The Trinity

The Trinity has come up in a few emails, so we wanted to touch on the subject. I am the Sr. Pastor of Calvary Chapel Crossfields and have had many conversations with Jehovah’s Witnesses over the years. The Trinity is a concept that the Watchtower has used over their entire history to discredit Christians that adhere to it.

The funny thing about the Trinity is that nobody can really understand it, and it is not shameful to admit that. If we could understand every fine detail about Gods character then He would cease to be God and we would end up usurping His role. There are mysteries about spiritual things that have yet to be discovered such as what the 7 thunders uttered in revelation that the angel forbid john to write about and what it will be like living in eternity with our spiritual bodies.

The problem with Jehovah’s Witnesses is that they claim to know everything about God, which is totally absurd. Their understanding of the Trinity is fallacious because of their preconceived bias regarding the deity of Christ [jn10:33, jn8:58-59, is9:6, rom9:5, titus2:13, etc] and the personal nature of the Holy Spirit [He teaches (1cor2:13), convicts (jn16:8), can be lied to (acts5:3)], etc. This is not the characteristics of an ‘active force’ [You can live on Paradise Earth 1982 pg 40] such as electricity (which Jehovah’s Witnesses ascribe to the Holy Spirit); this is the characteristics of a personal being! When was the last time you lied to electricity?! Peter even said regarding the Holy Sprit when you lie to Him, you are lying to God (acts5:4)]. God does, however, give us a glimpse of His triune nature used throughout scripture: The multiple uses of Elohim when describing Himself ["IM" in Hebrew denotes plurality, Elohim literally means Gods], the use of the word “echad” in Deuteronomy 6:4 for “the Lord is [one]” referring to God [echad means a compound (not absolute unity) in Hebrew as opposed to "yachid" which means "only one" which Moses did not use in this passage when referring to God, etc].The Jehovah’s Witnesses argument will be that Christians over the years described God as a trinity which was a take-off on pagan society’s trinities. (Reconciliation 1928 pg 101) How amusing, Gods people copying off of satan? Who came first? Starting from the ‘beginning’, satan has always copied God, not the reverse: God made sex inside marriage good, satan has perverted it in our society to be destructive:

Gods number for perfection and completion is 7, satan made his 6: Jesus is the Messiah, satan’s antichrist will be the false messiah that will dupe the nation Israel for a time, AND God exists in 3 persons [as we do: we are flesh, mind, and spirit (and they operate individually at times but we are "one" person)] so satan copied it and perverted it with the Egyptian / Babylonians false trinities and with the final false trinity of the dragon, antichrist[beast] and false prophet in the book of revelation in end times.

It’s also important not to fall into the trap that they set regarding the ‘original Greek and Hebrew’. When they are ‘on the ropes’ in a debate they are trained to say that you cant understand the full meaning of Gods word unless you know the original Greek and Hebrew [as if they have more insight in interpretation than the hundreds of bible translators over the years that all agree on the meaning of the scriptures]. It’s not a bad thing to learn some basic Greek and Hebrew since they aren’t that difficult to learn, I have. What’s interesting is that when I use these languages and call their bluff, they all do the same thing: they look at their watches and say “we have to go, we have another appointment”.

Joe D
Senior Pastor

Calvary Chapel Crossfields