Nuggets from An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith by Dave Hunt - The Truth about God

Nuggets from An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith by Dave Hunt – The Truth about God

The belief that God is a single being is held by both Muslims and Jews, who insist, respectively, that Allah and Jehovah are single entities. This belief is also held by pseudo-Christian cults such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons – and by various aberrant Christian groups who also deny the deity of Christ. Some Pentecostals claim that God is a single being and that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are God’s three “titles” or “offices.” Here we have unity without diversity.

That God must have both unity and diversity is clear. The god who is a single entity (Allah of Islam or the Jehovah of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Judaism, for instance), is incomplete in himself, unable to experience love, fellowship, and communion before creating beings with whom he could have these experiences. The Bible says that “God is love.” But the god of Islam and Judaism could not be love in and of itself- for whom could it love when it was alone before creation?

The belief that God is a single entity (Unitarianism) and not three Persons existing eternally in one God (Trinitarianism) was first formulated in the early church around AD 220 by a Libyan theologian named Sabellius. He attempted to retain biblical language concerning Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without acknowledging the triune nature of God. Sabellius claimed that God existed as a single Being who manifested Himself in three activities, modes or aspects; as Father in the creation, as Son in redemption, and as Holy Spirit in prophecy and sanctification. This ancient heresy, though condemned by the vast majority of Christians, survives to this day among many who call themselves Christians.

The Bible presents a God who did not need to create any beings to experience love, communion, and fellowship. This God is complete in Himself, being three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, separate and distinct, yet at the same time eternally one God. They loved and communed and fellowshipped with each other and took counsel together before the universe, angels, or man were brought into existence. Isaiah “heard the voice of the Lord [in eternity past] saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isaiah:6:8Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.
See All...). Moses revealed the same counseling together of the Godhead: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”; and again, “Let us go down, and there confound their language” (Genesis:1:26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
See All...; 11:7). Who is this “us” if God is a single entity? Why does God say, “The man is become as one of us” (Genesis:3:22And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
See All...).