Regarding the Trinity

              Right after my conversion to Christ, in 1968, the Trinity was explained to me as God, being a large Vessel of Holy Spirit, pouring the Holy Spirit into a smaller Vessel, which was Jesus, and when Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to the Father, they became One Vessel again. What a bunch of baloney, I thought to myself. When I defended Campus Crusade for Christ against the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) guys at Merritt College in 1969 because I knew the SDS guys, the Crusaders didn’t want to fellowship with me because of their Trinity doctrine that I didn’t accept or believe in. So I went back to hanging with the SDS guys. Marxists seemed more reasonable to me than Trinitarians. I’ve had many discussions with other Christians about the Trinity: a word that is not found in the Bible. I’ve had family get extremely angry with me for studying with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 2017, as I started to discuss my position with our private guide in the West Bank, who was a Messianic Jew, he threatened to kick me out of the car somewhere between the Baptismal Site where John baptized Jesus and Jericho, thinking I was a Jehovah’s Witness. To be clear, I am not a Jehovah’s Witness, although we share similar views on the Trinity. And since I didn’t want to hitch a ride from the West Bank to Tel Aviv, I backed away from my position with our Messianic Jewish guide.                The Trinity is inexplicable because it is not Biblical, but is a bunch of Greco-Roman mumbo jumbo from the 2nd century, over a hundred years after Christ and even after Paul. Wikipedia gives a good history of how the doctrine evolved from simply referencing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as 3 separate entities in the late 1st century to becoming a doctrine of all 3 being One by the 4th century. By the 4th century, after the Edicts of Toleration and Milan made Christianity legal and the preferred religion in the Roman Empire of Constantine the Great in AD 311, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Catholic doctrine of the Trinity held sway 14 years later at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. The pseudo-non-Trinitarian doctrine known as Arianism, which taught that Jesus was not by nature, God, was declared heresy and the Nicene Creed was adopted to prove one’s faith in Christ, overriding Romans 10:9-10 which is how Paul said one proves their Christian faith. Later, in AD 381, at the Council of Constantinople, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, was finally adopted to include the Holy Ghost as One with the Father and Son and the Trinity doctrine has been predominant in mainstream Christianity ever since.               Since my discussion of the Trinity is strictly based on Bible. I do not accept non Biblical sources from the 2nd century onward or even the 1st century onward. My position is if you don’t have chapter and verse, then you aren’t making a Biblical argument. So let’s start with the Gospel in Romans: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1) “9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10). This is the Gospel that Paul gives long after Pentecost (Acts 2:1-41).               Jesus promised this future Gospel, before Pentecost, to Nicodemus in John 3:14-18: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:14-18) The Gospel would not be available to anyone until Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead by God and the Holy Spirit would fill believers beginning on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-41.               As we can see, in both cases, Jesus is dead and God is alive to raise Jesus from the dead. God cannot die and Jesus must die. Therefore, God and Jesus are obviously 2 different beings. The Trinitarian views God raising Himself from the Dead or Jesus raising Himself from the Dead and Mary is the Mother of God, even though the Mary calls herself the handmaiden of the Lord (Luke 1:38) which is hardly the Mother of God. One cannot be saved according to Romans 10:9-10 or John 3:14-18 if Jesus is God and God dies. Jesus must die and the Living God must raise Jesus from the dead. Anything else, such as the Trinity, negates the Gospel per Jesus in John 3:14-18 and per Paul in Romans 10:9-10.               Jesus and God have different wills: “And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” (Luke 22:41-43). Here we read about Jesus praying to His Father, God, that Jesus’ cup of crucifixion be removed from Jesus, but not by Jesus’s will but by God’s will. Jesus doesn’t want to die but God wills Jesus to die and sends an angel to comfort Jesus because God can’t die and Jesus must die for our salvation as God has ordained. Matthew 26:36-56 weaves this prayer with the betrayal by Judas arresting Jesus as his disciples sleep and then flee, leaving Jesus abandoned to face trials by Caiaphas, the high priest, and then by Pontus Pilate, where He was found not guilty by Pilate but finally voted guilty through an illegal trial by “democracy”, where “the people” chose the insurrectionist, Barabbas, over Jesus, to be released and Jesus to be crucified. (Luke 22:44-23:25)  Jesus’ last cry of victorious faith was when, on the Cross, He proclaimed: “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.” (Luke 23:46) To the very end Jesus and His Father were very close, but never are they the same person. Jesus was His Father’s obedient Son doing His Father’s Will and not always His own Will in obedience to His Father.               Trinitarians primarily draw from the Gospel of John to support their doctrine. They rely on John 1:1 and 1:14 but blatantly ignore John 1:18 which concludes the introduction to that Gospel (John 1:1-18). Below is a study of the 3 verses in order. Refer to John 1:1-18 for the full context:              “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) God created everything through His Word. His Word has power. Some say it is the Holy Spirit, some say Jesus, some say both.               “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14). Some interpret this as Jesus being born with Holy Spirit, but I disagree. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit but Jesus was not filled with the Holy Spirit until He was baptized by John the Baptist. Only John the Baptist is born with Holy Spirit from the womb (Luke 1:15; 41-44) because John will baptize Jesus with the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. That is when God announces: “lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:14-17) and Jesus is baptized with the Holy Spirit and the Word is made flesh as stated in John 1:14.               “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” (John 1:18). Many men saw Jesus, including His disciples, His family, Pilate and the Romans, the Pharisees, the crowds that He fed and the infirmed that He healed, all saw Jesus but no man has seen God at any time. So the Word made flesh (John 1:14) in the only begotten Son is what gave Jesus the authority to declare His unseen Father. This verse should prove that Jesus isn’t God and neither is the Word made flesh God. But if the Word was God isn’t it still God? Yes it is. We only know God through His Word. Adam never saw God, but God appeared as a soft breeze. Moses never saw God but God appeared to Moses as a burning bush that didn’t consume the bush. But the bush wasn’t God. Both Adam and Moses knew God through His Word because God’s Word was God. The Word was with God from the beginning.               Trinitarians will often cite John 10:30 which says: “I and my Father are one.” and leave it at that, ignoring John 10:31-36 which follows. The Jews immediately sought to stone Jesus for blasphemy by saying He was God. But Jesus didn’t say that (John 10:31-33). He responds to the Jews in John 10:34-36: “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?”. Jesus called Himself the Son of God. Jesus knew, as did the Jews, that if Jesus said He was God then that would be blasphemy. Therefore, Jesus never said He was God and saying Jesus is God is still blasphemy as the Jews then said and now still say.               So how are Jesus and His Father One with the Word, or Holy Spirit? John 17:20-23 always had the answer: “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” (John 17:20-23) We, who are born again Children of God (John 3:1-8) being baptized with Holy Spirit, know we are One with God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit and we also know we aren’t God or Jesus but we are all born again of the Holy Spirit (John 3:1-13).               So who hides this Truth from Christian believers? “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2 Corinthians 4:4) Satan the Devil is the God of this world. Satan has blinded the minds of them which believe not. Satan has brainwashed them. They have two good eyes but they just don’t see. This includes the Trinitarians who don’t see the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the Image of God. They still see Jesus as God and not God’s Son who is the Image of God. In fact, it is Satan, God’s other son (Job 1:6-12, 2:1-7) who wants to be worshipped as God and pushes this deception through the Trinity to this day. Many worship Satan through the Satanic doctrine of the Trinity. So the Trinity is essentially a Satanic doctrine used to deceive people from accepting the Gospel of Christ: the good news of salvation. And that is why the doctrine of the Trinity is so evil, deceitful and insidious.               “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24)

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