That's Modalism! | Mormon Response

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Yeah, and I don't want to interrupt, but just want to say, I'm going to make sure I'm clear so no one misunderstands me.

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When I said, when he said, I was raised Protestant, and I said, that means nothing.

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What I'm not saying there is that there aren't solid Protestant churches worldwide. There are good churches everywhere, all over this planet, solid, solid, solid churches.

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Well, and you regretfully say that means nothing. That's not a celebration for you. That's my point, is that we live in a time, 21st century, in Evangelism in the

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West, Protestantism in the West is in a horrible state. And by the way, in case you think anything special about that, so is

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Mormonism, and so is Catholicism. I mean, you can name it across the board, because of the

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Western mindset regarding truth today, truth today. And so when you say to me, well,

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I was raised Protestant, that means nothing to me. Tell me what that means. What kind of training did you have?

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What kind of Protestant training did you have? Because if you were to say to me, I was trained in Protestantism in Dr.

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White's church growing up, I would say, that means something. Because I know what kind of doctrinal training you got.

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And even part of a larger historical context, what do we mean when we say Protestantism? What are we protesting?

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And where does that come from? There's a historical meaning that goes all the way back to the Reformation, which the same doctrines that came out of that time period actually conflict with the views that you hold about man's will, and God's predestining power.

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That's what the Reformers held to, by the way, was predestination. And Augustine, and the early church, second century church, and of course, the

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New Testament itself. I got to just say this quickly. If you're using that as a historical context, you're not using it to like flash your

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Reform knowledge and how much smarter you are than your opponent.

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That's not what it was. That's not, there's no comment being made on the age of the person who engaged in this dialogue.

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That's not what's being said. When you guys asked him, like, who do you have on your bookshelf?

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You were asking him like how, what, you were gauging the completeness of his knowledge on the subject.

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You weren't making a comment on his age or saying that he didn't know anything. No, I'm so glad you brought that up. Now, that's critical.

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I want to just say, officially, it's very important. I'm so glad you brought that up, because when I brought up the point about what book is on your shelf, what

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I meant by that is when you say the Bible cannot be demonstrated from Scripture, it cannot be done, there are 2 ,000 years of Christian exegesis of the text of Scripture and defending the

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Christian faith. That is, I'm sorry, I'm just saying this in the classical sense, that is asinine.

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That is asinine to make that kind of suggestion that for 2 ,000 years in history that no one's been able to defend this from Scripture.

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It shows me something that you have not taken the time to try to even read on this. Because I'm telling you, there are descriptions, discussions, exegesis on this subject that are so deep and so far, you can't get three pages into it without your head blowing up with the amount of Scripture and the logical argumentation, the consistent biblical exegesis and historical references.

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It is just insane. So, when someone says, well, it can't be shown, it can't be done, that's why we're still having the debate, that's why I said, what do you even have on your shelf to demonstrate that you've even given this a shot?

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Because I can tell you right now, on my shelf are hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of Mormon sources.

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I'm talking about historic Mormon sources from your own sources and library where I've taken the time as a

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Christian to understand your worldview and to read these texts and to understand this. I've sacrificed time from my family, my work, my hobbies, my joys to make sure that I invest in understanding your perspective so that I might properly represent you.

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And my point there was to demonstrate that you don't seem to have done that for us. And that was the point.

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Also, I was just thinking, one, the Methodist church came about the same time period as Mormonism.

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They came out of that same kind of nonsense going up there around in New York. That's where we get a lot of our denominations, from that same revival, if you will.

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So, there's that. But again, that's just evidence from him. It's more subjective evidence referring to, well, they were smoking pot and having sex.

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Don't tell me that the kids in the Mormon church aren't doing that, because I don't buy it. Well, let me just say, I moved to Gilbert, Arizona when

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I was 18 years old. I was still in high school. I was living on my own. And at Gilbert High School, I mean, tons of Mormons at Gilbert High School.

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I befriended many of these. I drove people home from school. And I'll tell you right now, the problem is the same in the

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Mormon church. I can promise you that. Absolutely promise you that. But that's not the main source of my argumentation.

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The point there is to say, let's get down to brass tacks, and let's get to what the Bible says. Let's get to the theological discussion, what actually matters.

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These claims aren't ultimately helpful. Actually, the Trinity has been something that has been on my mind probably since fifth grade, starting at Harvest Bible Church in Cypress, Texas.

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This has been something discussed a lot. I've read a lot about the Trinity. Then why have you misdefined it consistently?

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I don't think I have. Okay, you said that there's one being who's three beings. No one. I didn't say that.

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You did on the video. You did. We played it. We played it more than once. Did I or did Ian say it? No, you guys talk over each other.

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How's anybody? Because I feel like when I look back at my episode about the Trinity, I think it represented very well.

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It's three persons and one God, correct? Do you know what the difference between person and being or nature is?

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Well, I know that. That was not brought up, right? Would you admit you didn't? All right, here we go. So that was the intro to the discussion, so let's do it.

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What Mormons Believe About the Trinity. Kwaku says this was published about a year ago, December 5th, actually, 2017 is when it was published.

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So let's go ahead and run through this together and do it as quickly as possible. Hey, three Mormons, why do you talk about the

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Trinity, huh? Huh? Oh, because you can't, because your church is false,

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Joseph's conman, LD dollar sign church. So the

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Trinity and the Godhead, this is a big topic. A lot of people have asked us to address. I think we need to really talk about the

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Trinity because the Blade Trinity is one of the best trilogies of all time. I wanted to say that is horrible because that only

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Blade 1 was good. You think so? No, I'm sorry.

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I totally disagree. Three Mormons are absolutely wrong. First one's definitely the best. You can't do one better than the first one.

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You're disagreeing, Daniel? Yes. Okay. All right. First one's definitely the best. You got to admit that.

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Yeah. Okay. Well, I think Pirates of the Caribbean is a great trilogy. No, I know that three.

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No, they're not. There's more. Four and five. You said four and five was good. Oh, I enjoyed it, but I recognized that it was bad.

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But the first three are just synergy. Just synergy.

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Synergy. Okay. We're going to talk about real sagas. Synergy. New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the

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Jedi. But you don't even know what those are. You don't even know what those are. I haven't seen Star Trek. Okay. This is something you mentioned a couple days ago. You said the

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Trinity and Godhead, at face level, they seem like the same thing. You just look at them, you're like, well, what's different from Mormons and other churches?

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Yeah. You got God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. You got God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. So why are they different? Why is there such a discussion online about why they're different?

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Yeah. Well, we're going to talk about that today. A lot of times, people confuse the Trinity with modalism.

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And so that's important to make a distinction. Growing up a lot... This was good. I was really glad that he actually... Thank you for that. I don't usually do that.

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Very glad that you actually brought this in and you got this kind of right here. Modalism is the doctrine that the persons of the

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Trinity represent only three modes or aspects of the divine revelation, not distinct and coexisting persons in the divine nature, quoting from google .com.

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So I'm glad you made this distinction. But this is where it falls off. Sometimes I heard this before I was

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LDS. You know, God is kind of like, you know, if you have a cup of water, that's a liquid. But if you freeze it, it's ice.

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And then if you leave it out forever in the hot sun, it evaporates and turns into gas. Just so you know... That's modalism. That's what he was told.

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Yeah, yeah. Encourage everyone out there who's listening to this right now or watching this right now. Very, very important that you never, ever, ever use that example because it is undeniably false and not biblical.

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And yes, modalism is all over that. So Christian out there, if you've heard that and you've just sort of picked it up as a child, someone told you that, and you've just been passing that around, please never use that.

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It is absolutely unbiblical and false. And there's one thing about that too. Remember Bavink and reform dogmatics.

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He makes the very astute observation that anytime you compare the triune God to anything at all, your comparison automatically falls flat on its face.

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So we should just stop doing that. We should stop comparing the Trinity to any creaturely thing.

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Yeah, exactly. Just give what the Bible says. That's all you need. It falls flatter than the flat earth.

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Well, Nick, it creates this sort of environment where you are attempting to understand something fully in a physical human way, when a part of it is that God is not a man.

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Right. So there are things about him that we will not comprehend in the way that we comprehend things that are here on this earth.

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So when you do propagate bad examples of modalism, it does, well, what it does is it creates groups of people, my generation, that completely misunderstand what the

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Trinity is. Yes. Yeah. So don't do that. Don't make the comparisons. Just give what God says about himself.