The word “trinity” does not appear in the Bible. And yet denying the trinity is the #1 definition of a
cult. Does that make sense?
The way the term is used by Christians we are given the impression that the trinity is spoken of on
every page of the Bible – but is it? Can YOU turn to a dozen verses which mention it? Five? Even one?
In fact, can you remember reading even a single verse that says God is three beings in one? Why not?
Doesn’t that make you wonder? Without a single verse clearly teaching the most basic belief of every
Christian church on Earth, how can you be SURE you’re right?
If God is a trinity, the Bible will surely reveal it clearly, for the Bible was given to us “for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). So if your beliefs are true,
the Bible will surely prove that. If not, the Bible will prove that also.
Either way, you have nothing to fear by demanding PROOF from your Bible. So we’re going to start by
asking a few simple questions – questions most people are afraid to ask:
In the doctrine of the trinity, all three Gods are coequal; none holds power over another. But is that
what the Bible says? John 14:28. So if Jesus and His Father are not equal… the trinity, if it exists at all,
cannot be an equal trinity!
Jesus made it plain in dozens of verses that God the Father was His Father. That’s why Jesus called
Him… the Father. Pretty simple, right? Unarguable scripture states that Jesus was the Son of the
Father, NOT the son of the holy spirit! But then how is it possible that Jesus was conceived by the
holy spirit??
Matthew 1:18 (Philips) The birth of Jesus Christ happened like this. When Mary was engaged to
Joseph, before their marriage, she was discovered to be pregnant—by the holy spirit
The Bible says that the holy spirit was Jesus’ Father! Did He have TWO fathers? Do we need to have a
spiritual paternity test to see which one is Jesus’ real Father?? Most Christians dismiss questions like
this as allegorical or spiritual, something mystical we can’t understand.
But there is one possible, very simple answer: that the holy spirit isn’t a separate person at all; it is a
part of the Father Himself. It is the holy spirit OF the Father! (Matthew 10:20). Just as our spirit is an
integral part of each and every one of us! (1 Corinthians 2:10-11).
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Bible Study Course Lesson 2 – 7
If this spirit isn’t a separate entity apart from the Father, but an integral part OF the Father, then these
problems disappear! For it would mean that when Mary was impregnated by the “spirit of God”, it
meant she was literally impregnated by God the Father, THROUGH His spirit!
THESE THREE ARE ONE
The most famous verse that people quote, the only one that actually speaks of God clearly as a trinity is
1 John 5:7-8; make sure you use a KJV Bible when you look up this verse. Now that certainly seems
like a convincing argument for the trinity. But let’s look a little closer; look at that verse in a modern
translation, say, the NIV; that verse seems a lot shorter in the NIV, doesn’t it? That’s because the
majority of this passage is missing! Why is that?
All Bibles are translated into English from the original languages; Greek, in the case of the New
Testament. Greek copies of the Bible were kept all over Europe, some dating back over a thousand
years; and in the 1500s a man named Erasmus gathered together as many as he could find and compiled
a complete copy of the Greek New Testament.
1 John 5:7-8 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the
blood: and these three agree in one.
In the first two editions of Erasmus’ Greek Bible, 1 John 5:7-8 did not contain the struck-through
passage, which is called by scholars the “comma Johanneum”; in other words, all evidence of the
trinity was missing from this verse!
This was because Erasmus did not believe those words were a part of the Bible, since they didn’t
appear in the older source manuscripts that he had. But it was a popular passage, and churchmen were
furious that without this passage, the proof of the trinity was seriously weakened – and it is!
“Erasmus is said to have replied to these critics that the Comma did not occur in any of the Greek
manuscripts he could find, but that he would add it to future editions if it appeared in a single Greek
manuscript. Such a manuscript was subsequently concocted by a Franciscan, and Erasmus, true to his
word, added the Comma to his 1522 edition, but with a lengthy footnote setting out his suspicion that
the manuscript had been prepared expressly to confute him.” – Wikipedia, article “Comma
Johanneum”.
In the end of the 19th century, a new version of the Greek New Testament was released, based on a
different set of texts, and it correctly did not include this passage because the vast majority of
scholars believe it is a fraud! What the passage said when God inspired it was…
1 John 5:7-8 For there are three that bear record, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these
three agree in one.
And of course, this offers no proof of the trinity. It simply says that these three witnesses agree about
their testimony. Don’t believe me! Look this up for yourself in any Bible dictionary or encyclopedia.
There are a few who believe it is inspired, but by far the majority of scholars believe that this verse
does not belong in the Bible. This includes Trinitarians, who would love to have such strong
confirmation of their beliefs – but most can’t, in good conscience, use it.
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ARE JESUS AND HIS FATHER ONE?
Absolutely! That’s what the Bible says! John 17:11, 21-22. Here Jesus prayed to His Father, asking
that WE may be one JUST AS He and His Father are one! Now if their oneness is a part of the trinity, a
Godhead closed off to man, then certainly we could NEVER be a part of their oneness! And yet Jesus,
knowing this, asked it for us anyway! Why?
If these verses prove the existence of the trinity, they also prove that we can ALL be a part of that
trinity – in which case, it would cease to be a trinity altogether (since a trinity is, by definition, ONLY
THREE persons in one) and become something ELSE!
And while we’re on the subject, why isn’t the holy spirit a part of their oneness? Jesus and His Father
are said to be “one” at least a dozen times in this book – yet not once is the holy spirit or the comforter
EVER said to be “one” with either of them!
WHY IS THE SPIRIT IGNORED?
There are thousands of verses that speak of the divinity of God; many more that speak of the divinity of
Christ. Over and over again we are shown glimpses of the throne room of God in heaven, and every
single time we see God on the throne, and Jesus on His right hand or in front of Him… and yet we
never ever see the holy spirit sitting anywhere.
For example, read John 1:1-3. In this time before the worlds were created, John says that there was
God; and that this was Jesus. That’s two Beings… and the holy spirit is not mentioned. Why?
In various visions of God’s throne room we invariably see the Father and/or Jesus… but never once, in
all those visions do we see the holy spirit sitting on a throne beside Them. For example Acts 7:56; why
isn’t the holy spirit on His left? Why isn’t the holy spirit mentioned in Daniel 7:9-14 when the
“Ancient of Days” (the Father) and “one like the Son of Man” (Jesus) are pictured in the throne room
of heaven? Or in a similar vision in Revelation chapters 4 and 5, we see the Father on a throne and
Jesus before Him – but “God the Holy Spirit” is nowhere to be seen. Why?
Or in Revelation 7:10, why do they only cry “salvation to our God… and unto the Lamb”? Why not
“Salvation unto the holy spirit”, too? Even in the very last pages of the Bible, when the glorious future
is described and God dwells on Earth in the holy city, there is no evidence of “God the Holy Spirit”
anywhere. Read through Revelation 21-22 and you will see the Father and the Lamb (Jesus Christ)
mentioned over and over – but the spirit is never once pictured among Them.
We do hear the spirit speaking in Revelation 22:17, but we will see later whether or not that constitutes
proof that the spirit is a separate person. Again in 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, Paul was fighting idolatry, and
so he set out to make a complete list of Gods; ignoring all those that are falsely “called gods”. And he
said there is one God the Father; and one Lord Jesus Christ. No mention of God the Holy Spirit! How
could Paul commit such blasphemy and ignore the third divine person – unless there is no third divine
person?
But Paul did that all the time; in the beginning and ending of most of his books, Paul addresses
salutations such as “Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus
Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:3). Read the first few and last few verses of every letter from Paul, and you
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will see that he NEVER addresses anything to the holy spirit; never prays to the holy spirit; and in
general, completely ignores the holy spirit as a person!
In the entire Bible, no one EVER prays to the holy spirit. Not once! They sometimes pray “in” the
spirit – meaning that their prayer was INSPIRED by the holy spirit, but not once is a prayer ever
addressed TO the holy spirit!
Again in 2 John 1:9, if the trinity were true, then every time – or at least, the vast majority of times –
that the Godhead were mentioned, the spirit would be mentioned with them. If they were indeed
coequal, it would be impossible not to have them each mentioned.
If God were a trinity, this scripture SHOULD read “he that abides in the doctrine of Christ, he hath
both the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”… but not one verse in the entire Bible ever says
anything like that!
BUT WHY IS THE SPIRIT CALLED “HE”?
The spirit is translated as “he” and “him” regularly in the latter chapters of John and a few times
elsewhere. It is also usually capitalized so it reads “Spirit” (a person) instead of “spirit” (a thing). The
capitalization is quite easy to answer. The Bible was inspired by God. The translation of that Bible was
not.
The Greek language from which the NT was translated has no punctuation or capital/lowercase letters,
not even any spaces – SOONESENTENCELOOKSALOTLIKETHIS – and the punctuation,
capitalization, chapter/verse markings, margin notes, and cross-references were all added by the
translators of the Bible.
This was necessary to make it readable in English, but since it was not an inspired process, they made
mistakes because they were translating the Bible as they understood it; so when they saw the Greek
word for “SPIRIT” they usually translated it as “Spirit”, not “spirit”, because they believed it was a
person. And that’s all there was to it – “Spirit” was the opinion of the translators, not an inspired
fact.
The gender of the spirit is a bit more complicated to explain. If you’ve ever studied a foreign language,
you probably have learned that most other languages divide their objects by gender. In Spanish for
instance, “mesa” is table; but the word is feminine, so if it were literally translated into English it would
be something like “the she-table”. On the other hand, “sol” means the sun; but it is a masculine word,
so to literally translate it into English it would be “the he-sun”. This of course is never done, because
that information is arbitrary anyway – everyone knows there are no female tables or male suns, nor vice
versa.
The best English comparison is how we tend to call boats “her”, or how people tend to think “all dogs
are boys, all cats are girls”. When approaching a cat, a large majority of people will call it a her without
knowing what the gender is; reverse that for dogs. And so this obviously incorrect information is
nonetheless a part of our culture and language.
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And it is simply a part of most languages that all nouns have a gender. It has no bearing on whether that
item actually IS masculine or feminine; it just makes the language… well, it’s just how it is. Some
languages also have a third gender, which is neutral. Greek is that way.
In Greek, both masculine and neuter words are used to refer to the holy spirit; the “helper”,
“comforter”, and “advocate” in John 14-16 is parakletos, which is masculine. That is, the noun
parakletos is masculine, and so in those chapters the translators spoke of it as a “he”. But the
masculinity of the Greek noun has no bearing on whether the subject referred to, the comforter, is a he,
she, or it.
So translating those words as a “he” in English is like translating a Spanish phrase into English “where
is my shirt? I want to wash her”. In Spanish, shirt is feminine. So in Spanish, you wouldn’t call your
shirt an “it”, you’d call it “her”. But to translate that into English is misleading and implies that the
shirt has a human gender which of course it doesn’t!
And the translators were not consistent with calling the holy spirit a “he”, for example in Romans
8:16, 26, 1 Peter 1:11, John 1:32, etc. So you see, by the same evidence FOR the personhood of the
spirit – the fact that it was called “he” – we also have evidence for the “thinghood” of the spirit – the
fact that it was called “it”.
Incidentally, Hebrew has a similar gender system, and in Hebrew the noun for “spirit” is feminine.
Does that prove God the Holy Spirit is a she? If not, then neither does John 14-16 prove that the spirit
is a he, or a person at all.
IS THE HOLY SPIRIT A PERSON?
The holy spirit is mentioned many times in the Bible; but what exactly is it? Is the holy spirit a divine
person, the third arm of the trinity – or is it something else? To find the answer, look at your Bible;
what does the holy spirit do – how is it portrayed? As a person, or a thing?
Trinitarians point to the fact that the Bible says the holy spirit “shall teach you all things” (John
14:26); “shall testify of me (Jesus)” (John 15:26); “searches all things” (1 Corinthians 2:10); gives
various gifts (1 Corinthians 12:1-11); reproves (John 16:8); helps and intercedes (Romans 8:26); and
so on. Now all of those are facts; the holy spirit does those things!
And those do seem person-like… but that’s only half the story. Because the Bible ALSO says the holy
spirit can be “quenched” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). Can you quench a person? It says it can be “stirred”
(2 Timothy 1:6-7); can you stir a person? It says it can be “given” (1 Thessalonians 4:8,
2 Corinthians 1:22, etc). How can you “give” a person to someone else, unless perhaps they are a
slave? The holy spirit is given in measured amounts (John 3:34, 2 Corinthians 1:22)… how can a
person be given in measured amounts?
The holy spirit can be “poured out” (Acts 2:17, 33), people can be baptized (immersed) in it (Matthew
3:11), drink it (John 7:37-39), and be filled with it (Acts 2:4; Ephesians 5:18). None of those make
sense if the holy spirit is a person. So how can we explain the times when it does show person-like
characteristics? Simple – ask yourself if, when the Bible treats something as a person, it is always
LITERALLY a person!
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For example in Romans 7:17, is Sin a real person? Based on this, the same type of evidence cited for
the holy spirit’s personhood, it is. The sun is “ashamed” – a clearly person-like emotion – in Isaiah
24:23. According to Luke 19:40, stones would cry out, if children did not praise God. Does that mean
every stone is a person?
The land enjoys her rests (Sabbaths). (Leviticus 26:43). Does that mean land is a living female person?
Abel’s blood cried to God from the ground (Genesis 4:10); does that mean Abel’s blood was a separate,
individual being apart from Abel himself? And that it also had a literal voice? And in the next verse, the
Earth opens her mouth; is this more proof of the Earth’s female personhood?
In Proverbs 1:20-33, Wisdom makes a long speech as if it were a real person; does that mean it is?
Much later, Jesus said that “wisdom is justified by her children” (Matthew 11:19). Does this mean that
Wisdom is a real, existing person somewhere in the universe – probably an immortal person, from the
context? Perhaps a fourth part of the trinity? Or is the Bible just speaking metaphorically to make a
point, just as it did when it personified sin, the moon, rocks… and perhaps the holy spirit as well?
THE ANSWER
So at best, that gives us a mixed answer; there are some things that could imply a person, but just as
many that simply cannot be a person. And yet the answer is so simple! And you already understand
it, you just hadn’t thought about it this way! Once again, people fail to apply the golden rule to
God!
Take the common phrase “I’ll be with you in spirit”. When you are with someone in spirit, it means that
while they are gone, you will be thinking about them. Your heart will follow them, and would be there
with them if it could. So why don’t people understand that when God says “I’ll send my spirit to
be with you”, He means the same thing you do!
Because what if you DID have that power? Suppose that, while your loved one was on the other side of
the world, you could send a small piece of your self to be with them; something that would allow you
to communicate with them, express your love for them, help them with problems – even though you
yourself were thousands of miles away. We call that a cell phone! God calls it His spirit!
And that’s it – you now understand what the spirit of God is. You’re just a human so you can’t send
your spirit an inch, much less a thousand miles. But God can! And while God is in heaven, He CAN be
with us “in spirit”. By sending a portion of Himself, to watch over, guide, and teach us.
Not a separate person! But an extension of the SAME person; when you make a phone call, you
don’t become two separate people just because your voice is heard in New York and California at
the same time; but that phone signal CARRIES your self – your emotions, your compassion, and your
thoughts to someone even though you never left home!
But God, instead of using radio waves, uses those ultra-ultra-small super-super-fast waves we talked
about in the last lesson. And instead of connecting with a digital receiver in our iPhone, He connects
with a receiver He built into each of us – OUR spirit!
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The spirit of God testifies of God, teaches us about God, and searches the deep things of God because
it is like being on the other end of a super-phone call with God. It conveys what God wants, thinks, and
feels – and His power as well – to us.
But that spirit must be used regularly; like an old-fashioned phone line will “beep-beep-beep” at you if
you don’t dial after picking up the handset, so God’s spirit must be used every so often or it will go
stale, and God will give it to someone else. If you do things that offend God and “quench” the spirit,
God will “hang up” on you.
And it’s the same for all those other attributes applied to the spirit. It is God’s way of communicating
with us – the only difference between it and a phone line is that instead of connecting to our ears, it
connects to our thoughts; and unlike a mere phone line, it can also carry the power of God with it, to
cause miracles even though God Himself is far, far from here… because He is with us in spirit.
Read 1 Corinthians 2:11. We can better understand God’s spirit by understanding our own, since we
are made after His pattern. Our spirit “knows the things of man” – meaning that it understands us; it
knows what we think and why. For lack of a better word, it is our conscience (Proverbs 20:27).
Our spirit is like a flashlight that God uses to shine around the inward parts of our soul to see what we
think, why we do what we do, and what we believe right and wrong are. And above, 1 Corinthians
2:11 says that God’s spirit does the same thing in Him that ours does in us; just as our spirit is our
conscience and moral center, so God’s spirit is His conscience and moral center; in the same chapter, it
goes on to say “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
If we have the holy spirit, then we have the mind of Christ in us. Obviously not the entire mind, for
then no one else could have any of it! But we have a receiver that connects us to the mind of Christ in
us! And that receiver – our spirit – allows Christ’s spirit to connect with our mind on a sub-verbal,
sometimes sub-conscious level, to convey to us what Christ would do in a given situation.
Have you ever been told “your phone is talking”? Is your phone actually talking, or is it just relaying
someone ELSE’S voice, a PERSON’S VOICE? Now apply that thinking to Revelation 22:17. Is
God’s phone speaking – or are we simply seeing the “phone” God is using to talk to mankind?
After all, we know the bride is not a literal person, but a symbol for a GROUP of people!
WHO IS THE COMFORTER?
We made it clear that the comforter was not an independent third arm of the trinity, but you haven’t yet
learned what it IS. But if you read John 14-16 carefully, there is no question of just what it is – or
rather, who. You read that the Father has a spirit in Him (Matthew 10:20). But Jesus also has a spirit in
Him! (Luke 23:46).
That spirit left His body when He died; until then, it was a necessary part of His body just like your
spirit is a necessary part of yours. You can’t give me your spirit, nor can I give you mine. Because
when we “give up the spirit/ghost” we die – as James 2:26 says “…the body without the spirit is
dead…”!
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Now read John 15:26. Jesus was going to send the comforter back to them after He was with the
Father; and that comforter would testify about Jesus; that is, it would say the same things Jesus said!
(John 14:26). Everyone knows the comforter is the holy spirit; and the Father was going to send it IN
JESUS’S NAME.
That phrase is very badly misunderstood, but it is very simple. It’s like when a king sends an
ambassador to another country to speak in his name. That ambassador is empowered by the king to
speak in the king’s place; to talk to people as if the king himself were talking to them.
So when God sends the holy spirit in Jesus’ name, it means He is sending it in Jesus’ place! The
comforter – the holy spirit – is sent to them to REPLACE Jesus’s physical presence with them! (John
16:7). Now think about that!
Why was it NECESSARY that Jesus go away before the holy spirit could come? Why was it
impossible for the comforter to come while Jesus was still there? Did Jesus and the holy spirit have a
fight? Can they not be in the same room with one another? Demand answers to hard questions like
this! WHY did Jesus have to leave before they could receive the holy spirit??
Jesus and the Father can be in the same place at the same time, but Jesus and the holy spirit can’t be!
Why is that? Even much later, after Jesus was resurrected, the holy spirit STILL couldn’t come until
Jesus actually LEFT the Earth 40 days after His resurrection! (Acts 1:3-4). This was the same promise
He gave them in John 14-16. He continues to say… Acts 1:5-9.
It was TEN DAYS later, after Jesus ascended up into heaven for the last time, that the holy spirit was
FINALLY given to them. Why? The answer is so simple! Jesus said in John 14:17… “the spirit of
truth… ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you”.
The holy spirit was WITH them! It had been made flesh AND DWELT AMONG THEM! (John 1:14).
They ALREADY KNEW Him! This wasn’t a NEW spirit, but a spirit that had been living amongst them
for 34 years! And that same spirit – not a third member of the trinity, not someone else’s spirit, THAT
SAME SPIRIT OF JESUS was going to be INSIDE of them!
This is shocking, but it is SO EASY to prove, it’s embarrassing! John 14:16. They were going to get
ANOTHER comforter… That means they already HAD one! Who was the comforter that they already
had? Verse 17. They already HAD a comforter dwelling WITH them; but they were going to get
ANOTHER comforter dwelling IN them! WHO is this comforter coming back to them? Verse 18.
Jesus wasn’t going to leave them without a comforter because HE was coming back to them AS THE
COMFORTER! The word “comforter” is translated from the Greek parakletos meaning “helper,
comforter, or advocate”. The identical Greek word was used later, but was translated as advocate. See
for yourself who that advocate/comforter is!
1 John 2:1 …if any man sin, we have an advocate [parakletos, comforter] with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous:
Remember, John was THERE! He wrote BOTH of these books! So he knew who he meant when he
said parakletos in the gospel of John, but he made it absolutely clear in his first epistle – the parakletos
is JESUS CHRIST! Not “God the Holy Spirit”!
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Jesus promised to come back to us as our comforter/advocate and 1 John 2:1 proves that He did just
that! What spirit is going to be inside of the true Christians? Romans 8:9, Colossians 1:26. So it is
beyond argument that JESUS WAS THE COMFORTER! That’s why Jesus said “I will not leave you
comfortless: I WILL COME TO YOU”!
He couldn’t put His spirit in them then, because His spirit was still necessary to keep Him alive! Jesus
gave that spirit to His Father when He died (Luke 23:46), so that it was His Father who had to give that
spirit back to us – which is why that spirit “proceeds from the Father”! (John 15:26).
He couldn’t put His spirit in them until He had sat down with His Father in His throne – THEN He
would send the spirit back to them FROM His place with the Father! That is why the physical
Jesus and the spirit of Jesus couldn’t be in the same place at the same time! Because any place the
physical Jesus was, the spirit of Jesus was INSIDE of Him and couldn’t be inside of anyone else!
Do you see how it all makes perfect sense, if you just let the Bible interpret itself!
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The worst part of the trinity is not that it is a false doctrine. The worst part is that it hides the truth from
you, and the truth is a thousand times more wonderful than the trinity. You’ve studied it in several
lessons, but it’s summed up well in John 17:21-22.
God’s main purpose in creating the world is to make us into Gods like Him. The Godhead – the Godspecies
– is not intended to be a finite entity, forever closed off to growth. The Godhead is supposed to
grow indefinitely (Isaiah 9:6-7). The world would deny that and smother it under an incomprehensible
trinity, closed off to man forever.
And the true reason they teach that is that their God is that OTHER Jesus, whom they worship in
ignorance! And THAT pseudo-Jesus desperately wants to be God the Holy Spirit, the “power” of the
Godhead, and then close the Godhead off forever to any newcomers like you and me!
And so naturally, the false Christianity fights against that idea with all of its might. It DESPISES the
idea we will be like the Most High, because that is the position their false Jesus coveted for himself,
and himself alone! (Isaiah 14:14).
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 he feared they would be corrupted by belief in another Jesus, with
another spirit bringing another gospel – and lo, Christianity today believes in a spirit Paul did not
preach – God the Holy Spirit! The dream job of Satan the Devil!
The false Christianity has deceived the whole world, and has probably deceived you – but now that it’s
time to demand proof of the trinity, you’ll find it can’t hope to compete against the true plan of God
which is to bring us to an eternal crown of glory (1 Peter 5:4, 11), and to call us to glory and virtue
(2 Peter 1:3), so we can be partakers of the divine nature, HIS NATURE (verse 4)!
That is the glorious future the trinity prevents men from understanding! That is the TRUTH that is
blasphemous to the world, but holy and sacred to God! That is the truth that is deeply offensive to
Satan and his churches, because it means that WE will be a part of that Godhead that he wanted so
fervently to join and close off to all of mankind.
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John 1 Does not mention a third person in the Godhead because there isn’t one. When God resurrects
us into His family, we will awake not merely in His spiritual image, but in His spiritual likeness –
looking like Him, acting like Him, and RULING with Him!
And that’s why there isn’t a third being in that Godhead, there are potentially BILLIONS!
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