The Forgotten Trinity

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I noticed Spring 2007, Systematic Theology 1, Bibliology, includes, along with provocative topics such as the
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King James Only Controversy. Now, it says the instructor is to be announced, but I'd like to make a suggestion on textbooks for the class.
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Think that might work? Think we might work that out? Okay. All right, good. And then
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Systematic Theology 2, Lewis Brown's doing that, huh? You're going to be doing that?
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What text are you going to be using? I don't know yet. Don't know yet? Yeah, I'm using Spring. You know, everybody has said, well, when are you going to write a
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Systematic Theology? I say, I'm too stupid to write a Systematic Theology. There's no way. But I have used
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Boyce, Raymond, and Raymond and Boyce in that order, basically, for that, and that's useful.
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There does look like some really neat classes in here. I hope you all will take advantage of that. I was just sitting here thinking that the last time
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I was with you, I think it was just a few months later that I was in Omaha, and I'm wondering how that little connection took place, and I'm going to be in Omaha in October, so it's just sort of odd that we just do this on a yearly basis type thing, keeping it in the family, shall we say.
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And I won't mention which brother worked out harder at the gym than the other. I'll leave that a secret that we won't get into this morning, but I'll bet you there will be some disagreement by certain people as to who works out better.
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I do bring you greetings. If you weren't here last evening, they said you missed something.
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I'm not really sure because I don't remember most of it. When you fly across the United States and then drive here real quick and just jump into it, at least now we've had the opportunity of getting into a bed and sleeping and showering and doing stuff like that and feeling semi -human, so it is good to be with you this morning.
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We have a lot to cover, unfortunately, and I hope you have a pen and pencil or, of course, if you're a true geek like I am, you have your
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PDA ready to go. The day will come, I think, when I will just set up an infrared port up here and beam my notes to everybody and just hold your little palms up and just get your, not your palms, it's a computer, and you'll just download it and we'll go from there.
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Literally, I could do this presentation off my Palm Pilot anymore. It's amazing what these things can do.
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I'm a bit of a geek along those lines. In fact, if you've been holding off on that, let me just mention in passing, there's so much
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Bible material available, not only for the computer now, but for the Palm Pilot. If you're wondering what in the world
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I'm talking about, let me just mention when I'm doing debates and I travel and stuff like that, I have on this little unit in my hand right here,
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I have, well actually, it's just this. I have all of my books. I have about eight
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English translations, a German translation, an Italian translation. I have four or five
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Greek texts, the Hebrew text parsed. I have little kittles. I have all of the
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UBS translation handbooks. I have numerous lexicons, the modern lexicons, the biblical languages in here.
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I have the first set of early church fathers. I have Spurgeon, Edwards, Calvin, Luther, and that's just the text files.
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That's not the cool games as well. Now, I can't mention some of the videos
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I have in here in Massachusetts because they're of the fact that in my state of Arizona, we have something called the
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Constitution of the United States. It used to be here, used to be here, but it's gone now.
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And we have something called the Second Amendment of the Constitution which allows those of us in Arizona to actually own firearms and to utilize them.
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And so I've got some neat videos in here that I'll only show to Steve later because he's a former cop of, for example, what a
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Smith & Wesson M550 caliber Magnum does to a watermelon. But it's really neat.
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You can watch it on video the whole nine yards right in your hand. But seriously, it is incredible the amount of information that is available today.
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On this little palm pile, I can do more biblical studies. I can do searches on this that scholars 60 years ago, it would have taken them three months with all their graduate students to do the same grammatical study of the
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New Testament that I can do on this little unit in a matter of seconds. It's just we live in an incredible, incredible age.
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So if you're a fellow geek like me, you just get your palm pile ready to go. This morning, in the brief amount of time that we have, the very brief amount of time that we have together,
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I am, as I mentioned, I'm Scottish, which means I like being on time. And so it's going to be tough for me to fit this all in before allegedly 9 .50,
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I think. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Go to 10. Okay, all right. Well, this subject, what
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I'm going to do is I could honestly do the entire weekend on almost any one of these subjects.
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I mean, we're doing Sola Scriptura, we're doing the Gospel in Roman Catholicism, we're doing the Trinity, and I could do the whole weekend on each one of those topics.
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So rather than just simply sit here and go, okay, you got that, okay, you got that, okay, you got that, and just fly through it, especially on this subject,
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I'm going to try to do an introductory type issue that would then hopefully lead you,
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I don't know if we have any of the Forgotten Trinity or not, we do, hopefully lead you to the book on the
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Trinity that would then take you from that point forward to the biblical evidence that you need to understand in regards to the doctrine of the
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Trinity. How many of you have ever had the Jehovah's Witnesses knock on your door on a Saturday morning?
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Ah, okay, all right. You know what's interesting, by the way, I suppose I can take this as a positive thing.
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Jehovah's Witnesses used to be the second largest religious group, and they may still be numerically, outside of the
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Roman Catholic Church in Italy. But I was in Italy just two weeks ago, and I was asking about that.
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They have stopped going door to door in Italy. Now for the
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Jehovah's Witnesses to stop going door to door is an amazing thing, if you know anything about Jehovah's Witnesses. But they have stopped going door to door in Italy, and their numbers are suffering.
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Now that's, okay, you go, whoa, that's great. That would only be great if the reason for that was because Christians were having inroads and the gospel was getting to these folks.
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Italy is just a completely secular nation. And they're struggling in a post -modern secular nation, their message doesn't really resonate overly well.
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So it is interesting to note that. I call it the biblical doctrine of the
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Trinity. A lot of folks these days in systematic theology would not identify the doctrine of the
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Trinity as a biblical doctrine. They would identify it as a traditional or historical doctrine that developed over time.
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I am firmly convinced that if you believe sola scriptura, scripture alone is the sole infallible rule of faith.
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Please notice I did not say it's the sole rule of faith. People trip you up on that. We all have our either confessions or our traditions and the things that we do that function as a rule of faith.
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That's what defines us over against somebody else. But those rules of faith are not infallible. They are subject to correction by the word of God.
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If we believe that the scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith, and if we believe in tota scriptura, that is we have to believe all that God has revealed in his word, then
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I believe because of that we will have to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. And everyone who does not believe in the doctrine of the
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Trinity is disbelieving a particular element of biblical truth. They think they are just believing a non -biblical word,
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Trinity. But in reality what we need to do if we are going to be effective, first of all in communicating it to others, actually let me change that, second of all to communicate it to others, first of all for us to understand why it's important for us to believe in the doctrine of the
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Trinity, we need to be able to understand what the biblical foundations are. And I made that distinction just now due to the fact that for most
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Christians, let's face it, you can live your life, most evangelical
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Christians will go through a week without ever thinking about the doctrine of the
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Trinity. It does not impact their daily life. And if you were asked, why should the doctrine of the
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Trinity impact the way you behave or act today, how would you answer? If we say it's definitional, if we say it's central, why?
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Why? That's one of the things I want to talk about today. First of all though, preliminary considerations.
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Preliminary considerations. I started my book out by saying I love the
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Trinity. And I asked the reader, do you find that an odd statement? When was the last time you heard someone say,
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I love the Trinity? Have you ever heard anyone say? You have heard?
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Probably me. Well, I wonder where he got that at? Note to self, do not use in churches that have read your books.
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But it's true. It is very unusual in evangelicalism as a whole to hear this.
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I mean, we have a certain broadcasting network that is related to this word.
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And on that you have people who do not believe in the doctrine of the
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Trinity who are allowed to preach regularly, which means that from their perspective the Trinity is a negotiable.
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It's a, yeah, you know, does it really define things, so on and so forth. Why don't we hear more evangelicals saying,
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I love the Trinity? I would suggest to you it is because you don't say you're passionate about something and you don't act that you're passionate about something that you don't understand.
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If you don't understand it, if in the back of your mind you're going, well, you know, if someone really asked me what this is all about,
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I don't know how I would respond. I'm not sure how to answer. There's all sorts of questions. In fact,
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I've got questions that I've never really had answered about this. And if somebody asks me about it, then I don't want to look stupid.
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And so it's a whole lot easier to talk about more popular subjects that are more mainstream than to say,
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I love the Trinity. I have all sorts of questions about it. And it's not normally the subject of the preaching and teaching of the church.
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And it's even becoming less that way when you see that in many evangelical churches the concept now is, well, what you need to do is you need to have 20 -minute sermonettes and you need to have, you know, skits and stuff to keep the kids happy and bring everybody in and make them all feel warm and things like that.
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And once you define the church as a place where you're supposed to bring unbelievers in and entertain them, that's going to change the nature of what you do.
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If it's no longer the gathering of the saints for worship where God's truth is explained and expounded and applied in the power of the
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Holy Spirit in people's lives, then obviously subjects like, you know, New Perspectivism or the
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Trinity or whatever it is are simply going to be dismissed. They're not going to be the subject of discussion any longer.
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I obviously believe that it's vitally important if we're going to say that this defines the faith, we need to know why and we need to be passionate about the reasons for it.
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I believe that the decline in worship, and you might say, what do you mean the decline in worship? There's more worship music than there's ever been.
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There's more worship seminars and ways that you can have exciting worship in your church than there's ever been.
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How can you talk about a decline in worship? I was speaking at a conference in Chicago a number of years ago, an apologetics conference, and they had a worship team there.
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I've always wondered about worship teams. I mean, I don't have a problem with the concept of people who specifically help to lead in the music portions of the service.
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I just wondered, do they ever get together and compete? You know, I mean, that's what a team is. Who wins and what do you get if you win as a worship team anyways?
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Is there a Super Bowl? How does that work? But anyway, there was a worship team, and they were very good. I mean, they were polished.
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They were smooth. Some are just sort of almost painful to watch, but others, you just know that they just really know what they're doing and they're very good and all the rest of that stuff.
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And they were, but I was about to speak on the subject of Mary, and they said, now before we end the worship and the speaker comes, we're going to sing one more song.
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And I'm just sitting there like, do I say something? When I get up there, should
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I say something? I mean, I'm not from Chicago. I'm visiting, you know, and I'm sure they didn't mean anything by it, but should
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I say something? Anyone want to guess if I did or didn't? How do you all know?
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I got up there and, yeah, I said, I'd just like to mention something that I don't think we're done worshiping quite yet, that when
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God's truth is proclaimed, in fact, that's actually the central aspect of worship. And unfortunately, they heard none of that because as soon as they were done, they were going right out the side door and never heard a word
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I had to say because they had another gig to get to that day, and so that's sort of how it worked. Decline in worship to me means true worship, worship that's not centered upon man but worship that is centered upon God.
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The less and less we know about God and the more and more we form him into our image, the less we're actually worshiping and the more we're just entertaining ourselves, the more we're just generating warm, fuzzy feelings inside ourselves, and those warm, fuzzy feelings may be wonderful at that time, but have you ever wondered why so much of modern evangelicalism doesn't have any impact on Tuesday morning?
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It's because the emotions wore off by Monday morning. And if it's all based upon emotion, if it's all based upon that kind of concept, that explains some of the surface -level material that we see out there.
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And so I believe that the decline in worship, and I do see that because I see the church redefining itself around man rather than around God and his worship, and what he has said is pleasing to him in comparison to whatever we think is pleasing to us, has a lot to do with the fact that we don't discuss the doctrine of the
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Trinity, we don't really understand it, we don't see how it's central, we don't see that the gospel itself is a
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Trinitarian gospel, that it finds its source in the electing decree of God the
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Father, its completion and its fruition in Jesus Christ, its application in the
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Holy Spirit. There is no gospel without the doctrine of the Trinity. Since we don't discuss it that way, then
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I think that's part of the reason for a decline in worship. And when we talk about historical issues, as we sit here today, and I've been helped a little bit by my recent travels,
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I've had the opportunity over the past couple of years to actually do a little, and I'm not a big traveler, some of you have noticed that, well, you travel well, not really.
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I would rather just have my little old routine in my little old house in Phoenix, it's much easier on me, but I have had the opportunity of traveling outside the
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United States, down to Sao Paulo, I just got back from Italy, I was in London in Scotland, and when you go to places, you know, and you're in the storied northeast, and you've got, in New England, you know, you've got a whole lot more history, as far as the
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American nation goes, than I have in Phoenix, believe you me, when the state becomes a state in 1912.
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Things go back a lot longer around here, but even then, in comparison to going over to England, you know, way, way longer than anything around here, and then you go to Italy, and, you know,
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I visited the Colosseum, and you're seeing stuff from some way, way, way back there, you realize, wow, there's a lot of history there that we don't really, as Americans, think about.
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I mean, my Italian host told me, he said, one thing about you Americans, he said, you build lousy homes.
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He says, nobody in Italy would ever buy a home made of wood, because when you buy a home in Italy, you're expecting your family to own that home for the next 300 or 400 years, and we don't think of buying homes for 300 or 400 years, you know.
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We don't, we honestly, when you buy a home, you don't expect it to be there 400 years from now, because we don't think in that kind of long -term history.
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Well, the same is true of evangelical churches. For most of us, church history started about 20 years ago, and we don't see ourselves standing in any type of historical continuation.
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And yet, I think one of the most beautiful things, especially when you study Christian doctrine, is to go back and to realize that these are things that have been believed for generation after generation after generation.
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Now, the problem is, there always has to be a balance, because the tendency is, for people, once you notice that, to start going, hey,
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I'm going to now elevate those earlier believers to a position they shouldn't have.
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I'm going to start honoring their writings to a point where they almost eclipse the Bible. That becomes the pull that direction.
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I'm not talking about that, but there is a tremendous comfort to be taken, especially if we happen to be living in a culture that is coming under the wrath of God, especially if we live in a culture that has so sinned against the light, has had so much gospel preaching within it, and yet revels in its debauchery, loves to spit in God's face, loves to produce art and media that glorifies that which
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God calls sinful and abomination as sight. That's called television in our land these days.
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And is under the wrath of God. And if we, as the people of God, are in a society like that, when
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God's judgment comes upon a people, God's people suffer along with the rest of the people. God doesn't put us in a hermetically sealed bottle and say everything is going to be fine for you.
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A growing, discerning church is a blessing on a nation. Does this nation deserve, meritoriously, that kind of blessing?
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The only answer to that is no. And if it is blessed with a discerning, growing church, it's completely of grace.
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But in that type of a concept, let's say you are in a place where the faith is, well, in Italy, where my friends there, they almost all know each other.
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If you're an Evangelical Protestant in Italy, you know pretty much all the other Evangelical Protestants in Italy because there are so few of you.
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In a situation like that, how do you stay encouraged? How do you stay motivated? How do you keep pressing forward?
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Unless you see that Christ has been building his church for 2 ,000 years.
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And there have been times when that church has been extremely persecuted and extremely small and in a vast minority and greatly thought against and spoken against by the prevailing culture and even the prevailing religions around it.
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But you see that God has been faithful to his people down through the ages. And it's the same thing with this particular doctrine.
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This isn't just something that somebody cooked up in the early church. When my wife and I visited the
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Colosseum, outside they're selling books and stuff like that, and you buy the book for €15, and then you take it in, you scrape the price tag off, and it was originally printed at €11, and that's just sort of how it works.
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But we picked up this book that gave information about the Colosseum and about the Forum and Circus Maximus and all the rest of that stuff in the center of Old Rome.
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And one of the things they mentioned was, and there's some argument about this, they're not absolutely certain of this, but it seems logical, that when
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Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, was martyred, that he would have been martyred there in the
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Colosseum. He was thrown to wild animals. There are only a certain number of places that really could handle having wild animals.
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And as an aged bishop, if you're not familiar with him, by the way, if you're not familiar with him, I would highly recommend the reading of his letters.
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He wrote seven letters as he was being transported, having been arrested, to Rome.
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And he wrote to a number of the major churches. They're fascinating letters, they really are. And he also even wrote to the church at Rome.
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And he was given the opportunity of recanting. He refused to do so. And I threw in a couple quotes here, just because very often
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I've been told, especially by Jehovah's Witnesses, ah, this is a belief that developed over time, it was the
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Council of Nicaea, and even after that, yada, yada, yada, yada. In fact, I had a Jehovah's Witness elder sit in my office once and tell me that it was the 12th century before anyone believed in the deity of Christ.
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And I'm like, wow, your church history texts are a little bit different than mine. But Ignatius, who is also
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Theophorus, unto her that hath found mercy in the bountifulness of the Father most high, and of Jesus Christ his only
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Son, to the church that is beloved and enlightened through the will of Him who willed all things that are, by faith and love towards Jesus Christ our
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God, even unto her that hath the presidency in the country of the region of the Romans. This is from his letter to the
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Romans, which by the way, just for interesting sake, does not mention the
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Bishop of Rome. The Bishop of all the other churches is named.
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But there is no Bishop of the church at Rome mentioned. You know why? Put this one in your trivia file, because it's rather important.
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There was no singular Bishop of the Bishop of Rome until about 140 A .D. This is about 107.
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The church at Rome functioned on the Biblical pattern of a plurality of elders up until around 140
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A .D., until the what's called a monarchical episcopate, one bishop over a group of presbyters developed there as well.
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But initially, it was a group of elders, just like we have in sound Biblical churches today.
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And for some reason, they didn't have this concept of the papacy or a pope. It's an odd thing that they wouldn't do that so early on.
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But you will notice, Jesus Christ our God. Now, this is 107.
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This is, depending on where you date the writing of the last books in the New Testament, this is very, very close to the
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New Testament age. And already, without even having to explain it, without saying,
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Oh, and we have a new doctrine we'd like to tell you about. I mean, this is just mentioned in passing. You don't mention things like this if it's some new thing that you're just trying to promote.
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This was something that had been believed all along. To the Smyrnians, he wrote, that he is truly of the race of David according to the flesh, but son of God by the divine will and power, truly born of a virgin and baptized by John, that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him, truly nailed up in the flesh for our sakes under Pontius Pilate and Herod the
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Tetrarch, of which fruit we are, that is, of his most blessed passion, that he might set up an ensign unto all the ages through his resurrection for his saints and faithful people, whether among Jews or among Gentiles, in one body of his church.
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Now, you may look at that, and that may not excite you, but it excites me to see someone writing, uninspired writing, but early on, a clear biblical knowledge of the facts of the gospel.
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Because there are other things you can read in early church history that are not like this. If you want to read
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Barnabas, if you want to read the Shepherd of Hermas, these are horrible little works that show very little knowledge of the biblical text.
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Ignatius obviously knew the biblical text, and what we believe, I mean, there's nothing in there that any of us could possibly object to.
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And yet, this was written almost exactly, well, in two years, it will be exactly 1900 years ago.
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I like the fact that I still believe what he believed 1900 years ago. That, to me, is sort of important.
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Ephesians 7, this is not Ephesians, this is his letter to the Ephesians. There is only one physician of flesh and of spirit,
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God and man, true life and death, Son of Mary and Son of God, first passable and impassable,
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Jesus Christ our Lord. That's high Christology. That is a high doctrine of Christ.
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That's not something that developed way down the road someplace. That is part of the most primitive faith of the church.
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Unfortunately, it's probably beyond what a lot of preaching today about Christ is about.
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But here in the very letters of a man who's going to his martyrdom, he's going to die.
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You know, you write letters to people when you're going to die, and the only thing you put in those letters are important things, right? That sort of focuses the mind,
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I'm going to die. Okay, I'm going to talk about what's important. Well, what was important? Trinitarian theology, sound
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Christology, who Christ is. I'm going to skip past the Council of Nicaea there and get to our subject because of that crazy little clock in the back.
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There must be something wrong with that clock. It just, no? There we go.
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He was just slowly bringing me back up in case I dropped it again. There you go.
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Sorry about that. I hate doing things like that because I've been a sound man myself. It's the most thankless job in the world, by the way.
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So you ought to thank the sound man. If you don't go to this church, thank your sound man. Thanking their sound man if you go to another church is sort of irrelevant.
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But if you go to your church, thank your sound man because when you do it right, no one ever says thank you.
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When you do it wrong, they all know where to look. And they all blame you even if it's one of those other guys that messed around with how you had it set up perfectly when you got started.
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Anyways, basic definition. How many of us could give a sound basic definition?
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If I were to go like that, those of you who are fast memorizers, quick, ask me before it goes.
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Quick, quick. You know, you learned how to cram right before the test and then 15 minutes after the test, you have no idea what any of it was anyways.
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If I were to ask you to give a basic definition of the Trinity, how many of you feel really, really confident that in so doing, you could avoid any of the ancient heresies of the church?
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I was at a church in Florida. And this is fun to do back when, you know, and I'll even mention this to folks.
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If I'm coming into a church where I've never been before, they've never heard of me, they don't know anything about me, they haven't played any of my
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DVDs or whatever that is. I like to come in and role play, especially with the young people.
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And so I went into a junior high department and they had been studying cults, quote, unquote. And so they said, now this morning we have a very special treat for you because, and, you know, they'll come up with a name.
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Sometimes they'll use like Lucas because, you know, that's white and Greek. So, you know,
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Mr. Lucas from the local kingdom hall has agreed to come and talk to you.
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We've been studying about what Jehovah's Witnesses believe and so Mr. Lucas is here to talk to us about what he believes.
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And you see the kids' eyes are getting bigger and bigger. This is a real Jehovah's Witness? Does my mom know this?
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And so I got up with the poor little student dude and have you ever noticed that we take the least mature adults we can find and put them with the kids?
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Have you ever figured out why that is? Don't the kids need the example of the mature adults? I've never figured that part out but I guess it's because they can run around more than us older folks can.
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And so this poor college dude is standing there and within 30 seconds
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I had him defending heresy. Within 30 seconds. It was real easy.
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I said, so you believe in the deity of Christ? Oh yes, yes, I believe in the deity of Christ.
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For example, like in John 1 .1, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Right, right, you believe that teaches that Jesus is
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God, right. So that means that Jesus is the God with whom he was?
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Because it says the Word was with God. So Jesus was with himself. Well, I said,
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I mean, you believe the doctrine of the Trinity is there's three persons that are one person, right? Right, boom, got it.
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Because that's not what the doctrine of the Trinity is. Three persons that are one person. But if I had made you stand up,
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I'm not going to point at the Golden Gate graduate because certainly you would know. But, right?
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Yes, indeed. But if I point at you, and I asked you that question, how confident would you feel to stand up in front of everybody and expound upon the answer?
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That's what I mean when I talk about lacking a confidence in the doctrine of the Trinity itself.
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We have to know what we're talking about. Now, for those men in the audience who are colorblind, and that does seem to be a man's trait, the word being there is in a sort of reddish -pinkish, actually, color.
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It comes out here, and so is person. So I just wanted you to know those two words are in different colors. Honestly, I've had folks who had no idea what
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I was talking about. Anyone want to actually admit you do not see that? No one wants to admit it.
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Well, I know you're... There you go. Thank you. There you go. See? That's just how it works.
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And that's why you have someone to help you dress, right? There you go.
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There you go. I know. I was just waiting for you to look up here. Yes, I knew that was coming. Within the one being that is
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God, there exist eternally three co -equal and co -eternal persons, namely the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, you would think that a doctrine that can be defined in one sentence that is not overly complex, there's not 14 different clauses to it, not too many wherefores and thous and so on and so forth, you would think that a doctrine that could be defined that way wouldn't be all that difficult for folks to master.
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But one of the reasons that we struggle in discussing the doctrine of the
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Trinity, in discussing the eternality of God, in discussing what's called the hypostatic union.
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What is the hypostatic union? Anyone? Sir? The relationship of deity and humanity in Jesus Christ.
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Jesus Christ is the God -man. What does that mean? What's the relationship? Does the God part gobble up all the man part?
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Does the man part gobble up all the God part? Is Jesus two different persons? What's the difference between a nature and a person?
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Et cetera, et cetera. The reason we struggle with these issues, one of the reasons, is because we are talking about something that is absolutely unique.
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And we learn by analogy. You and I learn. Remember when you were a kid, and you asked dad a question.
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Very frequently, dad or mom are going to answer, well, it's like this. And they will take something you're already familiar with, and then try to build upon that to help you understand something that maybe you haven't yet experienced.
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The problem is, when you start talking about God, if God is in fact utterly unique as God, as He exists as a triune being, as Christ existed, as the only and unique God -man, any analogy will automatically be wrong.
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I mean, you can illustrate maybe some aspect of the truth with an analogy.
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But if those two things, especially the Trinity and the
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Incarnate Son, are utterly unique, then there can be no analogy drawn that is going to be perfect.
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And in fact, taken to its logical result, any analogy is going to end up leading to problems.
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And so we struggle to learn something that has no counterpart in the created order.
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And I know you've heard of many analogies to the doctrine of the Trinity. You've heard about water. And it's ice, and it's water, and it's vapor.
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And you've heard about the cloverleaf. And you've heard about, well, I am a father, and I am a son, and I am a husband.
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And almost every single one of them is actually heretical when taken to its final conclusion because it just can't do justice to what we're talking about here.
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We are talking about one being and three persons. Being and person are different things.
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Being is what makes something what it is. Person is what makes someone who they are.
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Hank Hanegraaff has used the illustration. I don't know if he stole it from somebody else, but I've stolen enough illustrations from other folks that at least
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I'm giving credit to where credit's due. One what and three who's.
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One what and three who's. We have to keep those categories distinct. And we do so in our daily experience.
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We recognize that you could find some rocks out there across the street, and we know that a rock has substance, it has being, it exists.
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If you doubt it, take it, smash it against your forehead, and you'll have all the evidence that you need. It exists.
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Now you might think that's a silly illustration, but if you ever talk to a Christian scientist, you'll see why it actually has some merit to it.
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I've never figured out how to talk to a Christian scientist when they don't believe I'm actually there. So I've always thought you pop them in the nose.
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Did that hurt? Okay, we have a starting point. All right, here we go. But it doesn't really work that way. They put you in jail.
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But anyway, a rock has being and substance, but unless you're one of those weird folks who got into the pet rock stuff a number of years ago, which
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I thought was just the most amazingly odd thing that I had ever seen, but you don't sit around talking to that rock.
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You don't worry about how you treat that rock. You don't worry about whether what you say to that rock might hurt its feelings because you recognize that it lacks a second category of personality.
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But you know that a human being exists, that it exists on the level of being, ontology.
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It exists in a certain time and a certain place. I've come to the conclusion that mothers do develop the ability to be in more than one place at more than one time, especially that's inversely proportional to the number of children that she has.
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But generally, humans are limited to one place, one time, and that that being, however, is personal.
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You do have to worry about feelings, and you can communicate, and you can differentiate yourself from that other person.
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There is something about who -ness there, not just what -ness.
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And when we talk about God, we're talking about one being of God, that which makes God, God, differentiates
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God from anything else that exists, and yet three divine persons that share that one being.
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Now, my human being is shared by only one person, me. When your human being is shared by multiple people, well, we have institutions for you.
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That's not natural. All right? We are limited, we are finite. One of the big differences is when we talk about the being of God, we are talking about something that is infinite, something that is not limited by time and space, like our being is limited, and hence can only be shared by one person.
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We're talking about an infinite being, and the question is, does the Bible reveal to us that that being is unitarian, only one person sharing that being, or possessing that being, or trinitarian, three persons sharing that one being?
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That is the question. Now, the most common misunderstanding that I have encountered in talking not only, sadly, with cultists and those outside the faith, but even within the faith at times, is the
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Trinity is not saying that there are three beings who are one being, nor three persons who are one person, one being eternal and limited, shared by three divine persons,
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Father, Son, and Spirit. That's how I got that young man to defend something he should never have been defending, that there is one person who's three persons.
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I remember when I first ran into some Mormons in high school, and I started reading some books on the subject,
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I struggled with this idea, and so I went to people in my church, and I asked questions, and I'll be perfectly honest with you, every illustration answer
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I was given was actually wrong. It was actually wrong. I, in essence, was given modalistic answers.
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What's a modalism? What's a modalism? Well, that's an odd way of putting it. What is modalism, and who is a modalist?
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Modalism is really still promoted by one major group in the United States called the
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United Pentecostal Church International, based in St. Louis. Dr. Bernard is their leading theologian, and Nathaniel Urshon used to be a name that you would hear in regards to the
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UPCI, and they are modalists. There's different forms of modalism, but in essence, a teaching that denies the existence of three divine persons, and says that the
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Father, the Son, and the Spirit are in some way the same person. Now, what they actually say is that Jesus was two persons.
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His divine side was the Father. His human side was the Son, and so the
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Son, for the UPCI, is not eternal. He came into existence at His birth in Bethlehem, and the
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Father is both the Father and the Spirit, but it is a confusion of the divine persons, a denial of biblical
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Trinitarianism, and yet, every illustration and the answers I was given when I first asked as a teenager were actually modalistic, and I'm afraid that if we were to pass out a survey this
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Sunday at most evangelical churches, we would get primarily modalistic responses.
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There's another famous modalist who became a polytheist. His name was Joseph Smith, and if you read the
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Book of Mormon, Mosiah chapter 15, clearly Joseph is trying to explain the doctrine of the
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Trinity that he had been taught in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches as a youth. He didn't understand it.
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He presents a modalistic perspective, and that becomes enshrined in the Book of Mormon. Now, obviously, later he abandons that and becomes a polytheist, as we have in the
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Doctrine and Covenants, but you therefore have a contradiction within LDS Scripture at that point. But this is a common problem, and it is a common response amongst evangelicals to give the wrong understanding.
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Now, what are the three biblical foundations of the Trinity here in the last 14 minutes we have together on this subject?
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I want you to get these down because this is where the rubber meets the road. You can sit around and talk about the
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Council of Nicaea and being in person and everything else until you're blue in the face, but to actually get somewhere, especially with a believing
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Jehovah's Witness, you need to get into the text of Scripture. And like I said, I'm a biblical
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Trinitarian. I believe the doctrine of the Trinity because I believe the Bible, and therefore this is where you get into the text itself, and you can identify where you need to go by what element of this people deny.
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The basic foundation, and I would say it's the primary foundation. If we were to give primacy to one of these foundations, this is it, is monotheism.
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There is only one true and eternal God. That is without question the foundation.
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That, of course, is where the battle is joined in the debate with Mormonism, and in fact with various forms of Jehovah's Witnesses as well.
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They violate true strict biblical monotheism. This is also important in the fact that there is a growing encounter and knowledge of Islam in our society today.
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And Islamic apologists, and there are many of them, Islamic apologists will allege that we violate the doctrine of biblical monotheism.
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They would argue that we are the ones who are not monotheists, that they and the Jews are monotheists, and that we actually are tri -theists.
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And really, even when you try to correct them, they can't believe you're right. They can't believe you're right because the
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Koran says that you have violated the truth that there is only one true
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God, that as a Trinitarian you have committed the sin of shirk. Shirk is to associate anyone with Allah.
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And the Koran very clearly presents the idea that Christians believe, and I think this is clearly what
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Muhammad believed, that Christians believe that the Trinity is Allah, Jesus, and Mary.
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We could go into this if we had the time to do it, but it really seems to me very clear in a number of passages, especially in Surahs 4, 5, and 6 of the
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Koran, that this was Muhammad's understanding. And I have debated a Muslim apologist on Long Island, and it did not matter how many times
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I reiterated the Christian belief. They can't believe I'm right because the
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Koran says otherwise. And so that's just all there is to it. So we need to understand monotheism.
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Let me just ask a question. Without turning to the 28th book of the
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New Testament called Concordance, how many of you could quote five verses off the top of your head right now that teaches there's only one true
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God? I'm not asking for hands. I'm just asking you to ask yourself that question.
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Where would you go? How would you prove it? Just simply saying everybody knows that doesn't work. It's not that they're difficult to find, especially if you've been reading the book of Isaiah anytime lately, but they are all over the place, and this is an important issue.
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Somebody pull the battery out of that thing. Did you know that within the past two months,
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Eerdmans Publishing Company, one of the largest Christian publishing houses in the world, published a book by Robert Millett, who is a professor at Brigham Young University, called
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A Different Jesus? And it is an LDS apologetics work defending the
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Mormon view of Christ, and it's being published by Eerdmans and distributed in Christian bookstores. And the reason for this is that certain evangelical leaders, especially
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Dr. Richard Mao, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, where I am a graduate, has taken a leading role in convincing
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Eerdmans to do this because Dr. Mao has been talking with LDS scholars and has come to the conclusion that Bob Millett, though Bob Millett still believes that God is an exalted man and Bob Millett still believes that men can in some way become gods and that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer and he attends the
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Mormon temple and he reads the Book of Mormon, Dr. Krauss -Pilgrim Price, that Bob Millett is trusting in the biblical
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Jesus for salvation despite all of that. The walls do be a crumbling, my friends, and biblical monotheism is one of the key issues that I've raised in regards to Mormonism for many, many, many years, and yet now you have people such as Dr.
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Paul Owen of Montreat College saying the issue isn't whether they have the wrong god or the wrong Jesus.
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With Mormons, the issue is they haven't been baptized properly. Wow. Yeehaw.
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Foundation number one, monotheism. Foundation number two, there are three divine persons. The Father is not the
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Son. The Son is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. The Father speaks from heaven when
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Jesus is baptized. The Spirit descends in the form of a dove when Jesus prays to the Father. He uses the second person, not the first person.
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He refers to the time before His incarnation when He and the Father, as divine persons, shared one glory.
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There's clear distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit all through the text of the
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Bible. It is the modalists who missed that one. And foundation three, co -equal and co -eternal, that is the
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Son and the Spirit, though differentiated from the Father. Clearly they are not the
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Father, and it is the Son who is sent by the Father to be the Redeemer. It is the
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Father and the Son who send the Spirit to indwell the church. Distinct roles from one another, but as to their participation in the divine nature, they are co -equal and co -eternal.
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Now, who would deny this? Well, almost all of liberal theology would, of course. The Jehovah's Witnesses do, of course, because they believe that Jesus is
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Michael the Archangel, a created being, and the Holy Spirit isn't even a person, but is God's invisible active force.
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And so, all forms of subordinationism that subordinate the Son and the Spirit, not functionally, because the
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Son voluntarily takes on that role as servant, but as to being, they subordinate the
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Son and the Spirit to the Father. That's the third foundation that they violate, and the scriptural passages that would teach those things.
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Now, if you'd like to have an illustration, you've probably seen the triangle before, but you may not have seen it like this.
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This is not the is God, is not thing, which you may have seen in various places.
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Instead, what I do is I put those three biblical doctrines on the triangle, monotheism being the foundation, being the primary of the three, and then by negating each one of these, you can write at the far end the resulting heresy or error that comes about.
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Let me show you. If you negate monotheism, if you get rid of monotheism, if you somehow violate that, the result then is some form of polytheism.
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Now, that doesn't necessarily mean polytheism as rank as in Mormonism, where you have literally an unlimited, limitless number of gods, but it can also be something like henotheism, where you have one main god and then minor deities below that god, as I believe
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Greg Stafford, a Jehovah's Witness apologist, ends up with a form of henotheism. But if you deny that biblical foundation of monotheism, then you have three divine persons and equality of those persons.
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The result then becomes some form of polytheism. Or if you deny the existence of three divine persons, then you have an equality of the persons.
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You have monotheism, and so the result is modalism or oneness Pentecostalism, the idea that Jesus is the
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Father and the Son and the Spirit and that these are just different manifestations of one person, et cetera, et cetera.
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And then if you deny the equality of the persons, you're left with three divine persons and monotheism, and hence you have to subordinate those divine persons in some order, normally
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Father, then Son, then Spirit, in that particular order, but to make the
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Son a lesser being than the Father, and hence subordinationism,
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Jehovah's Witnesses, the Way International. These are all examples of that kind of an error. Okay?
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Did you get a chance to jot that down? So what we would do at that point, if we were doing the entire weekend, is now we do an entire hour on monotheism, then we do an entire hour on the existence of three persons, and then we do a couple hours on the third foundation, because that tends to be where you end up having to do the most biblical argumentation, especially with Jehovah's Witnesses.
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And there are so many ways that you can demonstrate the deity of Christ, the person of the
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Holy Spirit, things like that, from the text of Scripture. By looking at the
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Bible, there's just so many ways to do it. That's where we would go from that particular point, and that's why you're going to have to read the
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Forgotten Trinity to get to do that particular portion. Or, if you have
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Internet access, and who doesn't these days, I guess, you can go to aomin .org,
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which is our website, and we make available MP3s, and certainly everyone runs around listening to your
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MP3 player now, right? Yes? No? Maybe? I forgot to bring...
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My Palm Pilot, by the way, can play MP3s too, and very nicely.
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But I have... I didn't bring them. I should have. I apologize, because you would have loved these.
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But I'm... I don't know if any of you have noticed, but I have one major character flaw some people feel.
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I love anything made by Oakley. Okay? I love Oakley sunglasses,
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Oakley shoes. This is the Oakley Detonator. Beautiful watch. Isn't it gorgeous? These are
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Oakley glasses. Prescription glasses. This is an Oakley case. I love Oakley stuff.
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And for Christmas, the people in my... We have a worldwide chat channel. I know that none of you have ever wanted in there, but...
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Actually, we do have... Where's BBAS? There's one of my channel rats back there.
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I own the channel, and so I get to kick people out and do whatever I want. It's sort of my own little kingdom. It's fun. But it's really a little community.
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We know folks from the Philippines, and Australia, and England, and we kick all the
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French out. But anyways... We've just banned France. Just .frban.
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Okay, that's all right. Never mind. I'm sorry. So anyway, they got together, and they bought me a pair of Oakley Thumps.
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And if you've not seen them, Oakley Thumps are sunglasses with a 256MB MP3 player built in.
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I should have brought them. I just forgot. I'm so sorry. But you put them in. They've got the ear things that come right down in it.
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The controls are on the side. And so as you're walking along, the sound is awesome. Just incredible.
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And at 256MB, which means you could put, I don't know, 24 hours worth of sermons and things like that in there.
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Or about 4 hours worth of great music. And so I'm going to have to wear those in a debate someday, just for the fun of it.
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Just sort of freak people out. Sit over there like this while the other guy's talking. That'd be sort of fun.
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But if you listen to MP3s, if you have an MP3 player... I have two MP3 players with me on this trip.
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You listen to them on your... I have 3 ,700 MP3s on my computer system that I can listen to at any point in time.
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So I am a true geek. But we make MP3s available. And I did a debate in November of 2003 against Greg Stafford on the subject of the deity of Christ and is
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Jesus Christ God? And so if you want to, you can just grab that thing. I think it's all of three bucks, an
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MP3. You can listen to it. You can watch the DVDs, whatever. And you can especially see why that third point combined with the first point is necessary.
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If you're dealing with a really well -read Jehovah's Witness, especially if they're up on their current apologetics, that's the debate you're going to want to listen to.
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But for like a Sunday school, and if there's folks here that aren't from BBC, for a Sunday school class or a
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Wednesday night class, the DVD of my debate with Hamza Abdul -Malik on the deity of Christ and the
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Trinity, especially the deity of Christ in the New Testament, if you want to understand what
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Muslims think about this and what they hear and do not hear in a presentation, that one, to this day, continues to fascinate me.
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At the end of the debate, there were audience questions. And to listen to what the
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Muslims asked is one of the most educational things you could possibly get hold of.