6 - The Triunity of God, Part 1

Well, welcome back to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are so glad to be back with you this week, especially after last week. For those who were trying to watch the show, you got to see, if you were watching live, you got to see the split second of us saying, wait, wait, we just lost power in Superstorm Sandy but we're back on generator, we're ready to go.

Just give us five minutes and then we lost the internet. Oops, all gone. So we were a no-show last week, and so we are really sorry about that, but some things were outside of our control. We are doing well.

We are back. We have power. We have water. We have internet. It's sometimes good to be completely off of the grid for a little while. No internet, no news. I didn't hear who was bashing who in the political scene.

It was kind of nice. The kids had no games they could play, no phones were working, no cell phone. Fortunately I was able to text once in a while when that worked, and so we had a good time as a family to be at home as a family and spend some time together, which was pretty good.

And so we are glad to be with you with an extremely important lesson. This week we are going to start a lesson that is very important for all of us. So if you have your syllabus, let me get out of the way of the syllabus.

Actually it was better. Wait, I think that's even better. But if I get out of the way of the syllabus, if you have your syllabus as an enrolled student of the Academy, get your syllabus. We are on page, on lesson five of your syllabus, should be about page 18, on the triunity of God.

No, I did not say that wrong. I know some of you are used to hearing Trinity, but I said triunity for a reason, and we're going to get into discussing that a little bit tonight. Tonight's lesson is vitally important, especially if you talk to any people that are of other cults or world religions, Muslims, Jehovah Witnesses, Jewish people.

If you talk to Mormons, if you even talk to some professing Christians, you're going to see that on the lesson we get into today, there's a lot of people that just don't know what they're talking about.

They don't know how to properly define things, they don't know what the Bible actually says, and it's because of that that we're going to be looking at that. If you've been following along with us, we are in the first book of our School of Systematic Theology, and in that book we are in God's throne room, that's the title for book one.

We are looking at the doctrine of God, that's section one, and this lesson this week is The Triunity of God, The Triunity of God. So looking at that, when we look at The Triunity of God, we are going to see that we have God, this is a doctrine that is one of the more misunderstood doctrines, but this is one, when I talk to people that say they came out of a Christian background and became Jehovah Witness or became Mormon or became Muslim, and I talk to them, the single reason that they almost always give on why they came out of quote-unquote Christianity because they never were Christians, I think those of us that properly understand the Gospel know that someone who leaves the faith was never of the faith, they went out from among us because they were never of us.

And it is for that reason that we would look at this and say that we have the reality that people who just do not understand the doctrine of the Trinity and they end up getting into some false beliefs because they are lacking in understanding of this one essential doctrine.

And that's why we want to spend the time to look at this doctrine because this is, I say, vitally important if you are going to have to talk to folks that are from these different quote-unquote faiths.

The Definition and Importance of the Triunity of God

Alright, so let's look in our syllabus. If you are looking in the syllabus, again, we are in Lesson 5 and that is on the Triunity of God. And if you look there, let's take a look in your syllabus, it says, though the term Trinity or Triunity or Trinitarian is not found in the Scriptures, we use these terms to describe the essence yet, to describe God as one in essence yet existing in three personalities.

So this is where we have the start of our definitions. God is one in essence but He exists in three personalities, alright? And so we have there, if you are following along in your syllabus and you have your blanks there, you will see there that the Triunity refers to the doctrine of the three persons in one God.

That's very clear to understand. That's essential. Three persons, one God. This is not three gods in one God. It's not three persons in one person. It is three persons, one God or some say one God head, alright?

So when we look at this, we see that, and we are going to see, unlike last week or the last lesson, Lesson 4, where you had a lot of fill in the blanks, we are going to slow down tremendously. We are not going to finish Lesson 5 today, just saying.

And I am saying that because of this very simple reason. I really want you to fully understand what is happening here, okay? We want you to make sure that you know exactly the doctrines that are in play, alright?

So what we have here is the fact that we have, when we look at the doctrine of the Trinity and if you look in your syllabus, you have about three pages of notes, where I have about 17, alright? So in other words, I have a little bit more than we are going to be able to cover.

However, we are going to get into this. So someone is actually asking in the chat room about modalism. Yes, I am going to cover that briefly, alright? So as we survey this section on the triunity of God, we are going to look at both the Old Testament and the New Testament and we are going to see further discussion on the Trinity that is going to be presented when we talk about the deity of Jesus Christ and the deity of the Holy Spirit.

We want to make sure that we are extremely careful in the definition because this is where people get into trouble, alright? When we look at the definition, again, I am going to say it again so that it is very clear, it is three persons in one Godhead, alright?

And the reason I am saying that is because many people have some false views of what the triunity of God is and how it is defined. Some falsely define it as three persons in one person or three gods in one God and they use a logical argument to say three can't equal one.

One plus one plus one cannot equal one. That's what Muslims will often say. And there's many people that try to illustrate the Trinity. You cannot illustrate the Trinity, it's something beyond any illustration.

So many people try, they use an egg, they use water, they use different things. There is nothing that's going to properly be able to help you define or illustrate the Trinity because it's just something beyond any illustration that we have, okay?

So we get to a point where we're going to say we just don't know, we can't comprehend. The fact, if you remember the attributes of God, the fact that we cannot comprehend everything about God does not mean that those things He has revealed to us we cannot know with certainty.

And that's what we're going to get to with the Trinity. There are certain things that we can know with certainty but though we know them with certainty we do not know them completely, alright? That's an important distinction because people are going to make a logical argument and they're going to try to say that we don't, because we don't know that therefore it's something that is just not true.

There's a lot of things that are true that we don't understand, that doesn't make, our ability to understand it doesn't make it true, alright? And you're going to see that very often, especially when you talk to someone that's a Jehovah Witness and they go, well this just doesn't make sense to me.

What they're doing, and I did this when I was over in London this summer at the Olympics and I was speaking with a large group of Muslims and I asked them, is God beyond your ability to comprehend? And they said, well yes.

I said, okay. Is your reasoning something that God has to submit to? And they were like, well no. And so then I established that up front because when they started asking me about the triunity of God or the Trinity, I could easily say, well wait a minute, when they say, well it doesn't make sense to me.

I agree, it doesn't make sense to myself either, however it doesn't matter whether it makes sense to you or I, it matters whether it's true. And the fact that we cannot comprehend it does not mean it's wrong.

And if we say because we can't comprehend it, it can't be right, then we are actually subjecting God to our ability to reason and we're setting ourselves above God and our reasoning above God. We need to make sure that we keep that clear at all times.

So let's go through this doctrine, this very essential doctrine. There's many things that we're going to see. As we mentioned, the word Trinity, Triunity, Trinitarian, you're not going to find them in the Bible.

But there's many things you're not going to find in the Bible that we know are true. The word Bible doesn't appear in the Bible. Is the Bible true? Well yes, but it doesn't appear in the Bible. So we use these terms, and actually I think terms like omniscient, omnipresent, I don't think those appear in the Bible either.

And so what you have is you have certain words that don't appear but we use them theologically so that we can understand something, so that we can comprehend using a label, having a good definition for it, and we can know what things mean.

And so that is what we have with the word Trinity. We have plenty of things, as we're going to see, where in the Old Testament it makes hints toward the Trinity of God. Now before we get into this lesson, I just want to go over some things that we have and some ways people misinterpret it because I want to make sure that it is something that we all understand as we go forward.

We're going to see, and you're going to see this when we look at the ministry of Jesus Christ, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, you're going to see with the Trinity they do the same works, the works of deity.

And so there's going to be things like creation, like preservation of God's word, like providence, like the incarnation of Jesus Christ, like the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These are things that you see all three members of the Trinity doing.

And so since all three of them are doing it, we know that is something that is true for all of them. And yet since there are things that only God can do, we are seeing that we have three persons, and we're going to get into this in more detail, but it's three distinct persons.

The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father. They're three distinct persons, but they make up one Godhead. And this is something that becomes essentially important.

So let's look at the Jewish view real quick. This is not in your notes, but if you want to, and you're taking notes on your syllabus, this is where you get to take some extra notes. But a Jewish view is that the Jewish religion does not have a belief in the Trinity at all in modern Judaism.

Their belief is monotheistic. It is based on passages like Deuteronomy 6 .4. We're going to look at that in detail in a few minutes. But we look at that, and they would say that Jews believe that the Christian view of the Trinity is a form of polytheism, poly meaning more, theism, gods.

So they believe that our view is that we have multiple gods, okay? This is where the definition becomes essential. It's not three gods, it's one God, it's three people, all right? Three separate distinct people.

In Islam, Islam believes in a strict monotheism. Islam does not accept any view of a Trinity. They would say that we are believing in polytheism. In fact, in Islam, it is the one unpardonable sin to believe in a Trinity.

Now, you have to understand, in Islam, the Trinity is not the way we would define it. We would define the Trinity as being the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's not how Islam defines it. They believe that our view of the Trinity is the Father, the Mother, and the Son.

Huh? Yeah. So, we see that there's some issues there, right? That's not our view. They think we define it that way. So, they would see that as the one unpardonable sin. Now, Jehovah Witnesses, if you're familiar with them, they would not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ.

Therefore, they do not believe in a triune God. They define the Trinity this way, quote, The doctrine in belief is that there are three gods in one. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. All three equal in power, substance, and eternity, unquote.

That is from a Jehovah Witness document. But you saw right from the beginning, we do not believe in three gods. Yes, we believe in God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, but they are not three separate and distinct gods.

They're three separate and distinct people, one Godhead. Okay? How about Mormonism? That's in the news lately. But the Latter-day Saints do not accept the term Trinity, okay? Their view of the Godhead would be of two physical persons, God the Father, God the Son, and a spiritual part of the Godhead.

So they believe that God the Father was a physical being that was born on a planet called Kolob. He had physical parents, had a physical wife that gave birth to Jesus, and he had physical parents and yada yada, and it's kind of good science fiction, I guess, I don't know.

But they do not hold to that. Now, when you get to passages, as some of you may be thinking, Genesis 1 .26, we're going to look at that passage in detail. But when we look at that, we see that in here that they take it literally to mean that we're made in the image of God, that we were made in the physical image of God, therefore humans have a physical body like God has a physical body.

Yikes! They believe that God is glorified being of the flesh and bones and not just a spirit essence. Now, this is different than what we believe. They do not believe what Christianity believes. Mormonism is not Christian.

Let me say that again for any of you who may be following the news. Billy Graham just met with Mitt Romney, and the very day that he meets with him, what happens? They removed from the Billy Graham website Mormonism as a cult.

Mormonism is a cult. It is not Christianity. They have a different God. They have a physical God, a physical being that became God, was a sinning human being like you and I, that became God, and that we could be like Him.

And that the Godhead, the Trinity, what we call the Trinity, is two physical beings that are separate and distinct that became God and a Holy Spirit that is God, but not a physical being. So you see, that is not the Christian definition.

And there's a whole lot of other differences, but right off the bat right there, you see it is a different God. If I say that I know you, but I describe you as someone totally different, I describe your age as being 50 years off, and I say that you don't know the languages you speak, you were born somewhere else.

And one of your friends came up to me, you'd be going, I think we have a different person we're talking about. And that's what we have here. They say they know the same God, they just describe Him completely different than Christianity.

They don't have the same God. All right? Now, let me get to another one. And this is going to get a little bit more closer to home. And that is a term called modalism. Modalism. Maybe some of you are familiar with modalism.

Modalism teaches that God exists in one person in three different modes. So during different times in history. Thus, they believe that God was the Father in the Old Testament, He became Jesus Christ on earth, and then He became the Holy Spirit.

And so you have three different modes, and in the end times He'll become the Father again. So what you have is you have three different modes. It is not three different persons. It's one person, one God, but presents Himself in different modes throughout time.

So He's God the Father at some point in time. Then He's God the Son when He walked the earth. And now, in this time, they would say He's God the Holy Spirit. He's no longer Jesus. He's no longer the Father.

And one day He'll become the Father. Now, there's a whole bunch of issues with that, and we're going to see that next week when we look at the New Testament and we see that there's times where they're distinct.

Some of the most prominent modalists that you may know of are people like T .J. Jakes and Joyce Myers. They believe in this doctrine of modalism. Now, when you get into this, they get into explaining this.

Also, if you're a Oneness Pentecostalist, anyone that holds to what's called Oneness Pentecostalism would be a modalist. And this is heresy. It's a totally different God. And so you can have people that can look, say, as I heard recently someone preaching out of the book of Revelation, out of a passage that dealt with Jesus Christ, and they referred to this and said, this could refer to the Father and not affect our view of the Trinity.

The only way that the book of Revelation, speaking of Jesus, could be referring to the Father and not Jesus is if you're a modalist. And you don't believe in the Trinity, the Triunity of God. You have a totally different Godhead.

That is how it's important. And these people come off within the Christian community. And because they write these Christian books, people accept them and they don't question men like T .J. Jakes or women like Joyce Myers.

And they say, well, they're Christian. They're preaching this great message of Christ. Therefore, they're okay. They have a different Jesus. They have a Jesus who was once the Father. Then who was Jesus praying to in the garden?

Himself? Who descended like a dove on him when he was being baptized? Himself? You see, what they're trying to do in all these different false views, they're trying to answer the question of, I want to understand the Trinity.

But you can't. Period. Just get over it, okay? You can't. I can't. At least until we die. Maybe in a glorified body we will. But God understands the Trinity. He's revealed what we can understand. And that's about as much as we're going to know.

And we have to be satisfied with that, okay? We have to just trust that God knows what he's doing. And he's a little bit smarter than us. Okay, a whole lot smarter than us. But you understand the importance of this now.

There are people that come in and they just have a shade of falseness. Everything else sounds really good. They just have a little issue. Well, that little issue is a pretty big issue. It's a totally different God, okay?

The Old Testament Hints Toward the Triunity of God

So let's look in our syllabus there. If you have your syllabus, we're going to start looking at the Old Testament, the Trinity in the Old Testament. You go, wait a minute. I've been told for years that the Trinity is not in the Old Testament.

Well, it is. All right, we're going to look at that. So the Old Testament emphasis is clearly on the uniqueness and the unity of God. Okay, the uniqueness and the unity of God. Remember, the Old Testament was written in a day where there was polytheism, where you had many gods.

And therefore, the focus in the Old Testament times was on the uniqueness of the God of Israel, the I Am, Jehovah, this unique and singular God. In a land where there was tons of polytheism, Israel alone worshipped a monotheistic God.

And the foundation in understanding God was necessary in order to refute the primary religious delevation at the time, which is polytheism. Polytheism, that's your blank there. This section will... So, however, even though in the Old Testament emphasis was on the unity of God, we're going to see that there were hints of the Trinity throughout.

Let's look at the first hint. The first hint that we have is in the use of the term Elohim. That's your blank there. The use of Elohim. Let's look at a passage of Scripture. In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth.

Now, what is special about this? If you remember when we talked about the names of God, we talked about this in such a way that we said that the names of God were... that the name Elohim was a plural.

El would be the singular. Elohim is plural. So, what we immediately see here is that this term, this name for God, has more than... it's not a singular, it's a plural. So, are there multiple? I mean, is God, as one atheist argued to me, is God schizophrenic?

No, God is not schizophrenic. Okay? As some would try to argue. It is that we see that the name is plural. We see the first hint here. And the significance of this, if you look in your syllabus there under letter A, Elohim, a plural pronoun, is used with a singular verb.

Okay? And to describe one true God. So, you have a plural name with a singular verb. That is done for emphasis. In other words, there's something special about this. It's not that God didn't understand grammar.

He created it. Okay? He created language. He understands the rules of grammar. I may not. You can ask my proofreader. Yeah. And my proofreader is going to be real, real busy, real, real soon. Because we got a book that's going to be coming out real, real soon, we hope.

But she's kind of done on the second syllabus, getting ready for the next book. But needless to say, what we have is that the name demonstrates the unity of God is not contradictory to the triunity of God.

And I keep saying triunity because tri means what? Class. Three. Very good. And unity is the idea of unity. Of one. Uni is one. Tri three. Uni one. Tri unity. We say trinity, but it kind of loses some of it in that I like the three in one aspect.

Three in one. So we have tri unity of God. We have another thing here. Not only do we have the use of Elohim, but we have here the work of the Spirit of God. The work of the Spirit of God. And we have a verse here for this.

And it is Genesis 1 -2. Genesis 1 -2 states, The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the water. So if you see here, in this passage, you see the Spirit of God was in the act.

We witness the Spirit of God included in the act of creation. This is important to note because you're actually going to see this with each of the members of the Godhead. That they were all involved in creation.

You can look at Colossians 1 -15 -16 and you'll see that Jesus Christ created all things. So each one of them were involved in the creation order. Now, one of the things when you talk to the liberals, you talk to maybe the Jewish people.

And they'll state that, I didn't mention this before, but with the use of Elohim. With Elohim, they'll say, some will say Elohim is referring to, like the Jewish people would say, God speaking to the angels.

So He's including them sometimes. It's kind of like a, or it could be a royal we. You know, the royal we, when you say we but it's only one person. So that's one way they'll argue this. This is the royal we.

This is the plurality. He's including the whole host of heaven. So that's how they try to argue that. But the grammar just doesn't fit for that. It's a plural name. When we see the work of the Spirit of God, what's important here.

Is that when you talk to Jehovah Witnesses, they believe that the Holy Spirit is just a force. Kind of like the Jedi force, right? If you watch Star Wars. That's what they kind of think. It's kind of like electricity is a force.

A force doesn't create. And if you looked at that passage again, let's bring that up. You see there, and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. He was involved in the act of creation. And so we're going to get into more detail on that.

Let's look at the next one. So we have there letter C is the use of plural pronouns. Plural pronouns. That's your blank there. Let's take a look at a passage of scripture. And that would be this one. And I said we'd get to this again later.

So here it is. It is Genesis 126. Then God said, let us. Notice the us. That's a plural pronoun. Let us make man in our image. Our is a plural pronoun. According to our likeness. Again, another plural pronoun.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, and all the earth that creeps on the earth. So what you see here is let. Then God, singular, said let us, plural, make man in our, plural, image.

According to our plural likeness. So do you see how that is? So you have there a plurality in its pronoun. And yet in the actual wording there, it's a singular. Now the Jewish people would argue that that is God bringing the angels.

So when he says let us make man in our image, he's speaking to the angels. We're not made in the image of angels. We're made in the image of God. Okay? We're made in the image of God. So that is not a royal we.

That's not something like that. So if you look in your syllabus there under letter C, the significance. The use of plural pronouns describes the one true God. Again, hints at the teaching of plurality persons of the Godhead.

Okay? There's a plurality of persons in the Godhead. If you have your syllabus, you see some other passages there that also you can look up in Isaiah. That's some other examples. And there's many more examples than that.

But what we have there is we have some hints here in the Old Testament of seeing this plurality, but yet having a single God. So you have a plural name, yet always referred to with single verbs. So you have plural names, but used in a singular sense.

You have the Spirit of God active. So the Spirit seems to be more than just, it's not part of God. As just another way of describing God, but as a separate being that's active in creation. You have the use of plural pronouns.

Alright? You have the use of plural pronouns. That's very strong because it shows a plurality. Alright? So let's move on to one more. Actually, do we have the, we do have, Isaiah 6, 8, do we have that?

Yeah, okay. So let's look at that one real quick. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said, here I am, send me. That's Isaiah speaking at the end.

But do you notice here, the whom shall I, that's a singular, send, and who will go for us? You notice the plurality? The us? And so what we have here is the reality that there are a singular God, but you see in its use, God has no problem referring with a plurality here.

And that's how we see it used. Alright? And that's what we see. Now there's, let's go to one more. And that is the use of one. The use of one, that's letter D in your syllabus. The significance here, when we look at this, alright, the significance is that many who oppose the doctrine of the Trinity claim that it contradicts the doctrine of the one God.

The word, for example, in Deuteronomy 6 .4, I said we'd get to that, so why don't we put that up. Here is that passage, and that passage says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Or alone.

And this passage right here, it's called the Shema. Shema is because the word for here that you see there is Shema. Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

In this translation, the Lord alone. But the idea there is that you have the word translated for one. Or alone is Echad. Which does not always refer to oneness in the sense of single. That's your first blank there, single.

But oneness in the sense of unity. Now, how is that different? Because there are times where Echad refers to one and single. It most often does that way. But let me explain it in the English, and we can see how this is used.

If I say I have one pen, the word one preceding pen gives the idea that there is a single pen. But if I say the pen is one, I no longer am thinking in the sense of the pen being one in the sense of singularity.

But in the sense of the pen being unified. It's all put together. It's a single unified pen. The pen is one. So let's look at that passage again if we could. You notice the Lord is one. Or alone. The emphasis is on the Lord, not on the one part.

Just like our pen. You have one pen would be singular. The pen is one is unity. Similar thing here. So what we have is we have God describing himself as one. But he's unified as one. And we want to be careful with this because if you do come upon someone that knows Hebrew, they'll argue with you, as I had someone in New York do, a Jewish young man, argue that this was saying that one was singular.

And because echad is used in a singular sense very often, most often in fact, they would be right to say that. But the reality is that what we have is we have something where we're looking at God in the sense where he is describing himself as being unified.

He's being unified. And that becomes an important distinction. Because he's not saying he's singular. He's saying he's unified in that. So again, let's review. We have the use of Elohim. That was letter A there.

We have the work of the Spirit. We have the plural pronouns. We have the use of one. And there we have that Hebrew word for echad. And now we have one more. Hopefully we can get to two more. But let's look at the angel of Yahweh, the appearance of the angel of Yahweh.

So that's your blank there, the angel of Yahweh. The appearance of the angel of Yahweh. And the significance here, when we look at the significance, the significance here is that these and other Christophanies and Theophanies.

If you remember, Christophany is an appearance of Jesus before the Incarnation. And a Theophany is an appearance of God in the Old Testament. So these and other Christophanies or Theophanies are able to exist both in heaven and in one place in time to accept worship.

So we see, I was going to explain it, but I think we have the passage. We have Genesis 16. Let's look at this Theophany that we have here. It says in this passage, The angel of the Lord said to her, this is speaking of Rahab, Return to your mistress and submit to her.

The angel of the Lord said to her, I will greatly multiply your offspring that they may be counted for the multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Now you have conceived and shall bear a son, and you shall call him Ishmael.

For the LORD, notice this is Yahweh, it's all in caps, The LORD has given heed to your affliction. So what we end up having here is the fact that you see that this angel of the LORD, this angel of Yahweh is referred to as Yahweh.

So we see the angel of the LORD that we'll see later as being distinct is also referred to as God. So we see these special appearances, and the angel of Yahweh has no problem calling himself Yahweh. And now let's get to one more, the last one in your syllabus there for this part, for section 1.

And it is the prophecies of the Messiah. The prophecies of the Messiah. And the significance here in the variety of passages prophesying the coming Messiah, He is spoken of as being a distinct person but in the same essence as God.

So let's take a look at some passages. One that's very familiar to many of us, Isaiah 7 .14. We know it every Christmas season, it's quoted. But it says here, And we know from the New Testament because Emmanuel means God with us.

So he's referred to, his name is going to be God with us. Let's look at one more, Isaiah 9 .6. So you'll see that he is the everlasting father. That's what his name is. And so what we have here is we see in the Old Testament that we have these things, these hints in the Old Testament.

Now some of the questions that have come in in the chat room and that we want to address in the couple of remaining minutes. Now clearly we would say that we look at some of those other cults, we would say a Muslim can't be a Christian, a Jewish would not be a Christian, no issues there.

You get a little bit fuzzier when you get to, can a Jehovah Witness be saved? Can a Jehovah Witness become, you know, I would find it hard to believe because they have a totally different Jesus. How did they get their sins paid for?

It gets even more muddy when you look at the Muslim, Mormons because they're using the language but they have totally different meanings. So if you walked in, if you were taught by a Mormon yet you have a Christian understanding of the terminology, maybe you could become a Christian, like get saved because you have a different definition than they have.

But if you understand their definitions, I find it a little bit more difficult. But maybe, I don't know. And so extending beyond that now when we get to a modalist, someone who's professing to be a Christian, professing to have the same God but they don't.

And so you have a totally different God. Can you not have a clear understanding though of the Trinity and still be saved? And I think that may be the real question being asked. If you truly understand modalism and you know what it means and you understand the distinctions, then you know you have a totally different God than the God of Christianity.