The Weakness of the Evangelical Church on the Doctrine of the Trinity

This is the Dividing Line. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

This program is designed to equip the body of Christ with biblical answers to the complex questions that we face in our day and to serve as a witness of the gospel of the grace of God to the unbelieving world around us.

The Dividing Line is a presentation of Alpha and Omega Ministries. Our host is Dr. James White. This is a live program and we invite your participation. In the Metro Phoenix area, you can call now at 602 -274 -1360.

And toll-free across the United States, it's 1 -888 -550 -1360. And now, with today's topic, here is James White.

Phillips, Craig, and Dean and the Trinity Controversy

And there we go. I sound much better when I'm on the air. It is symptomatic of exactly what is going on in evangelicalism today. It is symptomatic of what is wrong with evangelicalism today. What am I referring to?

I'm referring to the conflict that is taking place these days between many people regarding the subject of music. And specifically, specific music that's supposed to be playing right now underneath me.

Listen very carefully. There it is now! Ah, yes. You may have heard this music before. This is the music of Phillips, Craig, and Dean. As you listen to it, you'll notice it's very pretty. And if you listen to the words, you don't really hear anything overly unusual.

In fact, I listened to this song for a long, long time and really enjoyed it. So what's wrong?

It's a beautiful song. It's based on Galatians 2 .20, one of my favorite passages. Maybe one of yours as well. And it's beautifully sung. It's arranged wonderfully. It actually excites the emotions. And if you listen to someone saying this in your church, you'd probably not for a second think of anything more than Galatians 2 .20 and to be crucified with Christ and everything else.

So why in the world do we bring this issue up on the dividing line today? Now listen to this song just for one more moment. Crucified with Christ and yet I live. That's a beautiful message. And that is the music of Phillips, Craig, and Dean.

And you say, well, what could possibly be wrong about that? And why is this emblematic of what's wrong with evangelicalism today? Well, let me try to tie all of this together. Some of you may be familiar with an article that appeared recently in Christianity Today.

There is a controversy. Marty Minto has mentioned it on Straight Talk Live. It was a controversy I was aware of quite some time ago as I was writing an article for the Christian Research Journal entitled Loving the Trinity.

And at that time I was aware of the fact that there were concerns about the Weigh Down workshop and a woman named Gwen Shamblin. And as I read some of the things that Gwen Shamblin had read, I admit I bent over backwards to try to read them in a positive light.

And I came to the conclusion that in reality what we had going on with Gwen Shamblin was simply confusion. We had a woman untrained in theology, untrained in scripture, who was really just a weight loss expert, who was saying some confused things about theology.

And there are a lot of folks that are confused about theology, so I didn't even mention her particular situation in my article on Loving the Trinity. Well, lo and behold, I was too nice, and only recently Gwen Shamblin has come out on her webpage as being specifically and purposefully anti-Trinitarian.

In fact, the church that she and her husband, I guess, are a part of and are sort of in charge of is going off into, well, rank cultism, to be quite honest with you. And in the Christianity Today article, we read the following words.

Let me repeat that just one more time. People don't care about this, Shamblin told CT. They don't care about the Trinity. This is going to pass. What women want is weight loss. So Gwen Shamblin, of the Weigh Down workshops, said people don't care about the Trinity.

They don't care about my views on the doctrine of the Trinity. They want to lose weight. That's what's important to Christian women. If I were a Christian woman, I would be exceptionally offended at such a statement.

And yet, though I am thankful to report that there are many churches that are closing their doors to the heresies of Gwen Shamblin, there will be many others who will agree with her assessment and say, hey, look, she talks about Jesus, she talks about the Spirit, she talks about God the Father.

What does it really matter if she's not a Trinitarian? What does it really matter? Because people get something positive out of what she has to say. And if it can help them meet their felt needs, if it can help them lose some weight and feel better about themselves, isn't that why we're here?

Well, is that why the church is here, folks? Is that why the church exists? If your church exists to make people feel better about themselves, then you're not going to care at all about Gwen Shamblin's theology.

In fact, you're probably going to say, look, you theological Nazis, run around being concerned about what people believe on these irrelevant issues, whether there's a Father and a Son and a Spirit, or there's just one person that manifests himself.

You know, it's just all a bunch of words anyways. Doesn't really matter at all today to the modern church. That brings me to an email that was sent to me this week. It was sent to me from a local listener who had written to K-Love Radio, and as you know, K-Love is not just one radio, there is a local station, K-Love, that plays contemporary Christian music.

But there is a whole series of radio stations in the K-Love family, and this particular individual wrote to the folks at K-Love and basically said, why do you always play the music of Phillips, Craig, and Dean?

Because Phillips, Craig, and Dean are not Trinitarians. In point of fact, they are Oneness Pentecostals. They deny the doctrine of the Trinity. So why do you play their music? And this was the content of the response.

Thank you for your recent email to K-Love Radio. I'm glad you took the time to write. I appreciate your willingness to come to me with your concern regarding Phillips, Craig, and Dean. K-Love does seek to be doctrinally accurate and true to the Bible, and I do understand why you were alarmed.

K-Love has long sought to uplift all believers regardless of their denomination. Our goal is to focus on the 90 %—now listen closely— the 90 of essential doctrine on which all Christians can agree, and not to argue about the 10 of non-essential doctrines which give room for Christian liberty.

Early last year, the issue of Oneness Pentecostals and Phillips, Craig, and Dean, Dean's involvement in this movement, was brought to our attention. The K-Love Board of Directors discussed this matter, and I'd like to share our conclusions with you.

After much prayer and research, we learned that PC and Dean do believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They just don't call them the Trinity. But then, neither does the Bible. From their testimonies, they seem to be fellow believers and are not living in sin.

The lyrics of their songs are clear and biblically correct. If that should change, K-Love would immediately stop playing their songs or promoting their concerts, but until then, or until new information comes to light, we decide to continue to play PC and D.

Also, the board decided to leave them on because the doctrine of Oneness Pentecostals would not exclude them from eternal life. They believe in Jesus, and that faith in Christ is essential. In other words, they believe in the basics of K-Love's statement of faith.

End quote. Well, listen to what this means. We are told, first of all, that the station is going to focus upon that which uplifts all believers, that is, on the 90 of essential doctrine in which all Christians can agree.

The only way I can understand that is that means that the doctrine of the Trinity falls in the 10 which is non-essential. The doctrine of the Trinity has become non-essential. We are told that after much prayer, K-Love learned that PC and D believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they just don't call them the Trinity, but then neither does the Bible.

Now folks, what does that mean? What does that mean? As I pointed out in my response to this, Mormons believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What they mean when they say they believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is, of course, completely and totally different than what Christians mean when they say they believe in the Father, that's Elohim, one God who was once a man on another planet, and Jesus, that's Jehovah, who is the first begotten child of Elohim, who has a body of flesh and bones, and one of his heavenly wives, and the Spirit, we assume, is another one of the offspring of Elohim, and a third God, but they believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Then again, so do Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God's impersonal active force, and the Son is Michael the Archangel, and the Father is Jehovah, but they believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and so it would seem that since the Trinity is part of the 10 non-essential doctrine, that Jehovah's Witnesses who produce contemporary Christian music, there's a bunch of Mormons producing contemporary Christian music, and if you listened to that contemporary Christian music, in a large portion of it, you would not be able to detect specific Mormonism.

So should they be played on K-Love as well? Should Christian radio stations say, Hey, you know, as long as it has a good beat, it sounds good, it's arranged well, it's recorded well, all is well with us.

It is also told that, we are also told that the board of directors of K-Love has decided that Oneness Pentecostalism does not affect the Gospel. Now, I don't know what basis upon which they're saying this.

Oneness Pentecostalism, as it is expressed in the United Pentecostal Church, and I'm quick to point out that none of the members of PC &D are still members of a UPC church, but Oneness Pentecostalism, as it is expressed by the UPC, the largest denomination, not only denies the doctrine of the Trinity, but it goes beyond that to say that speaking in tongues is absolutely necessary for salvation, and that you must be baptized in the name of Jesus, not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not in a Trinitarian formula, but in the name of Jesus alone for salvation.

But, we're told that the board has decided that the doctrine of Oneness Pentecostalism does not exclude from eternal life. They believe in Jesus and that faith in Christ is essential. Folks, what Jesus?

What Jesus are we supposed to be speaking of here? That is where all of this falls apart. Back in 1999, I received a copy of an email that was written on September 9th, 1999, by Randy Phillips of Phillips, Craig, and Dean.

Listen to what's said here. Quote, As far as your question is concerned, we believe in the three dimensions or personas of one God, 1 John 5, 7, Matthew 28, 19, and 1 Timothy 3, 16. We believe in one God who is eternal in His existence, triune in His manifestation being both Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that He is sovereign and absolute in His authority.

Folks, that is classic modalism. That's Oneness Pentecostalism. It says we believe in the Father who is God Himself, creator of the universe. We believe that Jesus is the Son of God. He suffered, died, was buried, and rose from the dead for our total salvation.

We believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him. Sounds good until you realize that in Oneness Pentecostalism, that means Jesus is two persons.

He is a human person, that's who the Son is, indwelt by the Father, that's who God is. And finally, we believe in the Holy Spirit who is God indwelling, empowering, and regenerating the believer. The Holy Spirit is called the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth.

So, in Oneness Pentecostalism, you have one person who is the Father. When He indwells, He is the Spirit. And He indwelt the human person who is the Son, so that the Son is two persons, the Father and the Son.

The Son is not eternal in Oneness Pentecostalism, folks. The Son came into existence at His birth in Bethlehem. Now, I have written to Phillips, Craig, and Dean. I have asked them specific questions about these very issues.

And I'm not getting responses anymore. You can imagine why. The end of Randy Phillips' email said, For centuries, people have debated endlessly theological differences. We do not want to spend our time in debating differences, but in coming together on our similarities.

This is the call of modern evangelicalism. Let's not worry about our differences, let's focus on our similarities. Folks, if we don't believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, what are our similarities?

We start off playing a song, I Am Crucified with Christ. It's a beautiful song. But what does it mean? For the Oneness Pentecostal, that means I have been crucified with He who was the Father in the flesh.

Not with the second person of the Trinity who became enfleshed to die in the place of believers. No. We're talking now about patrapassionism. We're talking about modalism. We're talking about a different Jesus Christ.

But we're not allowed to talk about that without being divisive. As long as it excites you, as long as it gives you goosebumps, as long as the music is good, and the lyrics are good, and the harmony is awesome, and they are great performers, then it doesn't matter.

As Gwen Shamblin says, people don't care about the Trinity, they want weight loss. Is she right? Is that what's going on in evangelicalism today? People don't care about the Trinity, they want pretty music.

They want to be entertained. Is it possible, folks, that the main reason that there has been only a few voices, such as my own, raised in warning about inviting Oneness Pentecostals into the church to quote-unquote minister, is because the vast majority of evangelicals are closet modalists?

They're modalists out of ignorance. They're modalists because no one will preach on the doctrine of the Trinity. We won't train our children in what the doctrine of the Trinity is supposed to be, and the main reason we won't do it is because it's too inconvenient to do it, and we really don't care.

It really doesn't matter whether we worship God in spirit or in truth, as long as our needs are met. What does it really matter? We wonder why the church is losing its voice and its clear identification, and yet, on the very basic issue of who God is, what the doctrine of the Trinity is, well, there's compromise.

There's compromise. Phillips, Craig, and Dean, beautiful music. It's beautiful music. But in reality, when they say I'm crucified with Christ, I don't know about you, but if someone's going to lead me in worship, there's one thing that needs to exist.

They have to believe in the same Jesus I do. I can't be led in worship by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They may sing holy, holy, holy, but they don't believe in my God, and the words ring awful hollow when you know what the meaning is, don't they?

602 -274 -1360. 1 -888 -550 -1360. Let's go to our phone callers, and let's talk with Johnny in Whittier, California. Hi, Johnny. Hi, how are you? May I call you James?

Sure. Oh, hi, James. I'm calling to ask you about the Protestant, One-Eyed Pentecostal author David Bernard. He wrote a book called Oneness and the Trinity, and in this book he makes the claim that early Christian authors, such as Clement Ignatius, Polycarp Hermes, were all One-Eyed Pentecostals, and then he makes reference to the Didache that it was interpolated, that it didn't originally carry on.

What I'm hearing is that he, I get the impression that he's taking them out of context.

Well, yes, very much so. Anyone who's read Ignatius knows he was no One-Eyed Pentecostal. He very clearly differentiates between the Father, Son, and Spirit while affirming the deity of the Son. So really, the position that he espouses was one of the earliest heresies the Church dealt with, and any group, for some reason, feels the need to go into the early Church and somehow try to prove that their view was, in fact, the majority view.

Which I think shows a real ignorance of Church history as a whole, because outside of monotheism, there was almost nothing that all the early Church authors agreed on. But as it may, there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the Didache, which contains the Trinitarian form of baptism out of Matthew 28, 19 -20, has been, quote-unquote, interpolated.

Dr. Bernard and I have not debated that issue. We did debate on WMCA a couple of years ago. The subject, does a person have to speak in tongues to be justified? And in that particular situation, it took me, I would estimate, about an hour and a half to get Dr. Bernard to admit on the air that I was not justified because I have not spoken in tongues.

So it took a lot of work on my part, but eventually I did get him to admit that, in point of fact, the doctrine of the Oneness Pentecostal, the United Pentecostal Church, and he is their chief theologian, is that.

So there has been a lot of discussion of Dr. Bernard and I debating in the future on Long Island. I'm sure that eventually that will take place. I don't know if it will happen the next year or not. But to debate the doctrine of the Trinity, and I'm sure those issues would come up, some debates, sometimes you have time to get into the early Church, Father, sometimes you do not.

But there were certainly modalists in the early Christian Church. They were called modalistic heretics, and they were refuted by anyone, such as Irenaeus and others, who recognized the clear teaching of the Scriptures regarding the fact that the Father and the Son are differentiated from one another.

Actually, his book called The Oneness of God, interacted with that a fair amount when I wrote a paper that is on our website called The Trinity, the Definition of Council on a Oneness Theology. And I think one of the most glaring things from Dr. Bernard's book is the tremendous difficulty, in fact impossibility, that faces Oneness Pentecostal writers when they attempt to deal with the subject of the prayer life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the problem here, Johnny, is that the vast majority of evangelicals have never even heard a sermon on the doctrine of the Trinity, and therefore to be able to provide a response to Oneness Pentecostal, who's ready to do it these days?

That is, I think, one of the greatest shames upon the modern Church, is that we simply do not prepare our people to understand what the issues are and to understand the errors of those around us. And I think that's why you see not only Phillips, Craig, and Dean, but Gwen Shamblin and other Oneness Pentecostal individuals.

Turn on the channel here in Phoenix. Well, you're in Whittier, so you've got TBN over there. Turn on between 20 and 22 here in Phoenix, and you'll see T .D. Jakes constantly. And I have sat there and listened to T .D. Jakes present a modalistic view of God, and yet he's on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Hello? Is anyone home? I don't get the feeling that too many folks are.

Yes, because I was at the debate that you did against Tim Staples, and really what I'm concerned with is on Church history, because I want to get into the Church Fathers. And you even said at the debate not to read quote books, to read the actual stuff.

Right, right.

Well, you know, it's fascinating, Johnny. You know what's fascinating about why? Because we didn't ask you to call, right? No. You just called in. The reason is Richard Pierce is sitting across from me in the control room, and I happen to know that during the break coming right up, he's going to be talking about a new item that we're offering on our website.

Mr. Pierce, do you want to tell us about it? Because the reason I think you might want to listen to this, Johnny, is we're offering a new product that contains a number. It has the entire 38-volume Erdman set available on the Master Christian Library.

I don't know if you have that yet. But Mr. Pierce is going to be talking to us about that, and you might want to listen in, because you said you wanted to go to the originals. Well, that's how you get to the originals.

It also has a lot of other stuff on it as well. So listen in to see if he describes it here in just a second, okay? Sure. Okay, well, thanks for calling today, Johnny. Thank you. God bless. 602 -274 -1360, 1 -5 -0 -1360.

We're going to take a break and be back with Kevin right after this. I've even got to hold it. Turn that music down. I can't hear myself. I feel like Rush Limbaugh. Can't hear myself. Just about deafened me there, actually.

I picked up the Ages Library because not only did it have the 38-volume Erdman set, which, hey, I know I've had that for a long, long, long, long time. I mean, everybody puts a CD out, throws it in there just for the fun of it.

But it had all sorts of other stuff, including now Kylan Dellich's commentary on the Old Testament, which is a very, very valuable 10-volume resource, and so it is definitely worth picking up. Let's go out to Surprise, Arizona, and talk to Kevin.

Hi, Kevin. Hi, hello. How are you doing, sir? All right. How are you doing, Jay?

I'm doing just fine. It's good to talk to you. I'm calling specifically to ask you a question on how we could, on what approach, I guess, the specific people you had mentioned, Bishop T .D. Jake and Philip Craig-Zendine.

Philip Craig-Zendine. Craig-Zendine. Okay. On dealing with truth instead of relying on feeling.

Well, you know, we live in a society that teaches us to rely upon feelings. It is a part of postmodernism to teach us to think in such a way that truth is what you feel that it is. Everyone's feelings are to be respected.

And what that turns into is everybody's feelings are to be taken as a valid expression of truth, and if you dare hurt someone's feelings by telling them they're wrong, you're a very bad person. I mean, we can see the absolute foolishness of this in our educational system when, for example, people will say you shouldn't tell a child when they say 2 plus 2 is 5 that they are wrong.

We should instead show them a better way. No, 2 plus 2 is not 5. And it's ridiculous to think that the opinion that 2 plus 2 is 5 is equally valued with the opinion that 2 plus 2 is 4, that that somehow is something we should be promoting.

So we've got to realize most of this thinking comes from the world. It has come into the Church, and instead of the Church being informed by Scripture and being informed by the way that Christians are to think, Christians are thinking like the world, and then editing the Christian message from the world.

It has come into the Church, and instead of the Church being informed by Scripture and being informed by the way that Christians are to think, Christians are thinking like the world and then editing the Christian message to take out those things that are that are contrary to the way that the world thinks.

So really it's a it's an entire worldview situation. It involves the necessity of laying down some very basic fundamentals and that is that God is our Creator and that because God has created all things there is truth and there is error.

There is right and there is wrong and he has revealed what the truth is regarding the gospel and regarding his existence in Scripture and therefore we must line ourselves up with what is found in that which is Theanostas, that which is God-breathed.

And so many people come into the church because of non-biblical means of evangelism with the idea that they in essence are able to tell God what opinions he should value and which ones he shouldn't. And it really it really involves starting from the ground up and laying that foundation that the scriptures are our sole infallible rule of faith, they're sufficient to function that way, and then once you've got that foundation laid then you can say all right here's here are certain teachings, here's what T .D. Jake says, here's what the scripture says, this is why it is important.

But as I said in the first half of the program, so rarely will you hear preaching and teaching on these particular subjects again because of the deep deep influence of the world upon the church rather than the church upon the world.

You know when.

You speak that, it's funny you brought up that specific individual in T .D. Jake's because I had noticed also that in his teaching on the Trinity that he wasn't talking the same way I guess I would look at it, and in the church that I attended they, we, the pastor and I had not have me teach there anymore because I didn't believe in the doctrine of losing your salvation.

But instead constantly he is a very, that individual is a very popular figure within our church. And but when I talked to individuals who who seem to adore him, they still seem to adore Trinity in essence of what we would speak of it.

And most people don't, they can't, if they were to go on and see his statement of faith, can't understand manifestation or three-person. They can't distinguish that, it's too too great for them. So what I'm asking is, how far do you go on that?

I mean I have already addressed that, but is it healthy? Or I am not saying that it's a non-essential, because I believe the Trinity to, the nature of God to be a very essential part of our faith. Right.

Otherwise we're talking about a.

Different God. Well and we don't have anything to say about our God, because we when people say, well who is your God? We go, well you know we all don't really agree on that, so we don't want to discuss that.

That exactly doesn't accomplish much. In reality, the reason that it's absolutely vital is that when we talk about worshiping God, we're to worship God in spirit and in truth. And seemingly modern evangelicalism has decided that spirit is enough, and even then they've redefined the word spirit to make it emotion.

That we worship God in emotion and truth is irrelevant. So it is vitally important, because it absolutely defines whether we are worshiping God or whether we're not. And God takes his worship very, very, very seriously.

I just remind folks of Aaron's sons and Uzzah. And if you don't know who they are, look them up in your Bible concordance and you'll discover that both of them died when they did that which was against God's prescription in regards to his worship.

And so again, I know many a person who regularly attends an evangelical church in the United States today, who would say, I would never worship a God that would strike someone dead for worshiping him wrong.

So in other words, I don't know what God they're worshiping, but they're not worshiping the God of the Bible. And it is that issue that I think is, this whole way in which people are treating the Trinity, is only a symptom of the fact that the church has so watered down the gospel that we have filled the pews with people who are not willing to submit to the Word of God.

And I think someday, when it is no longer popular to be a Christian, and it costs you something to be a Christian, you will see a huge crash in the number of people who darken the door of a Christian church on a Sunday morning, when it costs you something to walk through there.

When you have to live in light of it the rest of your week, you can't get the position at your job because you go there, etc. etc. It's going to change things tremendously. So how far do you go? I think when it comes to the central defining doctrines of the Christian faith, you go all the way.

And that means you might become unpopular, you might be considered unloving, you're not going to get the support of a lot of folks, but that's what you've got to do because it's vitally important. Okay, Kevin?

One more comment. Okay. If you have.

Time. Real quick, yeah. Okay, I don't believe within what I see in our area that there are churches willing to hear that message. You wouldn't even have the door, the open door, to tell that doctrine.

You mean the doctrine of the Trinity? In dealing with issues, as you're saying, dealing with popular figureheads, and then coming back to the truth. Well, I can assure you there are.

They aren't the biggest and most popular ones. I'm an elder in a church that obviously names names. I recently preached a sermon on the new gods of evangelicalism, where I named names in regards to Gregory Boyd and other people who are presenting, I believe, false doctrine within the quote-unquote pale of orthodoxy, etc., etc.

So there are such churches scattered around the valley, but I will admit they are not generally the biggest and most successful churches, because generally the preaching is very applicatory, it's very direct, and it is the central aspect of the worship service.

And people are looking for something else. They're looking for something that is commensurate with the way in which they think, and they think in light of the way the world thinks. So that is most definitely an issue.

But they are out there, and we can be very thankful for that. Thank you, Kevin, for your call today, 602 -274 -1360. Real quickly, let's talk with Sid in Tullis. Hi, Sid.

What Must Be Believed for Salvation

Hey, what's up, James? Well, I was wondering exactly what would be essential for salvation, as far as doctrine is concerned, because I know believing in Jesus Christ is what the Bible says, but do you think that a person who didn't believe in the Trinity, because of that, would that.

Default their salvation, or what? Well, the quick answer to that question is that we are not saying that a person, the very first day in which they confess faith in Christ, needs to have a Doctor of Theology degree and be able to give you a word-by-word, in-depth discussion of the triune nature of God, the relationship with the Divine Persons.

What we are saying is that an unwillingness to accept what the Scriptures teach in this subject would be indicative of an unregenerate heart, and that a person who is willing to continue to embrace a falsehood when, in point of fact, they have been given the truth, or when they are presented a false gospel within the context of Oneness Pentecostalism, that that gospel does not save.

I know many an evangelical who has misconceptions and confusions on the doctrine of the Trinity, but the call to the elders in the Church, to those given responsibility of teaching, is to continue to teach that truth and to call people to understand that they are to worship God in spirit and in truth.

And it should be the desire of the Christian to be growing in that knowledge, to be growing in that grace. It should be a consuming desire to know the Word and to continue to grow in an understanding of who our God is, because we want to know the One that we love and worship.

Anyone who gets to the point where they don't care at all about the identity or the concerns of their husband or their wife in a marriage is in big trouble. Well, in the same way, we should be very concerned about the identity, the concerns, the desires of the One that we say we love, who is our Heavenly Father, who is Jesus Christ, who is the Holy Spirit, our Triune God.

And that is a lifelong pursuit that we should be taken up with, and I would suggest that it should be far more important to us than anything else in life, and yet I think many of us will confess that the world frequently gets in the way of our pursuit.

And so it is my hope that the discussion of this will cause people to, again, consider what is really, really important and what is not. You have to cut me off, because I.

Just wanted to make one more comment. Okay, go ahead, real quick. Well, I was thinking, because something like, let's say a parallel, I don't know if this is a good parallel, but something like Martin Luther, who was a well-known and very strong evangelical Protestant, but he'd rejected the Book of James, he accepted the book to the Laodiceans as Scripture, and then he also hated the.

Jews, and there were certain things about him... Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sid, let's back up there. Okay, yeah, that may be wrong. Luther did not reject the Book of James. In fact, if you read his writings, he very frequently cites from James.

What he said was that in comparison to Paul's writings in regards their testimony to Christ, James was a straw-y epistle, and he did not like what James had to say in James chapter 2, because quite simply, he did not understand what James said in James chapter 2.

I don't know what you mean about... Luther did not change the.

Canon in any way, shape, or form. Okay, because I have read stuff like that, I might have read some bad... If it's on the.

Internet, you might want to take it with a little bit of a grain of salt. What I'm.

Trying to say is, if, you know, Luther could, you know, like for instance, he did not like the Jews much. I mean, he had some negative writing on the Jews. He.

Certainly did toward the end of his life, especially most people in that day. Yeah,.

What I'm trying to say is, if they could make that fault, but still be very strong and saved, could a oneness Pentecostal, somewhat just because of his misunderstanding of the Trinity, could he still be a strong leader in the church or something, or preach a very strong gospel and get people saved, but at the same time still keep his oneness?

That's what I'm wondering. No, I do not.

Believe so, because we're talking about the very object of our worship. We're not talking about the cultural fact that Luther was caught up in the very same type of horrible anti-Semitism that had been fostered by the Roman Catholic Church for centuries, and had come out of the Crusades, and all those horrible things that happened there.

That's not the issue. The issue is, what God are we proclaiming? And oneness Pentecostalism does not have the true gospel. Oneness Pentecostalism has a very works-oriented gospel, secondly. So no, I do not think that there is salvation in denying that the Son has eternally been God, in believing the Son is merely a human being who came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem.