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're 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. We had a good time as a family to be at home as a family and spend some time together, which was pretty good.

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, as an enrolled student of the academy, get your syllabus.

We are on page, on lesson 5 of your syllabus, it 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 are 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 are 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 that 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.

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 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

Trinity 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 and one

God. It's not three persons and 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, 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'm saying that because of this very simple reason.

I really want you to fully understand what is happening here.

We want you to make sure that you know exactly the doctrines that are in play.

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.

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.

Someone is actually asking in the chat room about modalism. Yes, I'm going to cover that briefly.

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. Now we want to make sure that we are extremely careful in the definition.

Because this is where people get into trouble. When we look at the definition, again,

I'm going to say it again so that it's very clear. It is three persons in one

Godhead. And the reason I'm saying that is because many people have some false views of what the triunity of God is.

And how it's defined. Some falsely define it as three persons in one person or three gods in one

God. And they use a logical argument and 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.

So we get to a point where we're going to say we just don't know. We can't comprehend. 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 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. 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. There are 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'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. This is where the definition becomes essential.

It's not three gods, it's one God, it's three people. 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 are 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.

The doctrine in belief is that there are three gods in one.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. All three equal in power, substance, and eternity.

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, and God the Holy Spirit. But they are not three separate and distinct gods.

They are 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.

He 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 when 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. Alright?

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.

And 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, they're trying, 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?

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.

Alright, 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, okay?

In a land where there was tons of polytheism, Israel alone worshipped a monotheistic

God, okay? 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. Okay, 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. And let's look at the first hint, alright? 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've 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 triunity 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 pronoun, or 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, okay? He was involved in the act of creation.

All right? 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 of 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 if 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 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, 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 hear that you see there is

Shema. Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.

Okay? 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. Okay? 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. Okay?

If I say I have one pen, the word one preceding pen gives the idea that there is a single pen.

Okay? 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. Okay? You notice the Lord is one, or alone.

Okay? 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. Alright? 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, okay, most often, in fact, they would be right to say that.

Okay? But the reality is 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. Alright? He's being unified. And that becomes an important distinction.

Because He's not saying He's singular. He's saying He's unified.

Okay? 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. Alright? And there we have that Hebrew word

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.

Okay? 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.

Okay? Christophany is an appearance of Jesus. Okay? Before the

Incarnation. And a Theophany is a appearance of God before, you know, 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, alright, 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, 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. Alright? 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 this is a, we see these special appearances and the angel of Yahweh has no problem calling himself

Yahweh. Okay? And now let's get to one more, the last one in your syllabus there for this part, for section one 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, therefore the

Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him

Emmanuel. 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.

For a child has been born of us, a son is given, and authority shall rest on his shoulders. And he is named

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

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.

Can a modalist be a Christian? 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 do 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 get, 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. Alright? 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. And so you, then I find it hard to believe. Okay?

But if you don't, for example, I was raised Jewish, not understanding anything of the

Trinity. I did not know the Trinity. I didn't completely comprehend how

Jesus could be God but I didn't question it. How could Jesus have been God walking the earth and still be in control of the whole universe?

He's God. I don't understand him but he understands more than I. So I didn't have an issue with that.

Somehow Jesus was God. I wasn't really totally modalistic because I didn't think in those terms.

I just didn't understand. I never put some thinking behind that. But if I was to have been asked, you know, if I was forced to have to defend my view of really what we know is the

Trinity, I probably would have leaned to more modalistic only because of a lack of understanding. So I guess

I would say it depends how educated the modalist is. Do they really understand their modalism?

And that would be a thing. There's another question that was asked. Was anything other than a plurality?

Would it be a change in his nature when he created man?

So I'm not sure I completely understand the question. Maybe I'm just reading it funny. I do read things funny.

I kind of read everything the way I write which is kind of funny. Yeah. Was anything other than a plurality?

I'm not sure what that might be referring to. So if I can get some help on that one of what that was referring to, that'd be good.

But the plurality that I would say is that there is a plurality in the

Godhead as far as three in one. The plurality wouldn't include the angels or anything like that.

So we have these several hints, these six different ways of seeing in the

Old Testament, we see the Trinity. We're going to get into more detail next week on this.

But let's review real quick so that you remember them. And I'm going over this because I really want you, I want to solidify this in your mind so that you really understand it.

You really know it. You really have this down. Because this is essential when talking to people.

So it's, if God was anything other than a plurality when He created man, would that be a change in His nature?

God's nature never changed, if that's the question. God's nature was the same as it always was.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His nature can't change. That is, if you remember the attributes of God, remember when we went through those,

He's immutable. That's how we know modalism's wrong. Right? If God can, if He could change

His nature, then He's not immutable. You see how, and we're going to see this throughout these lessons, how the understanding of how we started with the attributes of God, that's where we must start.

We must start with the character and nature and attributes of God because all of our theology is going to be based on that.

And if we have that wrong, kind of all bets are off. Okay? And that's the reality.

We don't want to be in the position where we're wrong on that and we have to start in the nature of God. God is immutable.

Being immutable, He cannot change. He can't be the Father one day, the Son the next day, the

Spirit the next day, and then go back to being the Father. That would be, then

He's mutable. Okay? So He always was. I hope that answered the question. So let's review these real quick because I want you to make sure you have them.

So in the Old Testament we see, first, the use of Elohim, a plural name for God.

We see the works of the Spirit of God separate from God the Father, yet doing the very same works.

We see the fact that there's plural pronouns used in the sense of being with singular verbs.

So you have in Elohim, a plural name with singular verbs. Here you have a plural pronoun with singular verbs.

You have the use of one being singular, not doing singularity, but being unity.

You have the appearance of the angel of the Lord who has no problem calling Himself Yahweh, calling

Himself God. And then you have the prophecies of the Messiah, which were describing the future

Messiah as God. Alright? So I hope that gives a good grounding.

It's not saying that it's absolutely teaching the Trinity in the

Old Testament, but it is where we see the hints in the Old Testament.

Alright? So again, we're going to look into this in more detail next week. It is important to be involved next week.

Next week's lesson, we're going to look in the New Testament, the Trinity in the New Testament, and we're going to go into a lot of detail there.

And this is essential to learn. So make sure you're here for next week's class.

Make sure you let your friends know this is an important lesson. Alright?

It is one of those more essential doctrines that you have to make sure you have right, because this is one of those things that many get wrong.

And when they get it wrong, they end up arguing with people over something that is incorrect.

So this is essential to get right. So now remembering that, when we look at that, we have to make sure that as we get that right, we have it defined right.

Three separate distinct persons in one Godhead.

Okay? Three separate distinct persons in one Godhead. Okay? Remember that.

Okay. So, if you have any questions, those who have enrolled in the

Striving for Eternity Academy, and to do that, you just go to our website and enroll in the

Academy, and you will be able to enroll and be able to get involved in about 5 -10 minutes on the top of the hour after the live show.

We have a Q &A conference call that goes for about an hour, unless all the questions are answered.

We answer anyone's questions that you have from this class. If you have questions that, there's no questions from tonight's class, we go over any questions you have over this whole school of systematic theology, or we can go into other topics or just have a time of fellowship.

But that's something that we avail to those who help to support the ministry. We do this for free, but we need the support of people like you.

We are grateful for those new students that we have. We are grateful for them.

But if you have any questions and you're not a member, you can always contact us from the website at academyatstrivingforeternity .org

I want to also mention real quick before we close, I really want to encourage you to come out and think about coming out to the

Super Bowl Outreach. You want to register very, very quickly.

Alright? The reason I'm saying that is from what I understand, there is limited beds available.

Alright? And they are filled up quite quickly. From what I understand, and I'm not 100 % on this, but I think there is something like I think about a half dozen to a dozen beds available right now.

Okay? And so I want you to consider going out to superbowloutreach .org, register.

It is I think about like $250 or $300. I think it's $250 if you do it soon.

And register. And somewhere in there, mention that you want to be on my team. Alright?

We are filling out the team. We still have some space left on my team. You want to get there soon because last year my team filled out.

We had to split it. And so we kind of did it by first come first serve. So you want to do that quickly.

And so I really encourage you to do that. And now we come to the point of the show where we want to give you someone to encourage.

We want to give you a person. We want you to go out and encourage this week. Alright? And this week is a person maybe many of you are not personally familiar with but we're going to link on the

Facebook page. And that is Brother Dean Birch. Dean Birch is someone who is on the board of directors for the

Striving Fraternity Ministries. As being a member of the board, he also at one point in time actually pastored two churches at the same time.

He was a very busy man. He and two other men, the three of them pastored two churches at once.

He has now he does and that whole time he also held down a secular job.

Very, very busy man. He travels the country teaching English grammar. He knows his

English very well and he looks at my stuff and just goes, oh man, you really need grammar.

But if you ever actually want like if you're for your business or anything, you don't really understand how essential grammar is unless you don't know it well.

But he does things like that. He does proofreading if you ever need someone to proofread stuff.

But Dean is the reason I specifically want you to encourage him this week is he had a death in the family this week and he had his mother pass away and he's going through a rough time.

Many of you know that Superstorm Sandy or Hurricane Sandy, whatever it was, was passing through this week.

He had to bury her on the day, on Monday when that hurricane was coming through.

So it was a really rough time for him. And it's so for that reason that I would like to ask you to just encourage a brother in Christ.

Even though you may not know him personally, I encourage you to get to know him. But he's a far better preacher than me.

Don't let him know I said that. But he's one of the people who speaks for Striving for Eternity.

If I'm not available and someone wants them, we send Dean out. The problem is Dean's better than me.

And if you hear Dean, you may not want me to come back. You may be wanting him to come back. But Dean and I have different topics that we both are more expertise in.

And if you have areas of raising children, that's an area that Dean will usually speak on.

When we talk about marriage, that's usually an area that I will cover. We talk about finances.

Dean's background, he's actually got a degree. He used to teach accounting. So when we talk finances,

Dean handles those topics. When we talk evangelism, I handle those topics. So this is how

Dean and I work. But I ask you to go out and encourage him this week. Again, if you have anyone that you want us to encourage, let us know at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

And we want to encourage you to go out and strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And I'll see you next week. Amen.