This might interest you. We don’t get many Bible references here. I pulled this from a library of articles from the church I read most. It was much longer with a lot of complaint and comparison to those who broke up the World Wide Church of God and attempted to take the money and all member’s and their tithes to themselves. They got aligned with the main-line churches and their false doctrines. This piece does not have all the Bible references we could want but I have another article I’ll attach to it.
Is There Truth to
the Trinity Doctrine?
The True Nature of God
Throughout all of the New Testament only Jesus Christ and God the Father are mentioned together. If the Holy Spirit was a being, “he” would have been mentioned along with Jesus Christ and God the Father in Apostle Paul’s letters which now appear in the New Testament. Read the opening remarks in all of the Apostle Paul’s letters. He consistently refers to God the Father and Jesus Christ only! The Holy Spirit is not mentioned along with Christ and God the Father because there is no trinity! And all human beings can be happy for that!
Let’s now review the true nature of God as taught to the Church by Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong. Religious scholars did not agree with him when he was alive; they will not agree with The same doctrine taught by The Philadelphia (era) Church of God now.
The Human potential is stupendous. Satan is very jealous of our future and will do anything to prevent us from fulfilling our potential.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The word for God in the Hebrew is Elohim. The Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon states that this word is plural. It is different from the singular form of the word eloha. Elohim is a plural word like family, church, or group. Now a scholar could say to you: “No, I see Genesis 1:1 as saying there is only one God there.” You can refute this scholar with another very simple scripture. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).
If we were to look at the context of this scripture with an open mind, we all would have to admit that there is more than one God represented here. The words “us” and “our” make it plain that there had to be at least two. But it is still only one family known as God. This verse also says that man was to be made in God’s image and likeness. Mr. Armstrong always taught the Church that “image” referred to God’s character. Mankind was not only to look like God, he was to become God.
Let’s get some more context related to verse 26. “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:24-25). God made all the animals after their kind. The cattle were made after the cattle kind.
When we come to verse 26, we see that man was not made after the animal kind, nor was he made after the angel kind, but after the God kind!
Since his rebellion, Satan has resented this fact. He was never made after the God kind. That’s how exalted man’s future is. We are to be born into the Family of God. Satan feels that God has cheated him, so he has created a doctrine that puts himself in the Godhead. But his doctrine also shuts man out of the picture. Satan failed miserably with God’s purpose for him, and he wants all of us to fail in God’s purpose for us! If Satan can blind us to this great truth, then he can easily destroy our potential!
Man’s Incredible Human Potential,
The Hidden Truth In the Holy Gospel
The following are some quotes from Mr. Armstrong’s book The Incredible Human Potential:
And now, a vital new truth!
What God had created was perfect in quality—but, like unfinished raw furniture, the earth’s creation was to be completed by the angels. Thus the angels were to participate in acts of creation!
Actually this earth was the proving ground—even as God endowed it to be for man today—to qualify the angels to perform the same creative finishing of the planets of the entire endless universe! And that has now become the transcendent potential of man!…
But God also knew there were not enough of Him! He wanted millions—even billions—of personages endowed with His holy and righteous character!
That is why God had purposed to reproduce Himself, through man.
The trinity doctrine blocks all this knowledge concerning the Family of God. Satan has produced a great deception. God has designed a plan that allows for “millions—even billions” of humans to be made into members of the God Family!
How many Gods were present at creation? Does the Bible tell us? Yes it does! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). We must look to the New Testament to further understand Genesis 1:1. There were two Gods present at creation. One was called the Word and the other was called God. They were both individual beings of the God group. We know from the Scriptures that they became a Family. The Word came to this Earth and lived as the human being Jesus Christ. At His resurrection, Jesus Christ became the first human being to become a spirit-born member of the Family of God (Romans 1:4). Jesus Christ’s resurrection opened the way for all converted, faithful human beings to enter into the Family of God.
Here is another quote by Mr. Armstrong, from his book The Missing Dimension in Sex:
The doctrine of the trinity is false. It was foisted upon the world at the Council of Nicaea. It is the pagan Babylonish trinity of father, mother and child—substituting the Holy Spirit for the mother, Semiramis, and calling it a “person”…. God is a kingdom—the supreme divine family which rules the universe! The whole gospel Jesus brought to mankind is, merely, the Good News of the Kingdom of God—and that Kingdom is God. It is a family—a ruling divine family into which humans may be born!…
So the Eternal Father is a Person, and is God. Jesus Christ is a different Person—and is God. They are two separate and individual Persons (Revelation 4:2; 5:1; 6-7).
Mr. Armstrong was very specific about this teaching. He showed the Church very clearly, from the Bible, that our salvation was to become members of the God Family.
God’s plan for mankind is very clear and simple to understand, if men are willing to repent and believe it. “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my father in his throne” (Revelation 3:21). Jesus Christ shows us here that the firstfruits will share His throne, which is an extension of God the Father’s throne. But all human beings will have a place in God’s Family, if they are willing to “overcome.”
Jesus Christ’s Father will also be our Father. The true Gospel of Jesus Christ has everything to do with Family. We are going to be God as God is God.
Many denominations teach that we are not going to be God as God is God. We are not going to have God’s rank or authority. We will not share past eternity with God.
But that is clearly an error with no basis in the Bible. Rather, from the instant we are changed from flesh and blood into spirit beings we will be God as God is God for all eternity!
Our Fabulous Future
Let’s look at a few quotes from Mr. Armstrong’s book, Mystery of the Ages: “Therefore God’s Word reveals that God and the Word—two supreme Personages—coexisted always.”
Mr. Armstrong writes: “The false trinity teaching does limit God to three Persons. But God is not limited. As God repeatedly reveals, his purpose is to reproduce himself into what well may become billions of God persons. It is the false trinity teaching that limits God, denies God’s purpose and has palpably deceived the whole Christian world.”
Mr. Armstrong wrote, “The trinity doctrine limits God to a supposed three Persons. It destroys the very gospel of Jesus Christ!” That Gospel, according to Mr. Armstrong, is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.
Other denominations talk about a gospel of salvation, or a gospel of grace, or a gospel of love, or any other Protestant-sounding gospel you can imagine. They truly don’t know the teachings of The Savior. He died a terrible death, as the final sacrifice so that YOU could this important news. But, others have made the gospel out to be a story (a legend) of the life and times of Jesus. He went here and there, preached and argued and taught and healed and fed people, but what he came to teach is ignored. Ignored!
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong wrote about the trinity in Mystery of the Ages, and he spoke about other worldly religions that believe in it. He said the trinity limits God. He said the trinity destroys the Gospel.
And he said the trinity doctrine destroys the Family of God.
We must go back to The Holy Bible for the correct doctrine. If we believe a false doctrine we will be denied entire into the Kingdom of God.
Your right knowledge makes you who and what you are. You must have complete and correct information to reason correctly.
Other churches talk about love and brotherhood—but are far from the knowledge of God! We must hold fast to God’s knowledge to acquire God’s nature!
“Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Pet. 1:2-4).
These verses are so clear. If you receive the right knowledge of God then, and only then, can you receive the divine nature. This is why the teaching of many main-line churches is a dastardly error. If church members accept it, then they are cutting themselves off from God’s nature—and will not qualify to be members in the Kingdom of God!
We must work harder now than ever before to get the truth about the Family of God into our minds. Our ability to overcome depends on how deeply we believe this truth.
Never forget that Satan wants to destroy you and all of us. We have been given such great promises for our future, but Satan works tirelessly tol deceive us, if we open our minds to his doctrine. Why?
Satan hates our future, because he cannot share in it! “For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son” (Hebrews 1:5). Neither Satan, nor any of the other angels have been promised sonship! But you and I have! We should never forget that the world can’t yet understand or accept our doctrine!
Now, only the Philadelphia Church of God teaches the true doctrine on the nature of God. God is a Family. We know that God’s Church on Earth is the Family of God in embryo (Ephesians 3:14-15). This is a great truth! Knowing this truth carries with it the weighty responsibility of teaching this truth!
God is not a trinity—but a family into which all human beings can be born!
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IS THE TRINITY
A SCRIPTURAL TEACHING?
Editing: Stephen Newdell
Why should we examine the Trinity Doctrine? It has long been accepted as being an essential. The Roman Catholic Church calls it “The Central Doctrine of the Christian Religion.”
They add this from the Athanasian Creed to elucidate. “The Father is God, The Son is God, The Holy Spirit is God, yet they are not three Gods but one God. In this Trinity each personage is co-equal and co-eternal, each one being uncreated and omnipotent.
The Greek Orthodox Church promotes something similar. They call it: “the Fundamental Doctrine of Christianity,” continuing; Christians are only those who accept Christ as God. To expound; God is Triune. The Father is Totally God, The Son is Totally god, and The Holy Spirit is Totally God.”
This doctrine continues; “All three are without beginning and exist eternally. All three are almighty, none is greater nor lesser than the other two entities.
Many believers in God have found this line of reasoning difficult to comprehend. The Encyclopedia Americana notes: “This doctrine is considered beyond the grasp of human reasoning. Well it might be if one is attempting to define the word God as a single entity, however as Mr. Armstrong understood it, God is a family, and you are invited into it. Eventually you would mature to become a part of God, “very God!”
The Catholic and Orthodox version leaves us accepting as theologians have often repeated, “It’s a profound mystery, which we cannot begin to understand.”
If Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin Scholars cannot explain it, would God have created such a confusing concept?: Why would He?
1 Corinthians 14:33
New International Version
33 For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people.
There’s something wrong about this. There’s no peace about this doctrine. Indeed, it has led to heated arguments and even military battles over the centuries. The murder of the persecuted was unspeakably awful and the motivation to do this came in some measure, from this doctrinal line of thinking.
Bible accounts record that humble, simple people, the peasant farmers, fisher-folk, house wives and tax collectors came to know “the only true god and Jesus Christ … whom He sent forth.”
John 17
New International Version
Jesus Prays to Be Glorified
17 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
The simple people who lauded Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and cried Hosanna to the King, were among the first of his followers. They in turn taught others what Jesus had taught and shown to them. Just a rare few in the synagogue in Jerusalem credited Jesus as being the Messiah for whom they had long been waiting. He even predicted this, saying, in
John 5:43
New International Version
43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.
We want the truth, and God also requires truth.
John 17:17
New International Version
17 Sanctify them by[a] the truth; your word is truth.
The Creator Almighty God requires that our worship must be based on truth and not on unfounded ideologies written by men. This passage speaks of believers being set apart from the sinful and unrepentant. This is the meaning of “Sanctify.”
God will wash our sins off us and then forget them, but we are required to take His sanctification seriously, change our behavior, work constantly to purify our thoughts putting our attention upon good and pure activities, being fogiving, kind, charitable, willing to become a suffering servant as Jesus was. Who does that? Some few and they who call upon God’s Holy Name and work to get closer to Him will given time realize changes are being made by the power of the “Holy Spirit.”
As has been explained in the article above, the Holy Spirit is the God essence or force within you, helping to strengthen, heal and mold you to be like HIM. You are being raised as one of God’s Children to be Like HIM!
Genesis 17:1, NIV: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.”
Genesis 17:1, ESV: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless,”
There’s a hard saying. Who can be watched constantly by God and be without fault? Not me!
In these translations God’s name is God Almighty.
Abram’s story jumps ahead 13 years from the end of the previous chapter. As far as we know, Abram has not heard from God, at least in any special way, since the birth of his son Ishmael to Sarai’s servant girl Hagar. The Lord now appears to a 99-year-old Abram who, in his waiting, has decided that perhaps Ishmael is the child of God’s covenant promises, after all. God will make clear to Abram that is not the case.
For the first time in Scripture God refers to Himself as “God Almighty,” as El Shaddai. This is a name meant to establish God’s power on earth, even over nature, and in the life of Abram and Sarai. God begins this new contact with Abram with two commands: Walk before me faithfully, and be blameless. Literally, God commands Abram to walk in the Lord’s presence and to be of such good character before God that no valid charge of wrongdoing could be brought against him.
This is unlike other times when God spelled out His promises to Abram. He begins this conversation by placing expectations on Abram to live a life worthy of this covenant relationship with God. We’re not meant to understand that Abram was sinlessly perfect, or that he could become so. This only means that God expected Abram to center every aspect of his life around honoring the Lord.
In the Bishop’s Bible (1568), the word Jehovah occurs in Exodus 6:3 and Psalm 83:18. The Authorized King James Version (1611) renders Jehovah in Exodus 6:3, Psalm 83:18, Isaiah 12:2, Isaiah 26:4, and three times in compound place names at Genesis 22:14, Exodus 17:15 and Judges 6:24.
From this we infer one of God’s names is Jehovah or poetically Jah. He is also called “The Lord” as a title. In our day we might refer to “Prince Charles” in that time we could refer to The Lord Jehovah.
God Created All the Universe and is therefore Sovereign. But this is difficult to find in modern Christian translations. Jewish scholars refer to God as Sovereign more than modern Christian Bibles do.
David Arnow Jewish scholar:
Jewish liturgy repeatedly refers to God as melech ha’olam, “Sovereign” or “king of the universe,” and the story of the Exodus affirms the image of an activist God who saves the downtrodden and punishes the oppressor.
The Bible itself struggles with this very question. The Book of Deuteronomy tries to explain the apparent absence of divine intervention by asserting that Israel’s sins bring about a hiding of God’s face, which allows evil to flourish (31:16-17). This hardly satisfied Job. “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He covers the eyes of its judges, if it is not He, then who? . . . I insist on arguing with God” (Job 9:24 and 13:3). Many of the psalms also angrily chide God for failing to exercise sovereignty: “Why Lord, do You stand aloof, heedless in times of trouble . . . The wicked . . . think God is not mindful, He hides His face, He never looks . . .” (Psalms 10:1-11).
The rabbis of the Talmud were no less honest. One tale recounts why certain biblical texts ascribed to Jeremiah and Daniel fail to refer to God precisely as Moses had, as “mighty and awesome” (Deuteronomy 10:17). The explanation? Because in the days of Jeremiah enemies destroyed God’s Temple, so where’s the awesomeness? Because in Daniel’s day enemies enslaved God’s people, so where’s the might?
Still, how did Jeremiah and Daniel dare to abolish something written by Moses? “They knew,” says the Talmud, “that God insists on truth and they would not ascribe false things to God!”The Aleynu, a prayer recited three times daily, refers to God as “our Sovereign,” but concludes that, “we hope in You . . . that we may soon behold Your might . . .” Paradoxically, we both assert God’s sovereignty and pray for — and work to bring — the day when it will truly become manifest.
Mary C. Boys CHRISTIAN
To speak of God as “sovereign” of the universe is at once an act of faith and an expression of longing for divine mercy and justice to be manifest in our broken world. We voice our faith that the incomprehensible God cares for all creation. We cry out, mindful of the violence, chaos, and finitude of the human condition.
Clearly, God is not sovereign in the conventional sense of the term. God does not eradicate evil. Suffering abounds. How the infinite goodness of God can allow so much suffering remains a major enigma for religious persons. Job’s question has never been adequately answered.
Revelation 1:8 New International Version
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
The Apostle Paul began his letter this way:
1 Timothy 1
New International Version
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,
2 To Timothy my true son in the faith:
And finishes this portion of his writing thus: 1 Timothy 1:17
First Timothy chapter 1, verse 17
17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
So then, who was the Son and from where did He come?
John 1
New International Version
The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and[b] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
By this we understand Jesus on Earth was “The Living Word of God” and dwelled face to face with God through an unimaginable span of time. For them, there was no time. They knew the beginning from the end. They were ultimate companions. I like to imagine that God The Father designed all the universe and 13.5 Billion years ago he handed the knowledge of it to “The Word” and The Word spoke it all into existence. All things came from Him. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
Beyond this, there is no mention of a third being, another son, nor anything else of the sort. The Holy Spirit is not a personage. The misunderstood title means the essence or life force or energy from or related to (of) God.
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