The biggest reason that Christians have difficulty accepting that one of the three men who visited Abraham is not Yeshua is because their minds are so attached to the trinity teaching which holds that God is only composed of three persons.
They try to box all physical manifestations of God into this limited definition.
Another problem with the trinity is that it has a tendency to give us this idea of God being composed of three different pieces that form a whole.
We mistakenly apply this three-dimensional thinking to our understanding of God.
The image that tends to get formed in our minds is that God is a general and the Holy Spirit and Yeshua are his close subordinates.
While this analogy would be correct when applied to God and his angels, it is not correct when applied to God, the Holy Spirit, and Yeshua.
The Holy Spirit is 100% God!
Yeshua is 100% God!
They are not subservient beings.
It’s not like when Yeshua was here on earth, the Father in heaven was only two-thirds whole.
God in heaven was NOT incomplete while Yeshua conducted his mission on earth.
I think it is much more theologically accurate to think of the Holy Spirit and Yeshua as “manifestations” or “attributes” of God.
But I cannot be dogmatic about that either.
The simple truth of the matter is that it is notoriously difficult to express the mysteries of God in words.
As paradoxical and mind-bending as it may seem, the Scriptures clearly teach that Yeshua was 100% God and 100% man.
Yeshua Himself said, “My father and I are one and the same!”
He said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”
Now based on a three-dimensional logical construct, how does that make sense?
Well, it doesn’t.
So you have to think about it in a different way.
One way to look at is this way: If you have seen the perfect implementation of a plan by Yeshua given to Him by His Father, then you have also been witness to the mastermind behind that plan.
So in that sense, if you have seen Yeshua, you have seen the father.
Another way to look at it is like this: In your own daily life, you play different roles, don’t you?
For example, if you are a man married with children, simultaneously you are a loving husband, a father to your children, and when you are working you play the role of faithful employee to your employer.
So in a sense, each of these different roles is a manifestation of who you are but you yourself are still the same.
You are not less of you when you are a playing a different role.
So along the same line of reasoning, the roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are as follows:
Father= The grand author of the salvation plan for mankind
Holy Spirit=The enabler and messenger of the divine plan
Son=The implementer of the divine plan
Finally, here is an interesting historical fact for you to contemplate.
During the period of 300 years following Yeshua’s crucifixion, the early church did not have a trinity doctrine.
It was not until the church was Romanized and taken over by Gentiles in the 4th century did this teaching come into being.
The first written record of this concept was formulated in what we know today to be the Athanasian Creed:
“…we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity… for there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost is all one… they are not three gods, but one God… the whole three persons are co-eternal and co-equal… he therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity…”
This is just another example of those teachings that have caused a serious rift between Jews and Christians.
Great. This is how Rev. William Marrion Branahm taught.
You are correct and incorrect about the Church not having a Trinity doctrine for the first 3 centuries. While it may not have been formally known as “the doctrine of the Trinity” we have evidence that the Church understood what you said above:
The Holy Spirit is 100% God!
Yeshua is 100% God!
They are not subservient beings.
Yet, they do serve one another. To serve another person doesn’t make you subservient (if it is done out of love). God is Love. Therefore, each member of the Triune God or Godhead is Love and they display this love for each other and consequently for us. The Father loves His Creation so much, that He gives us His unique Son. The Son loves us so much that He dies on the cross as an atonement for our sins. He then sends the Holy Spirit who loves us and keeps us in both the Father and the Son. The Unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is how God demonstrates what it means to be love.
Love is not really “love” if it is self-love. That so-called “love” is what you see in a singular individual person who only loves himself. This is not God.
True love always has a recipient (a target if you will) and if that recipient is also in union with the source then a type of symbiosis occurs. Almost like the infinity symbol. A constant giving and receiving of love. This is God. Now, some might ask where does the Holy Spirit come into the picture. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of this Holy God. You might say the Holy Spirit is the essence of both the Father and the Son.
Well my 1 cent.
1 Time is proven by physics theory and experiments that is part of physical world and not absolute but relative to the speed you are moving(the faster you move, the slower time for you).
2 God is the only being that knows time in advance thus the key characteristic of Scripture is that what was written has already been and will be fullfiled and this is signature of God – He knows the future.
3. There is no indication in the Scripture that angels would know the future apart from what God told them. Therefore it is not enough to be spiritual being leaving in spiritual world to know the future in physical world(because time is part of physical world see point 1). Of course spiritual world is more real than physical world because it existed before physical world.
4. That means God exists in even “higher”, “deeper” dimension than spiritual world, because he knows time in physical world in advance while other spiritual beings in spiritual world do not.
5. What does that got to do with trinity? Well, imagine 2-dimensional guy living on a piece of sheet. He doesn’t understand 3d world. He cannot imagine 3d world. He would see ball going through the sheet he is living in as dot coming from nowhere, enlarging into a circle and going back into the dot and vanishing. Now imagine three of your fingers moving around going through the sheet – the guy would see three circles going around, having independent, unique movement and “personality” for him, yet it would be ONE hand. This is the best I came to understand Father, Son, Holy Spirit. God is in dimension so high and deep above everthing that exists, that he is only that sees time(physical world) in advance. From this high and deep dimension (like 3d for sheet guy) he reveals to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit(like 3 independent circles for 2d sheet guy). Each is God, each is independent in physical/spiritual world to our perception and understanding yet it is not 3 Gods but only ONE (like it is not three hands for 2d guy with three circles but only one).
So from God the only knowing the future I derive that he exists in higher dimension than everything created, spiritual or physical and from there I derive that from this highest dimension where only He exists, He can be seen, understod and percepted by us as three persons, each God, each different, each independent, yet One God.
For how can 2 dimensional guy drawn by 3d God understand 3 dimensions where God leaves? – only by faith in the Word of God. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
Addendum:
I also am convinced in my spirit and from the Scripture that writing on the cross of the “He who is to come” is abbreviation of God’s unspeakable 4-letter name. I have studied hebrew scripture etc., Read reasoning contra and refuted it from the Scripture in Hebrew. So Jesus of Nazareth, king of Jews is acronim YHWH, written on the cross. So abbreviation of Jesus is JHWH. Now is Son JHWH Father JHWH? No. Son is not the Father and Father is not Son. Yet son is YHWH and Father is YHWH.
1 Corinthians 15:27-28
“For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.”
As I posted in another section, I am a “Oneness” Apostolic Christian who agrees with you wholeheartedly that God is One and Jesus is the manifestation of God. I was reading a Bible commentary and saw this amazing statement – the devil is not interested in eliminating religion, he’s more interested in corrupting it. If we are to believe the apostles’ doctrine, why do we not follow it as they taught in Acts 2, Acts 8 or Acts 10? Why do the majority of “Christians” follow a doctrine that was formed 300+ years after the book of Acts? In the OT God was over us, in the Gospels He was with us and from the Day of Pentecost until today, He is in us. God is One!!
I am not sure I understand all you teach about Yeshua and His divinity. So, I’ll just explain my God given understanding of it.
Yeshua is God (divine) because God is His Father; He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He is human because His mother is a human (He got His divinity from His Father and His humaness from His mother). This is why He is sinless because His father is not human. Our sin nature comes down from the male.
I do agree with you about Yeshua’s preincarnate appearances. Yeshua wasn’t Yeshua until He was born. Before that, John tells us, He was the Word and the Word BECAME flesh.
Thanks for sharing Pamela. Be blessed.
One obvious aspect of the relationship between Adoni YaHshua ha-Mashiach and ADONAI YHWH is that of the Shaliah (the one who sends) and the one who has been shalach (sent). From the Hebraic shaliah principle, it explains why YaHshua is able and empowered to speak and act “as though he was YHWH HIMSELF”. That’s the shaliah principle.
Thanks for sharing Gim.
I noticed you just unsubscribed from my list…
Is everything okay?
Jesus is God because His Father is God; He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. This is why He was without sin. Scripture tells us that our sin nature comes down through Adam, the male line. Jesus was human because His mother is human. He inherited His humanity through her. Jesus wasn’t Jesus until His conception. John tells us, before this He was the WORD…”and the Word BECAME flesh.” Remember HOW God created the universe and EVERYTHING in it…He SPOKE WORDS! PHYSICALLY, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are separate. When Jesus came up out of John’s baptism, the Father spoke from Heaven, Jesus was in the Jordan, His father was in heaven, and the Holy Spirit came down from heaven in the form of a dove. Three PHYSICALLY separate beings. God the Son has a human body, God the Father does not, God the Holy Spirit does not; God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are spirits. God the Son accepted and proclaimed His divinity…”Before Abraham was, I AM.” The Jews of His day wanted to stone Him for blasphemy because He said this; they knew exactly what He was explicitly stating. ONLY God could reconcile Himself to His creation. BUT, He doesn’t have blood; He is spirit. So, he had to come as a human with blood conceived by the Holy Spirit to reconcile humans to Himself and atone for their sins through His blood. And, lastly, there is information that ONLY THE FATHER KNOWS!
“I and the Father are one and the same” is a statement of mission and purpose, NOT biology.
Yeshua’s statement is WAY MORE! The Jews wanted to stone Yeshua for blasphemy; they knew exactly what He was saying. They didn’t want to kill Him because of His mission and purpose. John tells us that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and became flesh.
Thank you for this clarification. I have read your postings here for a year or more and always got the impression because of your rejection of “trinity” that you didn’t believe Yeshua was God. I agree that the concept of trinity can be problematic based on one’s concept/definition. Yah says He is echad, one, and so all understandings should be seen in that light.
Thanks for your insights!