Mormons Don't Understand the Trinity

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Quakoo, of course, is a Mormon convert. He converted from the Methodist Church in Texas, and so I would have their own issue.

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I would I would want to talk about that as some critical theological points, but be that as it may, he converted at the age of 15,

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I believe, from the Methodist Church, and if you listen to his 19 -minute testimony online, you'll see that it's pretty clear from that testimony that he tells us he doesn't eat the church that he went to didn't have really solid doctrinal instruction.

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They weren't very serious about these things. I'm gonna go ahead and play that right here for you guys. I start talking about Mormons with some of the people in my

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Methodist Church, and we go to this big youth camp, and in the

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Protestant world, you go to these big youth camps a lot. It's always like a stadium full of people or a big big gym full of people, and they have a band, and they have a youth pastor.

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We weren't learning about prophets. We weren't learning about atonement. We weren't learning about a lot of things. A lot of it was just,

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I like to call it meme Christianity, where we were high schoolers who were doing things that weren't good, and then we would see it like some kind of meme or sermon about, hey,

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God loves you no matter what, and we're like, I love Jesus. I'm gonna go back to smoking weed and having sex.

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Like that really was the mentality. I know that's really messed up, but that's the way it was. So I was sitting there, and I was in this wonderful conference, and I just didn't really buy a lot of it.

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I didn't believe that some guy, some pastor with no authority, it's not like an angel came and told him, or God was like, hey, you can preach my word.

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He was just some guy who signed up to do it, and who knows if he's right. He was just spewing his opinion out, and a lot of it was good, but it was still his opinion.

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There was no way to know if it was completely true, and I knew that it wasn't completely true because I looked at the fruits, and the fruits weren't that good.

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So I began praying about the Book of Mormon. So there you go. So yeah, two points there.

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I think the beginning portion there is most relevant to what we're gonna be playing here, and this isn't the only spot in this testimony that he talks about the nature of his

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Christian upbringing, but talking about the nature of where he was at, the community that he was a part of, doctrinal training was not a big part of that group he was with.

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I mean, no talking about the atonement, those sorts of things. It just wasn't what they did. He calls it meme Christianity, which unfortunately is often the case.

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So when Dr. White pointed out to him that he didn't really have a background to justify all these claims he was making in terms of his understanding of the

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Trinity, and all these different things, it's from his own words, his own testimony. That wasn't the nature of the conversations that he was in, and his doctrinal instruction and training.

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I mean, the way he describes the group he was a part of is pretty awful, a pretty awful state.

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I mean, if you were a part of a youth group where there wasn't solid doctrinal instruction coming, and people were just living the lives however they pleased, we would also be condemning that right alongside you.

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And should have obviously left that church, but certainly not have left it for a non -Christian cult.

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That was, I think, the wrong decision. So those are his own words. I want to make sure we have that on record there, because that does come up here.

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So I'm gonna play a bit here. We'll just sort of, just tell me to stop, guys. We'll stop. This is Kwaku talking with Dr. White and I on last week's episode.

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To teach it in that sense, but it has never ever been claimed. This is the exact way it is, period.

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That's how it is. That's not the reality. However, I would like to push back, though, because this idea that God being a man, even an exalted man, if we do read the

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Bible, we do see how he's a man. Okay. We see he's a man. I'd love to see this. Okay. And I think we also see that...

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Okay, just quickly there. He doesn't. He made a lot of claims last week like that, because that's how it happened, because that's what it says, or because the

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Bible says that God is a man. Or the Bible doesn't teach this anywhere. Right, exactly. Those kind of broad sweeping claims.

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Yes. So the difficulty here is that when you read the Old Testament and you have descriptions that are anthropomorphic or phenomenological languages.

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Wow, those are two words hard to say. Phenomenological. Phenomenological language. You have wording in Scripture.

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You have, of course, metaphor. You have all kinds of instances where you have to say, let's take the language and let's say, what does the

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Bible teach here? So, of course, you have instances in Scripture where you have the

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Christophanies, where Jesus appears in the Old Testament. Jesus appears in the Old Testament.

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He shows up He interacts with God's people, and that cannot be missed.

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You see that the Christophany in the Old Testament where Jesus is actually worshipped. They're monotheists.

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They believe there's only one God, but God shows up and they worship Him, and that's, of course, the pre -incarnate Christ. How do you know that it's a pre -incarnate

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Christ? Because John chapter 1 tells you. No one has seen God at any time.

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Now, you're either going to believe that or you're not going to believe that. An inspired apostle, the Apostle John, Quakoo quoted from John and said,

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Jesus said, I am. So, apparently, he believes John is reliable and can be trusted because he quotes from the Apostle John.

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Well, that same Apostle John said that no one has seen God at any time. God who? God the

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Father. That's the context, John chapter 1. The only begotten God, Jesus, the unique and one -of -a -kind

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God, Jesus, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known. So, of course, in the

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Old Testament, all the examples of speaking to God face to face as one speaks to his friend, that, of course, describes everything you need to understand about that.

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Are we talking about face to face, as in terms of two human faces interacting with each other, or as a man speaks to his friend?

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The description is right there. So, you also have instances in the Old Testament where God uses the phenomenological language, or anthropomorphic language, and you have language like, for example,

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God covering you in the shadow of His wings. You have the Bible saying things like, our God is a consuming fire. Are we going to read all those texts and say that God is a blazing furnace?

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Or are we going to read those texts and say that God has feathers? What kind of feathers does God have?

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Are we going to understand it in the context that it's given? And so, when we look in the Old Testament, no, you cannot find any instances where God the

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Father is described as a man, that God is a physical body of flesh and bone, as tangible as man's.

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No. You have to read the Bible in its context with the language, and I'm not saying the language is meaningless.

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And that's the thing that got me about Kwaku, is that he would often say, well, that's poetic. Meaning, that's meaningless.

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I can wave my hand at that. That's not what I'm saying when I say something is poetic, or it's hyperbole, or metaphor.

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I'm saying that it has real meaning, but God uses these different forms of language to communicate

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His message to us. And what you do not see in the Old Testament is that God the Father is a body of flesh and bone, as tangible as man's, or that God was once a man who lived on another planet one day, and exalted to become a

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God one day. You cannot find that, will not find that. And, of course, in the Old Testament, where you do see the

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Christophanes, or God showing up, walking in the garden, or interacting with Abraham on Mount Moriah, you have

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God, of course, showing up. It doesn't mean that God was a man at all. And you, of course, have instances that Christians use.

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This is the interesting thing. I said this, and I don't think you caught it. The instances from the Old Testament where you have God showing up, and interacting with His people, the pre -incarnate

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Christ, I use those very same verses to demonstrate the triune nature of God, and the pre -existent nature of Jesus Christ, that He always existed as God.

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He doesn't become God. And that was also another interesting thing about Kwaku, when I was talking about Jesus, the pre -incarnate

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Jesus, as was He God then? He said, yeah, He was God then. That's interesting, because in the case of Jesus, and Mormon thought, their

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Jesus, really, it's confusing how you could say He was God before the Incarnation and the Resurrection. He hadn't gone through His earthly ministry, and done all those works, and been exalted to become a

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God one day. Also, it's interesting if you take Brigham Young's approach to this discussion.

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Brigham Young said that the only men who become gods, or even the sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.

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So polygamy is that necessary portion of becoming a god or goddess one day. So the question is, was Jesus a polygamist in the pre -existence, where He was a spirit offspring of Heavenly Father, one of His goddess wives, and Lucifer, and all of us?

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Was Jesus a polygamist then? Or do you go with the early Mormon apostles and prophets, where they taught that Jesus actually married the

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Marys and Martha, and that Jesus was a polygamist in His earthly ministry? So there's all these problems with that.

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But, be that as it may, let me go ahead and play some more. Him being a man is more clearly supported than Him being a

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Trinitarian spirit, which is what what my wonderful evangelical friends believe, but that that's, in my opinion,

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I mean this with kindness, that's not scriptural. That's that's a later idea. That's a mathematically impossible idea.

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It's just not true. And it can't be demonstrated with Scripture. I was actually reading a wonderful Stanford article last night about the

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Trinity, and says, yeah, I mean it isn't it isn't demonstrated in the New Testament or the Old Testament at all.

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Yeah. Has been done for hundreds of years. No, no it hasn't. Two millennia. That's why the debate's still going. Let me ask you one question.

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Please name the book on your shelf written by a Christian in history on the Trinity, defending the Trinity. Name one book on your shelf.

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Name one book on my shelf. I offered to send it to you, and you didn't hear it.

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Fun fact, I would have taken it. If I could just point this out to you, I think the reason you're struggling for a name of a book is you made another audacious claim again that Trinitarian doctrine is not scriptural.

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It's it's it's false. It can't be shown from the Bible. And I just wanted to say this humbly to you. I'm making sense of God by Timothy Keller, by the way.

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No, that's that's certainly not what we'd be aiming at there.

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My point in bringing this up, he says that it can't be demonstrated from Scripture, and the debate's still raging. No sir, it is it is it is not.

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Of course false teaching existed in the first century itself. You have the Apostles dealing with false teaching in their day.

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Does that mean the Apostles weren't clear, and the debate was raging on with the Gnostics because it just was undecided doctrine?

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No, you have false teaching everywhere. False teaching very much codified in, say, the Mormon fellowship,

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Mormon communion. And so the Bible teaches there is only one eternal God, only one

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God by nature. And yes, the Bible does teach from Jesus' own lips, he says in John chapter 4, that God is

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Spirit, okay? And if you want a definition from Jesus, now this is important, if you want a definition from the

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Lord Jesus about what that means, because he was asking, what do you mean by Spirit? And Dr. White said non -corporeal,

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I said, well, immaterial. And Jesus, I think, is the authority on what

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Spirit is. And so when Jesus says God is Spirit, we have to ask, well, did Jesus ever describe what

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Spirit is, what it's like? Well, at the resurrection, when

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Jesus appears in the upper room, or in the room with Thomas, Thomas doesn't believe that Jesus has risen from the dead.

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He's not going to believe unless he puts his finger into his side and into the holes in his hands. And Jesus says to him, it's

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I myself, he says, handle me and see. A spirit does not have flesh and bone as you see me have.

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That's what Jesus says to Thomas when he says, I want to touch his physical body and put my finger in those nail prints.

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I want to make sure I touch it myself. Jesus says, spirit does not have flesh and bone as you see me have.

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And Jesus himself said in John chapter 4 that God is Spirit.

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So the Bible teaches that God is Spirit. God is eternal from eternity into eternity. Psalm chapter 90 verse 2, it teaches that the

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Father is called God, the Son is called God, and the Holy Spirit is called God.

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Now that's three distinct persons, and the Bible describes them as co -equal, as co -eternal, and John chapter 1 was one of the...

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I want to hear what you guys have to say about this. This is what really was interesting to me. When Dr. White very graciously, very humbly went through John chapter 1 with Kwaku, he opened up the text, he walked through a few texts in John chapter 1,

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Kwaku acted bewildered by Dr. White's description of John chapter 1, and it wasn't complicated.

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It was very, very clear and precise. It was not something that was over everybody's heads. He was demonstrating the pre -existent nature of Jesus, that he existed eternally alongside the

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Father. In arche ein halagos, kai halagos ein proston theon, kai theos ein halagos.

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In arche ein halagos means as far back as you want to go. Without any reference point to stopping, the

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Word was already there, and he was proston theon, face to face toward the Father.

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He was in intimate relationship and fellowship with the Father from all eternity. In arche ein halagos.

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So Jesus was always existent with the Father, in intimate relationship, and he was God. Dr.

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White demonstrated that. Kwaku acted completely bewildered. He said, nobody will understand what you just said. I'm a hundred percent positive no one can understand what you just said.

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I found that compelling that he couldn't just grasp that one point. So they would have to say, you know, of this earth, essentially.

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But even then, that's still, like you mentioned earlier, that doesn't comport with their view of God.

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So Jesus and Heavenly Father existed co -equally as separate gods from eternity?

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You know, if they try to apply that to that verse, it still doesn't make sense in their worldview. No, it can't work, because it's a convoluted, contradictory, unbiblical system.

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So again, the Bible teaches only one God by nature, eternal, from all eternity, into all eternity. The Father, God, is described as the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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And Jesus is described as the same yesterday, today, and forever. I am the Lord. I change not.

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Therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. So the Bible says one God, Father is called

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God, Son is called God, the Holy Spirit is called God, and yet the Bible always makes a distinction, proper distinction, from Genesis to Revelation, between the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. There is never a time in Scripture where you'll see the persons confused...