Answering Marcus Rogers' Questions, 2 Thess. 2:15 and Jay Dyer

Well, greetings, welcome to the dividing line. Hopefully it's working. In fact, the red thing that was just up was like blown up. It was huge. So I don't know what that means. But hey, we're supposed to be live.

And it's good to do it this way, because I can tell you, doing it the other way that we did it last week really takes forever. I didn't have to do any of it. I just, you know, I still record the programs.

And then it took, you know, hours and hours and hours and hours to get stuff posted. So this is the most efficient way to do it. We are live broadcasting, webcasting, whatever you call this kind of stuff, from the desert metropolis.

How long has it been since we had that opening that's from the live, the desert? Webcasting live. Yeah. How is it? No, OK. Live from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. Live from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona.

This is the dividing line. That's about the same time we had, if you'd like to have more information about our books, cassettes, and tracks, you know you're dating yourself pretty well when you start talking about cassette tapes.

But and yeah, I'm not going to walk down that memory lane. I've already been sitting here for ages today. We did the second of the sweater vest dialogues today. And we got started about half an hour late.

So it went for about an hour. So I've already done an hour and a half. And it was a discussion between Doug Wilson and myself on the subject of, based on the subject of the Trinity and eternal subordination of the sun, ESS, and patriarchy.

And I didn't even know that that was another one of the many things running around out there. But so we had a discussion about it. And I brought up some, just some of the issues that I think are most important in that particular area, including Calvin and the emphasis upon autotheos, that the sun is God of himself, not only in a immediate fashion.

I think that's very important apologetically. Unfortunately, a lot of that Trinitarian discussion takes place outside of the purview of individuals who are involved in dealing with the Trinity. And interestingly enough, the first thing we're going to do today on the program is to deal with the Trinity.

But from a different perspective, Doug and I got into all sorts of stuff about the opera ad intra and how you recognize Father, Son, and Spirit prior to creation, rather than recognizing the distinctions between the Father, Son, and the Spirit in light of creation is easily done.

And that's what we're going to be talking about today is I'm going to be responding to a video that was put out by Marcus Rogers, who is a oneness advocate. And so we're dealing with stuff that isn't even an issue amongst any type of Orthodox believers.

This is already decided, already agreed upon by everybody. So this will be something new along those. This will be a different area. But we were talking about a much more abstract and challenging area, and that is how you distinguish between Father, Son, and Spirit prior to creation, solely in their what are called the opera ad intra, generation, inspiration, begettal, what does being eternally begotten mean, all that kind of stuff.

And so probably not as controversial as the last one, I would imagine, but I can just absolutely guarantee you, it wouldn't matter if we talked about the most mundane thing on the planet. Somebody will find something to grouse about, because there are just some people who seemingly live on the internet to do nothing more than grouse about things.

And that's just sort of how that works. Anyway, so I did want to, I forget when it was that Jeff let me know about this video. He posted it in our Apology of Leadership area. It's nice and short, thankfully.

It's not long, and so you can run through it fairly quickly. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to play it at 1 .2. I am not going to give long, lengthy responses, because I've written entire books on the subject.

So we've done entire debates on aspects of this. We've done debates with Oneness Pentecostals and with Greg Stafford and lost track of how many debates on this particular subject with Muslims and that kind of stuff.

So but quick, direct responses, because one of the reasons is when I do get a chance to go out and speak, we're going to be at G3 next week, and people sort of give me their background, their history.

A lot of them say, I only discovered you all in the last two or three years. And so we did a lot of stuff more than two or three years ago. And yeah, some people go, hey, and I've discovered the archives, and so I'm catching up with stuff.

But still, there's a lot of folks that have not had the opportunity to listen to these things. So we're going to hit it fairly quickly, but do want to respond to these particular assertions. They are very common, not only from people like Marcus Rogers, but from Muslims and others in their objections to the historic doctrine of the Trinity.

So grab your Bible. I'm not sure you have time to look up too much as the speed we're going to be going. But it is a video, but it's easier for me to do it on just audio. He's just sitting in a car looking at a phone, so it's not really overly useful to take a look at it.

Marcus Rogers, he's in the military and, as I said, advocate of a form of oneness Pentecostalism. Responded to him in the past. It's been a couple of years. But by the way, this was addressed to Stephen Bankarts, James White, and Jeff Durbin.

So I'm one of them, so I'm in the middle there. And Jeff is very, very, very, very busy right now with all sorts of things going on. And so I'm going to respond to this. Let's get started.

Responding to Marcus Rogers on the Trinity and Oneness Pentecostalism

That some things are a heaven and hell issue, and there are other things that are just a revelation issue. So even if we disagree, it doesn't mean that, oh, you're a false prophet, or you're going to hell.

Peter and Paul, they disagreed on different things. If you believe that Jesus is God.

Well, now, I'll back up here a second. Peter and Paul disagreed on different things, such as? I like some specificities there. I mean, there's a lot of people that assert apostolic inconsistency between Peter and Paul.

But I would like to know what specificity is being referred to there. And certainly, they did not disagree on who God is, who we're worshiping, whether we're worshiping one person that acts like three persons, or whether we're worshiping one God as manifesting himself in three persons.

That is a heaven and hell issue in the sense that it defines not only the object of worship, but the gospel is a Trinitarian gospel. It is grounded in the Father's decree. It is accomplished by the Son.

It is applied by the Spirit. It can only be understood, for example, in regards to the intercessory work of the Son, if the Son is a distinct person from the Father. You can't intercede before yourself.

So these are extremely important issues and cannot be put into just an area, well, Peter and Paul disagreed with each other, so we can disagree, too. I'd like to know what you think they disagreed about, A, and B, I mean, are you talking about Galatians?

Because Peter agreed with that. Peter agreed with the rebuke. And Paul was the one who was right. And it was a gospel issue. So that's why I didn't figure you were talking about that. The Galatians thing is in scripture, so that's not even.

Peter was in hypocrisy. He was not orthopodeoing. He was not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the gospel, as Galatians tells us. So it can't be that. So it must be something else that is in reference there.

If you believe that Jesus is God in the flesh, and you're born of the water and the Spirit according to John 3, I feel like how Jesus said, they're not against us. They're for us, all right?

Well, Mormons would believe all these things, too. But Mormons are polytheists, and they believe in multiple gods. And Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe that, but they believe Jesus is a god. And there's all sorts of variations you can throw in there.

You can minimalize things all you want. But the fact of the matter is, if you are teaching that the Son, as a divine person, has not eternally existed, then that's a division issue. That has to be a division issue.

I want to say to you, brothers, if you choose to answer these questions, I generally have a desire. You know, I love truth. I love studying the Word of God.

And I would love to know what you think. These questions have been answered for, well, in many instances, since the third and fourth centuries. And in Marcus's own life, he has been responded to repeatedly by numerous people that I know of that have given clear, full, cogent responses.

I have a unity in the body of Christ. I don't hate anyone. I know when I was younger, I was a little bit zealous. And I've apologized for that. I say, hey, let's come together. Let's study. Let's seek God.

The Bible says, great is the mystery of godliness. So I'm going to ask a couple of questions. And the reason why I wanted to do it this way is because I believe that when people debate, oftentimes, what we see happening is, if someone can't answer one of my questions, they avoid it.

And they dance around it. And they say, well, what about this? And what about this verse?

No, I want the answers to the questions. And I want to see it in the Bible. So I love you, brothers. Well, of course, the other possibility is that you don't want to have to answer the responding questions, because your system is incoherent.

It is inconsistent with itself. It can't answer numerous questions. I do not believe any exemplification of oneness theology can address John chapter 17 in any meaningful fashion. There's just too much there.

There are too many clear distinctions between the Father and the Son. The Son is clearly identified as a divine person. There is communication between two persons, both in his prayer as well as in reference to his pre-existence in the presence of the Father before the world was, where he was glorious, not just as an idea, et cetera, et cetera.

So maybe that has something to do with it, too.

I know some people call him a false prophet. He's a heretic. He believes in another Jesus and things like that. I don't have that energy towards you, brothers. It's all love. Like I said, I believe there's certain things that if you believe it, we can walk together, because some things are heaven and hell issue.

Some things are revelation issue.

So my first question. Well, any issue that is a heaven and hell issue had better be a revelation issue, too.

The Bible says that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary. And I want to say this. I already have—I'm not asking these questions like I don't know the answer. I already have explanations and answers for everything, but I want people to—.

Explanations and answers for everything.

So I'm going to ask you these questions, but my concern is you're going to listen to the answers, listen to the responses. You've already got the answers for everything.

Study the Bibles for themselves. Study the Word of God for themselves and know that the Bible cannot contradict itself. So if you're reading the Bible and you find a contradiction between verses, it's your interpretation.

It's not the Bible. The Word of God does not contradict itself because God does not lie. All right, so check this out. The Bible says the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary. Would that not make the Holy Spirit the Father of Jesus?

No, for many, many reasons that should be, I think, self-evident and obvious. Never does the Scriptures identify the Holy Spirit's activity as the means by which the Father is to be identified. The Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Father.

The Father and the Son send the Spirit. So there's a distinction that's made between them. The relationship of the Father and the Son is an eternal relationship. That's something that I believe your theology denies.

I don't think you believe that the Son existed as the Son prior to the Incarnation. And never does the Scripture say that because of the virgin birth that Jesus is the Son of God because the virgin birth.

He is not the son of Joseph, naturally, because of the virgin birth. But the identity of the Father is never connected. It's not said that Jesus is his Father, that the Father is the Father of Jesus because the Father overshadowed Mary or anything else.

The reason it's the Spirit that overshadows Mary is because that's just simply the mechanism by which God works in the world, and it was a supernatural conception. That's not what makes Jesus the Son of God.

He has been the Son for eternity. That's the relationship that he bears to the Father, and that is not a relationship that came into existence in time. I suppose if you're an adoptionist or something like that, I mean, the problem is with a lot of oneness folks, you can't even tell exactly where they're coming from.

But if you are an adoptionist or something like that, maybe you have some other way of defining these things. I don't know. But just in answering the question, that's not what makes the Father the Father in the first place.

Question number two, where in the Bible does it say pray to the Holy Spirit? I know that it says pray in the Holy Spirit, pray with the Holy Spirit, to fellowship with the Holy Spirit, but where does it say, you know, pray to the Holy Spirit like it's a separate individual?

I understand that some people say they pray to the Father, sometimes they pray to the Son, sometimes they pray to the Holy Spirit. We see this, you know, I think in the Catholic religion, they pray to Mary sometimes,.

And I believe some of the other apostles. Um, there is no explicit command or example of prayer to the Spirit because prayer is normally done by the power of the Spirit. However, uh, you do have not only references of prayer to the Father, but you also have references of prayer to the Son.

Jesus said in John 14, uh, that after his resurrection, you would ask him anything in his name and he would do it. This had to be done by prayer. The early church was known as those in, according to 1 Corinthians, who epikaleo, they called upon the name of the Lord, specifically in reference to the Son, that particular point.

So, if you have prayer addressed to the Father and to the Son, then I certainly think it is appropriate or acceptable to address prayer to the Holy Spirit, though the normal object of prayer is the Father, and also as well as the Son as well.

But there is no, there's no one's claimed that there is a command to pray to the Holy Spirit. You might be able to garner some possible foundation from that, some of the visions in Revelation, as far as the heavenly situation is concerned, and the seven spirits, which just simply means the fullness of the Spirit of God, possibility, but again, it's not a command in the first place.

So, where in the Bible does it say to pray to the Holy Spirit? We see in the Trinitary Doctrine, it says they're co-equal, right? They're three persons, personalities. Some people say persons, some people say personalities, but they're—.

Now, Trinitarians say persons.

Equal, right? Equal in their participation in the being of God. They are not identical to one another. There are things that distinguish them, given Scripture, as we were talking earlier, about the opera ad intra, and then there's the opera ad extra, the things that they do in regards to creation.

And so, the economic trinity is revealed to us. So, the Father is clearly distinguished from the Son, the Son clearly distinguished from the Spirit, in a way that is much clearer to us than before creation, because we are part of creation, and our knowledge of what took place before creation began is rather limited.

But this idea of equality does not mean sameness, does not mean the same offices, it does not mean functioning in the same way. It was not the Spirit who became incarnate, it was not the Father who became incarnate, it was the Son who became incarnate, and so, they take different roles in the accomplishment of the one work of salvation, which is not focused upon mankind, it's focused upon God and a demonstration of His mercy, His graces, love, His power, and His judgment.

That's like a big strong point. They are all equal, they speak together in unity. Speak together in unity. What do you mean by that?

It sounds like a strongman. They certainly are not saying contradictory things. It doesn't mean that they're always saying the same things or doing the same things. There is perfect harmony between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, but harmony is not sameness.

Harmony is not sameness. And so that's a big thing that I've seen a lot of people say, like, they're three, but they're all equal, you know, in power and authority. So why does, in John 14, Jesus say, the Father is greater than me?

It amazes me that anyone— I mean, I fully understand when I encounter someone who was raised within one's Pentecostalism and maybe has not had a lot of encounters with people from outside their own very small cadre of individuals, I could get that.

And when I encounter Jehovah's Witnesses who quote this and stuff, but it's very hard for me to understand how anyone could put themselves forward as any type of a teacher who is not already fully aware of what the responses— and I don't mean internet responses.

If what you know about Trinitarianism is derived from comm boxes and YouTube, I'm sorry, I have a really hard time respecting that. When I studied Oneness Pentecostalism, I went to the best Oneness Pentecostal writers, and I bought their books, and I read their materials.

We've tried to set up some debates with some of the leading individuals, not the young guns that no one's ever heard of before, but the people who have actually published, have some type of an influence in their movement, and would still like to do that in the future.

But you go to the original sources, and if Marcus Rogers would read almost any book, any meaningful work of scholarship on the subject of the Trinity, all these questions would be answered for him very, very clearly.

And John chapter 14, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, Mormons, Unitarians, Oneness Pentecostals, everybody quotes it, but they almost never quote it in context. The Father is greater than I am. What's the context of that?

What's the rest of the verse talking about? What's the context of the verse? Jesus has just said that he's going back into the presence of the Father, and he says to the disciples, if you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because the Father is greater than I am.

So there's a clear context. The Father didn't become incarnate. The Father is not being followed around by Pharisees that are trying to catch him at every word. The Father is not being surrounded by sick people with every kind of disease surrounding the house that he's in.

The Father has not had dust fall down upon his head from people breaking through the roof to drop paralytics down toward him to be healed. The Son has entered into human experience. And so the Father has not become incarnate.

And so the Father is in a greater position. He is on the throne of heaven, surrounded by the seraphim and the cherubim. He is not walking the dusty roads of Galilee. And so the Son is going to return back.

If you just read a few chapters on, Jesus himself will say in that high priestly prayer in John 17, 5, Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you in your presence before the world was. He does not have that glory.

He has laid that glory aside voluntarily to function as the Messiah, to function as the sacrifice for God's people. And so he is going to return back to that glorious position that was once his. And so this is not saying the Father is better than I am.

But in a debate, my response back would be, then who is the Son? Because if you are saying that the Father is greater than the Son, do you believe that the Son has eternally existed? When did the Son come into existence?

Is the Son going to be interceding for us? How is it that the Son is worshipped by all created things in Revelation chapter 5? So that's why debates are what debates are. Because they don't always, but should at least, place both sides in the position of having to answer as many questions as they themselves are asking.

It doesn't always work out that way, but it sometimes does, and that's very, very useful.

Right? If they're all equal, why does Jesus say the Father is greater?

Okay, there's clear equivocation, clear error, category error, on Mr. Rogers' part. Mr. Rogers' part. That sounds weird. All equal. That does not mean they're all the same. Anyone who can make that objection has not even the beginning of an understanding of what the doctrine of Trinity is.

So if you deny it, but you don't even understand what it is, it's not a good thing. That does not cause people to go, that's a meaningful objection. You're objecting to something you do not understand.

We are not saying that the Father became incarnate. We are not saying that the Spirit became incarnate. So if you say, well, they're all equal, then how can one be greater than the other? Because the Son voluntarily entered into human flesh to become the God-man.

The Father did not, and the Spirit did not. That's not even an objection. When you raise objections that are not even an objection, that helps the other side. It really does, when people understand what the doctrine actually is.

If they're all equal, this is a separate question. Why doesn't Jesus know the day or the hour? Mark 13, 32, he says, only my Father knows. So are they keeping information from him? Because, like, you don't have the right security clearance, so we know this, but you don't need to know this?

Of course, again, those who have listened to this program, we have addressed this subject as it's been raised by Muslims, by Mormons, by Jehovah's Witnesses, all for different purposes, which is interesting.

But again, at this point, if it would be helpful at this point to have a specific confession of faith to understand exactly how an advocate of some type of modalism would find this to be a meaningful objection.

And maybe I've misunderstood where he's coming from. It's been a couple of years since I even had heard of the gentleman, and I know we've responded to his stuff in the past. My understanding is that he's some sort of modalist, and so a modalist would have to answer this question as well.

And normally, the modalist would do it by dividing Jesus into multiple persons, to where the non-divine son doesn't know, but the other part of him, because he's sort of schizophrenic, so he has one side that prays to the other side, and one side knows stuff the other side doesn't know.

My response is that just as Jesus laid aside the exercise of a number of his divine prerogatives, including the display of his glory, which was briefly changed on the Mount of Transfiguration when he was transfigured before the disciples, and they saw his glory as he truly was, and yet when they come down from the mountain, that glory is no longer displayed.

So there had to be a veiling, a laying aside, a voluntary laying aside. To point out the Philippians chapter 2 verse 7 says that he made himself of no reputation. This is something Jesus did, and so the laying aside of certain aspects of divine knowledge, evidently, for what reasons I do not know, we're not told, was incompatible with Jesus's function as the Messiah, just as walking down the streets of Jerusalem, glowing with the Shekinah glory of God, would have precluded his being able to fulfill the position and function of the Messiah in the way that God intended for the Messiah to live and to die.

That would have fit how the Jews would have liked it, but that's not what God's intention was. So there is a veiling. It is for the period of the Incarnation. I am quite certain that Jesus is well aware of the day and the hour today, but at that point in time, it's interesting, though, that even in those words in Mark 13 and Matthew as well, when Jesus says, no one knows the day or the hour, in that same section, he identifies himself as the Son and separates himself both from men and angels.

And so again, that raises the question, what is Marcus Rogers' view of who Jesus is? Is he the God-man? And if so, who is the Son? Is the Son two persons? And how can the Son be ontologically above men and angels if he came into existence in Bethlehem?

Again, these are questions that would need to have an answer and would have to be answered in a debate context.

All right. If they always speak in unity, why did Jesus say, let this cup pass for me? And also, when he was praying—.

Okay, another straw man. If they always speak in unity, what does that mean? Where does the doctrine of the Trinity say that they can only say the same words when they're taking different functions? When Jesus says, let this cup pass for me, he is speaking as the sinless Son of God prior to taking on the sins of man.

So, he is not fearing death. In fact, he's not fearing anything. It's the sinless one facing, becoming sin for us, which again, absolutely unique, never happened before, never happened again, completely cosmos-altering reality there.

But that has nothing to do with the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus, as the God-man, faced the reality. He said, it is necessary that I go to Jerusalem. It is necessary I be betrayed and be killed and rise again the third day.

But in speaking of that tremendous self-giving, it's not the death that's in view. It is that taking on the sin. And certainly, the Son would not go, this is going to be fun. No, it was. But if he knew what the outcome was, then why does it matter?

You're still talking about the one who is going to be made sin for us. It's hard for us to even begin to imagine what that actually would involve and what that would mean. But that's what he's referring to there.

It's, again, this very shallow, straw-man-ish, well, if they're all equal, they all say the same thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a very, very simplistic objection to a doctrine that's much deeper than these objections even give ear to.

Why did he pray to the Father and not the Holy Spirit?

Why did he pray? That's like saying, why did he use these words and not other words? He did. There's not a why. Why should he? His regular practice is to pray to the Father. He is being assisted and aided by the Holy Spirit, but his prayer is to the Father.

He says, glorify me with the glory which I had in your presence before the world was, addressed to the Father. Why? This kind of objection, it has no substance. It's just, it's air moving, but it's like, why are you even asking that?

What's the relevance of it? Where in the doctrine of the Trinity is there something that would demand that he pray to the Holy Spirit? There's nothing. So it's just like, I'm going to throw some stuff out there and see what sticks.

What's the reasoning for it? We're not told. Did the Holy Spirit's opinion not matter? Because when he prayed, he said, let this go. First of all, his will was not lined up with the Father and the Holy Spirit,.

No, of course it was. Of course it was.

Of course, what do you mean it wasn't? He did it, didn't he? That doesn't mean that just because he knew it was going to happen, that he cannot express the reality of just the recoil. Can you imagine being eternally holy and then having the sins of all of God's people placed upon you and treated and experienced the wrath of God in their place?

I guess you can't because you don't understand the gospel. You don't understand the trinitarian nature of the gospel in the first place. I don't even understand in, again, if this is some type of oneness expression, I don't even understand how that works from your perspective.

What was going on there? Intercession, the prayers in Gethsemane. Was this one part of Jesus praying to another part of Jesus or something? I've often said that not only are the prayers of Jesus impossible for this perspective to understand, but the atonement itself doesn't make any sense.

I mean, how is this, how is the wrath of the Father falling on the Father? I mean, it makes sense in a trinitarian fashion because you have the Son voluntarily taking the place of those who are united with him and so on and so forth, but you, how does that work within some type of oneness perspective, if that's what's being presented?

I say they're all, you know, they speak as one. They're in unity. They share the same will, all that kind of stuff. So was he in rebellion to the Father and the Holy Spirit because his will at the time did not line up?

He was saying, let this cup pass from me. I don't want to. And then not only that, in the prayer, he didn't even acknowledge the Holy Spirit. He only prayed to the Father.

Okay, lots of straw men, lots of misunderstanding of who Jesus is, lots of misunderstanding of Dr. Trinity, very, very shallow, missing the point. But sadly, there are a lot of, you know, if you want to find a reason to not believe, it's not difficult to find a reason not to believe.

It's, you can, when I listen to many of my Muslim friends, one of the things they like to do is they like to isolate phrases from the Athanasian Creed, knowing that anyone who reads the Athanasian Creed without a context to it can just make it sound crazy.

I mean, it's just, it's just crazy talk. When you read it in context, then it's addressing very important issues and it's perfectly logical. But anybody who wants to come up with a way, I mean, you can do this with God's eternality.

You can do this with God's creator. You can do this with God's goodness, his knowledge of future events. It's just anybody who wants to find a reason to not believe will be able to do so. And you cannot stop that.

God will stop that someday. Justice will be done. But there is no, you know, people want the silver, you know, the quote unquote silver bullet, the thing that this is the one argument that'll shut anybody down.

Nope, there is no such one argument. You guys say they all, you know, communicate together. Um, in Matthew 28, why does it say name instead of names? When the Bible said, when Jesus said to baptize in the name of the father, son, and the Holy Spirit, it's a one name, a singular name.

Okay.

Where in the Bible, different question. Where in the Bible. Okay, different question going on to the standard Jesus only stuff. Baptizing them in the name of the father, son of the son and of the Holy Spirit.

So, um, I've recommended, I, I would recommend for Marcus Rogers, but I'm not sure he'd bother to do it. But, uh, I've recommended many times the excellent work of, um, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield on the subject of the Trinity studies and the Trinity, uh, and excellent work.

He does Yeoman's work on Matthew chapter 28 and what it meant to be baptized into someone's name. Um, but, uh, the idea here is not to go into a Hebrew understanding of name, uh, and how one divine name associates the father, son, the Holy Spirit in the same way, uh, that not only did the New Testament writers, uh, identify each of these divine persons as Yahweh, um, but that this, this unifies them in representing the one true God, but distinguishes them from one another, um, which is what the doctrine of the Trinity does.

But the objection here, um, is that what you should understand in Matthew 28, um, is that instead of taking this as a formula, which is what Christians have done down through the centuries, what you should have understood from their perspective is that when you come to the book of Acts, they're baptized in the name of Jesus.

And of course, our perspective is that is the formula, and what you have in Acts is just simply shorthand for Christian baptism. In other words, the, what you have in Acts is not the specific words that says, I baptize you in Jesus's name, which is the one name of father, son, Holy Spirit, uh, which really wouldn't, even when a theology isn't the one name, because Jesus wasn't the spirit at the time he was incarnate, was he?

Was the name, was God's name Jesus before the incarnation? None of that makes any sense. But the argument is, well, you're, you're baptized in Jesus's name only, even though the person who's identified as Jesus was the father in the Old Testament, was the father and the son during the ministry of Jesus, and is now the spirit.

And I don't know where the, I don't know where the, where the son went in, in their theology, in this particular man's theology.

I don't know what ends up having him. Where in the Bible, different question, where in the Bible did anybody get baptized father, son, Holy Spirit? The answer is not Matthew 28. That was Jesus telling them how to baptize, and nobody was baptized in Matthew 28.

So from that point on, every time somebody was baptized, they baptized them in the name of Jesus.

So the assertion being that in the book of Acts, when they receive Christian baptism, baptism in the name of Jesus, that's actual, that's an actual quote. So you have the actual quote from Jesus, baptized this way, but that's not really meant to be taken literally.

And then you get the general statements, they're baptized, Christian baptism in the name of Jesus. Oh, but that's a direct quote. So the direct quote becomes a non-quote, and the non-quotes become the quote.

See how that works? It's, that's how it works.

So when he says, let us baptize in the name of the father, son, and Holy Spirit, the apostles went and baptized in the name of Jesus. Nobody got baptized father, son, Holy Spirit anywhere in the Bible.

Some people have argued with me. They said, well, the apostles did it wrong. Like I said, the Bible can't contradict itself. Who was speaking to Abraham and Jonah when the Bible says the word of the Lord came to them, right?

When, when the word of the Lord came to Abraham and Jonah, Saul on the Damascus road, when Moses was talking to the burning bush, I know the angel was there, but then the voice said, I am what I am. What was that voice?