21. In the gospel of John, Jesus said, “We will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” This is proof of the Trinity.

This is Jesus speaking in the gospel of John about a future event. The Father and the Son will live with those who keep His words. The Trinitarian stops right there and says, “There it is, two distinct persons in the Godhead!” But we don’t want to stop there. We want to see how we can harmonize Jesus’ words with the first and greatest commandment: “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD.”

John reiterates Jesus’ concept in his second letter to the churches…

If someone transgresses and doesn’t abide in the doctrine of Christ, that person doesn’t have God at all. However, those who do will have “both the Father and the Son.” This is what Jesus was talking about back in John 14.

But let’s dig a little deeper. Just exactly what does it mean to “have the Son”? John opened the door to this in the introduction of his gospel….

To “have the Son,” we must receive the Son. Is that mere mental acceptance? No. John’s gospel was written many years after the birth of the Church in Acts 2. When did “His own” reject Jesus? At Calvary. Okay, then, when did people begin to “receive Him” to the point of being born of God? On the day of Pentecost. To receive Jesus is to be born again. And the only way to receive Jesus is to receive His Spirit, and that means receiving the Holy Ghost. Can we prove that with scripture?

To have the Son is to have Christ in you. How can Christ be “in you” when He is seated at the right hand of God in the heavenlies? The Trinitarians want it both ways. They want Jesus physically seated at the right hand of His daddy in heaven, and they want Him physically in our hearts at the same time.

Jesus can’t live bodily in a person. His Spirit dwells in believers. Notice how “Spirit of God” and “Spirit of Christ” are used interchangeably. And Paul said almost the same thing in Galatians.

What is the Spirit of the Son? It is the Spirit of the crucified Christ. What is the name of the Spirit of the Son? That name is Jesus, of course.

Jesus said He would see that they had another Comforter, which would be “the Spirit of Truth.” Is the Spirit of truth the Spirit of His Son?

Jesus is the truth, and His Spirit would be the Spirit of truth, and His Spirit is the Comforter. What else can we say about this Spirit of the Son?

We see here that the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, is the Holy Ghost. Now, let’s go over it again…

“I will come to you.” Jesus was the comforter with them and would be the comforter IN them. That comforter is identified as the Holy Ghost. And no wonder, Paul wrote almost the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15:45: “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”

Therefore, when we “have the Son,” when the Son comes to us, we have the Spirit of the Son, which is the Holy Ghost. But wait a minute, if having the Son is having the Holy Ghost, then how can we have the Father?

The Son’s Father was also the Holy Ghost. How about that? The Spirit of the Son is the Holy Ghost, and the same Holy Ghost fathered the Son. When Jesus spoke of His Father, when we have both the Father and the Son, we have the Spirit of the Son and the Father of the Son. We don’t have two Spirits, but one Spirit occupying two positions of relationship. The Spirit fathered the Son, and the Spirit dwelt in the Son (“God is a Spirit”).

Now back to John 14….

“We,” the Father who conceived the Son in the womb of Mary and the Spirit of the crucified Christ, will come unto him and dwell with him. It is the same Spirit, the same God.

20. According to Hebrews 1:2, God made the worlds by His Son and that, taken with John 1:1-14, proves that the Son was physically WITH the Father in the beginning, because the Son took part in the creation.

We have four things to consider here in context: “God,” “the Word,” “the Son,” and “the beginning.” First, let’s read Hebrews.

We can’t help but acknowledge that according to this passage, God indeed made the worlds by His Son. How does this tie in with “the Word” and “the beginning?” As everyone would agree, at the time God made the worlds, the “Word” had not yet been made flesh. This harmonizes with John 1:1-14.

Word in John 1:1 is derived from the Greek word Logos. According to Strong’s Concordance, Logos (Word) is “something said … Thought … The Divine Expression (i.e. Christ).”

So God made the worlds by His Son, but prior to being made flesh, the Son was the Word that was with God in the beginning. Moving backwards in time, we should be able to trace this through the Old Testament and find references to God making the worlds by His Word, His Divine Expression. Psalms 33:6 is one such reference…

Well, we appear to be on course. We still have God making the heavens by the Word, which was to subsequently be made flesh. But let’s read the rest of the verse…

Now this puts a little different perspective on things. If we are on target, the LORD in Psalms 33:6 would be the same God as in Hebrews 1:2, and the Word would be the same Word that was made flesh in John 1:14 and the same Son “by whom also he made the worlds.”

To really understand this, though, we need to keep moving backwards until we find God making the worlds by His Word. To see what happened in the beginning, we’ll have to go to the written record of the actual beginning…

Okay, this is the beginning John was talking about in John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Here is where we need to find God making the worlds by His Word, His thought, His Divine Expression.

Remember Strong’s definition? The Word in John 1:1 is “something said…thought…Divine Expression”

Now, let’s go to John 1:1 & 14 with the proper understanding of Logos:

Jesus really confirmed that the Word was God Himself (God is a Spirit) in John 6:63: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

Turning again to Hebrews 1:1-3, we find the “Divine Expression:”

Jesus is not the second person of some Trinity. He is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of God’s person, God expressed in flesh.

19. “Elohim,” the Hebrew word from which we get the word “God” in Genesis 1:1, is a plural word and proves that God is more than one person.

Elohim is a plural word in the Hebrew language, but it is used in the plural and in the singular, kind of like our word sheep. In Exodus 7:1, God told Moses: “See, I have made thee a god (Elohim) to Pharaoh:” How many persons was Moses? In 1 Kings 18:24, Elijah used it both ways: “And call ye on the name of your gods (Elohim), and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God (Elohim) that answereth by fire, let him be God (Elohim).”

However, the King James Bible is written in English and not Hebrew. If you want Elohim to be plural in Genesis 1:1, you’ll have to add the “s” to the English word… “In the beginning gods created the heaven and the earth.” Is that really what we want to do?

People try the same tactic in Genesis 1:26—“Let us make man…” They want this to be one god person talking to two others. But, look at it in context…“God (singular) said, let there be light.” “And God said, let the waters bring forth…” “And God said, let us make man…”

Genesis 1:26 is interpreted by verse 27—“So God made man in his own image.” God said and God made. Us didn’t do anything in Genesis 1:26.

18. If I believe what you’re saying, that would mean my grandmother (or some other beloved relative) went to hell.

Let’s look at the logic behind this argument: in effect, they are saying, “I know so-n-so went to heaven; therefore, any doctrine that contradicts that ‘fact’ must be in error.” In other words, they judge their relative into heaven and then filter biblical doctrines by that preconception. But it’s the Scriptures that will judge us, not the other way around.

The possibility that a loved one didn’t make it to heaven might be one of the saddest realities that a person would ever have to face. It is understandable that a person would want to believe that a loved one went to heaven. However, people who have passed on are already where they are. Our beliefs have no effect on the matter: their eternal destinies are settled.

We are not responsible for where our deceased loved ones will spend eternity, but we are responsible for how we respond to God’s word.

17. Acts 2:38 was only for the Jews, because they killed their Messiah.

Consider the following verses:

Jesus told the apostles to go someplace and do something. He told them to take their message to every nation and to every individual. And…they were to begin at Jerusalem. What began in Acts 2:38 is for everyone.

16. When they spoke in tongues in the Bible, they spoke in recognizable languages and not the gibberish we hear today.

While it’s true that several languages were understood on the Day of Pentecost, back in the upper room there was no crowd, and the Galileans would not have understood any of the languages. To them, they would all have been speaking gibberish. Remember, they spoke in OTHER tongues…other than their own. The tongues were unknown until later when the crowd came around.

If you’re going to set yourself up as the tongues police, to declare which are authentic and which are gibberish, then you must be familiar with every language ever known to man. I’ve read that there have been about 500 nations in North America. How many do you suppose were in South America? China? How about Africa? Anyone not familiar will all their languages, is not qualified to call any gibberish.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul devotes almost a whole chapter to “UNKNOWN” tongues (languages that no man understands) and their operation in the New Testament Church. Paul says he will continue to pray with the spirit (unknown tongues) (because it edifies a saint) and with his understanding also. Jude says that praying in the Holy Ghost is how we build ourselves up on our most holy faith.

15. I know that I received the Holy Ghost the night I went to the altar and gave my heart to Jesus because I was miraculously healed in my body.

Healing is no more a sign that a person has received the Holy Spirit now than it was in Acts 8. The Samaritans had devils cast out, they were HEALED, and they had great joy, but they did not have the Holy Spirit. That was a separate experience.

The Lord promised that where two or three were gathered together in His name, He would be in their midst. He also promised that if we ask anything of Him in faith believing, He will grant it. Therefore, people in all denominations can experience miracles. That’s why many people are deceived by false prophets. They receive a touch of the power of God and think that validates their church’s doctrine. But miracles are not a sign that a person has received the Holy Ghost, nor are they a sign of salvation. Even non-Christians can experience miracles.

The apostles clearly taught that the sign of receiving the Holy Spirit was speaking in tongues. Receiving a miracle from God does not exclude anyone from obeying the gospel preached by the apostles. Peter said of speaking in tongues: “This is That,” and nowhere in the Bible is there a “This” different from the one on the Day of Pentecost.

14. I knew someone who went to a certain church and spoke in tongues, and that person turned out to be a really terrible hypocrite.

As for spiritual depth, it is, sad to say, true that someone who speaks in tongues could be as shallow as anyone in any other church. This, however, does not negate the declaration in Acts that tongues is the evidence of receiving the Holy Spirit. Some people are fakers. Others could backslide. The fact that someone has experienced the new birth doesn’t ensure that they will always be perfect.

Look at Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. They were apparently true believers in the original church, who would have been baptized in the name of Jesus and who would have spoken in tongues. But in the process of time, they became greedy and held back a portion of the money they received from the sale of their property. They told Peter a lie about it and God struck them dead, not for keeping the money– the money was theirs–but for telling the lie.

Jesus said there would be some weeds among the wheat. And just because one person fails to keep the faith, doesn’t mean the faith is wrong. The gospel of the apostles is not dependent upon the actions of any man. The truth will still be the truth even if some people fail to live up to it, even if nobody lives up to it.

13. Romans 10:13 says that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. This is how everyone in my church was saved and it’s good enough for me.

It may be popular now, but it’s not good enough. First of all, there are many, many passages of Scripture that prove there is more to salvation than just believing, more than just thinking a thought. And trusting in your heart is nothing more than thinking a thought. When you stand before God in judgment, the record of your life will be judged against the Word of God, the Bible. It won’t make any difference how anyone else believed, not your church, not your friends, and not your family. Each person will give account of himself.

Secondly, the book of Romans was written to the saints (Romans 1:6). It was written to people already saved by the preaching of the apostles and others in the book of Acts. This letter absolutely WAS NOT written to lost people. All of the epistles were written to the church. There are no instructions to the lost in them. If you are going to Romans for your salvation without the experience of Acts, you are just reading someone else’s mail; Romans is not written to you.

Moreover, if you look at the very first verse of Romans 10, you will see that Paul is telling his Christian friends how much he would like to see his Jewish brethren saved. Then we move on to the main issue…

¹³ For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Actually, if we go back to verse 8, we see that Paul is telling us that it is the “word of faith which we preach.” And the “word of faith” the apostles preached was Acts 2:38. As previously stated, believers shalt be saved. Certainly non-believers will not be. That’s what Jesus said: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” It wouldn’t matter whether a non-believer were baptized or not.

But, there is this calling on the name of the Lord. When we get to Romans 10:13, he says those famous words, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

There is a written record of Paul’s salvation experience. Where in the record of Paul’s conversion was there a calling upon the name of the Lord? Acts 22:16 – “And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” To call on the name means to invoke the name.

Further, in the second chapter of Acts, Peter tied speaking in tongues to the same quote from the Old Testament book of Joel: “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” So, Paul didn’t come up with some new plan of believe-only salvation when he wrote Romans 10:13; he just reaffirmed the gospel that began in the second chapter of Acts.

12. I believe that true believers of all faiths (Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, etc.) will go to heaven.

Catholics in heaven? Perhaps, if you can find one who has been born again of water and of the Spirit. If you can find one baptized in Jesus’ name and filled with the Holy Ghost speaking in tongues. And if you can find a Catholic who doesn’t bow to statues or call a priest “Father.” If you can find one who doesn’t believe in a Trinity or one who will renounce the Pope as the head of the church. If you can find a Catholic who doesn’t pray to a dead woman, perhaps such a Catholic as that could go to heaven.

But then again, listen to Paul’s warning in 1 Timothy 4:1-4: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.”

Jesus is coming for a church without spot or blemish; He isn’t coming back for liars and hypocrites or a church teaching doctrines of devils. The first church that comes to mind that doesn’t allow some of their people to marry (priests and nuns) or to eat meat (on Fridays) is the Catholic Church.

Revelation 17:1-9 speaks of the great whore, the mother of harlots, whose headquarters is the city of seven hills. Who do you reckon that would be? And who would be her daughters? Modern theology says that “saved” Catholics can go to heaven, but how can Catholics be saved if the Catholic Church has departed from the faith and teaches the doctrines of devils? This is not to say that a Catholic cannot be saved. Many are. But when Catholics are truly saved, they are liberated from Roman tradition.

There are basically three kinds of Christianity:

1. Apostolic Christianity – The original, established by the apostles in the book of Acts.
2. Church Father Christianity – Developed around the invention of the Trinity in the early centuries after the death of the apostles and grew into the Roman Catholic Church.
3. Reformation Christianity – An offshoot of Roman Catholicism started by Martin Luther in 1517 that evolved into denominations such as Baptists, Assemblies of God, Methodists, Presbyterians, Churches of Christ, etc. These denominations are actually still Roman Catholic by virtue of their mother church’s Trinitarian philosophy. They are called Protestants (Protest-ants, Protesting Catholics).

Our approval will not validate the Church Fathers’ or the Reformers’ man-made substitutes.