The Forgotten Trinity

My name is Jason Wallace. I am the pastor here. We welcome you to Christ Presbyterian Church and to our apologetics conference.

A few things before we get started. Ladies room, go through the double doors, take an immediate right and head straight back.

Men's room, go all the way across the fellowship hall, then take a right and go straight to the back.

We are going to have pink lemonade and cookies after the presentation this evening.

So we invite you to stick around. Some of the cookies have nuts. Yes, some of the cookies have nuts.

Some of the cookies aren't. Be warned.

If you have an allergy, you're probably going to have to fly to Charlotte to not come. Anyway, it is very nice to see a number of people from other congregations.

We have a free will Baptist and an independent Baptist. But anyway, if you are not familiar with us, we are a congregation, which means that we are a remnant of those who still believe the

Bible. We received the Langston Christian Fellowship out of Mainline Presbyterian Church nearly 80 years ago.

We still believe the Bible is our only and powerful rule of faith and practice. We are centered, say, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.

And all that we do is speak to God's glory alone. And so we try to stress that simple rite of worship is positive for your preaching.

Rather than lots of programs, we try to equip and encourage fathers to be the spiritual heads of their homes.

We think it's far better for a family to be gathered around the dining room table, reading the

Bible together than all the slickest programs in the world. If you'd like more information on us, there are some flyers around.

I'll be hanging around as well. And it is a privilege to have you with us.

We'll be continuing to meet tomorrow night and Saturday night. The topics will be tomorrow night,

Romans 9, Potter's Freedom. Then Saturday night, with it being July 4th, we figured that we would go for something tame and non -controversial like homosexuality in Trinity.

But at any rate, it is a great privilege to have Dr. Williams, president of Alpha Omega Ministries.

He is the author of twenty -some -odd, I think, books now?

Twenty -four. Only twenty -four. But he has participated in part of over 130 formal moderated debates.

He did a host of different things. You missed last night's presentation.

A better recording of the same material is available on YouTube. It's on YouTube, but a better version is also on YouTube.

It's not on our channel. But we are going to be posting all these up there.

It's a great privilege to have him.

This is his gift to us. He has known us for many years and contacted me several months ago.

He has basically volunteered to come here without speaking to any moderators. It is an honor to be back with you again this evening.

It seemed like it was a little bit cloudy out there. I got up this morning.

I had been exploring. Every time I was on Lake City in the past, I was just ready to come up and do whatever.

Do debates, stay outside the temple, etc. I had always seen those canyons going off those huge mountains.

I knew that there were a whole lot of skiers that come up during the winter to explore those places.

Well, now I'm getting to explore them. This morning, I discovered a place called

Garzman Pass. On my bike, I started down at the bottom, rode up to the top there, and went,

Wow, this is really nice. There are some beautiful, beautiful areas up there. I'm enjoying that.

I'm sort of killing myself in the process. But arriving here in the morning and speaking during the evening and this evening, we have a subject that is in one sense similar to last evening in the idea that it requires of us a fair amount of concentration and work.

But very different. It's one of the reasons I chose not to use the projector this evening. I have, obviously, entire presentations on this that I can present to you.

But I decided I wanted to go a little more sermonic rather than professorial, shall we say.

In talking about our God and talking about why we believe what the Christian Church has professed for its entire history, really, when you go back to the very earliest world outside of the

New Testament, it's interesting to note that, for example, Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, on his way to a martyrdom in Rome, wrote seven letters.

And in those letters, he over and over again expressed full belief in the deity of Christ.

He had a very high Christology. This was not something that just developed over time.

This was something that you find not only in the pages of Scripture, but in the earliest faith as well.

And so, to me, it is vitally important that we know who God is.

Because what differentiates between Christianity and paganism is that in paganism you worship unknown gods.

You remember on Mars Hill, Acts chapter 17, the

Apostle Paul latches on to that image, that altar to an unknown god.

They're sort of covering their bases, just in case there was somebody out there that somehow had forgotten to communicate clearly.

Or maybe it chose a prophet that was very absent -minded. Who knows? I mean, if you think about how that all worked.

And he latched on to that, and he talked about this unknown god, and said that actually the one true god has revealed himself.

We do not worship an unknown god. And we do not worship a god that you can edit down to make comfortable to us.

Well, when I say we, I'm talking about those who truly desire to worship God, who desire His honor.

We do live in a day when much of what calls itself Christianity is, in fact, creating a designer god.

Creating a god that will not make demands upon them. Creating a god that is more psychologically fulfilling to worship.

That idea that you can, in essence, determine how you're going to worship God in such a way as to make you feel the best when you walk out the back door.

This kind of a Christianity is very popular in Atlanta. It is, however,

I would suggest, utterly unknown to the page of the scripture itself. And in fact, in my experience, as I seek to interact with Christians who struggle with certain elements of the

Christian faith, I am over and over again struck by the fact that when you raise issues in the scriptures where God reveals

Himself and He reveals certain aspects of His being that are the most challenging to sinful man, that is really when you find out whether someone is under the authority of the

Word of God or whether they are not. Because when you think about it, there are certain things that God has revealed about Himself that are uncomfortable to any sinful person.

The holiness of God. You think what happens in Isaiah chapter 6. You think about that encounter where Isaiah, one of the holiest men in Israel, sees

God as He truly is. And what is the immediate response of this holy man but to say,

I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips, and I live amongst a people of unclean lips.

In other words, once he saw God for who God truly was, then he saw Himself for who

He truly was. And I think that's what people are concerned about. They don't really, they're afraid of seeing who they really are reflected in the reality of who

God really is. I know some of you may have read in your experience in your lifetime a book called

The Institutes of Christian Religion. And I've often said that the vast majority of that book, the ink still smudges on the page.

It remains so relevant to where we are today. It starts off with this discussion of what comes first, our knowledge of ourselves or our knowledge of God.

And basically it comes down to the conclusion that, well, we need to know God rightly to know ourselves.

Because if we are His creatures, then a true knowledge of Him will give us the proper context to truly know ourselves.

We live in a day, however, where the idea that God has spoken with clarity and therefore has revealed

Himself is not something that is shared by a large majority of people. And I have to report to you, it's not actually shared functionally and meaningfully by a large proportion of the people who actually call themselves

Christians. When you look into what is taught in the seminaries, when you look into what is taught in Bible colleges across our land, you will discover that a belief in the true inspiration and revelation of Scripture is a small minority.

Even amongst people who would say otherwise, to really treat the Bible as what it claims to be, and even more so as what

Jesus taught it to be, is unfortunately a rarity. In the vast majority of instances, that word is subjugated under all sorts of other traditions or subjugated to the mind of man or whatever authority you want to put over it, that's what ends up happening.

Now, what does this have to do with our subject this evening? Well, let me begin with this thing. If you don't believe that God has spoken with clarity, if you do not have the highest view of Scripture, you will never believe the

Doctrine of Trinity. Because the Doctrine of Trinity is based upon two fundamental assertions,

Sola Scriptura, that Scripture alone is the sole and valid rule of faith, and Tota Scriptura, that we must accept and believe all that God has revealed in Scripture.

We can't get to pick and choose, we can't say, well, well, there's a fairly well -known fellow who, what, about two or three weeks ago now, came out and switched his position and did the flip -flop that many people are doing today on the subject of marriage and human sexuality, and he calls himself a red -letter

Christian. A red -letter Christian. Now, I have talked in the past about what

I call hyper -red -letterism. There are those people who basically seem to think that if the words are printed in red, they're more inspired than if they're printed in black.

There's a lot of people who take that view, whether they want to say that or not. The point is, this particular fellow, well -known guy, wants to create a view of Jesus.

He creates a Jesus that amazingly looks a lot like him. And then, with that view of Jesus, he then wants to read everything else in Scripture through that particular lens.

Now, what that results in is, well, if you do that, then you don't have to worry anymore about all those troubling passages in the

Old Testament where, well, isn't everyone just a little bit bothered by, like,

Belusa? I mean, is Belusa really one of the favorite childhood

Bible stories? Sometimes you're going, who in the world is Belusa? Belusa was that nice, he seems like to us, his nice guy.

And remember the people of Israel, they're moving the Ark, and they're not doing exactly right.

God had said it should be carried on poles by the priests, but they decided there was a more effective, more efficient way of doing it, and so they had it on a cart.

And one of the oxen stumbles, and the cart stops for tip, and Belusa, what a tragedy would it be for this beautiful Ark of the

Covenant to fall upon the ground, and so he reaches out, and he keeps it from falling, and he saves the day.

God strikes again. And a lot of us, we sit back, and we look at that, and we go,

I don't like it. Now, when Aaron's sons were consumed, they got out from a strange fire, and they were struck dead before God.

We don't know much about them, and we don't really know what they were up to, we're not really sure what the strange fire thing was, despite any conferences that were recently held in California and Japan.

We're really not sure about any of that stuff, and so we're like, well, it seems really strict, you know, this

God seems really strict. But Belusa really bothers us, really, really causes problems.

So what a lot of people do is they take Jesus, and they take the Jesus lens, and then they look through, that's the lens they've created themselves, and then they look back at the

Old Testament, and all of a sudden, the entire swaths of the Old Testament disappear. All that stuff about bringing

Israel to the land, and destroying the Amorites, and judgment, and, you know, all that stuff just disappears because we have a new lens that we can look through.

The problem is, once you start playing with scripture like that, there really isn't any stopping point.

And there really isn't any reason to continue to believe the things that we have believed down through the centuries, either.

Because unless you have the highest view of scripture, you will not be a biblical trinitarian.

Now I know, I know, if you go off to the university, or the community college, you're going to be told that the

Doctrine and Trinity developed over time, and it's just a matter of believing what the

Council of Nicaea said, and then reaffirmed the Council of Constantinople, and you've got Chalcedon, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

And it's all just historical meanderings of the Church, once it's sort of lost rooting in the

Bible. That's not the case. The only reason to believe the Trinity is because you are willing to believe everything that the

Bible says about God. And if you don't believe the Bible's God's self -revelation, there's absolutely no reason to believe the

Trinity. And I'm sorry, I know there are people who say, well, you know, if you look up in the sky, you'll see that there are certain constellations, but that constellation and that constellation, it reveals the truth.

And I just sort of go, what? I mean, I know there are some good folks who sort of believe that kind of stuff, but I don't even know how to begin to try to defend something like that from the pages of Scripture.

The reason we believe in the Trinity is because we believe all that Scripture teaches about God.

Now, let me give you a definition, and warn you ahead of time. I am not one of those people that discusses this subject without passion.

I believe this is central to our worship. I believe it's central to our Christian experience.

I am not claiming to be some objective scholar just examining the evidence. I am a biblical

Trinitarian. I am forced to believe in the Trinity by the revelation of Scripture itself.

And so I'm not one of those folks who starts off with all the philosophical definitions and all the rest of that stuff, and then eventually might get around to looking at my own.

My focus this evening, if that's the right time to do so, is looking at the three foundational doctrines that make up the doctrine of the

Trinity, that force us to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity from the Scriptural definition. But I do have to begin with the definition, given the fact that, well,

I recently have been having the opportunity of going down to South Africa, for example. And one of the first conversations

I had when I got there before my posts was the fact that, in essence, the majority of what calls itself the

Christian Church in South Africa is not Trinitarian. It claims to be.

But in reality, the vast majority of people in South Africa that claim to be

Christian could never define the doctrine of the Trinity accurately. They do not believe that it's central or important.

There are no sermons on the subject. Some people thought that some of the seminars I did there were the first seminars on that subject in 50 years in that country.

And so you can have people, and you can have churches, I mean, while the liberal mainline denominations still have the doctrine of the

Trinity in their creeds, they don't believe it. They don't really believe it's a divine revelation, but it's still there.

And so when you ask people what is the doctrine of the Trinity, when my Muslim friends ask people that in South Africa, they get a lot of different answers.

And I'll be honest, I think that if you were to go to most evangelical churches this coming

Sunday, and pass out just a short little quiz, a basic little quiz on what the doctrine of the

Trinity is, I do not have any confidence that 50 % of the people who pass that quiz, and in fact

I have a feeling that about 70 % would prove themselves to be heretical of the doctrine of the

Trinity. But completely out of ignorance. Completely out of ignorance. You rarely hear sermons on the doctrine.

I started my book, Forgotten Trinity, by saying I love the Trinity, and then I said when was the last time you heard someone say that?

When was the last time you heard someone say I love the Trinity? And the reason

I think you don't hear that is because people don't say they love something that they don't understand.

And I think most of us as believers are a little uncomfortable. When Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, if you challenge them, the first thing they're going to do is run to attack on the

Trinity, because they've found that to be the most effective way of silencing something, because they realize that Christians are extremely hesitant to really dive into the defense of the

Trinity, or even if they do, their knowledge is so fragmentary and self -contradictory that it's easy to end up tying them in knots.

In fact, back before YouTube became what YouTube is today, back in the 90s,

I remember going to a large church in Florida in the late 90s, and what

I used to like to do is I would role -play. I would go in and I would role -play, because no one had seen me before, and so it was easy to sort of sneak in, and I would role -play.

And I was teaching a junior high school class. Do we have any junior high school teachers in here?

Do we have people who teach either junior high schoolers or Sunday school teachers in junior high? Oh, there's one person in the entire room.

Well, you have my sincerest respect, because as I look at it, we're born, and we start that process of maturation, moving toward adulthood, toward true humanity, and then this happens.

It goes like that. That's the junior high school years right there for you. You get back down below the human level into some puzzle, and then somewhere around the middle of sophomore year, you start coming back out toward humanity again.

And so anyone who can survive teaching junior high schoolers deserves at least a

Purple Heart, if not a congressional one. Anyway, I had a junior high school class to teach on film, but this is what we did.

We had the youth minister. Why do we have youth ministers who are old? I mean, does that really make sense?

Take the most immature person we have, take the other most immature people we have. Isn't that a graphic thing?

It's like I'm driving by all these fireworks little shops out in the heat.

I'm trying to sort of get out of here. It's very frightening to me.

But anyway, the youth minister comes in, and he introduces me as Elder White from the local kingdom hall.

And since we've been talking about what other people believe, then we've got him to come, and he's going to talk to us.

And so I start talking with the youth minister, and within 30 seconds,

I had the youth minister spouting Harrison. I turned him into a mobilist, like that.

And then once you've got that, it's really easy to tie it up in a little bow and just...

And the kids, that was the only way to get them to listen. I mean, they're actually feeling bad for the youth minister for once in a while.

It shows some compassion for them. You can only go halfway through the class that way, because it's going to take at least half the class to undo the damage that you did during the first part, once you tell them who you really are.

But they really listened. I mean, if I was just some guy from Arizona, they would never listen.

It was so easy to get even a staff member to start spouting

Harrison in the Doctrine of Trinity. It took literally 30 seconds. And so I am concerned that there is a tremendous amount of confusion, and if we do not have clarity on the

Doctrine of Trinity, we will not be captured in seeking to defend it, and we will not see it being properly applied to the entirety of our worship.

And by the way, the Gospel is Trinitarian in its nature as well. So if we don't understand that, we are going to have some serious difficulties.

So, let's start with the definition. Within the one being that is

God, there exist eternally three co -equal, co -eternal persons, the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, that is one sentence. It is not even a majorly compact sentence.

That is one sentence. And you would think, well, if you can define something in one sentence, then how complex can it really be?

But the problem is most people conflate to the terms that I just used.

Let me repeat again. Within the one being, that is the first term, that is

God, there exist eternally three co -equal, co -eternal persons.

There is the other word. Namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, those who oppose the doctrine of Trinitarianism say, well, what you are saying is one plus one plus one equals one.

And what they are hearing us say is that there are three persons that are one person. Or there are three beings that are one being.

And we are playing around with the meanings of one and three. But being and person are not the same thing.

Now you say, well, you are going to go to the Bible, and we are going to get all philosophical. Well, I believe this is forced upon us by the testimony of Scripture itself.

But let me at least define it, and then we will see if that is indeed the case. Being is what makes something what it is.

Person is what makes someone who they are. And so, these are distinctions that we recognize in the creative order all around us every single day.

A rock has been. And in fact, one of the reasons that I was tapping the brakes quite as much as I was coming down the mountain this morning is that there were the shadows of trees on the road.

And sometimes those shadows can hide things like a rock. And it doesn't take a very big rock when your tire is only that wide to send you sprawling on the ground.

And so, a rock has been. Trust me, if I hit one at 40 miles an hour,

I will be able to testify to you that a rock has been. It has substance. If you have ever gotten nailed by one, you know, when we were kids, we were stupid when we were kids, and we threw rocks at each other.

I mean, you know, Mom and Dad told us not to do that, but they were building houses near where I lived when

I was a teenager. And there would be this period of time where it was really cool because they were digging these pits where they were running the sewer and stuff in the house.

So, once the people that were working were gone, there would be a period of time where you could have the most cool

Army games in the world. I mean, you've got one pit, and you tossed dirt plots at the guy in the other pit who was, you couldn't see him, so you started doing the bombing thing.

But of course, what's inside a dirt plot anyways? Rocks! So, yeah, we just about knocked each other silly, and I realize that in today's politically correct world, that would be a really dumb thing to do, but it was a lot of fun.

But a rock has been, but it's not personal. So, if you're not old enough to remember this, and you young people will laugh, but I bet you

Jason wouldn't. There was a time, there was a brief period where there was a craze of having pet rocks.

Pet rocks. Pet rocks. No, no, no, you don't remember that. This was 1970 -something. It was a

Weird Al song. Oh, okay. Pet rocks. Now, you've got to be pretty desperate to have a pet rock.

You can't even get along with a cat. Dog, what? You don't need to feed the rock.

You don't need to feed the rock, that's true. But you don't get much from the rock. Why? Because while a rock has been, it is not personal.

No matter what you say to it, you can hold it, and you can pet it, and you can say nice words to it.

Or you can use it to throw the guy in the next ditch over at the thousand plus development.

It won't make any difference. It doesn't care because it's not personal. It is not personal.

The Bible reveals that God is personal. The Bible reveals that we are personal.

We are each human beings, that's what makes us what we are. But we are each different in the personhood that is ours, the who that we are.

And when we have people who think that there are many people, we generally try to take them to a nice place where people keep them in a nice soft room and things like that.

It's unnatural for us to have the idea that our being can be shared by multiple persons.

When we come to talk about God, the question is, does the Bible say to us that there is one being that is

God? Does the Bible say to us that there are three persons who are differentiated from one another?

Is that what the revelation of Scripture is all about? Now I want to be practical.

I want you to be able to take some notes, go away with some text, maybe to be memorizing and to consider to commit to memory.

But I also want it to be very clear for you to understand exactly what it is we're saying.

So, what are the three doctrines that I say force us to believe the doctrine of Trinity?

If you've ever had a discussion about this, I know many of you have. Many Christians have said, well, you know,

I've tried to have a conversation with a Dylan Dwight, whether you're here in Salt Lake City, it's a member of the

LDS Church, or whether it's one of your local elipuses, or maybe a one that's kind of hostile, or whatever else it might be, or maybe just a confused

Baptist passing next door. I mean, I've had to talk with some of my own Baptist friends about this. Very often the conversation is frustrating because it doesn't end it goes from one verse to another verse, to another topic, to another topic, and you get done after two hours and you feel like you accomplished absolutely nothing.

Anybody ever had that experience? Yeah, I did. It helps if you and I have real clarity in our own thought as to what the

Bible teaches and once you have that down then as you're listening to someone else you can go, okay, what they've just said violates maybe two of these three things, one of these three things, they've got a misunderstanding of this doctrine here.

If we understand what the foundations are, then as we listen to someone else, then it's going to be up to us to do the listening and to figure these things out.

We're the ones that have to build the bridges, we're the ones that have to communicate. Then we'll be able to bring them to the scripture rather than well, my opinion is this or my opinion is that.

And I think that's vitally important. So what's the very first foundation of the doctrine of the church? Well, there's no question, it is the biblical doctrine of monotheism.

Biblical doctrine of monotheism. Now my Muslim friends insist that we are not actually monotheists.

That we do not believe there's only one God. That's because there are people who confuse monotheism with Unitarianism.

Now what do those two words mean? Well monotheism simply means there is only one

God. Now there are subcategories of monotheism, we can talk about some of those things, but what we are saying there is only one true

God, we are saying there is one true God who created all things, who himself is uncreated.

He made everything else, he is unlike anything else, he is absolutely unique, he is the ground of all being, anything else that exists, exists because God created it.

Now, how is that different than Unitarianism? Well, I don't know if you have the

Unitarian churches around here, you've got your next door neighbor down the road, what is a congregational church?

UCC. United Church of Christ? Oh, okay, alright, that's interesting. I've never seen one of those before.

Very little foundation. Oh yeah, very little foundation. I'm well aware of the UCC. They need to cut all those seats off.

But anyways, you may have heard Unitarian churches and you may have sat down next to a nice little lady at a restaurant once and she described,

I'm Unitarian and we just love to have everyone. And you've heard of the Unitarian Universalist Church, where they'll very frequently have cat dealings and things like that.

It's a very interesting denomination, but that's not what we're talking about. Unitarianism is the idea that the being of God is shared by only one person, unity,

Unitarian. So, they may be monotheists historically speaking, and then

Unitarian, one being, one person. That's different than Trinitarian, one being, three persons.

In between, you might have Binitarianism, where there would be two persons, something like that. But monotheism, the opposite of monotheism, is polytheism, believing in many gods.

There's also something called Enotheism, where you have one main god and lesser gods that lead that god, etc. Like I said, there are different categories.

Now, if you go to almost any Bible school or seminary today that, again, has a low view of Scripture, that has a view of Scripture that says, well, these are men's best thoughts about God evolved over time, you'll be taught that the original

Israelites were polytheists, who over time became enotheists, who eventually, in the late 5th or the 10th century, became monotheists.

And they're the ones who look at the Old Testament and chop it up into all sorts of different parts, and this is the

J part, this is the E part, this is the D part, that's the P part there, that's the Priestly and the

Eloist and the Deuteronomist and the Aoist, and you just chop it up into a thousand pieces, and then you can make it say anything you want it to say.

Now, I went to a seminary way to my left, way to my left, when

I did my first math. And now, it's so far to the left, I'd have to look to the right to see how far it is.

But all of my Old Testament professors presented this material, and all the commentaries

I had to read presented from that perspective, all of those things. So I'm not ignorant of the arguments,

I'm not just a knee -jerk reaction against quote -unquote liberalism. But the simple fact of the matter is, that is not how

Jesus viewed the Scriptures. And I sort of think, if you're going to call yourself a

Christian, does it really make sense for you to go, I'm going to entrust myself to Jesus for my eternal salvation, but when it comes to Scripture, I think

I know a little therapy. And yet, that's what we have in so much of Christian scholarship and academia today.

And I don't understand it. And so, I'm going to go with Jesus' view, when he quotes from the

Old Testament, and Matthew, there's this incredible section in Matthew chapter 22, when he says to men standing right in front of him, have you not read what

God spoke to you saying, and he quoted from what had been written 1400 years earlier.

From Jesus' perspective, those words were spoken by God, and every person living in each generation has held account of what

God said back then. That is a high view of Scripture. When you have a high view of Scripture, you'll be able to understand what the

Bible actually teaches about God. If you refuse to chop it up into pieces, and cut it into shreds, if you allow it to actually stand, and say what does this body of revelation, yes, 40 different authors, 1500 years, that's part of the miraculous nature of Scripture.

What does it teach about who God is? It teaches, first and foremost, there is only one true

God. Now, I know I have spent many hours downtown

Salt Lake City, talking with our Mormon friends about this very subject.

Because as you know, the King Paul funeral discourse, which used to be really authoritative, but is anything really authoritative anymore?

I don't know. Other than just the emotions and feelings. But, it used to be that there would be a lot of weight placed in the words of Joseph Smith, and he said, and we have imagined and supposed, that God was

God for long terms, and I'll refute that idea and take away the veil, so that you may see. Well, we had a lot of conversations, because if you try to refute the idea that God has got to be

God for all eternity, you have separated yourself and your followers forever from the

God of the Scriptures. Because the God that Jesus thought was the one true

God, every morning Jesus would get up, just like every other good Jewish person did, and he and his disciples would say,

Sh'ma Yisrael, Yahweh Elohimu, Yahweh of God. Here, O Israel, Yahweh is our

God, Yahweh is one. And that absolute monotheism was extended to every aspect of the

Jews, and it is what is revealed to us in the Scriptures themselves.

And in fact, it has very interesting applications, especially up here, and we do talk about Mormonism, because, as some of you may know, not during the days of Joseph Smith, but after him, there was further evolution in the

LDS understanding of the Godhead, and eventually the First Presidency defined that the

Father is Elohim, and Jehovah is the Son. Now, that wasn't

Joseph Smith's view, I think that's pretty obvious, but it became the official view when the

First Presidency defined it as such, and that certainly is what is presented in the

LDS temple ceremonies and things like that. And yet, in Scripture, that kind of division, where you have

Elohim as one God and Jehovah as a separate God, is absolutely impossible.

Five hundred and thirty -five times in the Hebrew Old Testament, the joint name Yahweh Elohim is used, of one

God. And in Deuteronomy 4 .3 .5 it says, "...to you it was shown that you might know that Yahweh, He is

Elohim, there is no other besides Him, not them." Now, it's painfully obvious that Joseph Smith did not read the original languages of the

Bible. He tended to a couple times. The reality is that the testimony of Scripture is painfully clear in regards to the subject of the fact that there is only one true

God. And if you ever just want to have this seep into your being, what you need to do is listen to the trial of all times.

The trial of all gods in Isaiah 40 -48. Just sit down at some point and let everything else decide.

Do something modern Americans I think almost get panic when they do. Turn off the TV. Shut off the music.

Silence, I think, scares the millennials. I think millennials are frightened of silence. They've got to have something special to hear.

Something going on. Try doing that and then listening to Isaiah 40 -48.

Yeah, I realize that's going to take more than half an hour of concentrated effort, but the benefits are incredible.

They really, really are. Because here you have God engaging literally in a level of sarcasm that is amazing.

Remember the part in that section where the prophet pictures the man who goes out and he cuts down a tree and he takes the wood and with half the wood he builds a fire and he cooks his food.

And then when he's done, he's filled, you know, he's had his dinner, he takes the other half of the wood and he carves an idol and he falls down and worships the idol.

The sarcasm, the mockery of the foolishness of idolatry is right there on the surface of it.

It's amazing. And one of the things tremendous is we learn from God's demonstrating what failures, false gods are.

We learn a lot about the true God as an example. For example, all through that section,

I am the maker of all things. I am the maker of all things.

In Isaiah chapter 44, verse 24, for example, we are told, thus says

Yahweh your redeemer, the one who formed you from the womb, I, Yahweh, the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spraying out the earth by myself.

You cannot begin to understand almost anything the Bible teaches about God or about human beings, law, meaning, or anything else if you do not have a creator.

If you do not realize He is the creator of all things. It makes no sense.

It is central to everything. That's why our society has completely lost its warriors.

We don't have a creator. We're not made. We're not created. We're not designed. You can't talk about purpose if there is not a created design.

And fundamentally, God stops humanity of its intrinsic and transcendent worth when we view ourselves well, as some people like to put it, as biological bags of fizzing chemicals because that's all we are.

Or for my fellow geeky Trekkies in the audience, you may recall a very accurate description of mankind once.

We were being described by a silicon -based life form as ugly bags of mostly water.

How many of you know ugly bags of mostly water? Okay. Now, mark them out there in the geeks.

That was a great episode. I really like a great episode. Ugly bags of mostly water. Well, if we are ugly bags of mostly water, then any kind of morality, any kind of trying to assign meaning, value of life, beauty, love, it's all meaning.

It's all made up. It's all real. We just do it to make ourselves feel better, but it's actually no. There's nothing there.

And we're seeing results in our society right now. God's creator, because He's the creator, the next thing

He challenges the idols to do is say, tell us what's going to happen tomorrow. Tell us what's going to happen in the future.

The idols can't do that. God says, I can. And then you've got things like Isaiah 9, 6, 7, 14, all those prophecies of the 22nd

Psalm fulfilled in Jesus. He proves that He has knowledge of the future, and then there's something a lot of people missed in that same section when

He's saying, tell us what's going to happen in the future, or tell us what happened in the past, and why it happened.

Ever thought about that one? Historians can tell you what happened in the past, not necessarily for that reason, but they can tell you.

But historians can almost never tell you why it happened. Why it happened.

It seems that God has a divine decree. He has a purpose that He needs to accomplish. He is the creator of all things.

And, by the way, that Isaiah 44, 24 text, you might want to write that one down. Because if you're going to be talking to folks around here, most of you know,

Isaiah 44, 24 is extremely well -known. Because it says that Yahweh tripped out the heavens by Himself, sprouted the earth, all alone.

It's in the Mormon theology. Yahweh didn't do those things alone. In fact, the presentation in the

Mormon Temple is, Elohim sent down Jehovah in company with Michael to organize the earth.

And yet, God says, Yahweh says, I did this by Myself. A little bit of a problem there.

There are so many texts. We can go from Isaiah 43, 10, before we ever forgot, 45, 56, just so many texts that emphasize the fact that it was one true

God. And what's fascinating is we get into the New Testament. The Apostle Paul takes the

Shema, that confession of faith of the Jews, and in Isaiah chapter 8, verses 6 and 7, he expands it out.

Evidently, drawing from something the early Christians did in the very first decade of the existence of the

Christian movement, to make sense of what has happened in the revelation of Jesus Christ.

He expands it out. And this leads me to another point before I go to the next foundation, a

Biblical foundation of the Doctrine of the Trinity. And that is this. Where is the

Doctrine of the Trinity revealed? Where is it revealed? Now, there are people who disagree with me on this.

I'm sorry. It was bizarre. It was bizarre. Excuse me.

We have some eager folks who want to tell us. There are some people who disagree with me about this.

But if you want to know where in the Bible, I believe, the Doctrine of the Trinity is revealed, turn in your

Bible to Matthew chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1.

I'm going to do that after I've got my Allen Revine in the New American Standard.

Matthew chapter 1 and look to the left of verse 1 to the gutter of your

Bible. Or if you want, you can go to Malachi and you can go to chapter 4 verse 6 and again, look right past that, right in between.

That's where the Doctrine of the Trinity is revealed. What is the fundamental revelation of the

Doctrine of the Trinity? It is the incarnation, life, death, burial, and resurrection of the

Son followed by what? The outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

And where did that happen? Between Malachi and Matthew. Everything from Matthew on is a record of that because it's already in the past.

Everything from Malachi onward is looking forward to that happening. So what I'm saying is the revelation of the

Doctrine of the Trinity took place in time and space and biblically, everything through Malachi is looking forward to it.

From Matthew onward is looking back to it and is written in light of it. Think of who

Peter was. Peter was an experiential Trinitarian. He experienced the

Doctrine of the Trinity. He stood on a mountaintop. He heard the Father speaking.

Using personal, there's personal communication between the Father and the Son. They're using personal pronouns of one another.

Jesus was not a ventriloquist. He was not throwing his voice. And now

Peter is, as he's writing, or as he's preaching in Acts, he's now indwelled by the

Holy Spirit. He walked with the Son. He heard the Father speaking. He's now indwelled by the

Holy Spirit. Peter is an experiential Trinitarian and the New Testament Doctrines are written by individuals who were experiential

Trinitarians and therefore it oozes Trinitarian terminology naturally.

If no one is thinking, I have to now explain this, this is the very reality that's there.

Keep that in mind. I think that's helped a lot of people understand exactly what I mean when people say, why isn't there a creedal statement or, you know, why don't we have it like a systematic theology or something like that.

I think that this understands where the actual revelation of the Doctrine of the Trinity took place.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there are not prophetic indications. Clearly, Isaiah 9, 6, clearly

Malachi talks about the one who's going forward from America. And as we see here in a moment, the

New Testament writers saw Jesus as the Yahweh that was seen in the Old Testament.

There's no question about all of that, but when does the actual revelation take place? I would say, right there.

Right before Matthew 1 -1 and right after the end of Malachi chapter 4. In between those two texts.

But, that was just a thought, I want to make sure I communicate it to you before I forget it. Foundation number two, because we have all the

Yahweh, there's only one true God, Yahweh, is the name he revealed himself.

When we come to the New Testament, we clearly see that there are three divine persons revealed in the

New Testament. Now, our Mormon friends here agree with us, they just miss it on the first part.

In fact, who's the only people that deny this? Well, formally, you have the

United Pentecostal Church International, the Jesus Only movement, that says that there are not three divine persons, that Jesus was actually two persons, that he was a human person who is the son, who is indwelt by the father, and then after the resurrection the father then acts like the spirit.

So, you have a form of what's called modalism there, God is a document, modes of being. Sadly, the vast majority of illustrations that people use of the

Trinity are modalisms. In fact, the vast majority of illustrations don't use them.

They don't help. They lead to confusion and not to assistance.

What do I mean? Well, the Trinity is like, it's like me,

I'm a father, but I'm also a son, and I'm a brother.

See, so I... How many of you have heard of it?

That's modalism. Because it's talking about having different relationships, different modes of being.

That's modalism. That's not... And if someone comes up to you with a three -leaf clover, smack them!

Just, you know, send glasses flying, it's okay. How many of you have seen that wonderful Lutheran satire video?

There's a great Lutheran satire video. They're just mocking all the really bad illustrations of the

Doctrine and Covenants. It's great. Look it up on YouTube and you'll get it.

Water! It's ice! And it's liquid! And it's steam! That's not the Trinity! Stop already, please!

When I first started asking questions to people in my mainline Southern Baptist church when

I was a teenager about these things, I got so many bad illustrations that it's amazing that I didn't become a heretic.

God exists uniquely, and as a result, if something's unique, then you're not going to find anything in nature that is going to be like something that's unique, because if it is, then it's not actually me.

So keep that in mind. We're talking about three divine persons. There are clear texts that evidence this.

And the three that I would suggest to you, normally I'd spend a whole lot of time going through these, but I want to be fairly brief because I want to get to some really practical stuff.

But John chapter 1, if you just look with me there for a moment.

John 1 -1 is a battleground for many people. By the way, on a practical level, you can get up your

I didn't know if they were running street battles between missionaries on their dead seat. Phoenix must be purgatory for more missionaries, because they got down out there in July, and they were just leaving the trail of sweat behind them.

So I guess only the bad missionaries get sent to Phoenix, I don't know. Anyway, it's the

Jehovah's Witnesses telling you before, do not go to this text.

I'm not saying that it's not a battle text and everything else, but Jehovah's Witnesses can answer

John 1 -1 while in a comatose state. They don't have to think. You're not starting a thought process.

They just start giving you this pre -memorized speech they've got, and they're ready to go to the next house, and you're not going to accomplish anything by going to John 1 -1.

You can go to it later on down the road once you've established a relationship, laid a foundation, but just take my advice, you're not going to get anywhere if you start from John 1 -1 and say

Jehovah's Witnesses. It's not going to happen. In the beginning was the Word, and where it was with God, the

Word was God. Now you know the Jehovah's Witnesses mistranslate this. They say the Word was a God, and they say that's off to the side of the moment.

The point is that what we have in John 1 -1, in the beginning was the

Word. The verb that is used here in the original language is timeless.

I remember, I'm so thankful, my dad went to Moody Bible Institute and graduated

I think in 1953 as I recall, and his Greek professor was

Kenneth Weiss, Skipper Weiss is what he was called, Skipper the good shit Greek, and he was so tough that it was said that Kenneth Weiss single -handedly sent hundreds of men to Mission Field because when you went to Moody you had to survive his class to go through the pastoral section, but you didn't if you went through the mission section.

So he sent many people to Mission Field because they couldn't survive his Greek class. Well my dad did, and I remember, this is one of those man

I'm thankful I had a Christian family stories, but I remember on a it was either

Christmas Eve or Christmas night, I think it was Christmas night we were sitting around and my dad broke out his

Greek text book this was when I was just first learning the language, and he went through how in the prologue of John the first 14 verses whenever John talks about the word he uses what's called the imperfect form of I mean pain as the term it does not refer to something being created or coming into existence, but when he talks about anything else he uses the aorist form of himmatos so when he talks about John there came a man named

John and he says all things were made through him, there's himmatos all the way through when the word is talked about it's timeless as far back as you want to push this beginning, the words are in existence but everything else beginning, beginning, beginning was created then, then at verse 14 the word alagos sarx aginato, the word became flesh why?

because there was a point in time when the word entered into human existence and so having carefully differentiated of that point, now

John very clearly explains to us that there was a point in time where the word became flesh, entered into human existence and I've never forgotten that lesson from my father, who's still alive my mom's gone, but my dad's still alive and I'm so thankful that when

I first started showing an interest in these things, he threw me in the car threw me to the Christian bookstore started buying me

Kenneth Lee stuff and H .E. Robertson stuff and Mexicans and everything else, he wanted me to have what

I needed to have and that has been a wonderful thing, so what you have here in verse 1 then is in the first block in the first blocks in the beginning was the word, the word is eternally existent then, and the word was cross on beyond the word was with God, there was a intimate direct relationship again eternal between whatever the word is we find out in verse 14 and whoever

God is, we find out that is in verse 18 the following, there is a relationship a face to face relationship that exists and then the third clause, the word was

God, that is the word was as to his nature deity, true deity, and so you have a differentiation, you have the assertion that the word as deity as eternally existent some people believe that Jesus came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem, he was not pre -existent and so where would you go in scripture to show that Jesus as a person, the

United Pentecostals say that Jesus existed in the mind of God, just like you and I do, that it was certain that Jesus was coming into existence and that is the only way he existed as an idealized idea in the mind of God, there are a lot of people who have that view we normally don't have to talk to those folks but they are out there, where would you go now other than John 1 where else might you go there are a number of places that I would suggest to here in the

Gospel of John there is another, and it is in John chapter 17 and then outside of John chapter 17 what

I would suggest to you would be the great passage in Philippians chapter 2, we will look at all of them very briefly here, there is so much to cover but specifically in the prayer of Jesus to the

Father in John 17 5, listen to these words now Father glorify me together with yourself with the glory which

I have with you before the world was now think listen to the pronouns glorify me now

Father, so you are addressing someone else, is Jesus talking to himself is this his human side talking to his divine side, the prayers of Jesus are a major problem that is why

I can't get their chief theologian Bernard to debate trying and trying

I think he recognizes that the prayers of Jesus it is an impossible thing they cannot explain what is going on here

Father glorify me together with yourself with the glory which

I have with you before the world was now that is not one person talking to another person, the language cannot communicate what they usually do and evidently what it says is that one speaking at a point in time before the world was, shared glory in the presence of the person to whom he is addressing these words so you have two glorious eternal persons so clearly

Jesus is speaking of himself as one who existed before the world was and was glorious in the presence of the

Father if that is not an indication of divine persons

I don't know what possibly could the other so many things here,

I am going to say very little about this because well it might show up in certain sermons coming up in the future but chapter 2 verses 5 to 11 probably one of the ancient hymns of the church and I won't, like I said, go through a lot of it but just look at the beginning of it have this attitude yourselves in verse 5 which is also

Christ Jesus who although he existed in the form of God and not regarding equality with God was taken to be ground but emptied himself taking the form of God certainly by being made like this now here is the key issue here there is all sorts of things we can talk about in regards to well did he have equality with God was it something he wasn't trying to grasp at was it something he had but gave up, was it something he didn't have, did he try to get, there is all sorts of things that would go beyond the amount of time we have this evening but what is important to see is that this empty, notice it says he emptied himself not he was empty, that term empty is never used literally by the

Apostle Paul it's always used metaphorically it's never like I had a glass of water and I emptied it out it means to make yourself of no reputation it means to humble yourself and that's what this whole section is about, it's about humility but the point is how did he do this he did this by taking the form of God certainly by being made the likeness of man now our

Lutheran friends have an interesting interpretation of this they think this was when Jesus dirt himself with a towel and washed the disciples feet he did not

I could believe almost anything from some Lutherans this is pretty much the general

Lutheran perspective, they don't believe this is the incarnation I think it very obviously is the incarnation because he when it says he existed in the form of God that's taking us back into the eternity and he did not regard that equality as a thing to be held on to at all costs, but he made himself of no reputation by taking the form of God by being made the likeness of man so if this is the incarnation then think about what it means when it says that he did not regard equality regard is an action of thought it's an individual considering something, weighing something thinking about something that means

Jesus before the incarnation is a person he is able to think, he is able to act as he is the one who empties himself and so clearly there is a distinction between the father and the son you might say, well what about the

Holy Spirit why isn't there more discussion of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, we'll get to that in just a moment, we'll look at the third foundation so the point is we have three persons when

Jesus says for example baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the

Holy Spirit this is not baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Father, the Father this is not baptizing them as most

Jehovah's Witnesses would have it baptizing them in Jehovah, Michael the Archangel that's how they would have to understand that particular text you have a differentiation between the divine persons that is clearly made in Scripture the

Holy Spirit speaks, Jesus in John 14 and 16 says that he and the

Father will send the Holy Spirit who is another Comforter like Jesus is another

Comforter there's all these texts like this, we're simply allowing all of Scripture to speak and therefore we have three divine persons revealed to us, but the third foundation then that's the one that we normally end up arguing about the most and that is the co -equality and co -eternality of these persons what do

I mean by that? well this is where you have the deity of Christ and the personhood and deity of the

Holy Spirit this is the third area and of course we know this is when we're talking about Jehovah's Witnesses this is where we're going to be arguing we're talking about anybody who in some way subordinates

Christ as to his actual being this is where we're going to be engaging in Biblical disputation with these individuals, so go to the three doctrines 1 .2

.God, 3. Divine Persons and Equality of Persons does the Bible teach these things? that to me when

I listen to someone and I hear them objecting to the doctrine of the Trinity and normally it's something like, you know you read a lot of books, well

I don't believe in that because their own Catholic Church came up with that well I've done a lot of debates with their own

Catholics and Pope Francis might be the guy the very kind of guy you would want to live next door, borrow borrow a mower you know he is maybe the nicest guy

I've ever met the problem is he bears the titles of each of the persons of the

Trinity, which is a simple problem I think, I think a lot of people answer briefs are fun and optional that's a problem as well

I have debated many Roman Catholics I tried to debate Roman Catholics here, in fact one of the weirdest debates

I've ever had with a Roman Catholic, this guy arranged, I'm not sure where he came up with this, but one of the weirdest debates

I've ever had with a Roman Catholic because when I did the debate the guy was saying he said

St. Mark Luther Calvin on a chipper St. Mark Luther so it was an experience, but I I stand firmly against Romans teachings no question about that, but what does that have to do with Trinity that's not why

I believe in the doctrine of Trinity the Roman Catholic Church did not exist at the Council when

I stayed in 325, nobody there believed the things you have to do to be a Roman Catholic today so that's just simply prejudice masquerading as history, theology

I don't want to believe the doctrine of Trinity when I hear someone I want to see what their real objection is and bring them back to Scripture I don't want to sit there and quote creeds to them, the creeds may be important but the creeds are only relevant as long as they are reflecting what is found in that which is theological that which is

God's word and so those are the foundations when I hear someone speaking I want to ask them some questions to clarify exactly what their position is and then

I'll be able to see which of these foundations they deny sometimes I'll deny more than one it's obvious for Mormonism that they deny the very basic foundation, monotheism but Jehovah's Witnesses actually somewhat deny monotheism because they believe

Jesus is a God He's a created God He's a gay God, He's the first thing that Jehovah God created and so they also then of course deny the co -equality and co -eternality and so on and so forth and they actually deny the free -flying person physically, the

Holy Spirit is the only person I can force, so they actually deny all three so you can go to any one of those foundations biblically to deal with the

Witnesses at that point in time, but it's important for us to be firm in our thinking Does the

Bible teach each one of these foundations? One of the things I wanted to do and we only have about 20 minutes left one of the things

I wanted to do was in looking at this last section there's just so many texts we could go to, the

Indian Christ, the person the Holy Spirit, but one thing that I found really helpful to many audiences is to walk with you through what

I found to be the most effective way of clarifying someone's thought when it comes to the doctrine of the

Trinity, especially if you're talking to someone like one of Jehovah's Witnesses there's sort of two ways to do it, if you've still got your papers in Philippians chapter 2 let me tell you a story about an experience

I had with some Pioneer Ministers now how many of you have ever heard of Pioneer?

Pioneer Ministers this may have changed in the past but the Witnesses have changed too they well know that they've got to dump their 1914 prophecy stuff and all the rest of that kind of stuff because 1914 there's no way left and so they've learned you don't do this quickly you do this slowly and just by de -emphasizing stuff and just hoping that people don't notice over a period of time but Pioneer Ministers back when this incident took place spent if I recall correctly 30 or 35 hours per week going door to door distributing

Watchtower literature that's pretty much you know in under the

Obama regime that's full time work thanks to Obamacare that's full time for all of us so I mean these people are the

I would say a Pioneer Jehovah's Witness is more than a match to the Doctrine of Paternity for the vast majority of seminary graduates

I mean how many of us spend 5 hours a week preparing to deal with anything else and they're spending at least 5 hours a week constantly preparing to deal with this so it's just a matter of preparation just a matter of preparation there were two women

Pioneer Ministers that I was sitting in someone's home and they,

I was trying to help them to understand the relationship between Jesus and the

Father I went to Philippians chapter 2 and what

I tried to communicate to them is what is found in looking at the context of this chapter because see this is what

Jehovah's Witnesses massacred in the New World Translation that Jesus did not give consideration to a seizure namely to be equal to God I mean the

New World Translation is just it's so fun to read it's like chewing aluminum foil it's just awesome and so he did not give consideration to a seizure namely to be equal to God so from their perspective what's being said here

Jesus as you probably know is Michael the Archangel God's first created thing through whom he created everything and so Michael didn't try to become equal with God oh

I need to speak I have a 64 gigabyte micro

SD card it's amazing we got it in here you got it 64 gigabyte we still work on 888 we're good alright so here's what they're saying is that Michael was not equal to God's Father and did not try to become equal how do you cut the seed for the problem the key is the context so often

Christians would allow themselves to be dragged into debate into context without taking the time to read the preceding verses the result you see the context of the karma christian karma christian means the end of Christ this is a sermon illustration it's a sermon illustration and what's a sermon illustration about Paul is saying to the church at Philippi you need to remain united you need to be of one mind one heart one soul and the only way that that ever happens in a local body of believers is if every one of them is committed to being a servant to the others once you get people once you get people who start promoting themselves you start getting division in the local church we all know

I went to this big huge southern baptist church and I enjoyed my time there

I learned a lot there it was a time of blessing in my life I got to sing in a singing group I got to travel around there were a lot of advantages of being in a church with 20 ,000 members that's not quite what it is because your body is over 7 ,000 at any given time and I joked and it wasn't much of a joke that you had to personally present your own death certificate to get off the road but it was still really a neat experience but I worked in the sound

I ran sound 250 voice choir full orchestra it was a job by the way anyone who runs sound most thankless job in the world you do it perfectly no one ever says a word to you if you do anything wrong everybody knows where you are if you go to a church that has a sound man take off your watch do something nice to the sound man because it is a thankless job that I learned very very often but one thing you learn in the sound man group is that the souls are very focused on themselves and that I learned that many of the major problems in large churches come out of music because there are people there they've got egos they are performers they are hurt when somebody else chose to sing the song rather than themselves and I can tell you a story of divisions that took place and if you just read

Philippians 2 1 -4 it would change all don't look to your own things look to the things of others and there is a

Greek word what a wonderful word that is it is a word you can say over and over again and people will think you are very smart but it simply means putting others before yourself that is what

Paul is telling Philippians that is the key to maintaining peace in the local church and if you don't know that you are never going to be able to use

Philippians 2 5 -11 in an apologetic context why? because it determines because you see just simply on the basis of grammar you can't decide whether what is being said here is that Jesus had equality but didn't consider it something to be held on to or that he didn't have equality and didn't try to grasp at it you can argue either one from the grammar of the text so are we left not knowing?

no, here is what happened picture this I am sitting on a couch next to the owner of the home and by the way the only time

I have ever been physically assaulted in a witnessing situation have you been physically assaulted?

you are young I mean

I have been in mosques I have been but the only time I have ever been physically assaulted was when witnessing to a

Jehovah's Witness couple and I was slapped across the face by a little old

Jehovah's Witness lady so I was

I was trying to explain to this lady how in John 14, 14 if you look in the

New World Translation if you look at their Kingdom Interlinear they deleted the word from the Greek text because in John 14, 14

Jesus says if you ask me anything in my name I will do it

Jesus is talking about how can you ask Jesus anything in his name? prayer so what you do is pray well that is gone in the

New World Translation they took it out, even though it is in their Greek text she could not see it so I took my

Greek text and I came over and I knelt down next to her and I said see this it is right here and she looked at it, looked at me and she just used the back of her hand and slapped me right onto my back that is why

I got away from her because I figured she would probably do that she slapped me right into the middle of the room

I collected my wits, I got up and I remember looking over at her and the look on his face was you don't know that yeah, that was an experience anyways, what were we talking about?

Moses was in the bull rushes and where were we? here we are, we are sitting there and they are holding their

Bibles in their laps and I said let me ask you a question you have these two possibilities as to what this means but remember let's go back and read the first four verses

I said Paul is talking about humility of mind serving others laying aside your rights to serve others and this was back remember remember the days of Michael Friedman I remember really 1993

Sons vs Bulls Charles Barkley we were close we were close lost in 6 but everybody knew who the best basketball player in the world was and so I said think of it this way if you are the water boy on the

Chicago Bulls bench it's game 7 you are down by 2 there is one second left are you going to run up to I think it was

Phil Jackson right? and ask to be put in the place of Michael Jordan to take that last 3 point shot of course not would you call someone that would humble would you say they had humility of mind listen to what you are telling me this text says that a created being

Michael the Archangel didn't try to become equal with Jehovah God and that's an example of humility a creature not trying to become equal to the creator is to be our example of humility no the point of Philippians 2 is that we have the ground is level for the cross we all have equal rights but we lay those rights aside in the service of others and that's what

Jesus did he was equal with the father he was the object of the worship of the angels and yet he laid that aside and became obedient to death and in death on a cross that's what

Philippians 2 is about and I remember seeing this woman she is holding her Bible and it's almost like a snake appeared in her lap she was like I saw her get it

I saw her see it and that's one of the things when you're talking to Jehovah's Witnesses they won't take literature from you they won't take traction from you but I've never had a

Jehovah's Witness leave their Bible so if you could show it to them in their own text that would be great now in the last two minutes

I once met with three Witness elders elders of the congregation now

I can do something that most Arabalites can't do and that is we sat down and we introduced ourselves and said well let me tell you something folks

I'm an adjunct professor with actually lots of schools these days and I teach

Greek and Hebrew and Christian apologetics and I actually teach folks about what you believe could

I explain to you what I tell people you believe and normally they'll go oh yeah and then what

I'll do is I'll give just the most accurate explanation of what Jehovah's Witnesses believe

I'll use their own language and I once had some elders say that could have been a talk in one of our kingdom halls

I mean they're just blown away then I'll say well obviously we have some very fundamental disagreements mostly about what we believe about God I'd like to explain to you why

I believe that Jehovah is triune and I'll use I won't argue with them about whether it should be

Yahweh or Jehovah that's a dead area it's not worth going into that I mean

I think Jehovah is impossible but that's the term they use

I'd like to explain to you why I believe that Jehovah is triune they are a little bit taken aback by people who use divine meaning a lot of them think they're the only ones that know they'd be surprised to turn it in before Jehovah they'd be surprised but anyway you only have a certain amount of time with someone like this before they become very uncomfortable so you've got to be clear you've got to be here's how you do it turn with me to Psalm 102 go ahead and use their

Bible I know that there's all sorts of mistranslations in it we're about to read everything else for this instance use their

Bible and turn to the 102nd Psalm and ask them to read verses 25 -27

Of old you've found the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands even they will perish but you will endure and all of them will wear out like a garment like clothing you will change them and they will be changed but you are the same and your ears will not come to an end their translation is pretty much the same before you do anything else you must establish some things say now who is this talking about is this not talking about Jehovah and if you go back to verse 21 in their

Bible it will say Jehovah that men may tell the name of Jehovah in Zion and so you have to establish this is about Jehovah and they will agree yes this is about Jehovah second this is about how

Jehovah is immutable he is unchanging the creation grows old

Jehovah does not change Jehovah is immutable could this be said of any creature they will say no only

Jehovah is unchanging you've got to establish that first say well in light of that could you turn with me and look with me in Hebrews chapter 1

Hebrews chapter 1 you will find these words Hebrews chapter 1 now you can start farther back if you want if you want to start back in verse 8 that's ok cause there it says but of the son he says your throne of God is forever and ever and righteousness is separate from his kingdom you have loved righteousness and hate law therefore

God your God is the only good with the oil and blood of his blood the point is to establish who is being addressed their translation doesn't call

Jesus God don't argue about it we'll get back to that in a later point the point is verse 10 then says and and who's still being addressed the son the son is being addressed and it says you

Lord beginning with the foundation of the earth your heavens and earth are your hands they will perish but you will remain you will become old like the garment like your hand that will pull them up but your garment will also change you are the same and your years will not come to an end and these words are addressed to the son and they've already agreed

Psalm 102 25 -27 is only about Galilee and cannot be taught in a church and what's going to happen in the vast majority of instances is there's going to be this awkward moment of silence now at that point you have a decision to make if you're into this because you want to whip out your theological sword and get it bloody by skewering some

Jehovah's Witnesses then this is the time to whip it out and say well what about it

Mr. Cultist and savage our people a little bit if you force them to come up with an answer they'll come up with an answer it may be the dumbest thing they've ever said but they may go to their grave defending it when you show someone something they've never seen before let's say you show a

Mormon Isaiah 44 24 Jehovah does this all alone I thought he was sitting down in company with Michael Bailey you may have never seen that before in your life and there is that awkward moment what you've got to do is you've got to take advantage of that awkward moment and do this now

I can't expect you to give me an answer to that I've never seen that before but first could you take a look at it and get back to me on that and secondly could

I show you one other verse like that I've never had a Jehovah's Witness say that now

I have now given them the freedom and in fact made it incumbent upon them to think through these things and I've released the pressure because normally you're talking to a

Jehovah's Witness with another Jehovah's Witness present and even if they were troubled by it even if they were interested by it they can never express that with the other

Witness so you've got to take that pressure off if you're going to accomplish anything in this situation and I've never had one of them say no

I'm not going to do it so what you do is you now bop yourself a second opportunity and where would

I go I would go to John chapter 12 John chapter 12 if you're already familiar with these things just don't see them

John chapter 12 the end of Jesus' public ministry and the

Greeks who come seeking Jesus it says in verse 37 36 these things

Jesus spoke and he went away and hid himself from them but though he performed so many signs before them yet they were not believing in him this was fulfilled in the word of Isaiah the prophet he spoke

Lord who is the leader of your people and who is the arm of the Lord of your people this reason they could not believe for Isaiah said again he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts so they could not see with their eyes but see with their heart and be converted these things

Isaiah said because he saw his glory and he spoke now normally when we read this section we're so struck with the judgment element that we just go skipping right over an incredible statement did you catch it verse 39 it's just short little words for this reason

I'm sorry verse 41 these things Isaiah said because he saw his glory and he spoke huh what's that about well there are two texts cited immediately above one's from Isaiah 53 one's from Isaiah 6 and in Isaiah 6

Isaiah sees the Lord upon his throne remember that's when he is commissioned for his work as a prophet now

I'll tell you a quick story when I was writing my book on the trinity thankfully

I had to deal with a man by the name of Rick Stafford Stafford is a former

Jehovah's Witness now former Jehovah's Witness not so fast not so fast and his argumentation the argumentation defined by a lot of Unitarians today is that what verse 41 is referring to is back to Isaiah 53 because that's the first one cited they realize what this text might be saying because if this is

Isaiah 6 then what is John saying if the immediate reference is

Isaiah said these things Isaiah 6 because he saw his glory

Jesus' glory and he spoke of him when did Isaiah see God's glory when did

Isaiah see God Isaiah 6 who did he see Jehovah so if you ask

Isaiah Isaiah whose glory did you see I saw Jehovah's glory if you ask John whose glory did he see he saw

Jesus' glory well because I had to deal with Stafford I decided to take a look at the

Greek Septuagint now what's the Greek Septuagint the Greek Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament and it would have been the

Bible that John's audience would have been utilizing and guess what do you know

Isaiah 6 1 between the

Hebrew remember John's audience what are they going to read

John's last gospel read all of his citations of the Old Testament come from the

Greek Septuagint because he's writing to the Greek audience why would you be quoting the

Hebrew when they don't have access you're quoting from the Greek translation of the Old Testament and there's a variance

Isaiah 6 1 now remember what Isaiah 6 1 says in most of our

Bible translations it says I saw the Lord lofty and lifted up and the train of His robe was filling the temple guess what the

Greek Septuagint says I saw the Lord lofty and lifted up and His glory was filling the temple what was the very thing that according to the

Greek Septuagint of Isaiah 6 1 Isaiah actually saw he saw the glory of Jehovah and so every person using the

Septuagint reads John 12 41 and goes I know what he's talking about and I know what he's doing

I know what he's identifying Jesus so once again you get to show those two and I remember very well a gentleman who left the

Watchtower Society many years ago he said these words he said you can argue forever and a day as to whether he's a

God or a God if he's Jehovah all the rest of it is acting if he's

Jehovah it's done, it's over and so being able to demonstrate that Jesus is identified as Jehovah vitally important I mean it really is for anyone any of these groups a central plank of demonstration of that third foundation between the equality and co -example let me just mention briefly in passing once you recognize these things then when you see the ease with which the

New Testament writers speak of Father, Son and Spirit just you know the benediction at the end of 2

Corinthians Ephesians talking about one Lord, one faith, one baptism when you talk during this how often for example

Paul will talk about the Spirit of Christ the Spirit of God just going between the two just so easily what we're seeing is that these

New Testament writers are not trying to lay something out that's new they are speaking from the experiences theirs of the

Incarnation of the Son the outpouring of the Holy Spirit if you want to read one of the best discussions of this and I am greatly indebted to this source for again back when

I was in seminary finding so much insight but B .B. Warfield's material on the Trinity is wonderful and he has some excellent material it's a very short article that he has that really lays a lot of things out he's got a great book called

Son of God and the Glory on the median price of Heidelberg and we carry it out in the mail but once you once you've grasped what the essential doctrines are then you can start seeing that the evidence for the deity of the

Spirit in Israel is found in the association that is so easy and so easily made by the

New Testament writers they don't have to emphasize these things because they are now experiencing these so very fast time

I realize that again there's so much that I hope you will be encouraged to consider so let me just close with this

I said at the beginning that I believe our worship is severely degraded if we do not understand the

God of worship we can hear this in the prayers of people in church we need to come alongside people who will pray oh dear heavenly father thank you so much for coming and dying for us it wasn't the father who died it was the son when you can hear modalism in the very prayers you know there's confusion in the heart of that individual and this is why it's important, aside from the worship aside from the fact that we should have a clarity of thought in our worship the gospel it finds its origin in the father its outwork in the son its application in the spirit and if there's confusion as to the relationship of the persons then there is going to be a lessening of our amazement and for example the humility of the son that he makes himself of no reputation remember

Philippians 2 he makes himself of no reputation that's a reflexive problem this is something

Jesus does it's not done to Jesus, he actually does it himself talk about condescension, talk about a demonstration of love but at the same time one of the major pastoral problems among Christians is that we think

Jesus is the nice guy that comes along and sort of calms down the real mean spirited father the spirit just wants to the father just wants to zap us with lightning bolts and treat us like the

Amorites and throw hailstones from heaven and Jesus comes along and he's the real nice guy and he makes the father sort of put up with us that's how a lot of people view the text of that is not in any way shape or form you read

Ephesians chapter 1 and the very origin and source of all our spiritual blessings and the great love of which we are loved is from the father and if we don't understand the doctrine of Trinity the gospel atonement, the purpose that God is accomplishing in this world the very foundation and bedrock that ties it all together is lost to us it's lost to you

I love the Trinity because it is divine revelation and it amazes me given given how cavalier

I can be with the truth given how

I can live my life so often focused upon myself and not upon God that God knowing me and knowing you still in love and condescension and grace took the time to draw aside the very veil of eternity and reveal

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to you and I so that we could worship you in the world these texts we have looked at this evening

God did not have to love you and I God did not have to rejoice absolutely rejoice

God has been so kind and so good to reveal himself to us we do not worship and he has made himself known therefore we show ourselves never more arrogant or foolish than when we ignore the revelation he has given to us we come up with our own ideas revealed in scripture reveals to me who the

God I deserve to worship indeed our gracious heavenly father we thank you for your word and we thank you for the revelation that you have preserved for us the revelation that it gives of your purposes who you are

Lord we recognize that we live in a world that would think that the time we spent this evening was a time of foolishness and was wasted

Lord we know that as we have opened your word and considered these things our true desire has been to know to know our

God better we might worship in the spirit of truth we might understand the biblical revelation of the gospel what we have been called to do we thank you for the freedom we continue to have to speak about these things we know there are many who would like to take that freedom away but you continue to grant it to us and we thank you for it help us remember these things give us opportunity to bear witness of that truth bring these things to Christ we thank you again for being with us this evening just a couple of notes in Protestant Reformation one of the great divisions between the

Lutherans and the Reformed was that for Martin Luther and the Lutherans the central issue of the

Protestant Reformation was solidarity justification by grace alone through faith alone the

Reformed understood that this was a this was a doctrine that the church did rise and fall over they understood that it was not the fundamental issue with Rome the fundamental issue was idolatry by Mormonism the fundamental problem is not works righteousness because works righteousness makes perfect sense if your

God is one among a multitude of gods and is exalted man who is separated from you only by time and exaltation a

God who is the one true and living God who the heavens of heavens can't contain a

God who needs Isaiah to declare woe is me for I am undone that is a

God who makes sense of biblical grace because God is holy sin is awful the fall was not a call upward rather it was treason that destroyed us man is not simply making mistakes and working out his free agency but rather he is a slave to sin and trespasses in sin and grace is the only thing that makes sense tomorrow night we're going to be looking at something on which we can fully agree with Martin Luther that God is

God he is sovereign over everything and that the only reason that we believe is that God has had mercy and that he raises the dead to life again we invite you to come back and join us for that if you'd like more information on this congregation if you are not part of a solid bible leading church we invite you to we have some materials around I'll be around as well as our ruling elder is here we'd be happy to speak with you because we are a 21st century

American and so I'm not looking for perfection there are some white freshmen we have some pink lemonade, some cookies and other things, please stick around it was a joy on Sunday we're actually doing

Sunday school 9 .45 worship Don Souther is in the bunch we invite you to come eat with us it would be nice if you brought food as well let's give our thanks to Dr.