna be changing my diet, doing some exercise, and working on content that will then, you know,

I'll be able to come back in April with a vengeance. So please, I'm not going away. I'm just taking a little break.

I may sneak in a video here or there, but I really do wanna focus on kind of finding my center again, get more into prayer and my personal devotions and things like that.

And so just wanted to let folks know that if they notice that I'm missing for a little bit. As the famous philosopher once said,

Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'll be back. So no worries there. Well, that's it for this episode, guys.