Okay, live on the interwebs, here we go. Misunderstanding the Trinity. Okay, this time I will start my timer. Yeah. All right, the doctrine of the Trinity. is quite possibly the most difficult doctrine in Orthodox Christian faith. And as a result, I think it's oftentimes taught incorrectly. I've been teaching sixth grade theology and apologetics at Antioch Bible Church since 2003. And in the past 16 years, I've heard quite a number of explanations of the Trinity. And some of those I'm going to be refuting today and help you come to a better understanding of how we can teach the Trinity to those who either are new to it or have mistaken notions about it. But first of all, before we get started, I want to lay down some rules. These are the presuppositions I'll be operating under. The first of which is that the Bible is the inspired word of God and is without error in the original manuscripts. Every jot and tittle has a purpose. If it's in the Bible, it's there for a reason. Our job is to figure out what that reason is. Thirdly, exegete, do not isegete. When you exegete the text, you take what the author said and you discover the meaning that he put into the paper. You extract the meaning from the text. Isegesis is the opposite of that. It's basically running around saying, I see Jesus, I see Jesus. Everywhere you look, I see Jesus. It's not that. You don't want to read into the text that which is not there. Keep your ideas in your head. and let the Word of God change your ideas. Don't turn that process around. One of the first times I taught a lesson on the Trinity, I had a young man stand up at the back of the class. I said, you know, the word Trinity is not found anywhere in the Bible. And he says, well, you can't teach it then. And I said, well, you know, It's okay, because after years of study, we know why the word Trinity is not found in the Bible. It's because Hillary deleted it. I know that Kitsap County voted for Hillary predominantly in the 2016 election, so this is a very risky slide for me to put up here, but I was assured by Phil Fernandez that this was a safe slide to put up here, so if you're going to stone somebody, stone him. All right, but seriously, this should not cause us heartburn or loss of sleep at night, because there are lots of other words that don't appear in the Bible. Take, for example, atheism. The word atheism is not in the Bible, but we do see it taught, because in Psalm 14.1, it says, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Clearly atheism. Monotheism is not a word that appears in the Bible, yet it is clearly taught. Deuteronomy 6.4, the Shema. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Monotheism. Incarnation is not taught in the Bible. Oh no, the word doesn't appear in the Bible, it's a pagan origin. No, the principle is taught, even if the word does not. Because John 1.14 says the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And lastly, the word rapture is not in the Bible. But the principle is taught. After that, we who are still alive and left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So why is this important? Well, It's important, the whole doctrine of the Trinity is important, and it's important that we come to a proper understanding of the Trinity, because if you don't, then you get down the road of many heresies. Hank Hanegraaff, whose theology I do not uniformly agree with, has this quote that he used to say all the time when I used to listen to him on the radio when he was aired here locally. He used to say, nearly every single theological heresy begins with a misconception of who God is. So if you have a misconception of who God is, you're gonna get off to the wrong foot and you're gonna find yourself an idolater. So the only thing that's true about God is that which he says about himself. And if our notion of God does not match what he says about himself, We're idolatrous and we need to change our beliefs. So when we're trying to understand something as difficult as the trinity or electricity or general relativity or any of that stuff, what we oftentimes do as a learning aid is we try to start from what we know and then we work to that which we do not know. And we do this via analogies. It's a pretty common thing to do. I have a degree in electrical engineering that I never did anything with, but I know enough about electricity to know that it's a lot like water flowing through a pipe. So if somebody wants me to explain how electrons flow through a wire, I can fall back to the analogy of water through a pipe. So what are some common analogies used to describe the Trinity? Well, the first of which, the one that comes up in my class every year, is, well, God is kind of like an egg. But the problem is, the shell is not an egg. I like to bring an egg to class, and I crack it, and I separate it into its three parts. And then I say, oh, you think the shell is egg? So how about you just, I go to one of the boys, because I know they'll try it. Here, why don't you try eating some of this egg? And invariably, I'll have some boy sit there and crunch on the egg. I'm like, how does that taste? Not too good. Does it taste like egg? No, it doesn't. Then why not? Well, because it's not egg. It's a part of the egg. Also, the albumin, the white part, is not an egg. And lastly, the yolk is not an egg. It's only when you put all these three together that you get an egg. So the egg suffers from, the analogy of the egg as a representation of a trinity, suffers from what I call the different stuff problem. The different stuff problem is this. The shell is calcium carbonate crystals. The albumin, the white part, is 90% water and 10% proteins, such as ovalbumin, conalbumin, ovomucin, and others that I can't pronounce. The yolk is a significant source of fatty acids, oleic acid, palmitic acid, linoleic acid, and it has high levels of cholesterol, vitamins A, D, E, and K. It's nothing at all like the albumin, it's nothing at all like the shell, and each one individually is not an egg. So the analogy fails. But wait, there's more. You see, the analogy of the egg as a representation of the Trinity is actually far worse than just that. Because the egg actually has, what is it? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine parts. You've got the thick albumen, the air cell, the cuticula, the eggshell, the germinal disk, the viddling membrane, the yolk, the chalaza, and the thin albumen. Even the albumen, the white part of the egg, has two parts. So really, the egg fails about nine different ways to Sunday. That's a horrible analogy of the Trinity. If you use it, please stop. Well, some people who probably took, if you took high school chemistry, you probably realized that water exists in three states. Sometimes water is used as an analogy of a trinity. Well, you see, water can exist as a solid, a liquid, and a gas. And see, this is actually, we're better now. Because now, liquid water, solid water, and steam are all still water. We don't have the different stuff problem. But we have a different problem. The problem is that all three states cannot normally exist at the same time. So really, this fails as an analogy. Normally, you can't have steam, ice, and liquid water existing at the same time, at the same place. It's kind of like a chemical law of non-contradiction thing going on there. But, if you got an A in high school chemistry, you'll know that there's this magical property of water called its triple point. The triple point of water, this is a state diagram for water. And you'll see here, this is pressure on the vertical axis and the horizontal axis is temperature in degrees Celsius. This is at one atmosphere, sea level, which is where we are here in Bremerton. So at sea level, freezing point is zero degrees Celsius. Or if you prefer freedom height, 32 degrees freedom height. And then, of course, at one atmosphere, the boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius, or 212 degrees freedom height. So what happens here is that anything in this region over here is solid. Anything in this region over here will be liquid. And anything in this region way over yonder is going to be steam. But you'll notice there's this magical point right here where these three regions intersect. This is called the triple point of water. What happens here is if you drop the pressure, if you put water in a container and you drop the pressure to 0.006 atmospheres, and then you raise the temperature ever so slightly above 0 degrees, 0.01 degrees Celsius, you'll get something magical happening. You'll get all three states of matter in the same space, or in the same container. So you'll see here, liquid water down here, and you'll get solid water, ice, floating on top of the liquid, and then you'll get steam up top, because obviously steam rises, it's a lot lighter than the other two. Well, what's the problem with this? Well, the problem is, it still falls short, as an analogy of the Trinity, because the states do not exist in the same location. Right? So there's no steam down here, and there's no liquid water up here. And there's no steam here. They're physically separate from one another. So the states don't exist in the same location, and they're also highly contingent upon their environment. This is a very delicate balance. You get that temperature, that pressure ever so slightly off, then boom, it goes all the way to liquid water, it goes all solid, or it goes all gas. It's a very, very precise balance. And God is obviously not contingent upon his environment, so ultimately, water at its triple point fails as an analogy of the Trinity. What's next? Ah, perhaps the best analogy that I've heard is that of a musical chord. Piano's probably not turned on, so I won't bother. So a musical chord is three or more notes played concurrently. And if you listen carefully, when you go home, listen to a chord, play one on a piano or a guitar, if you listen carefully, you can hear the three individual notes in the chord, but yet when they're played together, it has a whole other character all into itself. It sounds very, very different. But the problem here is that the Trinity is not at all like a chord, because God is not contingent upon an exterior entity. The chord does not exist in and of itself. The instrument must be played. If you've got a piano, you can hit the sustain pedal on it, but eventually it will decay out. The strings need to be restruck over and over and over again for the chord to continue to ring out. God is clearly not like this. He is eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. So, the fail is there. And also, It decays without help, right? So even the chord, which doesn't suffer from the different stuff problem, and it doesn't suffer from the different time problem, and it doesn't suffer from a different space problem, it does suffer from the problem that it is contingent upon an external entity. So it falls short. So you're probably asking yourself, okay, Dan, you've just destroyed three of my best analogies that I use to teach my Sunday school kids. What am I supposed to use? What is the best analogy of the Trinity? Well, I'm gonna show you right here. But yeah, there is none. Trying to describe an infinite God with finite terms, like physical analogies, is a lot like trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon. Even if you could find some place to put the water, you're never gonna do it. You're never gonna be able to scoop them all out. So, how are we to explain the Trinity? Well, if the only thing that's true about God is that which he says about himself, How about we go to his word? We let scripture speak to us rather than us try to speak to scripture. So what we do, that's my pastor. The only thing that's true about God is that which he says about himself. Let's meet the Trinity as reported by the Bible. In Matthew 3, 16 and 17, It says, after being baptized, Jesus came up from the water and the Spirit of God descended as a dove and the voice out of the heavens, which was the Father saying, this is my Son, whom I love, with whom I'm well pleased. So here we see the three members of the Trinity introduced. We have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, I'd like to draw your attention to some of the distinctions between the three. Notice that each member of the Trinity is in a different physical location. Right, so you had the Father up in the sky, disembodied voice, you have the Holy Spirit coming down in the form of a dove, and you got Jesus splashing around the muddy Jordan River. So they're in three physical locations. And each member is revealed or manifested in a different manner. So the Father is a disembodied voice, the Spirit is a dove, and the Son is a man. So you notice that there's also, so there's a clear distinction between the members of the Trinity. So let's go to John 1526 and see what we see there. These slides are out of order. Okay. John 15, 26 says, when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me. All right, notice what's going on here. What do we learn about the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Well, you see who's speaking? Jesus is speaking, right? So Jesus is telling us about the Spirit who is going to proceed from the Father. Now, did Jesus say that he's going to send the Holy Spirit from himself? No. Did Jesus say that he's talking to himself about sending the Holy Spirit? No, he didn't, clearly not. So there's a subject-object distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Son speaks to the Father about the Holy Spirit, causing him, the Father, to send the Holy Spirit to us. So what we learn here is that the Father is not the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father. Likewise, the reverse is true. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Clear as mud? All right. All right. So that makes us tritheists, right? Or maybe henotheists? Well, no, because we gotta keep reading. There's more to this. When we get to Deuteronomy 6.4, it says, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And also James 2.19. You believe that there's one God? Good, even if the demons believe that and they shudder. And Isaiah 45.5, Isaiah has a chain of verses that I like to walk Jehovah's Witnesses through. I am Yahweh and there is no other. Besides me there is no God. So how many gods do we have? Well, I am God and there is no other. God, and no others. So I know math is hard, but I can count to one. So what I see here is that there is one and only one God. All right, so we have one God manifested in his Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, let's take a look at this relationship right here, the Father to God. So the phrase God the Father, or God our Father, or our Father God, Father God, some connection between God and Father is almost hard to avoid in the Bible, especially in the New Testament. You can almost do the kind of daily devotional, like random daily devotional thing where you let the Bible hit the desk and plop open. I can almost bet you that you're gonna run into one of these phrases. So, for example, 1 Corinthians 8.6, Galatians 1.1, Ephesians 6.23, Philippians 2.11, Colossians 1.3, 3.17. Are you taking notes? 1 Thessalonians 1, 1 and 2, 1 Timothy 1 and 2, 2 Peter 1.17. This was just a little sampling. These references are all over the place. And it really doesn't really bear much discussion because nobody really debates God as the Father God. I've never heard anybody debate, no, the Father's not God. So we don't spend any time on it. It's there in the scriptures if you want to look them up, but nobody really argues about it. So the Father clearly is God. Now, let's work our way around the circle and go over here to the Holy Spirit and God. What's the relationship between the Holy Spirit and God? Now this is a relationship that you will spend a little bit of time on If you're talking to Jehovah's Witnesses or perhaps the Mormons, you'll spend a little bit more time on this than you ever would with the Father being God, but it's still not something that you really need to spend a whole lot of time on. I usually go to Acts 5, 3 and 4. where, if you remember, all the believers were getting together and they were selling their goods and they were giving to everybody. They're just all excited and wanting to share with everybody in need. Hey, I got more than I need. Let me sell some of this stuff and give it to you to help you out, my brother in Christ. And so Ananias and Sapphira get together and they're like, hey, you know, we wanna get on, let's get on some of this action. Oh, we got this property over here that we're not really doing anything with. Tell you what, Sapphira, let's sell the property and then we'll give the money to the church. So they can help out the people who are in need. Well, but yeah, but that's a lot of money. We don't want to give it all to them, do we? Yeah, you're right. I think we'll just, we'll hold back some of it. But if they find out that we're holding back some of it, they might look at us as like somehow like less Christian, right? So we want to appear super holy. So we'll just tell them that we sold it all and this is, you know, we sold it and this is all the money for it. So what happens? Ananias and Sapphira, Ananias comes to before Peter says, hey, check it out. I sold my property. And this is all the money. Puts it in front of Peter. Peter's like, yo, why is Satan so filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? Saw right through him like a plate glass window. And then the next verse he says, you have not lied to men, but to God. Notice what Peter does here. He first he says he lied to the Holy Spirit. And then in the very next breath, he says what? You have lied to God. So what did Peter believe about the Holy Spirit? That he is God, right? And we can also go to Hebrews three. Which says, therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, your fathers tried me by testing me in the desert. He's talking about the episode of Meribah, right? Where the Israelites are grumbling, give us water to drink. And they tried, and God was just like, oh, he just wanted to backhand them so bad. Tried them, tried them hard. So when we look back at Exodus 17.2, when we look at that account at Meribah, God says, why do, or excuse me, Moses says, why do you test Yahweh? You see what he's doing here? Why do you test Yahweh? Therefore, just as the Spirit says, your father's tried me by testing me. The author of Hebrews here is referencing the story back here in Exodus 17. He is equating the Holy Spirit with Yahweh, the same one who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the I Am. So from these two passages alone, or these four passages, you can see that the Holy Spirit is God. But again, nobody really seems to argue too much about this. The Jehovah's Witnesses will tell you, well, God, the Holy Spirit is just God's impersonal active force, kind of like a tractor beam or a gravitational wave or some such. The Mormons believe that he is one of the three members of the Godhead, a distinct member, so they're basically tritheists or polytheists. So, but not a whole lot of people spend a whole lot of time talking about this relationship right here, trying to prove that the Holy Spirit is God. As a matter of fact, I would recommend that if you do wind up talking to a Jehovah's Witness and they wanna get involved in a discussion about whether the Holy Spirit is God or not, I would suggest that you sidestep that and you focus on the next relationship because this is the one that's big. This is the one where everybody gets their knickers in a twist over about whether or not Jesus is the Son of God, whether or not he is God in the flesh. So let's take a look at what the Bible has to say about this relationship. John 28, excuse me, John 20, 28. Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God, the way the Greek is actually rendered, it says, the Lord of me and the God of me. And the interesting thing is not what, I just had a blank. Thomas, sorry, it's hard being blonde, especially after lunch. Thomas, the interesting thing here is not what Thomas said, but rather what Jesus said, or perhaps I should say what Jesus didn't say. Let's take a look at what happened when some other people were worshiped. How about Herod? Herod was giving a speech and people are like, oh yeah, the voice of a God and not of a man. And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory and he was eaten by worms and died. So, Herod, godly man or no? Don't be afraid to answer. This is not a trick question. Clearly not. He accepted worship. Did it end well for him? It ended well for the worms, not so much for Herod. Okay, well, what about Peter? Peter is generally regarded as a godly man. He occasionally stuck his foot in his mouth, but he was a follower of Christ and he was one of the 12 apostles. What about when he, did he accept worship? Acts 10, when Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet and worshiped him, but Peter raised him up saying, stand up, I too am just a man. Okay, so the ungodly, when they receive worship, we know God doesn't exactly look too kindly upon that. When a godly man is worshiped, the proper response is to tell the person to get up. But what about angels? How about when John, John the Beloved, was getting his revelation? And the angel told him some pretty amazing things and showed him some amazing stuff. And he says, I fell at his feet to worship him, that is the angel. But he said to me, do not do that. Or don't do it, wouldn't be prudent. He says, I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus worship God. So do angels accept worship? If you find an angel that accepts worship, we have a different name for him. Call that a demon, right? Clearly not what's going on here. But you know what? As if we didn't get the point the first time, or as if John, John was a little overwhelmed with this whole experience. He did it again. He says, I, John, fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things. But he said to me, don't do it. Not prudent at any juncture. So don't do it. So the godly should not accept worship, godly men will not accept worship, and neither will the holy angels, the sinless angels. So it's not appropriate to worship them. So now we compare that to what happened with Thomas, right? What did he say? He said, you believe because you see, blessed are those who believe and they haven't seen, right? Jesus also said stuff that only makes sense if he is God. So for example, in John 8, 58 and 59a, it says, before Abraham was born, I am. Therefore they picked up stones to throw at him. Now, wait a minute. Why would they buy tickets to send him to buy a one way ticket for him to go to a rock concert? What's the big deal here? I am, they picked up stones to stone him. See, there's only a few things you can be stoned for under Jewish law. There are a whole bunch of ugly sins that I don't wanna mention because we have a mixed audience, but one of those things is blasphemy, claiming to be God or besmirching the name of God. So the I am here that you see, when it says, before Abraham was born, I am, in Greek, this is rendered at, the Greek words used here are ego, a me. Which literally means, I am. Ego, I, a me, am. It's the same phrase that's used in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, in Exodus 3.14. Remember what happened in Exodus 3.14? This is where God appears to Moses in the burning bush. And Moses is like, hey, yo, who should I say sent me? God says what? Tell them I am sent you. So the Jews picked up stones to throw at him because they understood that Jesus was alluding back, all the way back to Exodus 3.14. This is the covenant name of God. Yahweh in Hebrew, or when translated into the Greek, Ego Ami. Okay, so. Furthermore, John 10, verses 30 and 33, Jesus says, I and the Father are one. Says the Jews answered him, they picked up again, they wanted to send him to the bottom of a rock pile. And Jesus is like, what's up? Why are you trying to stone me? What good work did I do that causes you to want me to want you to stone me? And they're like, well, for good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy. And because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God. You see, some people, I've had conversations with Mormons who will say, oh, I and the Father are one. He's just saying, they are one in purpose. Oh, really? Well, if that was really what Jesus was trying to communicate, and that's what his audience understood, wouldn't they have said, oh, hey, we're on the same team, buddy, right? They'd be trying to high five Jesus. Yeah, we're on God's team too. But no, they picked up stones to stone him. They wanted to kill him for his blasphemy. He says, the son also says, for I am Yahweh your God, the Holy One, your Savior. Oh, this is a good one. I love this. He says again in Isaiah, I, Yahweh, am your savior and your redeemer. All right, so who's the savior? Yahweh, or Jehovah, if you wanna go through Latin before you get to English. Right, so Yahweh is Savior. Now, we get on to the next verse, Isaiah 43, 11. I, even I, am Yahweh, and there is no Savior besides me. So now, not only is he our Savior, but he says, there is no other Savior but me. And who's speaking? Yahweh. But then, as if we didn't get the point the first time, Hosea 13.4 says, yet I have been the Lord your God, or Yahweh your God. There is no Savior besides me. Only God can save us. Only Yahweh is Savior. And finally, we get to Luke 2. We read this every Christmas. But how many of us really understand what's being said here and how earth-shattering this is? The angel said to them, today in the city of David, there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord. What does this mean? Christ isn't just some title. It's not a curse word that you throw out when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Christ is the Greek way of representing the word Messiah, or Savior. But only God is our Savior, and there's only one Savior, and that is Yahweh. So what are we to learn from this? Jesus is called Savior, or Christ in the New Testament. Therefore, Christ, Jesus, has to be God. If your Jesus is not God in the flesh, he cannot save you. He cannot save you. Not that he won't, he cannot. It is impossible for your Jesus to save you unless he is God come in the flesh. He must be Yahweh, the Yahweh of the Old Testament. So the Son, clearly, from scripture, is God. And there are other scriptures we could go to too, but in the interest of time, we will mosey on along. So, in a nutshell, the Trinity Looks like this is one representation of the Trinity. So we have the Father is not the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Son, the Son is not the Father. And likewise, we can go around the earth circle the other way. But the Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and the Son is God, but yet we have only one God. Put another way, God is one in being, three in person. What does that mean? What's the difference between being and a person? Well, let's take a look at a person. Me. So a being is what I am. A person is who I am. So for example, what I am is human. Come on. I am mortal, and I am seven feet tall, in case you hadn't noticed. Who I am is something different. I am an adopted child of the king, I am daddy to four, and I am the husband to one. See, we oftentimes have a hard time with the Trinity. Part of it is because when we think of being in person, we think of them synonymous, right? Because we have one being and one person. But God is three in being, or excuse me, one in being, three in person. It's hard to keep that in your mind, right? All right. So now I wanna bring up to you an analogy that my pastor likes to use, or an illustration my pastor likes to use. Carl Payne, in his book, Transferable Cost Training, he uses what he calls the apologetics wedding cake. The first layer of the cake is that Jesus claimed to be God. So for example, John 8, 58 and 59, we see before Abraham was born, I am, and John 10, 30 and 33 says I and the Father are one, one in essence. There's some grammatical concerns in there in John 10.33, which really drives home the point that it's one in essence, and it's not just one in purpose. But we won't go into that. Mark 14, 62 to 64, Jesus says, I am, and cites Psalm 110.1 and Daniel 7.13, which predict the Messiah. So Jesus claimed to be God. The second level of the cake is that Jesus said things that only make sense if he is God. For example, in Mark 2, five through seven, Jesus says, your sins are forgiven. What was the reaction of the Jews? Who can forgive sins but God alone? Bingo, now you're starting to understand what he's getting at, right? You're smelling what he's cooking, good job. Now follow up on that. Also, John 4, 25 and 26. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. And when that one comes, he will declare all things to us. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. I am the Messiah. It only makes sense if he is the Messiah, otherwise he's a liar, right? John 5, 21 through 23, Jesus receives and expects the same honor as the father. You can compare that with John 17, five and Isaiah 42, 48. And finally, John 10, 28, Jesus claimed to give eternal life. And the third layer of the cake is that Jesus' friends and enemies alike agreed that Jesus claimed to be God. For example, Jesus' friends and enemies agreed that he was claimed to be God in Matthew 26, 62 through 66. The high priest tore his clothes and the Jews called for the death penalty because he made a claim to divinity. A high priest wasn't allowed to rip his clothes, like ever. So that was a pretty big deal if Jesus made a statement to cause the high priest to want to tear his clothes. John 5.18, John says that the reasons the Jews wanted to kill Jesus was because he called God his own father, making him equal with God. And under the Jewish understanding, if you make yourself equal with God, what you're really doing is pulling God down to your level. That's blasphemy. Titus 2.13, Paul calls Jesus our great God and Savior. And in 2 Peter 1.1, he calls Jesus our God and Savior. So Jesus claimed to be God, he said things that only make sense if he is God, and both his friends and enemies alike all acknowledge that Jesus claimed to be God. Now, we don't have a lot of time here, but I wanna take a look at a couple, I'm gonna take a look at one objection that the Jehovah's Witnesses love to raise. They'll say, but wait a minute, Jesus said that the Father is greater than he is. Well, yes, that's true. In John 14, 28b, it says the Father is greater than I. But what does this mean? Well, let's think about, let's step away from the Bible for a minute and think about a little less religious example. How about Donald Trump? Is Donald Trump greater than I? Well, it depends upon what you mean by greater. We gotta define our terms, right? So if we're talking about in being, no. He is no more human than you or me. God doesn't love him any more or less than you or me. Jesus didn't die for him any more or less than him or me or you. So in being, there is no difference between Donald Trump and I. He is not greater than I. However, in person, Is he greater than I? Absolutely. He is the President of the United States. And as evidence of his greatness, his greater greatness than I, he is surrounded with guys wearing black trench coats with fully automatic weapons underneath. And who will take a bullet from him without even thinking about it? I don't have such a crowd of people surrounding me. I'm on my own. So in terms of whether or not Donald Trump is greater than me in being, no. In person, yes. You see what the Jehovah's Witnesses fail to realize is there's a distinction between person and being, and there's also a distinction between essence and role, as who you are as opposed to what you do. They don't recognize the fact that Jesus had two natures, a human nature and a divine nature. So they get confused on this point. And they say, the Father is greater than I. Well, you see, you can't do that if you're God. That's not what the Bible says. So we have nine minutes remaining. That is the end of the presentation. Do I have any questions? Oh, no, he's gonna let us out early. What will we do? What will the YouTubes do? No questions? So this is the cover of my book. Jesus is not the answer to every Sunday school question. It's basically, it's a three volume set which contains all the lessons that I teach my sixth grade Sunday school class at Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Washington. Although now my class, it contains usually more adults than it does kids. I like to say that I teach anybody from sixth grade to their sixth decade of life. The three volumes of the set, The first volume we address the reasons for believing the Bible in the first place because what I do is I walk in the class and I say, who here believes the Bible? And of course we're in Sunday school so all the kids raise their hand. They're like, me, I do, I do. I say, okay, great. Why? And then the crickets come out. And then I start getting them to try to answer this question, why do you believe what you believe? And I start playing devil's advocate with them and poking their answers and finding holes in their logic. And it's just a great amount of fun, right? And by the time we get to the end of the class, the kids realize, wow, I don't have a reason for believing this book. I don't know why I believe it. I believe it because mom and dad told me it's true. Not good enough, right? So I said, okay, you know what? We're going to be locked up in this classroom for the next nine months together every single Sunday. I don't want to waste your time. I hope you don't want to waste mine. So here's what we're going to do. Let's see if this book is even worth opening in the first place. So what we wind up doing is we study all the reasons, well not all, we study some of the more common reasons for believing the Bible. And once we discuss the evidences for believing the Bible, and we talk about manuscript evidence, archaeology, prophecy, and statistical probability, we get into, we actually open the Bible, and then it says, in the beginning. And I say, stop. What's a beginning? So we look at the answer to the questions. What is a beginning? What was there before the beginning? What began at the beginning? And this is when I slip in like general relativity in space. I bring in a fabric of space time and I show them how gravity works. It's really cool. And we talk about space, time, matter, and energy. Like all that came into the beginning. And then I ask the bombshell question. What's the key ingredient to any beginning or to any creative act? Nobody ever gets it. It's a great question. But it makes their brains smoke and I love it. And so once we spend several weeks on the word beginning, we go into the fourth word of the Bible, which is God. And as I've already explained, that if we have a conception of God that it doesn't match what he says, then we're found to be idolaters and we need to fix that. So my second volume is called, Who is God? And it's a very, very small primer on theology proper. And it contains, the last chapter of the book contains the, is the chapter that deals with Trinitarian analogies, which is the basis for this presentation. And then after we get done with that, we also talk about that when was the beginning. So creation apologetics is in book one as well. And then finally, in book three, that's called Practical Apologetics, and that's taking what we learned in the first two books and putting the rubber on the road and taking it out into the world, like, here's how you talk to Mormons, here's how you talk to Jehovah's Witnesses, here's how you spot logical fallacies in really persuasive YouTube videos. So it's a whole lot of fun, and I've been doing it for 16 years, and I would, there's nothing else I'd rather do other than be here talking to you. I saw a hand up here in the back. You have a question, sir? So what are some of the objections after I present this material? It usually goes something like this. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. In my third book, I relay the story of a six-month bus ride, six months of riding on the Metro bus after work, sitting next to a Jehovah's Witness and going through a lot of this stuff. And after about five months, I got on the bus and I sat down next to him. I kid you not, this man put earplugs in his ears. He was done. But I like to encourage people with that, saying, you know, don't confuse their seeing results with their being results. So just because the guy you're talking to shuts down and puts earplugs in his ears, doesn't mean it's not affecting anybody. Because I got a big voice, which is now starting to dry up a little bit, but I got a big voice. And as it turns out, there was a lady who was sitting three rows up. And she happens to know a friend, she lives next door to some of our old friends from Antioch Bible Church. And we got, my wife got an email from our old friend saying, hey, our next door neighbor has been riding on the bus. And she says, there are the two guys in the back of the bus that are always talking about the Bible. And she's like, well, describe them. And they described us, you know, this big, tall blonde guy. And they're like, wow, that sounds like Big Dan. And she's like, no, you don't understand. He's like really tall. It's like, yeah, that sounds like Big Dan. Like, no, you don't understand. He's freakishly tall, like Dash Dan. And so they've been, our neighbors, or our friends, have been neighbors with this lady for years, and they've been trying to share Christ with her. And they've had some conversations, but because of the conversations I had on the back of the bus, throwing a rubber ball up against a brick wall at Jehovah's Witness, this lady was able to take questions that she now had, and take it to our friends, so they could explain the way of God more perfectly to her. So never confuse, don't get frustrated when the people you're talking to shut down. Because I found in my experience, a lot of times when we're talking to somebody, it's not the person you're talking to who needs to hear. It's somebody who's eavesdropping. We've got three more minutes left. Yes? Do I have this on audio? No, but it's being recorded on YouTube right now. The audio books. No, I don't have audio books. Maybe I should, because I've been told I have a magnificent voice. Audiobooks are great. Yeah, when I used to commute to an actual, to a regular job, I used to like to pop in an audiobook from time to time. I got two minutes left. Yes, sir. Yeah, I actually talked to him. And our mutual friend Phil is the one of the, yeah, we. Mm-hmm. Right. Well, the first thing you do is you make the main thing the main thing. Jesus said, the most important question that Jesus ever asked is, who do you say I am? Because the answer to that question is the fulcrum upon which your eternal destination is built. Remember when I said you don't spend a lot of time talking about the Father as God, you don't spend a lot of time talking about the Holy Spirit as God? Because when you stand before him one day, you're not gonna be asked, what did you do with the Holy Spirit? You're gonna be asked, what did you do with me? Jesus is gonna look you right in the eye and say, who am I? And the answer to that question determines whether you're in heaven or you're in hell for all of eternity. So you need to focus on that. And so Carl Payne, my pastor, in transferable cross training, he recommends you focus on three areas. Well, he says four, I say three. He says, first of all, you only talk about the nature of God. the person and work of Jesus Christ, and salvation. He says with the Mormons you can also throw in there the subjective nature of the feelings because they get the holy heartburn thing there to confirm that the Book of Mormon is true. I've never had to go there because I spend all my time talking about the person and work of Jesus Christ, the nature of God, who God is, and salvation. Because those three things are what determine your eternal destination. Don't talk about baptism for the dead. Don't talk about the pre-existence of souls. Don't talk about whether your marriage is for time and eternity and all that, right? Those issues are secondary. They're not important compared to the magnitude of knowing Jesus Christ as God. So that's what you have to focus on. All right? I am officially out of time. Thank you very much. I appreciate your attendance.