Living in Two Worlds, then, A Full Response to a Muslim "Revert"

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday. Let me start off first. We're going to be doing a review of a video that I was pointed to, I think, just this morning, as I recall, and the subject's going to be Islam and the deity of Christ and issues like that, so I hope that'll be useful to you and a blessing to you.

Living in Two Worlds in a Time of Cultural Upheaval

But before we get started, I fully understand if you feel like you're living in two different worlds right now. In the old world, you're still thinking about yard maintenance and stuff that has to be done around the house and a trip this summer and doing stuff with the kids, grandkids in my case, planning down the future like you were at Thanksgiving of last year.

But then there's the new reality where you get up each morning and you see new, amazing things that you just never dreamed you would see in your life. Well, you saw them in dystopian movies, you saw them in Mad Max, you saw them in Snake Plitskin, was that his name?

Whatever. The one-eyed dude. Yeah, Escape from New York. Didn't he do Escape from Los Angeles too? Oh, okay, all right. The sequel, okay. All these, you know, Ryan, Logan's Run and all this stuff, we've seen it but literally this morning, you wake up and you see an article about BLM training military groups to attack police and to patrol black areas.

And I remember, I was really young but I remember back to the Black Panthers and to revolutionary groups like that. But they were on the fringes and now you fire up almost any one of the major corporation websites and they're donating to these people, they're supporting these people.

All of the NFL and NBA and Major League Baseball and anybody who's anybody is out there chanting Black Lives Matter and you've had three funerals for the same man so far and now he's got a halo. Is that not religious?

How did that happen? I mean, we've had presidents die that have not been treated in this way and none of these people knew the guy so you know that there's something else really, really going on here.

He's been turned into a symbol that has no connection to the reality because nothing has a connection to reality anymore. I mean, it's and so you see all that stuff and you don't know which world to live in.

I mean, you still want to go to work because you still got to pay bills but how do you plan for the future? And you know, how do you live in these two different worlds? And if you're sitting there going, okay we're waiting for the answer, sorry.

All I'm doing is saying to you, I know exactly how you feel. When I did a lot of grief counseling back in the day, I would see people in the lost support group that I would bring up. Well, for example, I bring up how many widows struggled with the feeling of anger toward their husbands who had died because there were so many things they didn't know how to do it, he hadn't prepared them for.

And I just, I'll never forget this one woman, it was like I had just discovered her deepest, darkest secret. She was like, because she thought she was the only person that ever felt that and she felt so guilty about it.

And just realizing that she wasn't the first and wasn't the only, made all the difference in the world to her. Now she could actually deal with it and think it through but she couldn't even deal with it because she was so guilty about it.

Once you find out you're not the only person feeling this way, then you can talk about it with others and you can move forward and we're all feeling that way. It just doesn't, it does not seem real because right now anyways, I can still pretty much go for a jog in my neighborhood and I'm not really concerned yet about that.

When night falls, okay, you know, I'm keeping an ear out a little bit more than normal and like a lot of you, there's a lot of firepower within short reach. And there's a bunch of you that never got around to doing that, they're discovering you can't do that now.

And you're probably wondering if the rest of us will share our bounty. No. Anyway, I get it. I fully understand. And so I walk in here with a topic to cover and it's not about guerrilla warfare and downtown Minneapolis looking like a war zone or defunding the police.

It's not, it's not about, she looked like she was about 35 years old, that woman from the Minneapolis, uh, uh, city of Minneapolis. It was asked that question yesterday. So if someone's breaking into my house, who do I call?

Well, you know, that question really comes from a position of white privilege. And you just wonder where these people, what planet they live on. Um, but those are real questions that, that, that need to have real answers.

And we, we look at this kind of stuff and, and it's hard for us to put together these two worlds where we need to continue seeking some level of balance. And it's not going to be easy to do. It's not going to be easy to do.

Um, and I don't, I don't have all the, I don't have all the answers to that, but, but this one thing I can be assured of, well, a couple of things I was, I decided this morning to turn on some, um, scripture memorization.

And then I was, where was that? I was up in, I think South Dakota, North Dakota. I was up in one of the Dakotas when I was given some CDs of a group of there that had done a bunch of the Psalms in contemporary music.

And, uh, they're really neat together with all that integrity music, the, all the scripture memorization stuff. I just have to avoid, I just have to not get upset every time someone goes Psalms something.

Uh, sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they get it wrong. Anyways, I was listening to that. I wanted to hear scripture. And, uh, at one point, I, one of the scripture passages, it was from the Psalter.

I was going to look it up. I didn't have a chance to, I was in a bit of a hurry, but, um, this spoke about, I, I will lay down and I will sleep in peace without fear. And it was because the Psalmist knew who his God was.

And so we know in our heart of hearts, we know in our minds of minds, we know theologically that God has a purpose. He's going to accomplish his purpose. And as a result, um, our days are numbered. He's, he's written them in his book.

And that should be, if you trust God, a great comfort. I can certainly see why in a random world, that wouldn't be overly comforting, but God has determined these things. And no matter what situation he brings us into, um, he's not going anywhere.

I, I remind you of the story from the hiding place I told a couple of weeks ago about how even God can use fleas to bless his, his children. So even in the deepest, darkest places, God is there. So we, we know those things are true.

But the thought I had this morning was, uh, we're going to be talking today in response to a Muslim video about who Jesus is and how you have peace with God. And one thing I know for absolute certainty, no matter what happens in this culture, the truth on that subject is going to be true one day after whatever crisis point is reached in our own history.

If someday history records the great monuments in Washington, as we've already done it in movies, I don't know how many times, how many times we've blown up White House and the Capitol and space aliens do it, terrorists do it.

I mean, we've all seen it, but we've always known it was not real. But what if someday, um, that's the reality and history records the smoke rising from the ruins of the United States Capitol and the experiment that was the United States of America no longer exists.

I, I hope and pray that's not the case. I hope we pray the only thing, the only thing that could possibly save this culture now is a society-wide revival, society-wide revival. I mean, think about it, you, you, you listen to all the politicians, they have no solutions.

They got nothing. They're either bowing themselves down and submitting, and in fact, leading into slavery, or they're just repeating the same mantras in the past that aren't accomplishing. They, there is no secular solution for the situation we face because the divisions that have now been created by a destructive anti-human ideology called critical theory, intersectionality, all of which assume a Darwinian worldview resulting in abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, again, all assuming a Darwinian worldview.

We're just animals. When a revival takes place, people realize who they are in the sight of God. And when you know who you are in the sight of God, then you can't have animosity in your heart. You can't have hatred in your heart toward others who are also made in the image of God and are just dependent upon God and His grace as you are.

That's how you have unity. That's how you heal these schisms, and it requires a revival of the Christian faith. That's the only hope. Can God do that? You better believe He can. Do I pray for that? I pray for that.

Do I recognize God is under absolutely no external constraint to do that? God, look, think, think how many, think how many nations, kingdoms, and empires have risen and fallen since Jesus rose from the dead.

Think of the fear that gripped people's hearts in the Roman Empire as it was collapsing in the 5th century. That's why Augustine wrote The City of God. We have an abiding city, and this really introduced the West into a linear way of thinking of time and things like that.

Very, very important, vital stuff. But the fact is that when the Council of Nicaea met in 325, in hindsight, there were already great signs of the decline, obviously, at this point. Yes, definitely. But most people figured, well, we'll get through this.

And the great battles that were fought to help define and defend the truth of the deity of Christ, the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit, the person of Christ, the hypostatic union, fighting against Nestorianism, Antiquianism, Apollinarianism, these all took place while there were great, huge, civil upheavals taking place as the Roman Empire was in its dying decades.

And yet, people didn't stop thinking about eternal truths because of what was going on around them. And I'm just wondering if we as Christians have not become so accustomed to being so focused upon, well, I'll speak to American Christians, America.

And when I travel, which I may not get too much of in the future, but when I had that blessed opportunity and got to be with dear brothers and sisters in other lands, they were focused on what was happening in my country, sometimes more than people here were.

Divine truth is not dependent upon this nation and this culture. And the divine reality that Jesus is homoousius, he's of the same substance as the Father, was true when Jesus said to the Jews in front of him, Ego, I am.

It was true then. It was true when that was recorded. It was true when that was transmitted. It was true at the Council of Nicaea when it was believed and formulated over against denials thereof. And it remained true when the barbarians marched to the gates of Rome, and it was true when they left.

It was true when the walls of the Colosseum began to crumble. It's true today. And it will be true if in God's providence someday there will be a picture, not a CGI picture, though these days they're so real, who's going to know which one's which, but a real, verifiable picture of a destroyed United States of America capital.

You know it'll still be true that day that Jesus is homoousius with the Father. That'll still be true. Divine truths transcend cultural experiences. And therefore, if we are wise, we will seek to, in a balanced fashion, maintain our growth in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Does it mean that we do not take proper precautions, preparations? We have to be thinking through very deeply what our faith means, what we are called as Christians to be at this time. No question about it.

Are those simple issues? They are not. They are not simple issues. Will we all come to the exact same conclusions? We will not. We will not. But despite all of that, we cannot simply turn off all eternal truths and focus only upon... we can't meaningfully wrestle with the current issues if we don't have the eternal foundations upon which to stand.

So, for example, if we say to our society, Jesus is Lord, He commands this, and the society says, who's Jesus to us? When we say, He's the one that gives you every beat of your heart and breath of your mouth, we better have an understanding of why that's true, because there's a lot of people on the other side who are apostates.

They can really come after you if you're not ready to give an answer for the hope that's within you. So, that's what we're going to be doing. And I understand there's this strange feeling, almost like, well, I need to be completely focused upon all this bad stuff that's happening.

Well, actually, it'll be better for you if you don't. You mark it, you take it seriously, you do the proper preparations, but you can't live your life in that kind of a context. And if it gets really, really, really bad and we're all just rummaging for food, okay, that's happened before, too.

But till then, there's no reason to be at that level, at that situation. So, a little bit of apologetic for dealing with this subject, though it's a subject we would do all the time on this program anyways, but in the context that we're in, in the time frame that we're in, it is important to continue.

Responding to the Muslim Revert Video

So, here's what happened. I'm not in many Facebook groups. I'm in a few. I love that stuff. I never thought I would. My son hates it, even the smell of it. But that's my apple cider vinegar, club soda.

There's this stevia-based stir stuff. I either use the lemon or the orange for some a little bit of a flavoring type thing with lots of ice, nice and cold. It's good stuff. Good stuff. Anyway, I'm not sure how good it is for my voice, but it's good stuff.

Anyway, I have not had a single diet Pepsi, nothing like that since about the 20th of February. I forgot to weigh in today, but I'm assuming I'm right at 16 .5 pounds down since then. I don't know if you've noticed.

I don't take up quite as much of the screen as I did before. I'll be honest with you, folks. Those diet things make you fat. I could give you this story about it, but we won't worry about that right now.

Anyhow, this Facebook group is a presuppositionalist Facebook group, and someone posted this video. So, I clicked on it, and I saw it's pretty well made. I have not listened to all of this. I clicked at the beginning, and it was running for maybe a minute while I was getting the URL to grab the video and stuff like that.

And then, once I had it downloading, I clicked a little bit farther on, and it was talking about some historical stuff, about the Council of Nicaea and stuff. It was really historically bad at that point.

That's not uncommon. Our Muslim friends have a lot of really bad history when it comes to Christian history, especially. But I have not listened to all of this. So, this is sort of how you get a chance to listen into, you know, if I was on the train in London, or, man, I hope I get to do that again, if I was on an airplane going someplace, whatever, and this was the kind of conversation that came up.

Now, my understanding is, since he refers to himself as a revert to Islam, my assumption is, I don't know, but my assumption is he was a Muslim who became a Christian who went back to being a Muslim. So, my gut feeling is we're probably going to run into some, a number of places we're going to have to correct some misapprehensions as to what the Doctrine of the Trinity actually is, which would say something about what the conversion initially was about anyways.

But we'll see. We'll see. So, like I said, the production quality was good. So, it's like, all right, let's just do a live response, listen in, give a response, and we'll go from there. So, here we go.

I would like to share something with you guys today that is very much a cornerstone to my reversion story. I doubt he has blonde hair. That's what these, I don't know, what do you call these types of things?

These cartoon, they're not really cartoon, but I mean, that's sort of a very stylized thing there, which is cool. It's better than staring at me. You know, I'll definitely give it that, but, and every time I talk about this, I say, we got to do stuff like this, and we get a bunch of people in contact to say, I'll help you, I'll help you, and then we never get around to doing it.

So, but, and because I've got some great music, I forgot to tell everybody, because I was going to use it that day and I didn't, but Seb Goldswain has recorded a music bed for me that I can use for teaching videos.

We've just, the world's been burning down, so I just haven't felt like that was really appropriate, but I'm going to have to get that cued up, and we're going to have to do this. But anyways, I'm not going to stop at every few seconds like this and make completely irrelevant.

Comments. As to why I decided to accept the concept of the Almighty Creator defined within.

The Holy Quran as Tawheed and reject the concept of the Trinity. Okay, so this is absolutely the central issue, Trinity versus Tawheed. How many debates have I done on that? I've lost track, but if you're new to the program, or if you haven't thought about these things, or maybe you've always sort of put the Muslim stuff off.

I'm not going to be real, I'm not really interested in Islam, but you've just for some reason kept listening today. What you need to understand is Tawheed comes from the Arabic word Wahad, which means one, to make one.

And so Tawheed is the central affirmation of historic Islam. It is not simply monotheism, that there is only one God, but I think functionally it has become, as it has been applied and interpreted, especially in regards to another concept called Shirk, it has become Unitarian Monotheism.

Monotheism means there's one being that is God, Unitarianism would be there's only one person that shares that being that is God. Christians, of course, are Trinitarians, so they are monotheists, there's only one being that is God, shared by three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This is the central issue, certainly issues of authority are part and parcel of the discussion, Quran versus the New Testament versus the Old Testament, transmission issues, all sorts of things like that.

But when it comes to the central affirmations of our faiths, Trinity and Tawheed, very much the issue. Now, in the Holy Quran in chapter 112 verse 124, the Almighty Creator is defined as the following.

Now, this is Surah Al-Ikhlas, and those of you who have listened to my presentations on the subject of Islam, starting, oh, I probably put the first PowerPoint together on that in about 2006 maybe, so over the past about 14 years or so, almost all my presentations include a fairly lengthy discussion of Surah Al-Ikhlas, Surah 112, and especially the third ayah of Surah Al-Ikhlas, ayah is a verse of Surah Al-Ikhlas, which says that God is not begotten, nor does he beget.

And most Muslim scholars to whom I have spoken, I think historically this would be the case, recognize that this is a specific repudiation of Christian belief. That doesn't mean the author of the Quran fully understood Christian belief, but certainly attempted to provide negations of Christian belief in different ways.

The Quran has a really strong emphasis on the uniqueness of Allah and that Allah does not have a consort or a wife, because in the Kaaba in Mecca, which you've seen lots of pictures of in the Great Mosque there, you had allegedly in history 360 some odd idols, and many of them were a male-female pair with an offspring.

And the Quran seems to have the idea that that's what the trinity is, a male-female pair, Allah and Mary, and their offspring, Jesus. That's certainly what Surah 5 would indicate to us when we look at it.

But that's some of the background that you have. Here's Surah Al-Ikhlas, Surah 112.

Say, He is Allah, the One and Only, the Absolute and Eternal. He begets not, nor is He begotten, and there's nothing like unto Him. Now what this concept means is that there's only one true Almighty Creator, and that there's nothing beside Him in equality.

What this also means is that this Creator is not begotten by something, nor does He beget, create something like unto Himself, and that everything that we perceive in this life cannot be this Creator, for there's nothing like unto Him, that He is unseen.

Now through my comparative study in the Torah and the Gospels and the Holy Quran, I found that there are a lot of similarities regarding this Creator. To give you an example, in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 4, Moses, peace be upon him, says to his followers, and he says that, here are Israel, the Lord of God,.

The Lord is One. Now I just want to point out, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad, the name Yahweh, which we pronounce in a subpar fashion as Jehovah, very often in English, but Yahweh is not a word that has any type of importance to Muhammad and to the Quran, and in Islamic theology, even though it's the name of God in the Old Testament.

It's the name of God in the Hebrew scriptures. He had the Torah, didn't necessarily call it the Hebrew scriptures, but he called it, you know, the Torah. The Torah technically is normally associated with a Pentateuch.

The problem is, here, that the author of the Quran, the Muslim assumes the author of the Quran is Allah, and that Muhammad has nothing to do with it. The problem is that when you ask a simple question, does the author show an accurate understanding of the content, canon, teaching of either the Old or New Testaments?

Does he even recognize what the difference between the Torah is and the Nevi 'im and the Ketuvim? These would have been terms that Jews themselves would have been using. Does he think the Torah is the entirety of the Old Testament?

Is he using the same distinctions that the Old Testament itself gives us of the law, the prophets, and the writings? Did he understand what was in the New Testament? This one, there isn't. There's no question.

There's zero evidence. There's just nothing from the life of Muhammad, even in the content of what's called the Hadith, the sayings and actions of Muhammad collected hundreds of years after his day, that gives us any reason to believe that he was meaningfully familiar with the theology of the New Testament, that he'd ever heard someone read, recite Colossians 1 or 2 about Jesus or any of these types of things.

And so, when you have someone reading Deuteronomy 6 .4, it's important to point out to this gentleman that that term, Yahweh, Shema, here, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh, there's the word, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh is our God.

Yahweh Echad, Yahweh is one. That phraseology is used by the Father and the Son. And the New Testament writers utilize that name Yahweh. They use passages that are specific about Yahweh in the Old Testament, specifically about Jesus in the New Testament.

That's something really, really important to recognize and to understand.

Jesus Christ, peace and blessings be upon him, also confirms as to which came before him and which came after him in the book of Mark, chapter 12, verse 29, where he says that you're Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Even to the very concept that this God is unseen and that there's nothing like unto him, echoed in the book of Exodus, chapter 20, verse 3 to 5, as it is said that nothing in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the water beneath the earth will ever resemble this God.

And we're not allowed to make any images of this God likened to it,.

To anything that we perceive. Yes, that is all true. Yahweh is transcendent. Yahweh is not circumscribed by his creation. He is absolutely unique. This is repeated over and over again in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, places like that, especially Isaiah.

But those same texts also identify man as the imago dei, the image of God, and that man is made in that image, male and female. So, there is that element that has to be included if we're going to have a complete, fair analysis of what is revealed in the Tanakh.

Tanakh is a good term, Torah, Nevi 'im, Ketuvim, the law, prophets, the writings, Hebrew scriptures, Old Testament can sometimes sound prejudicial when you're talking to Jews, and it's actually two different things, because there's an Old Covenant and there's Old Testament.

So, Tanakh is nice and easy.

The same message is also in the Gospels, in the book of John, chapter 5, verse 37, where Jesus, peace be upon him, says while standing in front of his followers, the Pharisees, and his disciples, and he says that you have never heard the voice of God, neither have you ever seen his shape.

The same message is also in the book of Timothy, in 1 Timothy, chapter 6, verse 16, where it says that God is immortal and that nobody has ever.

Seen him, that you cannot see this God. It's an interesting translation, but you also have to deal with the fact that the elders of Israel were said to have seen God, that Isaiah saw Yahweh sitting upon his throne, Isaiah chapter 6, and that in the Gospel of John, which is quoted from chapter 5, John chapter 1, says that no one has seen God in any time.

Haman agones theos, the unique God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. So, there is an exegesita, an exegesis, a revelation of the Father by the Son as the managones theos, the unique God, right there in John 1 .18.

So, you can't just quote from John 5 and then skip John 1 .18 and then the application, John 20 .28, when Thomas sees the risen Lord, he says, my Lord and my God, and Jesus' response, because you've seen me, if you believe, blessed are those who have not seen, yet have believed.

Jesus does not rebuke the fact that Thomas refers to him as his Lord and his God. The Greek does not allow the my Lord, my God absurdity that is frequently used by less well-read and thoughtful Muslim apologists or Unitarian apologists as a whole.

Both words are addressed to Jesus. There's no question about that in the original language. But that's the message of the Gospel of John. So, you can't take 5 .37, isolate it from everything that comes around it, to come up with something beyond that.

Having discovered these similarities, everything started to kind of make sense to me.

Now, wait a minute. Now, I'm confused. Having discovered these similarities, that sounds like this would be something that the okay, that's done. That sounds like, from his perspective, this would be something that Christians would not be aware of, that this is foundational, fundamental Christianity 101, that God is unique, God is one, we're absolute monotheists, we have to quote Isaiah 43 .10 and Deuteronomy 6 .4 and Deuteronomy 4 .35 and Isaiah 44 .24 and all the rest of our favorite texts when dealing with the Mormons, for example, who do not believe that God is one.

They believe there are many gods and do not believe that God is unique. There are many gods before God. They're extreme polytheists. And so, we have to quote those texts all the time. And so, to say, well, discovered these things almost sounds like I was a Christian and didn't know these things, and then I discovered them.

Well, then, with all due respect, your knowledge of Christianity was extremely deficient, horribly deficient at that point in time. And if you're a revert, which would mean at one point you were a convert, my question would be, what caused you to convert?

Because it doesn't sound like there was a real substantive understanding of what the message of Christianity was in the first place, if you're discovering this at this particular point in time.

There was still something I had to define, and that was the concept of the Trinity, because it was something that I wholeheartedly believed in. It was something that I propagated.

But having started... Okay, if you believed it and propagated it, then the idea that God is one, that there is only one being of Yahweh, that he's not to be likened unto his creation, that he's not limited by his creation, because none of those things are contradictory to the long before the Son voluntarily took on a human nature and entered into human flesh.

He didn't cease to be God. This was the intention of the Father, Son, and Spirit in eternity past. So, again, how were you promulgating something if you didn't understand it? Now, maybe, like I said, I'm just listening to this as we're going along, because these would be questions I'd be going, huh?

And these are things we'd have to be discussing as we were.

Moving along. In a comparative study, I found that I could no longer believe in it. Now, it's important for us to first define as to what this Trinity means and what it is defined as. The Trinity means that there is only one true God, and that this God is defined in three different personalities, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and that all three of these entities are one.

They are co-equal and co-eternal. They are omnipresent. They are.

All-powerful and all-knowing. Okay. Hopefully, we can all see that there's a problem right from the start and that this is not a fully functional definition of the doctrine of the Trinity. As soon as someone says personalities, you should immediately be concerned about is this a language issue?

Is English not this person's mother tongue? So, for example, when T .D. Jakes uses the term personalities rather than person, there's a reason for that. It comes from his history. It comes from his background.

I was going to do something. I totally forgot I was going to do it. Oh, well, we'll do it at another point in time. I just looked over there. I don't want to ruin the binding of that book. So, there is only one true being of God, and this being of God is shared by three co-equal and co-eternal persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, that all these see, the next line is just confusion and that all these three entities are one.

One in what way? You just used another word, entities, rather than personalities. So, are you saying that all the persons are one person? No, I don't believe that. They are three persons that are distinguishable from one another, but they each share fully the one being of God.

That being of God, since it is eternal and without limits, can be shared by three divine persons. A human being cannot be shared by multiple persons because a human being is limited, creaturely finite.

So, and that all these three entities are one, well, the orthodox definition would be these three persons share fully in the one being that is God. Person and being are not the same thing. This definition does not define what person and being are, therefore, it is horribly deficient as a definition and is indefensible or is very useful for strawmanning the doctrine of the Trinity.

They are co-equal and co-eternal. They, as in Father, Son, Holy Spirit, are co-equal and co-eternal, but they are not identical to one another. They are distinguished in their relationship to one another.

They are distinguished especially and most importantly in what's called the Economic Trinity, that is, in the different roles that they take in the redemption of mankind. So, the Father has one role, the Spirit has another role, the Son has another role, and only one becomes incarnate.

The other two do not become incarnate. They are omnipresent, well, the Spirit of God is omnipresent, and as they participate in one being of God, therefore, yes, they are all-powerful and all-knowing.

Yes, the being of God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Each of the persons, therefore, are all-powerful and all-knowing. However, in the incarnation, for example, to be able to function as the Messiah, there are certain attributes.

So, what this means is that... I must have touched something. So, to function as the Messiah, the Son has to be able to lay aside the exercise of certain attributes. And so, God is all-glorious, but Jesus is not going to be able to function as the Messiah if everyone is struck blind by looking at him.

You know, if he glows in the dark as he walks through the streets of Jerusalem at night, it's sort of, you know, a dead giveaway type situation, and it was not God's intention that the Messiah would...

The Messiah would have to be one who is going to be rejected by his people so as to bring about that atoning death. And so, if he descends from the clouds with lightning bolts, zapping his enemies, that's not going to demonstrate the love and grace and mercy of God that you end up seeing at the cross.

So, I just have a feeling, done this a few times before, that this is what's coming, is that there's going to be some confusion about that. And so, yeah.

All three of these entities have absolute power at the end of the day. But if we study the Gospels and on a theological basis, we find that we can no longer believe in this concept, even beyond the fact that God is only one and that nothing that we ever perceive could be like.

Unto him. How is that an objection to the Trinity? I hear the statement, but how is that... If you think that's an objection to the Trinity, you don't understand the Trinity. Because you are functioning...

God is only one. One being or one person? One being or one person? You may not like that we are differentiating between the terms, but you live that way. You function that way. When, in a sane society anyways, I may not be commenting about our society right now, but in a sane society, if a person picks up a rock and throws the rock and hits someone in the head that results in their death, we do not arrest the person who threw the rock and charge both with murder.

Now, we'll collect the rock as evidence, but when the trial is over, the rock could end up in someone's lawn. No one cares. Why? The rock has being. That's why it was able to kill someone. It has mass.

It exists in the space-time universe. God made it. It's of material stuff, but it's not personal. It has being, but no person. God has being and person. So do we. We're made in his image, but his being is infinite and unlimited.

Ours is finite, temporal, limited to time. So his being can be shared by more than one person, and the Bible reveals that there are three divine persons that are differentiated from one another, but each identified as Yahweh.

That doesn't work for us because we are finite, and so we believe God is one. There's only one Yahweh. There are not multiple Yahwehs. There's only one Yahweh. So how is God is only one? How is that an objection?

Unless you're trying to smuggle into it the conclusion of your argument, which would not be a valid form of argumentation. Therefore, Jesus, peace be upon him, is already out of the equation. Why? Why?

Why would the infinite being of God not be able to be shared by one of the persons who becomes Jesus, who takes on a human nature? He doesn't cease being God. He takes on a human nature. So why is that?

Jesus isn't already out of the equation, and I would think, again, if a person were promulgating these things, they would know that. They would know what at least some of the answers to some of these objections would be.

In order to understand the Trinity, let's dissect it a little bit. Now, all three of these entities are said to be omnipresent, meaning that they are everywhere at.

Jesus Christ. Now, to see the problem, what is actually omnipresent regarding God, his being? So, the person's partaking of that being can partake of omnipresence, and the argument here is going to be, if there becomes a localization of the Son, specifically, is what the argument is going to be.

I mean, I'm assuming this. I didn't listen to this, but my assumption is that the argument is going to be, how can Jesus be God, because Jesus lived on earth, etc., etc., etc. Now, it is interesting that there's a textual variant, John 13, 13, I believe, off the top of my head, where the Son of Man on earth speaks about the Son of Man who is in heaven.