The Existence of God

   PROOF FROM SCRIPTURE

   To begin our study in Bible doctrine we should begin with God. After
all, that's where the Book begins. The problem for the Bible believer
is solved with the very first verse in the Bible which says, "In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:1, the
beginning verse, assumes the existence of God. The Lord Jesus Christ
never questioned the existence of God; He referred to God in a
matter-of-fact way. To tell the truth, there is not one writer in the
Bible who wastes time trying to prove the existence of God. The term
God alone occurs in the Bible more than 500 times; the Bible takes the
existence of God for granted. But in this lesson we're going to talk
about the teleological argument for the existence of God, the
cosmological argument, the anthropological argument, and the argument
from congruity. These are theological subjects, but let us notice that
the Bible takes the existence of God for granted. It is never brought
up as a question.

   Christians are constantly challenged by atheists, skeptics,
agnostics, and hecklers to prove that there is a God. Fortunately, we
don't have to prove it. The Bible says in Psalm 14:1, "The fool hath
said in his heart, There is no God." Any man may argue about the
existence of God with his head, but the trouble is with the heart.

   It is very difficult for the natural man to believe in something
that he cannot see, touch, or feel; so in 1 Corinthians 2:14 we are
told, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned." However, anyone with any
intelligence can acknowledge the evident fact that a supreme
intelligence is manifest throughout the operations of nature, history
and the universe.

   Christ says in John 7:17, "If any man will do his will {God's will},
he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak
of myself." That is, a skeptic's trouble is heart trouble. It has to do
with a bad life and an immoral attitude. Now, it is true that you have
moral atheists and moral skeptics and moral sinners, men who do good
because they have found that it pays to do good. Or, they might do good
because they cannot do evil and get away with it. Or, they might do
good to soothe their conscience. Or, they do good so that they can brag
about their self- righteousness before their fellow man. We have always
had moral sinners, moral atheists and moral skeptics, but the only real
difference between them and the immoral sinners is the difference
between brand new garbage cans and old ones. They all have the same
contents.

   They have a joke about the Dial-a-Prayer service. The atheists have
a Dial- a-prayer service where they dial a number and nobody answers.
They also have one about a dead atheist who was lying in a coffin and
one of his buddies came by and looked at him and said, "Poor old Bill.
There he is, all dressed up and no place to go."

   Being an atheist takes a great deal of faith. As a matter of fact,
it takes a great deal more faith to be an atheist than to be a deist or
a theist--a believer in God. To be an atheist a person has to deny a
first cause. And in order to deny this, you have to deny your rational
powers. Anybody who knows about the laws of thermodynamics (and in
particular the second law, the law of entropy) knows that if the
universe had been here more than ninety billion years it would have run
down; by now it would be wasted out and burned out. How much more if it
had been here "forever" without a first cause? If the universe had been
here for more than, say, a hundred billion years, it would have burned
out at least fifty billion years ago--by the law of breakdown. For
example, the magnetic field around the earth is decreasing at such a
rate that it could not have been here for more than ten thousand years
at a maximum.

   To be an atheist takes a great deal of faith. Now, we realize that
in a country where "freedom of religion" is allowed, a man who is an
atheist can be called "religious" and he has the freedom to express his
views, which is perfectly all right with us. We couldn't care less. If
a man wants to exhibit his ignorance, that's his business. If you want
to display your stupidity, you're free to do it. However, you're not
free to demand a respectful hearing from those of us who have some
sense. In America we need to distinguish between liberty and license.
Granted, a man has the liberty to be an atheist if he wants to be. If
you want to go to hell, that's your business; but don't expect those of
us who have some sense to listen to the claptrap put out by Rousseau,
Voltaire, Celsus, Porphory, Tom Payne and Robert Ingersoll. We have
better sense. The Bible begins with God, And, although the Bible is not
a textbook that attempts to prove the existence of God, the Bible opens
with the positive statement that God does exist. Then, the first proof
for the existence of God is what we call the scriptural proof.

   There are other proofs which we shall also discuss: the proof of
nature, the proof of conscience, the argument from cause, the argument
from design and the moral argument, but the first main proof is from
God's word. "Thy word is truth." David said in Psalm 119:160, "Thy word
is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments
endureth forever." David said, "Thy word is true from the beginning,"
and the beginning takes God for granted--"In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth." So the Bible begins with God and takes His
existence as being a fact. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is
no God." He didn't say that in his head. Any man with any sense, a man
who is half intelligent or half rational, can see immediately that
there is a God. The man who says there is no God simply says that down
in his heart because of a bad life. Now, it's true he may have cleaned
up temporarily, but he may have plans for later or he may be trying to
cover up a skeleton in the closet from thirty years back. There's more
to it than just a college education, science, religion and all that
foolishness. All right, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God." Anyone with any intelligence would acknowledge the evident fact
of a living God.

   The greatest proof, apart from scripture, of the existence of God is
the daily fellowship that a born again person can have with God in
prayer. Those of us who know God can sing, "And He walks with me and He
talks with me and He tells me I am His own, and the joy we share as we
tarry there, none other has ever known." We know there is a God because
we talk to Him daily. He hears our prayers and answers the prayers of
our heart. The Bible says that we are to commit everything to Him in
prayer. Why would anyone be dumb enough to tell you, "Ask, and it shall
be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened
unto you" when there is nobody there to answer, nobody there to give,
and nobody to open the door? Rather stupid, don't you think? Could it
be that the four billion people who have been saved since the time of
Pentecost have all been deceived? Have they? When they can write down
lists of hundreds of prayers that have been answered? Comfort in
sorrow. Comfort in tribulation. Money sent in when they needed it. Jobs
obtained when they needed them. People in their family healed when they
were sick. Peace of mind and peace of heart in the face of certain
death and torture and pain. They were all deceived, were they? It's an
illusion, is it? Well, if it is an illusion you'd better get submerged
in it about a hundred and fifty fathoms deep because it's a permanent
illusion.

   I, for example, have been saved for nearly 20 years. I lived on this
earth 18 years as an unsaved man. I went to church nearly all my life,
but it was just "churchianity," not Christianity. I found Christ as my
Saviour after hearing the Gospel for the first time in Sunday School in
a Bible-believing church--after years of attending church services in
formalistic churches where no Gospel was preached. I was finally told
about my sinful condition and my need of the Saviour, and I received
and believed Him. Don't tell me there is no God. I sought Him and I
found Him. He heard me and answered my prayer; He delivered me from all
my sins and saved my soul; and He commanded me to commit all the
problems I had to Him in prayer and in thanksgiving and to make known
unto Him all my requests with supplications. Why? To play a joke on me?
Well, it's some joke, isn't it? Like a converted drunk said to an
atheist, "If it's a delusion, it's a funny delusion. I turned my
whiskey bottles into food and clothing for my family, my bad temper
into a charitable disposition toward my fellow man, and it got me to
stop by church on Wednesday night instead of a bar. It's some delusion,
isn't it?"

   So when we talk about these things--matters of apologetics--we are
talking about something that is real. If you were in a dark room and
you held out your hand in that dark room three times a day and somebody
put something that you needed in your hand three times a day, wouldn't
you guess after a while that there was somebody in the room with you?
Would you say after thirty years that the whole operation was an
accidental "coincidence"? I mean, you talk about rational powers and
being dishonest rationally and intellectually, what do you call that?

   Atheists, the worms are going to get you. Imagine a man giving
himself credit for what he has and the worms wind up with him. Don't
you find that rather ludicrous? The Bible takes the existence of God
for granted. The first proof is scriptural. The Bible speaks of "God"
over five hundred times using the name of God, and it uses the word
"Lord" over three hundred times.

   PROOF FROM NATURE

   The next proof we have for the existence of God is from nature. We
find this great passage in Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory
of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork." No man could gaze at
the universe and think that it came together accidentally unless he had
set himself up as his own god and looked at everything relatively, as
Einstein did, or unless he had set up his own moral standards in order
to avoid the moral standards of God. "The heavens declare the glory of
God."

   Romans 1:20 goes even further and says, "For the invisible things of
him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so
that they are without excuse." The man who will accept scripture will
readily acknowledge the existence of God. He will have proof for the
existence of God and there will not be any doubt about it. The
invisible things are clearly seen. When Christ wanted to tell man what
hell was like he pointed to a city dump-- Gehenna. When he wanted to
show people what heaven was like he pointed to a sinless, clean city
with a park in it. When the Lord Jesus Christ wanted to picture
Himself, He pictured Himself in the Bible as the SUN, which moves east
to west, as history moves east to west, as revivals move east to west,
as the Holy Ghost moves east to west, against the rotation of the
world. The invisible things are clearly seen.

   A perfect picture of the Godhead and the Trinity, for example, is
found in the sun which contains alpha, beta, and gamma rays. The sun
has light rays that you can see and cannot feel, a picture of God the
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ; rays that you can feel but cannot see, a
picture of God the Spirit, the Holy Ghost; and rays which you can
neither see nor feel, actinic rays which picture the soul of God, God
the Father. The sun, then, visibly seen, is a representation of things
not seen. So the things that are not seen are eternal, but they are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, Romans 1:20.

   PROOF FROM THE CONSCIENCE

   All right, the next proof for God comes from conscience. Man is born
with a universal belief in a supreme being. No tribe has yet been
discovered which lacks this. They know that some being creates and
controls life. The only kind of people who doubt belief in a supreme
being are people who have been educated out of it and have been taught
relative matters so they can live like the devil and justify
themselves. There is not one tribe (isolated or unisolated) on the face
of this earth that does not believe in a supreme being. If a man were
raised on an island with the animals, he would grow up worshipping a
supreme being. You have to be educated out of such a belief. There is
no such thing as an uneducated, natural atheist. Romans 2:15 says about
the heathen people, "Which shew the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the
mean while accusing or else excusing one another." The existence of God
is written in the human conscience. Whether the man has a Bible or not,
or the law or not, his conscience bears witness to the ten
commandments. People says, "What about those who don't know and haven't
heard?" They know a great deal more than you think they know. There's
many a Fiji Islander, Tasmanian Islander, or New Guinean; there's many
an African in the Chad in the heart of the Belgian Congo who knows a
great deal more about God than the professors at the University of
Oregon or the University of California or the Universities of Michigan,
Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee or New York. You say, "Where do they
get that from?" From having common sense. Where would you get it
otherwise? Out there in the jungle, the heathen cut off a man's hand
when he steals the first time, his other hand when he steals the second
time, and his head the third time. Why? Because they know the
commandment that says, "Thou shalt not steal," even if they do not have
a Bible.

   There is no tribe on the face of this earth where adultery is not
recognized as a crime, except in the college circles and high school
circles of America. They talk about "adult consent" and "premarital
sex." You are not born with a disbelief in morals and the existence of
God. You're born with the revelation of God in your conscience which
you have to drown out. The Bible says about these educated Americans in
1 Timothy 4:2 that they have "their conscience seared with a hot iron."

   In Acts 17:23 Paul says, "For as I passed by, and beheld your
devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD."
Now, that was in the city of Athens which contained the most educated,
cultured people of their day, the people who wrote the grammar text
books for the correcting of the King James text by the modern Christian
schools. They were agnostic, but conscience told them that there was a
God though they did not know Him personally. They were agnostic.
(That's what the word "unknown" is. Nosis with the alpha before it.
Agnostic. Ag-nos-tic. An "unknower," or, as they say in Latin, an
"ignoramus.")

   So, the heathen know about God. He is revealed in nature and He is
revealed in conscience even to those who have no scriptures. Some
atheists may claim that their conscience does not tell them about God.
That's because they burn their conscience out. For example, you stop
and think about the first time you took a cigarette or the first time
you took a glass of liquor. I am not talking about the third time, old
boy, I am talking about the first time. Don't tell me that the first
time you tried a Rum Collins or a Tom Collins or a Slow Gin Fiz or a
Sidecar or a Boxcar or a Manhattan or a Bicardi or a Bloody Mary you
took it with a clear conscience! The first time? It is doubtful that a
genuine atheist can be found, for, at the best, they are men who have
stilled their conscience by blatant unbelief and by long continued
living in sin. They have burned their consciences out so they no longer
warn them.

   Some men are so blind that they may deny the existence of a sun in
the sky, but that doesn't alter the fact that the sun exists and that
it rises and sets each day. None are so blind as people who refuse to
see, and the honest man will see that the inner still small voice says
that God exists and is alive. Men deny the existence of God, not
because they cannot find Him, but because they are afraid to face the
responsibility of being accountable to Him after death. There is not an
atheist in the world who did not run to atheism in order to get out of
his personal accountability to God. And that is why when Paul preached
to the most educated, cultured people of his day, the Athenian Greek
scholars and the Athenian Greek philosophers (Acts 17), they mocked
when they heard about the resurrection of the dead. No atheist could
stand to have his life brought out in the open and that is why men are
atheists. That's why "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God"--not in his head.

   Atheism is one of the devil's tools to put man to sleep without
accepting salvation. If there is no God, then I am not responsible to
anyone. I can live and die as I please. And if you don't accept the
true God, you can get yourself another one. Which really means, when a
man says he is an atheist, he is really just a liar. What he means is
that he does not want the God of the Bible. But men are incurably
religious, and every atheist has some god. You say, "Well, I'm an
atheist and I worship no god at all." Sure you do, son. You worship
your brain. If you do not accept one God, you put something else in the
place of supreme authority. Your God is either the God and Father of
Jesus Christ or it is Rama Krishna or Buddha or Mohammed or Lao- tse or
the first cause or the first principle or the Great Architect or
Mahabone or something else you cooked up or it is your own noodle.

   To look up and see a plane and not see a pilot and say the pilot
doesn't exist is ridiculous, and it is just as ridiculous to look into
the heavens and say there is no God just because we cannot see him. You
can't see the pilot flying a DC7 or DC9 over your head. What does that
mean? Few of us have ever seen our own brains, yet we believe we have
them. A man said to Billy Sunday one time, "I don't believe in God. I
don't believe in something I can't see." Billy said, "Have you ever
seen your backbone?" The man said, "Sure, I saw a reflection in the
mirror." Billy said, "Well, I see a reflection of Christ dying for my
sins in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." The man said, "Yeah, but I felt
it with my hands." Billy Sunday said, "I can feel the Holy Spirit
warming my heart and giving me confidence in God." You have as much
evidence that God exists as you have evidence that your backbone and
your brain exist. You have as much evidence that God exists and that
Christ died as Saviour as you do that you have a brain in your head.

   COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

   All right, another argument for the existence of God is what we call
the argument from cause--cosmological. That is, the world is here. The
first cosmological argument for God is that the world must have come
from somewhere. Somebody or something must have caused it to come into
being at one time or another. For example, here is a book. Well,
somebody must have written it. No printing press can of itself print a
book, be it ever so modern a press with the latest technology. Somebody
created the trees. Somebody operates the universe. If all the pieces of
a watch were placed in a can and the can was shaken gently for 150
billion years, the watch would not accidentally get together and start
running. The only sensible answer, to a man who is intellectually
honest, to the problem of the existence of the world is the existence
of an intelligent being behind the order, the cosmos. The chances that
man could come into being by Darwin's theory or by any modern
evolutionist's theory are the chances you would take if a print factory
blew up in the air and came down in the form of a dictionary. We say
this with charity toward all evolutionists, who are entitled to believe
what they want to believe. Freedom of speech, son. Help yourself. But
don't expect an intelligent man to buy it. I mean, after all, education
is not brains. An education is not intellectual honesty. Education is
education-- one of the greatest money-making rackets in America, I
guess, outside of sex, automobiles, and dope.

   TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

   This brings up an argument for the existence of God from design.
This is called the teleological argument. In the teleological argument
we presume that a watch not only exists but that it had a designer. It
was planned for a specific purpose. A watch was not designed, for
example, for mosquitoes to live in or for fish to swim in. It was
designed by a keen mind for the purpose of accurately telling the time.
An examination of the world and the things in it, both large and small,
shows that each is designed by an intelligent mind for a specific
purpose in life. The colors of the birds and the means of defense for
animals are not accidents. They are the result of the planning of a
superior mind, the mind of an Originator whom we call God.

   MORAL ARGUMENT

   The next argument for the existence of God is called the moral
argument, sometimes referred to as the anthropological argument--the
argument from the nature of mankind. Man has an intellectual and moral
nature that animals do not have, showing that the Creator must not be
merely an inanimate force but a living, intelligent, moral being. The
modern teaching being presented to all the college students in the
state universities is that if there really is a God, He is an
impersonal force. The god of modern science is sort of a neuter energy
force field with no morals. This brand new, scientific god, of course,
has been molded and made in the image of fallen man. As somebody said,
"God created man in His own image and man returned the compliment."
Which is a rather sarcastic way of saying that ever since Adam fell,
men have been inventing gods and making up gods and going to the dime
store and going down the counter bargain shopping for gods of their
choice.

   The choice of a modern educated fool with a Ph.D. or medical degree
is an inanimate neuter force that does not have any moral standards.
Guess why.

   However, in the Bible we read in Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness." And again, in Genesis 1:27, "So God
created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;" that
is, He patterned man after God. God says in Psalm 94:9, "He that
planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he
not see?" God has given to man ears, eyes, knowledge, intelligence and
will power, for these are the things that He, Himself, God possesses.
Man, who was once in the image of God in righteousness and holiness, is
a miniature, fallen counterpart of God; man fell, but he still retains
in his fallen state the vestigial remnant of the Godhead. Man was made
in God's image, not the image of an orangutan or an opossum or anything
else in Darwin's family tree that swung by the tail. (We'll talk about
this more when we get into our lessons on anthropology, one of the
branches of theology which deals with the creation of man.)

   Now, conscience teaches man right and wrong, good and bad, for his
Creator is a moral being who is holy and loves righteousness but abhors
evil. That is why the God of truth, the God of creation, the God of
this universe has been "run off the boards" by modern man. Modern man
does not abhor evil and does not love righteousness. "Modern man," per
se--especially the educated, religious, scientific type of man--is a
man who believes that righteousness and evil are relative terms which
you can switch back and forth. As a matter of fact, they are often
switched back and forth in matters like those discussed by men like
Hugh Hefner in Playboy, Esquire, Genesis, Playgirl, and the rest of the
girlie magazines--what they are doing is calling evil good and calling
good evil. To such a race of degenerates the God of the Bible can
hardly be accepted or even retain His respectable position. After all,
when a man hates righteousness and loves sin, he cannot have any
fellowship with the God of truth and righteousness.

   The moral argument is simple. Anthropology and the study of
ethnology shows that throughout the races, in any type of ethnic
culture, there are standards of right and wrong and, though varying
slightly from culture to culture, there is not any culture on the face
of this earth that does not consider murder a breach of moral
standards. "Thou shalt not kill." "Thou shalt not kill," not applying
to national defense or personal defense but to malicious intent and
assault and battery with intent to kill an individual. The Bible
doesn't make any mistakes. You may. Your education may have taught you
and helped you to nurture a bad disposition, a dishonest intellect, and
a rotten attitude toward the truth, but that is your problem, not ours
and not the Lord's. We have the moral argument.

   LIFE FROM LIFE ARGUMENT

   Then, we have the life argument. That is, life comes from life,
except if you are an evolutionist. If you are an evolutionist, life
must come from death. If you are a Darwinian anthropoid, you must
believe that life originated in the pre-Cambrian fossils, although no
fossils have been found, and then gradually worked up into complex
forms in the Cambrian strata and up to the Mesozoic and Cenozoic
periods; that is, life had to come from something that was inanimate
and dead. To be a good Darwinian, you have to believe that cooling lava
slung off the sun with temperatures above 1700 degrees Fahrenheit could
turn into the chemical elements that would bring forth life from
inorganic matter. Man, you talk about faith! That takes some faith!
Something slung out of a mass that runs 3600 degrees, cools into a
molten lava, becomes minerals, and then these rocks produce life, do
they?

   Do you realize that right now man is desperately searching Venus,
Jupiter and every place he can find to try to prove that Darwin was
right? Our government has spent over fifty billion dollars to try to
overthrow Genesis 1. Isn't that something? Our government has spent
over fifty billion dollars to try to find life on some other planet to
prove that life is not unique to this planet. Life comes from life and
the original life must have come from a being possessing eternal life.
That is, there had to be some life existing before physical life was
created. If you are a straight thinker! Now, where can such life be
found? It can only be found in God who possesses eternal life. Psalm
36:9 says, "For with thee is the fountain of life." The apple tree, for
example, gets its life from the parent tree; the lamb gets life from
the mother sheep. Where did they get their life from? You have to go
back to the original creation. This answers the problem of what came
first, the chicken or the egg; the answer is obvious! The chicken! Life
can only come from life. Jesus said in John 11:25, "I am the
resurrection and the life." In John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life." John 10:28, "And I give unto them eternal life." In John
5:40 He said to the educated people of His day, "And ye will not come
to me, that ye might have life." The Bible says in I John 5:12, "He
that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath
not life." All life proceeds from God.

   The theory of spontaneous generation has been proved to be false and
completely unacceptable to authoritative science. There is not a really
educated man (although he may wave some degree in your face) anywhere
in the world any more who believes in spontaneous generation (although
you find a few college teachers who do). Life must have a beginning.
The only logical answer, if you're logical at all, is that the
beginning of life was with God. This is what we call the life argument.

   ARGUMENT FROM CONGRUITY

   Finally, in our arguments for the existence of God in theological
discussion we have the argument from congruity. The theory of atheism
solves no problem; it only multiplies unsolved mysteries. If you have
ever taken a book on science and looked at what these scientists have
found out since the days of Copernicus and Galileo and before, you will
find that science has never solved one major problem that mankind had
on any continent anywhere in the world. All that science does is
discover new problems and partially solve old problems that bring up
new problems that remain unsolved. A man said, "What about the victory
over smallpox?" Try diabetes. A fellow said, "What about the victory
over pellagra?" How about multiple sclerosis? Don't kid us. Go kid the
folks who spend all their time getting diplomas and who think they're
smart. Go kid them. They're gullible. Science has never solved one
major problem man ever had. The problem of disease has never been
solved. The problem of starvation has never been solved. There will be
eight million people going to bed hungry tonight and half a million of
them will be dead before tomorrow morning. If you don't believe it,
travel to India and Africa and broaden your education.

   The most narrow-minded, bigoted and intolerant people in the world
are these scientists who profess to be broad-minded. There is not any
evidence that scientists have solved or ever will solve, one major
problem of mankind since the beginning. The problem of death has never
been solved. The problem of poverty has never been solved. Christ said
you will always have the poor with you (Matt. 26:11). You say, "We're
working on it." Don't talk like a fool. Of course, you're working on
it. You have to work to make a living. There are all kinds of ways of
making a living. You make a living working on those problems. Other
people make a living shelling peanuts and picking feathers off
chickens. So what? The theory of atheism solves no problems. It only
multiplies unsolved mysteries.

   The acceptance of the existence of God as Creator of the world is
like a magic key that fits all the facts of scripture, all the facts of
science, all the facts of revelation, all the facts of knowledge, and
all the facts of conscience and nature. This irrefutable doctrine is
held tenaciously by multitudes of souls who are willing to both live
and die in the consolation of the assurance that God is. Even the
devils believe in God and tremble, the Bible says.

   CONCLUSION

   So, what may we conclude in our first study? In our first study on
the existence of God we may conclude that atheism is only a giant
doubt. Its unbelief can only lead to darkness and despair and disaster
for the one accepting it. It can only lead to anarchy, paganism or
international socialism with the torture and imprisonment of millions
of people who do not knuckle down to a state as God. There is not a
real atheist anywhere in Russia or China. The god of atheism in Russia
is international communism. The god of every atheist and agnostic in
America is international socialism. There is no such thing as a man
without a god. The term "atheism" is like the term "annihilation." It
is really an insensible term which has no meaning at all. If a man does
not accept one god, he accepts another; and when you find people
correcting the Bible, they are setting up their brain and education as
their god.

   Acceptance of Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God," leads a sincere
seeker into the path of a fuller revelation of God Himself as a
Trinity, as the Creator, and above all, as Saviour and Redeemer.
Hebrews 11:6 says, "...he that cometh to God must believe that he is,
and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Then, the
intelligent man will come to God in simple faith based on the
revelation of God in scripture and nature, believing and trusting that
God is and that a god who would not reveal himself is the wrong god. If
there is any God up there at all, He is obligated to reveal Himself to
His creation, and this fact delivers a deathly blow to agnostic science
when we consider that men communicate to each other by words. The thing
that sets man apart from animal as a separate species of creation is
the fact that man communicates by the use of words and sentences.
Animals have only cries for help, cries for hunger, cries of pleasure,
warnings to get away, or invitations to come near, but they cannot
communicate by words. Therefore, if there is any God up there at all
(and, of course, we say that with no doubt in our own mind),
theologically, it is impossible to believe that He would not reveal
Himself to His creation by words. This is so fundamental and
foundational in theological truth that when Jesus Christ shows up in
John 1, we read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God." John says in I John 1, "That which was from
the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of
life." We Christians sing, "Sing them over again to me, wonderful words
of life." If there is a Creator at all, He is obligated to reveal
Himself to His creation. Any god who would create what you find down
here and then let this world take its course of six thousand years of
torture, abortion, bloodshed, murder, extortion, perversion, death,
disease, poverty, heartache, starvation, bereavement, war, and
imprisonment, while withdrawing himself, withholding himself and not
taking part in it, should be traded for a Model T Ford so you could
make some money. Now, it is very important for the theological student
to grasp this because theism and deism both teach in a god, but a god
who is not actively interested in and participating in his creation. If
sin is a problem down here, the God of creation would have to deal with
it or he would be the wrong god. If death is a problem down here, a god
who wouldn't actively participate in the death of his creation is not a
compassionate god. Therefore, any god (whether man believes in God or
not) who is not interested in the sin, sorrow and death of the beings
he created is (I say it reverently) a phoney.

   The God of the Bible, on the other hand, meets all the requirements.
He comes down--God manifest in the flesh, I Timothy 3:16--and becomes a
man. Christ calls Himself the "Son of man" and a man of sorrows
"acquainted with grief," a man who was "wounded for our transgressions,
bruised for our iniquities," the chastisements of our peace was upon
Him, and "with His stripes we are healed." I say this only to point out
to the student or teacher of the word of God that the God of the Bible
is the only god who can meet the requirements of human nature. Any
other god is a bitter disappointment and a charlatan. Any other god is
a "conman." The God of revelation is the only god who can satisfy the
longing of the human heart, for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ is the only god in any religion who is actively interested in
coming down and sharing the suffering and sorrow of His creatures,
dying in the place of His creatures, and offering to His creatures
eternal life as a free gift. This puts all other gods on the bargain
counter with used Edsels and worn-out yo-yos. They are hoaxes. They are
tragic substitutes for the real thing because they cannot satisfy the
yearning of the human heart.

   God is not subject to the microscopic scrutiny of man. God is the
subject of revelation. John 1:18 says, "No man hath seen God at any
time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he
hath declared him." First John 4:12 says, "No man hath seen God at any
time." The Lord said to Moses in Exodus 33:20, "Thou canst not see my
face: for there shall no man see me." Now, Moses talked to God and had
a revelation of Him, but he did not see the Lord's face directly.
Jesus, who is a real man in the Bible, was God's Son, coming down from
heaven to reveal God the Father to sinners. So, when He spoke to Philip
in John 14:7-10, Jesus said that He is the revelation of God. He said,
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

   Catholicism says, "Join thyself." Buddhism says, "Annihilate
thyself." Pagan wisdom says, "Man, know thyself." Mohammedanism says,
"Man, submit thyself." Modern education says, "Man, realize thyself."
But Jesus said, "Deny thyself," and, "Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you,
and learn of me;...for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (see
Matt. 11:28-30). In John 17:3, we read how God and Christ His Son have
eternal life to give. We read, "And this is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast
sent." You say, "What about all these other religions that profess the
same thing?" Easy. Try them out and you will find them to be hoaxes.
Try them out and you will find that they do not give you victory over
sin. They put you in a passive state where you pretend you don't have
any sins when you still have them. At the great Congress of Religions
at the World's Fair in 1932 (when scores of religions got together to
talk about their ecumenical magpie mess to try to bring all men
together under the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man), after
nearly a week of discussion, Joseph Cook stood up in that group of
dignitaries (which included Roman Catholic cardinals and bishops, Greek
Orthodox elders and patriarchs, Protestant deacons and preachers,
Mohammedan teachers of the Koran, and Buddhist and Hindu gurus) and
said, "How cleansest thou this red right hand?" Now if you don't
recognize the quotation, it's from Macbeth. After Macbeth commits is
murder he says, "How cleanseth thou this red right hand?" That is, "Now
that I have sinned, how do I get clean?" There was no religion that
could tell him how to do it permanently. The Romans told him to confess
it, get contrition and absolution for it, do penance for it, but he
couldn't know for sure the thing was gone because he could only hope
for heaven and could not know for sure whether he was going to hell or
not until he was dead. The Protestants told him to live a good life to
amend for his sins. The Buddhists insisted that if he had followed the
noble eightfold path he wouldn't have committed the sin, but that never
solved the problem. The problem was having sinned against an eternal
being who lives forever. How do I pay for it unless I make an eternal
payment? That is the problem. They had no answer for it. There is no
answer for it, unless what the Bible says is true. "The blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin." And again, "In whom we
have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins"
(Colossians 1:14).

   GOD AS A BALANCED BEING

   In this lesson we will discuss God as a balanced being. You must
remember that although God is loving, merciful and faithful, at the
same time the Bible reveals Him as just, holy, and righteous. This
country has had so much of the "love of God" that they think God is a
Santa Claus sitting up in heaven waiting to kiss somebody. This country
has had so much of love they can read John 3:16 and never blush.
America has been exposed to so much love, preached by lovely people who
want people to love them so they can get their money, that this country
has forgotten that God is just and that God is holy and that God is
righteous and that He will not tolerate sin, never has tolerated sin
and never will tolerate sin. War is God's judgment on sin here and hell
is God's judgment on sin hereafter. God has never gone out of business
in His attitude toward sin nor will He ever.

   Many Christians today have a lopsided view of God. Some
overemphasize His love and forget that He is just and holy at the same
time. Now, it is the love of God that allows God to forgive sin and to
show mercy to a repentant sinner, but it is the holiness and justice of
God that demands that sin must be punished to the fullest extent of the
law. Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death." We read that
every transgression in the Old Testament received a "just recompense of
reward."

   We must get a balanced view of God. The emotions that show up in man
are small, depraved counterfeits or counterparts of the original nature
that is perfect and holy and righteous. The liberal and the atheist, of
course, have trouble with this because they figure this way (figuring
from the depths of their depraved natures): "Well, surely God is better
than man, so if man hates, God wouldn't hold a grudge against anybody.
God can't hate anybody." They figure, "Well, if man can forgive an
enemy, then certainly, God can forgive a man anything." This, of
course, is a perverted view of the majesty of God. Every attribute of
man is magnified a thousand times in the Lord. God, to be a balanced
God, has to have a balanced nature; God Almighty has to be a perfect
being. His jealousy has to be perfect. His love has to be perfect. His
righteousness has to be perfect. If God were a human being He would be
completely frustrated. God is not like a human being. God is God and
His holiness is perfect. His righteousness is perfect. His justice is
perfect.

   God will not acquit sin at all or overlook the sins of the sinner.
They have to be paid for in some way. We have Calvary as the
manifestation of God's willingness to pay for man's crimes which God
does not forgive apart from substitutionary atonement. The trouble, of
course, comes from trying to liken man to God and creating a god after
man's image or creating a god after man's fanciful pagan imagination.
The God of the Bible created man in His image and man fell. Therefore,
man's emotions and feelings, his jealousy, his wrath, his 
righteousness, his justice, man's laughter, his tears, his holiness,
his goodness, his kindness, and his mercy are fallen counterparts. They
are minimized remnants of the once great and holy character of man's
Creator--God.

   Although God became man in the flesh, God in essence is a spirit
and, therefore, He is a balanced being and all His attributes are
perfect. God is not a mere human being. If God were a mere human being
you could deal with Him like any other man. God is not a mere human
being. God is not a man. Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man, that he
should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent." God is not
a man and His wrath and His love work together in perfect harmony, for
one becomes a balance for the other. For example, for a man to argue
that hell is impossible and that a loving God could not send a hapless
human being there for ever and ever is an unbalanced view of God which
comes from a mental sickness on the sinner's part. To argue that hell
is impossible on the grounds that you don't want to believe it is
nonsense. And if you continue to reject the truth of it, after it has
been revealed, on the grounds that you don't believe or you can't
"prove it" only proves that many people are mentally sick.

   You have never seen the back side of the planet Neptune. What does
that mean? You don't know what is beyond the third heaven or the sea of
glass. What does that mean? There is no man who has seen the
inhabitants of the earth (that the Bible speaks about) who are in the
bottomless pit about 4,000 miles straight under your feet. So what? To
argue that hell is impossible is a rather stupid argument in view of
the fact that many unsaved men have a foretaste of hell before they get
there to such an extent that they even say "hell is just in your mind."
To argue that hell is impossible is ridiculous in view of the fact that
Jesus Christ stated it was a fact. As a matter of fact, in the Sermon
on the Mount it was the Lord Jesus Christ who first coined the
expression "hell fire." People who don't like "hell fire preaching"
don't have any business fooling with the Sermon on the Mount. Yet, some
of the wildest situations you ever heard of occur in America where
liberal socialists are majoring in the "Sermon on the Mount" and never
talk about hell fire.

   To argue that hell is impossible proves that a sinner has an
unbalanced view of God. To understand the horrors of hell and the
blackout at Calvary, we need to think about the holiness of God and the
severity of God: God's wrath on sin. How can any of you talk about the
love of God and the love of Christ when you read in II Corinthians
5:21, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him." What do you suppose is
involved in God making Jesus Christ to become the personification of
sin? Love? In plainer words, when we reject the doctrine of hell and
the severity of God, we are unbalanced--not the Lord. What do you
suppose is involved in this statement: "For Christ also hath once
suffered for sins, the just for the unjust," I Peter 3:18? You call
that love? What do you make of this statement: "Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us," Galatians 3:13?
Would you say that if God turned you into a curse that that was a
manifestation of His love? No. To understand the horrors of hell and
eternal punishment you have to remember that the God who reveals
Himself in the word of God is a holy God. He is not like the god who
reveals himself in Transcendental Meditation--the great passive neuter
force. He is not like the god presented by the graduates and the
faculty members of the leading state universities in America--the great
neuter force field or the energy field of eternal evolution.

   The God of the Bible reveals Himself as holy and He manifests a
severe attitude against sin. That is why many scientists prefer other
religions. The holiness of God demands that we be holy. The law of God
pronounces eternal damnation on the guilty sinner in accordance with
the justice of God. One of the great marvels of our age is that God
found a way of salvation that satisfies both His holiness and His love.
You read about this in Romans 3. How can God be just and at the same
time justify all the sinners? The only way God can be just and holy and
justify the sinner is to take the sinner's place. This solution
satisfies the law and leaves man as a creature with a free will who can
choose either salvation or damnation, or heaven or hell.

   God Is Holy

   All right, first of all, God is holy. You can't imagine a God who
can be anything but perfect and holy. If He is not perfectly holy then
He's not God. To be holy, of course, means to be free from all
defilement--to be pure. God is absolutely pure. The Bible says in I
John 1:5, "...God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." Habakkuk
1:13 says, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not
look on iniquity." In Exodus 15:11 we read, "Who is like unto thee, O
Lord...glorious in holiness." In 1 Samuel 2:2, "There is none holy as
the Lord: for there is none beside thee." In Isaiah 6:3 the seraphims
are crying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts." Simon Peter says
in I Peter 1:16, "Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy."
This holiness of God separates Him from man.

   Educated sinners who like to think they are all right always reject
the first three chapters in Genesis. You will find the standard
operating procedure for faculty members of state schools is to pretend
that from Genesis 10 onward we are dealing with history but from
Genesis 10 backward we are dealing with mythology. Strange, isn't it?
Of course, they are forced to admit that from Genesis 10 on is history
because it is recorded history and dead men tell tales and the stones
and rocks cry out. See Luke 19:40. There is evidence for the flood in
history. There is evidence of Ur and Lachish and Akkad, the Babylonian
cities in history. There is evidence of Abraham's dwelling place in Ur
of the Chaldees and of the ziggurats in Babylonian history. Therefore,
the standard way of handling the Bible by the unregenerate, fallen,
depraved, Christ-rejecting, God-defying sinner is to pretend that
everything from Genesis 10 on is history but from Genesis 10 backward
is mythology and legend. Why? Because the first three chapters state
that man is not going up: he is going down. The first three chapters
teach that Darwin was a bigger monkey than he thought he was. The first
three chapters teach that you were made in the image of God and that
you are now descending to the level of a beast. That is what we call
"negativism." I believe that one ounce of negativism is worth a pound
of positivism when it comes to dealing with the truth. And these
positive thinkers, after all, are the most negative thinkers in the
world when you get right down to it.

   The most intolerant people who ever lived are scientists who profess
to be broad-minded. You throw that old King James Bible at them and
watch them clam up and have hysterics and strip their gears and burn
out their clutch plate and burn the valves and throw pieces of
carburetor all over the highway. There is nobody in this world more
narrow-minded or more intolerant than a religious liberal. Nobody! They
are the people who try to get Bible broadcasts off the radio. They are
the people who try to shut down the radio stations with blackmail by
threatening the FCC. They are the people who can't stand any Bible
truth contrary to their own liberal upbringing. Well, in the Bible the
holiness of God separates him from fallen man, and man is a fallen
creature.

   "Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of
Christ," Ephesians 2:13. The only way that man can approach a holy God
is through shedding of blood, for "the life of the flesh is in the
blood" and God is life and God gave life to man. There is not a heathen
in the darkest parts of Africa or Asia who doesn't know that "without
shedding of blood is no remission" of sins (Heb. 9:22). You have to go
to college to "unlearn" that basic universal truth. God is holy in the
Bible. The God of the Bible hates sin. His holy wrath will punish sin.
And this explains Isaiah 53:10 where the Bible says, "Yet it pleased
the Lord to bruise him" (Jesus Christ). Isaiah 53:5 says, "But he was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are
healed." God is holy. The God of the Bible is not the god of Buddhism
and Hinduism. The God of the Bible is holy and does not tolerate sin.
The God of the Bible does not call evil good and good evil. The God of
the Bible never speaks about "values clarification" and "relative
situation ethics." That is the work of the Christ-rejecting, hellbound,
fallen Adamic nature and it seeks to set up its own standards to
replace God's standards because God's standards are too high. God is
holy. You say, "Well, how in the world can I become holy like God?" You
cannot apart from a sinless Saviour who died in your place. Like they
say out in the world, "No way, man, no way."

   God Is Love

   All right, secondly, God is love. We read in I John 4:8, "He that
loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." This is not only a verb
that says God loves, but it is also a noun--"for God is love." If God
lives in a person's heart by conversion, then they must love Him, for
He is indwelt by love. John said in I John 4:7, "Beloved, let us love
one another: for love is of God."

   What is love? Well, out there on the magazine racks love is
fornication, premarital sex, perversion, bestiality and adultery--or
adult consent in adultery. When the newsstand speaks of "love" and
somebody's love affair and somebody's romance, they are talking about
fornication and adultery. You are living in a day and age that never
"tells it like it is." It professes to be the most frank and open
generation on the scene, but it is the most deceitful, hypocritical,
varnished, veneered, shellacked generation that ever lived. What is
love? Well, folks talk about "falling in love," that is, covetousness
or emotional upset. Folks talk about "making love," meaning fornication
or adultery or a married situation or relationship. Of course, this
isn't love.

   Love is a desire for and a delight in the welfare of the one on whom
the love is bestowed. Love is giving. True love is even love for your
enemy--Matthew 5:46, "For if ye love them which love you, what reward
have ye? do not even the publicans the same?" A hippie who loves the
hippie, groupie, Moonie and the communists and hates "the
establishment" is a rascal. Christ said, "Love your enemies...pray
for them which despitefully use you" (Matthew 5:44), "...bless, and
curse not," Romans 12:14. If all you can love are the folks who are in
agreement with you, you "ain't worth shooting."

   Love is a desire for and a delight in the welfare of the one on whom
the love is bestowed. If you love somebody, you want to give things to
them. Do you love God? If you love somebody you like to spend time with
them. Do you love God? I didn't ask you if you put up with Him as a
boarder or dictator or paid Him weekly rent as a landlord. If you love
somebody you want to talk with them. If you love somebody you take
sides with them against their enemies. Do you love God? If you love
somebody you hesitate to think evil of them and always think the best
of them. Do you love God?

   The love of God is manifested toward the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
and believers in particular. The Bible says of the unbeliever in John
3:36, "He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath
of God abideth on him." The Bible says about the religious man that is
counting on his religion and his sacraments to save him that he is
alone in the world, "dead in trespasses and sin," without hope,
"without God," and that he is by nature, by birth, a child of wrath.
Read Ephesians 2. Now, how is that for a negative picture of mankind?
You don't read through the Bible very far before you see why it is not
permitted in a college curriculum except as dead history and as a
sample of poetic beauty. You don't have to read through the Bible very
far before you find out why professors ceased to study the great
doctrines and truths of the Bible and believe them. You don't have to
read a great deal of the Bible to see why many people prefer Hinduism,
Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, or Rama Krishna--
somebody who won't rock the boat.

   In the Bible, if you've never been born again by the Spirit of God,
apart from your religion and your sacraments and the rest of your
nonsense, you are dead in trespasses and sins; you're going to hell.
You say, "I don't like that." Don't get mad at me. Turn off your head
instead of the radio. Get mad with God. Phone up the Lord in heaven and
say, "Look here, I don't like your Book. I don't believe your Book. I
know I'm better than that. What right have you to talk to me that way?
Look who I am." And then some day the undertakers will put you to bed
with a shovel and you will find out who you are. You say, "Why is it
necessary to talk that way?" Because this country is so saturated with
Hollywood love and the National Enquirer, Observer, and Midnight kind
of love that the average person in America when he talks about love is
simply talking through his stack.

   The Bible says in John 16:27, "For the Father himself loveth you,
because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God."
"For God so loved the world"--past tense--"that he gave his only
begotten Son"--past tense. This caused God to work out a plan of
salvation to give men an opportunity to escape wrath and damnation. God
is a loving Father and manifests His love to the Christian by
chastening. "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourageth
every son whom he receiveth," Hebrews 12:6. Then, love in the Bible is
defined as giving. "For God so loved the world that he gave...." It is
very possible for you to give without loving. But, you cannot love
without giving. In every love affair on the face of this earth there is
an element of selfishness on the part of one or both parties. You
haven't got one love affair on the face of this earth where somebody
isn't trying to get something for themselves. And this means simply
this: If you've missed the love of the Lord Jesus Christ as your
personal Saviour, you have missed the greatest love on the face of this
earth. Christ loved you enough to die for your sins, and you have no
other friend who would love you like that.

   God Is Faithful

   God is faithful. "God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the
fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord," I Corinthians 1:9.
Deuteronomy 7:9 says, "Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God,
the faithful God...." Now, this word "faithful" means somebody who can
be safely trusted who is reliable and dependable. God is faithful for
He is honest and never changes. His "faithfulness reacheth unto the
clouds," says Psalm 36:5. "All his works are done in truth," David says
in Psalm 33:4. God's faithfulness is manifested in His keeping of His
promises and in His fulfilling every word that He has spoken. God is
unchangeable, for as Balaam said back in Numbers 23:19, "God is not a
man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent:
hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he
not make it good?" Yes, He will. God will keep every promise to
protect, assist and guide His child in need.

   Some of the greatest promises in the word of God held out to the
believer are so great that they are called "exceeding great and
precious promises" by Simon Peter in II Peter 1:4. I will only quote a
few of them, but you can see by the checkbook that the Lord has given
you to fill out that a believer in Jesus Christ who has been born again
has access to riches that no unsaved man has access to, no matter how
high he is in his religiosity.

   Check Number One--"But my God shall supply all your need according
to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus," Philippians 4:19.

   Check Number Two--"I can do all things through Christ which
strengtheneth me," Philippians 4:13.

   Check Number Three--"...He which hath begun a good work in you will
perform it until the day of Jesus Christ," Philippians 1:6.

   Check Number Four--The Lord is faithful, "So that we may boldly say,
The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me,"
Hebrews 13:6.

   Check Number Five--"And God is able to make all grace abound toward
you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound
to every good work," 2 Corinthians 9:8.

   Check Number Six--"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord," Romans 8:38-39.

   And finally, Check Number Seven--"And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose," Romans 8:28.

   "If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny
himself," II Timothy 2:13. And Paul says in I Corinthians 10:13, "God
is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are
able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye
may be able to bear it."

   God Is Merciful

   Moses says in Deuteronomy 4:31, "(For the Lord thy God is a merciful
God:) he will not forsake thee...." Now, a little bit later he did put
Israel aside, but notice the statement is that He will not forsake thee
in the sense of if you are willing to go by what He said, then He will
keep His promise to you and will not forsake you and will show mercy.
Notice that instead of inflicting pain and death every time as a
punishment for sin the Lord is merciful and spares the sinner and gives
the sinner many blessings, health, comforts and earthly joys; and these
are given to both saved and lost. I don't know how many times God has
given some of you people a good meal who didn't even bow your head at
the table and thank God for the meal. Amen? I don't know how many of
you God has gotten out of car wrecks and you still think you are
smarter than Peter, James, John, Matthew, Mark and Luke. I don't know
how many of you God has saved from a violent death, being thrown by a
bucking horse or brushfire. I have no idea. I only know that God is
merciful, and God spares the sinner over and over and over again.

   And yet, in all His sparing and all His mercy, the Lord says in
Proverbs 29:1, "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall
suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Throughout all God's
mercy is the constant warning that although God will put up with some
things temporarily and be merciful to you, he won't put up with it
forever. His mercy "endures forever" in the sense that God keeps His
word and God will spare the saved sinner, but His mercy ceases in hell,
unless you can call a lake of fire mercy for people who have rejected
Jesus Christ. I can't imagine anything more like hell than being in
heaven with Jesus Christ when I didn't believe on Him and thought He
was just like Buddha. Wouldn't that be hell--having to cast your
rewards which you had earned at the feet of a man you didn't trust? How
would you like to look into the eyes of a man who loved you enough to
die for you, knowing that you never trusted Him and never thanked Him
and never received Him. Maybe in that sense hell is "mercy."

   Matthew 5:45 says God "...Maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." God will
give good crops to an atheist. What does that mean? It doesn't mean
anything. One time an atheist sent a letter to a preacher and he said,
"Preacher, it's October, and I plant on Sunday, plow on Sunday, harvest
on Sunday, and here it is October and I've got the biggest bank account
of any farmer in this county. Now, how do you account for that?" And
the preacher wrote him back and said, "God doesn't settle accounts in
October. That's how you account for that." You may have gotten away
with it 100 times, but you won't get away with it at the White Throne
Judgment; you won't. The Bible says, "Because sentence against an evil
work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men
is fully set in them to do evil," Ecclesiastes 8:11.

   God is sovereign and can choose to show His mercy to whom He
desires. Romans 9:15 says, "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on
whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion." The mercy of God can be shown to the multitudes. Exodus
20:6 says, "And showing mercy unto thousands of them" (then here is His
condition) "that love me, and keep my commandments." In this day and
age God has chosen to show His mercy to people who come to Jesus and
trust Him as their salvation. He may allow His mercy to extend
generally to an unsaved man, but His mercy in eternity (eternal mercy,
eternal heaven, eternal life, and eternal joy) only comes to the man
who does what God told him to do. And, what God told you to do is to
quit trusting your own righteousness and trust His righteousness.

   Now, how great is the mercy of God? In Psalm 103:11 we read, "For as
the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy" (condition)
"upon them that fear him." Again in Psalm 103:17, "But the mercy of the
Lord is from everlasting to everlasting" (condition) "upon them that
fear him." Notice in Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." And for some proud, self-righteous, stubborn,
self-reliant, self-preserving, self-sustaining, selfish, egotistical,
religious, bloated, puffed up, swelled up, puff-shirted people to go
around talking about the mercy of God is like Charles Manson talking
about being a Bible-believing preacher. If you're doing that, you're
not kidding anybody but yourself. "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." And don't tell us that you don't have to learn to
fear God. You also have to consider going to hell at judgment. If you
haven't considered it you've overlooked it and are dealing just with
the positive aspects of God, God's mercy. You've got a perverted god.
He's a crook.

   If your god only has one side to him, love and mercy, you haven't
got the God of the Bible. You have not got a holy God. You have an
unbalanced god. Why not trade him in for a used car and make yourself
some money? People say, "Do you have to talk that way?" That is the way
to talk in dealing with eternal things, and if you are honest, there is
no other way to put it. You say, "I don't believe that." All right, sit
still a minute and reason. Now listen, if your god only has love and
mercy, I say he's a pervert. Do you know why? Because if all he has is
love and mercy, then he has to love fornication, adultery, perversion,
deviation, bestiality, blackmail, embezzlement, lying, killing
swearing, cheating and extortion. He has to love them with the same
degree that he loves honesty, purity, decency, courage and
righteousness. Now, there is that great big synthesized, integrated,
passive, relative god. There he is. He's a freak. That is not the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is not the God who reveals
Himself in the word of God. That is some other god. That is some other
gospel. That has nothing to do with the revelation of God concerning
Himself. That is a lost sinner trying to fashion God after the image
man would like to create Him in so that God won't interfere with his
devilment.

   Again, Psalm 32:10, "...He that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall
compass him about." Then, we learn something. We learn that even an
unsaved, Christ-rejecting. hell-bound sinner can experience the mercy
of God in this life. God's mercy is one of His communicable attributes
which He can communicate to man. However, when it comes to eternal
mercy (the mercy of the Lord from everlasting to everlasting), this
only occurs at Calvary in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who is
"God manifest in the flesh." God is determined to show everlasting
mercy upon the sinner who trusts His Son and receives His Son. When the
penitent sinner comes to Jesus for forgiveness, he claims no merit, but
he throws himself upon the mercy of the Lord. When the unsaved man
comes to God for salvation, he doesn't come for justice. He comes for
mercy.

   Now, the Lord Jesus Christ is very clear about this in the New
Testament and He has something to say to you egotistical, self-
inflated puffed-shirts who think that you are somebody and who think
that your little old sacraments, your little old religion and your
little old rinkey-dinkey "golden rule" can get you to heaven. The Lord
Jesus Chr;st has something to say to you in Matthew 9:12,13, "But when
Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a
physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that
meaneth...." You ready? Matthew 9:13, "...I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance." Are you righteous? Then get out of the way and let a
sinner get saved! The Lord has no business with you. That Bible says in
Romans 5:8, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6, "For when we were
yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."

   Are you ungodly? Are you a sinner? If you are not then stay out of
the way--the Lord has business to do and you are in the way. The Bible
says about you that you "stand in the way of sinners." The Bible says
about you that you don't enter the kingdom of God and you stop those
that are entering from going in. The Bible says about you that you
stumble and cause those to stumble who are trying to find Christ.

   (Read Malachi 2:8 and Matthew 23.) If you are not ungodly or a
sinner, then you have no business getting in the way of people who are
trying to find Christ. Get off the track before you get run over in the
traffic. When the sinner comes to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, he
claims no merit, but he throws himself upon the mercy of the Lord. He
claims not his own righteousness but God's righteousness which is Jesus
Christ; he does not plead for a chance to "live it" and does not point
to his own life. He says with the ancient publican of yore, "God be
merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13). Another famous sinner (who wrote
nearly a quarter of the Old Testament) said one time, "Have mercy upon
me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness..." (Ps. 51:1).

   God is merciful. There is not a case where man ever came to God in
fear, trusting God's righteousness and God's goodness, that God ever
turned a man down. And the Lord Jesus Christ held out his open
invitation to sinners in John 6:37, "...him that cometh to me I will in
no wise cast out." For 2,000 years the Lord Jesus Christ has been
standing at the crossroads of eternity inviting men to come to Him. He
says in Matthew 11:28-30, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto
your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." He said to a
certain group of self-righteous religious people, "And ye will not come
to me, that ye might have life," John 5:40. The last invitation in the
Bible before the prayer for the Second Coming of Christ says, "...the
Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And
let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the
water of life freely," Revelation 22:17. God is merciful.

   God Is Just

   God is just. Moses said in Deuteronomy 32:4, "...God of truth and
without iniquity, just and right is he." David said in Psalm 19:9,
"...The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." The
God of the universe is just and righteous and will mete out just
judgment to each individual. Abraham said in Genesis 18:25, "...Shall
not the Judge of all the earth do right?" He certainly will. If you
want justice, you will get it. If you want God to square accounts with
you and give you what you have coming to you, I'll guarantee you He
will do it. That Bible says that in the day of judgment "...He shall
reward every man according to his works" (Matt. 16:27). And He said in
Romans 2:1,5,6, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou
art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest
thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. But after thy
hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against
the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who
will render to every man according to his deeds." Solomon said, "For
God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether it be good, or whether it be evil," Ecclesiastes 12:14. God
will bring you into judgment--whether it be good or whether it be evil.

   God is just. He will make no mistakes. Isaiah 45 21, "...there is no
God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour...." God, being just,
righteous and holy, must act in a manner that is just, righteous,
upright and holy; and He will. If your sins deserve hell, the Lord
knows it. If pitting your puny self-righteousness against the
righteousness of God is a crime worse than adultery or murder, I'll
tell you somebody who knows it, if your pastor doesn't know it. God
does! If your standing up and shaking your fist in the face of God
Almighty and bragging about your golden rule and your ten commandments
while you were trying to prove that your righteousness was as good as
the righteousness of Jesus Christ so that you wouldn't have to trust
him merits a lake of fire, don't worry, you will make it! First Samuel
2:3 says, "...the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are
weighed." God's nature of character leads Him to do that which is right
at all times and God as the Just One will be the final Judge of all
things. Notice I Kings 8:32, "Then hear thou in heaven, and do, and
judge thy servants, condemning the wicked, to bring his way upon his
head; and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his
righteousness." Notice also Revelation 20:12-15, "And I saw the dead,
small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and
another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were
judged out of those things which were written in the books, according
to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and
death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were
judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast
into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not
found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

   Conclusion

   So, we learn from our lesson on God as a balanced being that God is
holy, God is love, God is faithful, God is merciful, God is just and
that our God "is a consuming fire" (Deut. 4:24 and Heb. 12:29). Now,
how can God be loving and still demand holiness at the same time? How
can He be merciful and at the same time take care of the guilty sinner?
The answer can only be found at Calvary. It cannot be found in any
system of works on the face of this earth. The answer to the problem
can only be found at Calvary. At Golgotha we find expressed both the
wrath of God against sin and the mercy of God toward the guilty sinner.
So, in speaking of God's attributes, we learn several things at
Calvary. We learn first of all that God loves sinners and wants to save
them. We also learn that God desires to justify sinners knowing that
they cannot justify themselves. We learn that God wants to demonstrate
toward sinners His absolute perfect righteousness so that they can see
what He requires. We learn that God Himself is willing to take man's
suffering, pain, temptation, sorrow, and sickness in Himself and bear
the punishment of the guilty, although He, God Himself, is not guilty.

   Thus, Calvary is where a cross is found. We find where man's will
and where God's will cross, and where that cross is we find the
righteousness of man obliterated by the righteousness of God. At that
cross we find the mercy of God level and just and distributed evenly
and we find the wrath of God descending vertically on the helpless back
of the crucified Saviour. You cannot find salvation in this age apart
from a completed. perfected blood atonement. You say, "You're very
dogmatic about that, Brother Harris." I don't have to worry about it.
I'm talking to bloody people. I never have to worry in qualifying my
Ianguage to prove anything or validate anything. My congregation is
bloody. The life of the flesh is in the blood. Whether you call that
trouble Bright's disease, Hodgkin's disease, leukemia,
arteriosclerosis, hardening of the arteries, blood clot, or anything
else, when your blood ceases to function, you are dead.

   So, when I talk about a blood atonement for sin I'm talking to
anybody. I don't have to be choosey. I don't care if you are a Roman
Catholic priest. an Episcopal bishop. a Roman Catholic archbishop, a
Jewish rabbi or a Buddhist or Hindu guru. I don't have to worry about
whether you believe in daily vacation Bible school or whether you are a
Bible-believing Baptist preacher or a Methodist steward or a
Presbyterian elder or a Baptist deacon. You are all in the same boat.
The Bible says, "the life of the flesh is in the blood."

   The Bible says in Romans 3:22-23, "...There is no difference: For
all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." And when it comes
to sin, there is no more difference between a doctor and a lawyer than
there is between a junkie, a pimp, a prostitute and a bum. I know that
some of you people who were deceived into thinking that your education
and your money made you respectable don't like that, but who cares what
you like anyway? I mean, after all, when faced with the absolute truth
of the word of God, what does your opinion amount to? What does my
opinion amount to? Less than nothing! The Bible says that "there is no
difference." Now, if it says that, it means that. The fact that you
think you are different because of your education, your money, your
social image or your religious standing is no concern of mine and the
Lord is not going to regard it one way or another. The Bible says in
Romans 2:11, "For there is no respect of persons with God."

   Calvary is common ground. It is ground which levels all men to
sinners and even includes God's Son as a sinner. You read in your Bible
in Isaiah 53:12 that Jesus Christ "...was numbered with the
transgressors." When He came to the ministry of John the Baptist
where sinners were being immersed and John tried to stop Him, Jesus
said, "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all
righteousness" (Matt. 3:15). He took His place as a sinner in His
baptism. He took His place as a sinner on Calvary. And God bless your
soul, doctor, reverend, rabbi, father, lawyer, or whatever you call
yourself, you will take your place there, or in eternity you will see
the other side of God's face, the side you didn't believe was there.
God is love but not that kind of sentimental love that gushes over sin.
The love of God is holy and just. God hates sin and God will not
tolerate it. It you don't believe it. just keep on like you are going
and you will find out.

   To understand God, His being, character and nature, we must study
Calvary. We must study the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must
spend time with Psalm 22. Spend time with Isaiah 53. If you are an
orthodox Jew, you will find both of these passages in your Old
Testament. If you don't believe the New Testament, then read Exodus 12,
Psalm 110, Psalm 22, Genesis 12, Isaiah 53, and Zachariah 10,11, and
12. If you are a Catholic or Protestant and you believe the New
Testament, spend some time in Romans 5,6,7,8,9 and 10. Spend some time
in Ephesians 1,2 and 3. Spend some time in Colossians 2,3 and 4. Above
all, spend some time in your New Testament in the Gospel of John.
Calvary satisfies the holiness and justice of God by fulfilling all the
requirements of the law and permits a sinner to enter heaven legally.
Or, as Paul says in Acts 13:38,39, "...Through this man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are
justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the
law of Moses." Again, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the
law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one
that hangeth on a tree" Galatians 3:13. Jesus Christ's death on
Calvary's cross not only justifies you from the ceremonial laws given
to the Jews but also from the moral laws of the ten commandments, which
is perfectly clear from Romans 13 and II Corinthians 3.

   Now, if you are one of those foolish people who believe that you are
saved partly by faith and partly by works because you spend your time
in James instead of Romans and if you are one of those deceived, self-
righteous sinners who is always going to the Judaistic portion of the
New Testament to prove salvation by works (where you have got no
business being), you should spend some time in Romans 13 and II
Corinthians 3. Learn that the ten commandments--all ten, not just nine
of them--were taken care of when Jesus Christ died on the cross. The
Christian is no longer under the law. He is under grace. You say,
"Well, what then, shall we...?" Oh, never mind all that hot air. When
we begin to talk about salvation by grace through faith, we always have
these self-righteous, scripture-quoting Christians coming in and trying
to damn the sinner before he can find Christ by telling him that if he
does get saved he will have to do this and this and this and this and
this. These men are blind guides who lead the blind and they "both
shall fall into the ditch" (Matt. 15:14).

   If you want to know what happens to a saved child of God who doesn't
live right, the Bible is very clear on it. But it certainly is never
connected with his redemption or his salvation. His redemption and
salvation are completed at Calvary when Christ said, "It is finished."
When Jesus Christ died on Calvary's cross, He satisfied the holy
demands of a holy God for a just and righteous life and a perfect blood
atonement, dying in the stead of the sinner. May God help you to see
that today. May God reveal to you that Christ died, "...The just for
the unjust, that he might bring us to God," I Peter 3:18.

   STUDY IN THEOLOGY #3 -- The Trinity

   1. Proof The Trinity Exists

   In this study we will deal with the Trinity. The Trinity, of course,
is not a Roman invention as you hear falsely presented by the
Campbellites, nor is the Trinity the half accomplished thing taught by
the followers of Judge Rutherford and Pastor Russell, nor is the
Trinity some "Jesus only" doctrine picked up by many charismatic
groups. All of these groups have trouble with the word of God and none
of them are sound in doctrine, nor can their adherents study the Bible
properly; therefore, they get into all kinds of trouble. One group
says, "Well, if you've seen Christ, you've seen the Father; therefore,
the Father's name is Jesus," which, of course, is nonsense. Jesus is
the name of a human being--a man. God is a spirit. On the other hand,
when the followers of Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford get into the
same mess, they would not think of calling the Father "Jesus," so they
bend over backward the other way, go clean overboard and make as bad a
mess and try to pretend the Father is one God and the Son is another
God. This ancient heresy was called "Arianism" and it was discussed in
the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. The followers of the Watchtower
Society have never yet corrected the false teaching, nor have they
analyzed it, nor can they discuss it. Men who ignore the lessons of
history are condemned to repeat the lessons of history. So, we find the
New American Standard Version in John 1:18 teaching the ancient Arian
heresy of two Gods, an uncreated God--God the Father, and a created
God--Jesus Christ. This heresy is called Russellism or Arianism and was
supposedly settled at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.

   Now we know that there is one God and that this God is Creator of
the world and the universe. This God is the God of Genesis 1:1 who
spoke the world into existence. Deuteronomy 6:4 says, "Hear, O Israel:
The Lord our God is one Lord." There is only one God. However, a
careful study of the scriptures will show that this God exists in three
persons; that is, the Godhead is manifested in three persons. We read
about the Godhead in Romans 1:20 where Paul says, "For the invisible
things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,...even
his eternal power and Godhead." In Colossians 2:9 we read that in the
Lord Jesus Christ "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."
Bodily is a reference to a man. This brings up a problem. How can God
be three persons and one God at the same time? Wouldn't this make three
gods? And then, of course, this would resemble a pagan philosophy and
would contradict Deuteronomy 6:4. Now, the idea of three created gods
is an old pagan idea that one can find in all the pagan "mystery
religions." The mystery religions of Rome and Greece had three-headed
gods, so the Trinity itself, as a doctrine, is nothing new. The pagan
religions have trinities, but their gods are a plurality of gods which
we call "polytheism."

   Note that there is only one God, but the doctrine of the Trinity
presents God manifested in three persons. Now, I will explain this very
briefly so that the uninitiated can understand it. One person is one
person. I am only one person. I am not two. And yet, by any scripture
standard, I am three. There is nobody who is reading this right now who
is not a body, soul and spirit. First Thessalonians 5:23-24 says,

   "...I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that
calleth you, who also will do it."

   Every person is a body, soul and spirit--yet, they are one unit--and
yet, they are three.

   Notice that we have invisible red heat waves--the picture of the
Father. Yellow light rays that are seen--picturing the Son. Blue
chemical rays that can be seen by their effect--picturing the Spirit.
Or, an even more accurate picture is the sun itself. The sun puts out
alpha, beta and gamma rays. These rays are classified as light, heat
and actinic rays. Now, no one will deny that the sun is one unit. It is
one star--it is certainly not three separate stars. The sun is one
unit. Anyone who knows his scientific facts knows that the sun puts out
light rays which can be seen but not felt, heat rays that can be felt
but not seen, and rays that can be neither seen nor felt, actinic rays.
The actinic rays very plainly picture God the Father. The rays which
can be seen but not felt picture Jesus Christ the Son showing up in
human form. The rays that can be felt but not seen picture the Holy
Spirit.

   Again, we have a beautiful illustration of the Trinity in water.
Water is classified as H0, and yet anybody can see in a minute that the
term H0 is three units. One unit of oxygen and two units of hydrogen.
Does this make three separate things? No, it is water; it is one thing.
And yet water can appear in ice form, in liquid form or in steam form.
Do you know what ice is as a liquid? It is water. Do you know what
liquid is as ice? It is water. Do you know what liquid is as steam? It
is water. Or as someone said one time, "Three in one, one in three, and
the one in the middle died for me." Now, the unsaved man cannot
understand these simple facts nor can the people who teach "Jesus
oneness, onlyness." These people are not able to grasp simple, basic,
primitive, primary, grade school truths. The facts are that water is
water appearing in three forms and sunlight is the sun appearing in
three forms. That is a fact. It can be proved. And yet the uninitiated
(who spend a lot of time quoting scripture they know nothing about and
preaching the Bible without studying it and perverting the word of God
because they are not interested in what the doctrines have to say) can
never understand this simple basic truth that a trinity is a common
ordinary phenomenon of nature.

   Every person is a body, soul and spirit. I am one person, but I am
revealed as the son in a physical body; as a spirit--there is in me a
spirit, the spirit of man; and as a type of God the Father--a soul in
me that you cannot see and you cannot feel. Every person is a
trinity--they were made in the image of God; and, of course, although
Adam fell and his spirit died and men became dead in trespasses and
sin, they still have a spirit; howbeit, it is a dead spirit. Hence,
Christ says, "Ye must be born again."

   Now, Isaiah 55:8-9 teaches us that human reason has no bearing on a
study of God if a person is trying to figure out something that God has
already shown them. The Lord said,

   "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

   We cannot find the word "trinity" in the Bible nor can we find
"triune God" in the Bible, but as far as that goes, the word
"sacrament" is found in no Bible. The word "Catholic" is not a Bible
word by the wildest stretch of the imagination. And there will be a
hundred dollars reward for anybody who can find the word "rapture" or
the word "millennium" in the Bible. We are not now dealing with
technicalities of whether or not a word is found in Scripture. We are
dealing with the fact that the Trinity is demonstrated in nature. In
Romans 1 he says the invisible things (for example, the Godhead) are
"clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." So, we
can understand the Trinity by our study of sunlight and water.

   Now, the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity is very clear in the
Bible. For example, at the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew
3:13-17 we see the Trinity at work. God the Father spoke from heaven
and said,

   "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

   God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, was being baptized. God the Holy
Spirit descended like a dove and alighted on the Saviour. Here is a
perfect picture of the three persons of the Trinity at work, and
although all members of the Trinity are God, God is not split into
three separate gods. We are referring to the fact that Jesus is God,
the Holy Spirit is God, and the Father is God. This is brought out very
clearly in the New Testament in Matthew 28:19 where we were told to

   "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name
of (in the NAME--SINGULAR) the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost."

   Now, there is only one name that will match the Father, the Son and
Holy Ghost. This name is not Jesus. The one name that will match the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost is the Lord; so, baptizing in the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and baptizing in the name of the Lord is
the same operation.

   Now, we realize that all American heretics who are trying to be
saved by baptismal regeneration prefer the Jewish baptism of Acts
2:38--baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.
But this is the standard characteristic of all unsaved preachers who
are going to hell while quoting scripture because these verses deal
with Israel before the gospel of the revelation of the grace of God was
given to Paul. In Acts 2:38 there are NO Christians present. The term
"Christian" does not occur anywhere in your Bible until Acts 11:26. In
Acts 2, you are dealing with pork- abstaining, temple-worshipping,
Sabbath-observing, circumcised Jews whose salvation had an element of
faith and works mingled with it. This is why all unsaved preachers try
to get you to Acts 2:38 to give you the plan of salvation, because
there is no plan of salvation in Acts 2:38. Acts 2:38 is Simon Peter's
Pentecostal message to the house of Israel. This is more than apparent
by the briefest study of verses 14, 22, 29, and 36. Baptism for a
Gentile is said to be in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

   Jesus is the Lord. The Holy Spirit is the Lord. The Father is Lord.
Jesus is God. The Father is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The name
"Jesus" is never applied to the Father. Now, it is true that Christ
said,

   "...he that hath seen me hath seen the Father..." (John 14:9),

   but not once did Jesus ever call the Father "Jesus." That is a
mistaken blasphemy that comes from not reading your Bible. Not once in
the Bible is the Holy Spirit called Jesus. The Holy Spirit is called
the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God
and the Spirit of Truth. The Lord Jesus Christ is called the Messiah,
Immanuel, Christ, the Lord, the Lord Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus, and
the Son of man. Not once is Jesus Christ ever referred to as the
Father. That is not all. The Father is referred to in the Bible as
Jehovah, and Jeh, and Lord, and Lord God, and God, but never Jesus.
Therefore, we see the correct scriptural position is right between two
heresies. The first of these is the oneness, onlyness, Jesus only, Acts
2:38 heresy, which has no real salvation in it. And the second is the
heresy of the Russellites (whom Southerners call "no-hellers") that
teaches three separate gods when, of course, there are not.

   Notice in the benediction in II Corinthians 13:14 Paul says,

   "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen."

   Notice in Genesis 1 that we find the Lord speaking of Himself in
plural terms when He says in Genesis 1:26,

   "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion...."

   God is plainly speaking of Himself not as a plurality of gods but as
a plural God. Now, that is what you have to get. You say, "I can't
understand it." You can understand it if you can look in a mirror. You
are not three people, but you are looking at body, soul and spirit.
Christ said,

   "And fear not them which kill the body,...but rather fear him which
is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28).

   Now, why would you think they were the same when Christ said they
were different? Paul said,

   "For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the
spirit..." (Col. 2:5).

   Why would you think they are the same when they are not? The Bible
says in Hebrews 4:12-13 the word of God is able to divide asunder the
soul and spirit. Then, if they are different, why would you think they
are the same? They are the same because you yourself are body, soul and
spirit. You are not three individuals, but you exist in three
manifestations.

   God is not a plurality of gods, but He exists in three
manifestations. His body is the Lord Jesus Christ. His soul is God the
Father. His Spirit is plainly the Holy Spirit. Now, as we said before,
water is a beautiful illustration of this great truth. Water is H0,
three components, yet it is one unit. However, this one unit appears as
liquid and when it is frozen it appears as ice, and when it is heated
it appears as steam, yet it never ceases to be water. You can have
water existing in all three separate forms. It is still the same stuff.
It is still H0.

   Another good illustration is a business firm, Smith and Company,
composed of three brothers, Bill Smith, Henry Smith and John Smith. All
right, they have one name, one firm, and each brother is the head of a
department--the three work together without friction as a single unit
(as does the Lord), and all three have the same power.

   It must be emphasized that the Trinity still remains a mystery,
basically, and that no single illustration can possibly explain
everything about the Trinity. For example, you can't explain Christ
saying, "The Father is greater than I," when they actually have the
same essence. You can only explain that in view of the fact that when
Christ makes that statement He is on the earth in human form and the
Father is not. You cannot fully explain the collapse of the Trinity
into a Unity in eternity after Revelation 22 when the Son will deliver
up the Kingdom into the Father and then He Himself will submerge into
God the Father so that God may be all in all the way it was before
Genesis 1:1. However, we can use some illustrations to throw some light
on the difficult and complex problem of the Trinity.

   The most important thing we know about the Trinity is that it
exists. It is not a Roman doctrine. It is a Bible doctrine. It is not
the doctrine of Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford. We firmly believe,
any Christian firmly believes, that there is one God eternally existing
and manifesting Himself to us in three persons: the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit.

   Now, the Trinity can act as a unit. The Holy Spirit and the Son and
the Father work as a unity in the following operations. The Trinity
acts as a unity in creation, in the incarnation, in redemption, in
salvation, in communion, in prayer, in glory, and in regeneration. I
will show you how the attributes of God the Father are the same
attributes given to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit by the
scripture.

   2. The Trinity Acting in Creation

   All right, first of all, in creation, notice this, please. God the
Father spoke in Genesis 1:3 and said, "Let there be light." That is God
the Father speaking. But, notice in John 1:1 that He is acting in unity
with the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 1:1 we read, "In
the beginning was the Word." We also see in John 1:3 that "All things
were made by him: and without Him was not anything made that was made."
So, the Son was active in the world creation back there in Genesis 1.
But notice, the Holy Spirit is not left out either. God the Holy Spirit
moved upon the face of the waters in Genesis 1:2. We read in Genesis
1:2,3, "...darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said...."

   Then, we plainly have Bible references no matter who thinks what or
no matter whose opinions may be taken above anybody else's. We plainly
have three scriptural references that teach that in creation God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all active.

   3. The Trinity in The Incarnation

   All right, in the incarnation (that is, the coming of God the Father
to manifest Himself in the flesh as a man), God the Father is said to
have given His only Son. John 3:16,

   "For God (there is the Father) so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son" (there is Jesus Christ).

   So, the Son was born into the world. You know what the Lord said
about that Son? He said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased; hear ye him" (Matt. 17:5). Plainly, the Son is active in the
incarnation. After all, the Son was born and was called Jesus Immanuel,
which means "God is with us." So, the Son is born into the world, but
that is not all. When the Son was born into the world, the Holy Spirit
was the medium of conception. In Luke 1:35 Mary was told,

   "...The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee;"

   the holy thing born of her shall be begotten of the Holy Ghost.
Therefore, we learn that God the Father and God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit are not only active in creation, but they are also active
in the incarnation. The coming of God to this earth will be as a man,
the super-humanoid from outer space to bring peace on earth, the real
peace, from the real humanoid, from the right God. Therefore, all space
programs--Outer Space, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Thing From Outer
Space and the Jupiter and Venus kick--and all the pretty little
television shows put on around plots about getting the folks from outer
space to come and help you to bring peace on earth are what we call
contradictions of the truth. That is, they are direct falsehoods and
direct blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and they are aimed against the
word of God.

   In the word of God the "visitor from outer space," who has been here
and returned, told you what to do to get life, told you what to do to
have peace; and ninety percent of the population of the world has never
paid any attention to Him and never will. Therefore, Christ said in
John 5:43,

   "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another
shall come in his own name, him ye will receive."

   This one is spoken of in II Thessalonians 2; he is called the son of
perdition, the son of damnation, the man of sin, Apollyon, the
destroyer, and the Antichrist. So, the next man from outer space, of
course, will be the wrong man. Once you put that negative construction
on the beings from other planets, you set yourself at odds against all
modern scientific research, for it is based on the evolutionary
hallucination that if we can contact life on other planets it is bound
to be a superior form of life that will come down here and help us
solve our problems. That form of life has already been here and
returned. And, I might add, is coming again after the world accepts the
Antichrist as the head of the United Nations.

   4. The Trinity Acting in Redemption

   The Father and Son are active in redemption, and so is the Holy
Spirit. Notice that God the Father accepted the sacrifice as a perfect
sacrifice in Hebrews 10:8-12. No one has to be told that the Son
Himself offered Himself up as the sacrifice. In redemption, God the Son
is the main person involved. He offered Himself up as our substitute.
The Bible says, "...the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to
God..." (I Peter 3:18). The Bible says, "For he (that is, the Father)
hath made him (that is, Christ the Son) to be sin for us, who knew no
sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Cor.
5:21). The Bible says, "But he (that is, the Son) was wounded for our
transgressions, he (that is, the Son) was bruised for our iniquities:
the chastisement of our peace was upon him (that is, the Son); and with
his stripes (that is, the Son) we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). And he goes
right on to say in Isaiah 53:10, "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise
him." The reference plainly is to God the Father.

   God the Father is active in redemption, and God the Son is active in
redemption. That is not all. God the Holy Spirit is active in
redemption, for we read in Hebrews 9:14 that when Jesus Christ offered
up the perfect substitute, the perfect, propitiatory, vicarious
atonement for sinners, Jesus offered Himself "through the eternal
Spirit." Then, we see the Trinity acts as a unity in creation, in the
incarnation and in redemption. God is one God in three persons--Father,
Son and Holy Spirit--and there is no order of importance down the line.
The three are not one at the top and one on the middle level and one at
the bottom. The three are on the same level, with the Father coming
first, the Son coming second, and the Holy Spirit coming third. The Son
is related to the Father by regeneration; the Holy Spirit is related to
the Son by procession. Suffice it for now to understand that Jesus
Christ was the Father manifest in the flesh. Although not being a
substitute for the Father, He was God the Father manifest in the flesh
as God's Son. You cannot explain how God the Father could have still
been up there and Him down here, but it was so. You can't explain how
the Holy Spirit could have descended upon Him while He was being
baptized, and yet, He had not the Spirit by measure (John 3:34) for all
the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Him, but we know it is so.
The Trinity is a great mystery, but it is a scriptural mystery. It can
only be understood and comprehended by reading the word of God itself
and believing the word of God as the word of God stands.

   5. The Trinity Acting in Salvation

   Now, speaking further in these matters, the Trinity acts as a unity
in salvation. The perfect picture of this in the Bible is the Father
who received His son home. The Bible says God "hath made us accepted in
the beloved" (Eph. 1:6) and Christ said, "no man cometh unto the
Father, but by me" (John 14:6); therefore, the prodigal son coming home
from the far country is a beautiful picture of a boy being welcomed and
accepted by his father upon his return. Notice in Luke 15:22 and 23
that the father welcomed the sinner, forgave him, supplied his clothes,
and put on a celebration. It's a perfect picture of the reconciliation
of the sinner. The Bible says in II Corinthians 5:21 that God "hath
made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him." The Bible says we are "accepted in the
beloved."

   The Father welcomes and accepts any sinner who receives His Son.
This is perfectly apparent by the fact that the Bible says when a man
receives Christ he is predestinated to be adopted (see Eph. 1:5), and
when a man receives Christ he is predestinated to be conformed to the
image of His Son (see Rom. 8:29). Both of these operations, the
conformation of the image of Christ and the adoption, begin when the
sinner receives Jesus Christ. He is accepted by the Father, placed in
the family, and his final destination will be to be conformed to the
very Son of God Himself.

   Notice that the Son is also active in salvation. He goes to see the
lost sheep to save them. He said in Luke 19:10, "For the Son of man is
come to seek and to save that which was lost." In Luke 15:4 we have a
perfect picture of this in the parable of the lost sheep where we are
told there were sheep on the side of the mountain and the shepherd goes
out there and finds the lost sheet. John 1:11,12 says, "He came unto
his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to
them gave he power to become the sons of God...." So, God the Son is
active in salvation.

   Furthermore, God the Holy Spirit seals the new convert when he is
saved. We read in Ephesians 1:13 that when a man believes on Jesus
Christ he is sealed with the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, we read in
Ephesians 4:30, "And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are
sealed unto the day of redemption." In I Corinthians 6 we read about
the Holy Spirit active in this work and saying the born again sinner is
not only sanctified by the blood of Christ but he is also sanctified by
the Spirit of God. So, God the Trinity works in unity. God the Holy
Spirit, God the Father and God the Son are all active in salvation.
That is not all.

   6. The Trinity in Communion

   God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are active in
communion. God the Father invites us to come to Him for fellowship in
Ephesians 2:18, "For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto
the Father." But this is on the grounds of God the Son being our
reconciliation, II Corinthians 5:19, "To wit, that God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto
them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation," and it is
God the Holy Spirit that effects this union and communion. Read
Ephesians 2:18 again. We read about the Holy Spirit Himself making
intercession for us which shows us that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
act conjunctively in prayer. God the Father is the one who receives the
request. Requests are made to the Father, but they are made in the name
of the Son (John 16:23, "...Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my
name, he will give it you"), and it is God the Holy Spirit who directs
us in our requests and leads and guides us in our praying.

   So, the doctrine of the Trinity is not a Catholic or pagan doctrine
at all. The doctrine of the Trinity is a Biblical fact. The two stupid
blasphemies that come from perverting this fact were set up, first by a
group of people who insisted that there were three separate gods, with
Jesus Christ as a minor God--and these people lay very little emphasis
on the Holy Spirit, if any emphasis at all. The second blasphemy is
what we call the "Jesus oneness, onlyness `blasphemy'," which teaches
that God the Father is Jesus Christ, which of course is nonsense. Jesus
Christ is the name of God the Son. Now, the scriptures appealed to by
the reprobates who pervert the word of God are numerous and, of course,
to the uninitiated and to the student who does not study "to show
himself approved unto God" it all seems very logical. For example, if I
wanted to prove the name of God the Father was Jesus Christ, I would
turn you to Isaiah 9 and John 14. I would point out that Jesus Christ
said, "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." That is a good boffo
to try to prove a lie with. Then I would turn to Isaiah 9 and try to
show that Christ's name shall be "called" the everlasting Father. You
see? Now, this is the kind of jam that people get into by taking two or
three verses out and trying to make the Bible line up with the two or
three verses. All heretics operate in this fashion.

   The Campbellite heresy prevalent since 1800 was erected on the
stupid grounds that the whole Bible was to be regulated to Mark 16:16
and Acts 2:38. The Catholic blasphemy that will be used by the pope to
control the United Nations teaches that the whole Bible is to be
regulated according to Matthew 16:16-18. There is not a charismatic nut
in this country that isn't trying to make the whole Bible line up with
Acts 2 and I Corinthians 14, which is the height of folly, the
uttermost stupidity of the very worst, vulgar, blasphemous and obscene
sort. After all, the Bible was not written just to prove two or three
verses that you and your friends have perverted to attract attention.
The Bible is the word of God. The Bible clearly, from cover to cover,
presents the Father, Son and Holy Spirit working as a unit. And you
will notice the verses we use to prove this are not two or three verses
lifted out of context, but verse after verse in the context in which it
appears.

   For example, when the Lord Jesus Christ said, "he that hath seen me
hath seen the Father," He was speaking of His bodily appearance in the
flesh--God the Father appearing in the flesh. At no time does He imply
that anybody has seen God the Father as God the Father is in the
Spirit. The Bible says in John 1:18, "No man hath seen God at any time;
the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him." And again we read that God is a spirit and he dwelleth
"in the light which no man can approach unto," nor man can see, nor any
math hath seen (I Tim. 6:16).

   So, we see by the scripture that these cute little denominational
perversions that are erected on the grounds that "this verse teaches
this, therefore, the whole Bible should be regulated to this verse" are
obscene vulgarities of the very worst sort and beneath the serious
student of the word of God. Of course, we have trouble with the
interdenominational groups who say, "Well, any doctrinal teaching is
denominational teaching," which is also a lie. The scriptures were
written primarily to teach doctrine. This is apparent from II Timothy
3:16 which says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine...." The very first purpose that God had in
writing the Bible was to teach sound doctrine. The Bible tells us that
in the last days they will "heap to themselves teachers, having itching
ears" and they will not endure "sound doctrine" (II Tim. 4:3- 4).

   Now, in "sound doctrine" the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are said to
be spoken of as working together in creation, in the incarnation, in
redemption, in salvation, in communion, and in prayer. You say, "How
many verses?" Eighteen in a row, and more coming up. When the Bible
said Christ the Son shall be called "The everlasting Father" (Isa.
9:6), it is merely saying the Son shall be called that. At no time are
the titles ascribed to God the Father addressed to Jesus Christ. Now,
Jesus Christ the Son has the same attributes, since He was God manifest
in the flesh, but the term "Jehovah" is the name applied to God the
Father in the Old Testament; and although we know Jesus as a member of
the Trinity and not as a created god or a separate being from God, in
His earthly life He is never called Jehovah: He is called Jesus Christ.
And when He says, "I AM," to the group and applies to Himself the name
of "Jehovah I am," He lets us know that He is a member of the Trinity,
coequal with God, and He is coequal with Jehovah. As a matter of fact,
the term "King of kings and Lord of lords" is the "Jehovah of jehovahs"
in the book of Revelation. But again, this is dealing with the
manifestation of Jehovah God the Father as the Son, and at no time are
you ever told to believe in two separate distinct gods. Nor at any time
do the distinctions of the Trinity become muddled and lose their lines
of delineation; that is, it is a clear presentation of truth and yet a
mystery which an unsaved man cannot understand.

   So, everybody who teaches three created gods or two created gods or
only one God with one person and all have the same name--these people
are unsaved people who cannot understand the word of God. The Bible
says in I Corinthians 2:14,

   "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:
for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned."

   7. The Trinity Acting In Glory

   The Trinity acts in unity in glory. God the Father is to eventually
receive the eternal kingdom, I Corinthians 15; God the Son is the one
who will change our vile bodies to be like His glorious body,
Philippians 3:21; God the Holy Spirit gives the invitation in
Revelation 22:17. Again, God the Father records our new name in glory,
Luke 10:20; God the Son cleanses our sins in His precious blood,
Ephesians 1:7; God the Holy Spirit performs the transforming miracle of
the new birth, John 3:3-6, making all three operative in regeneration.

   8. Attributes Of The Trinity

   Now it is time to talk about the attributes of God. First of all His
incommunicable attributes: His eternity, His omnipotence, His
omniscience and His omnipresence. Then we are going to talk about His
communicable attributes: His truth, His benevolence, His communion and
His holiness. Then I am going to give you the scripture references to
show you that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit all
have these same attributes although all three are distinct persons.

   First of all on the eternity of God. God the Father is said to be
eternal, Psalm 90:2. God the Son is said to be eternal, Revelation 1:8.
God the Holy Spirit is said to be eternal, Hebrews 9:14.

   We will now take God's omnipotence or His all-powerfulness. God the
Father, I Peter 1:5. God the Son, II Corinthians 12:9. God the Holy
Spirit, Romans 15:19.

   We shall now deal with God's omniscience or His all knowledge. God
the Father, Jeremiah 17:10. God the Son, Revelation 2:23. God the Holy
Spirit, I Corinthians 2:11.

   Now we will see God's omnipresence, the fact that He is everywhere
at once, His immensity. God the Father, Jeremiah 23:24. God the Son,
Matthew 18:20. God the Holy Spirit, Psalm 139:7.

   We shall now deal with God's holiness as an attribute. God is holy.
God the Father, Revelation 15:4. God the Son, Acts 3:14. God the Holy
Spirit, Luke 1:15.

   Next we will look at God's truthfulness or honesty. God the Father,
John 7:28. God the Son, Revelation 3:7. God the Holy Spirit, I John 5:6.

   We will now deal with God's goodness or kindness or longsuffering.
God the Father, Romans 2:4. God the Son, Ephesians 5:25. God the Holy
Spirit, Nehemiah 9:20.

   Finally, we will deal with the communion of God--God communing with
man and communicating with man. God the Father, I John 1:3. God the
Son, I John 1:3. God the Holy Spirit, II Corinthians 13:14.

   Now, there we have proof that the Son is deity and that the Holy
Spirit is deity as well as the Father, without being three separate
gods. They act as a unit. The same attributes ascribed to God the
Father are ascribed to the Son and Holy Spirit but not the same titles.
For example, although God the Father is Lord and God and God the Son is
Lord and God and God the Holy Spirit is Lord and God, the exact titles
are not applied. God the Father is not called the Paraclete or the Holy
Ghost or the Spirit of Christ. The Son is not called by title
Jehovah-jireh. He is not called Jehovah-nissi or Jehovah-rapah. He is
not called Jah. Nor is the Son called the Holy Ghost; nor is the Son
called the Comforter. They maintain absolutely their separate
distinctions in one Godhead. A man said, "I don't understand it." You
are not told to understand it. You are told to believe it. And no
church told you that. The word of God told you that. The Father
maintains His separate distinction although the same attributes
ascribed to Jesus Christ are ascribed to the Father and vice versa. The
Father is never called Christ. The Father is never called Jesus Christ.
And the Father is never called Jesus.

   Three in one and one in three and the one in the middle died for me.
You say, "I don't understand this perplexing doctrine." Woodbridge
said, "He who will try to understand the Trinity fully will lose his
mind. But he who will deny the Trinity will lose his soul." And that is
as good as you ever heard it. These unsaved people trying to make the
Father Jesus and the Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit Jesus are unsaved
people who will not study the word of God or believe it. These unsaved
people who are trying to make God the Father one God and Jesus Christ
another God are in the same boat but on opposite ends. And the boat is
sinking.

   The Trinity is a mystery that will remain a mystery until we meet
the Lord in glory. However, this doesn't mean we can't believe it--it
doesn't mean we shouldn't believe it. A Christian must believe it--it
is the word of God. It is the teaching of the word--it is what the word
says. The attributes ascribed to God the Father, His eternity, His
omnipotence, His omniscience, His omnipresence, His holiness, His
truth, His mercy and His communion, are ascribed to Jesus Christ, His
eternity, His omnipotence, His omniscience, His omnipresence, His
holiness, His truth, His mercy, and His communion are ascribed to God
the Father. When Jesus Christ was baptized He came up out of the water
as the Son, the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove came down from heaven,
and the voice of the Father above said, "This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:16-17).

   Now, if you start this Jesus oneness, onlyness, holiness bit, you
are going to get into a mad situation because Jesus Christ was in the
garden of Gethsemane praying to Himself--almost like that neurotic
freak in Jesus Christ Superstar! Jesus Christ was not praying to
Himself in the garden. He said, "O my Father, if it be possible, let
this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt,"
Matthew 26:39. In plainer words, these two obscene, blasphemous,
vulgar, non-biblical teachings which were erected from five verses of
scripture are the teachings of unregenerate people who have no more
respect for the word of God than for a telephone book, not even when
they quote it.

   CONCLUSION

   All right, in conclusion, we realize that God the Father and God the
Son and God the Holy Spirit are members of the triune Godhead, exactly
as an individual has a body, soul and spirit. The individual's body is
a picture of God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It can be seen. The
individual's soul is a picture of God the Father which can neither be
seen, felt nor heard. And the individual's spirit, like air, is a
picture of the Holy Spirit, for man was made in the image of God. Now,
you would think that somebody could get this. If I stood on a platform
in front of you and said, "He that has seen me has seen Pete Ruckman,"
you would believe me. But, if I turned around and said, "No man has
seen Peter Ruckman at any time," you would think I was contradicting
myself, wouldn't you? But the truth of the matter is that when Christ
said, "He that hath seen me has seen the Father," and then turns right
around and says, "No man hath seen God at any time," He is telling the
truth and the contradiction is in your noodle. You see, nobody has ever
seen Peter Ruckman. You have never seen Dr. Peter Ruckman a day in your
life nor has anybody on this earth who has ever taken my picture or
eaten a meal with me. No man has ever seen Peter Ruckman at any time in
the sense of my soul, for my soul, my bodily shape within me, is
invisible. But, he that has seen me has seen Peter Ruckman. Why?
Because you have seen his body. Now, do you understand that? Why don't
you? That is a common illustration for understanding the Trinity.

   If man was made in the image of God then the image of God has to be
a triune image. There is no way around it. Now, you can say, "Well,
now, my body is Bill Smith, and my soul is Bill Smith, and my spirit is
Bill Smith." Well, that may be true of you. It is not true of God the
Father. God's body is Jesus Christ. The Bible says we are predestinated
to be conformed to the image of His Son. God's body manifest is Jesus
Christ. The Bible says in II Corinthians 4:4, "Is the image of God."
Therefore, God's appearance on this earth is the Lord Jesus Christ. His
first title, "Lord," matches God the Father who is also Lord. His
second title is unique to Himself, "Jesus," a human man. And His third
title indicates the work of the Holy Spirit, for Christos or Messiah
means anointed. So, we see in the very name of the Lord Jesus Christ
the Trinity. His first name, "Lord," indicates He is coequal with God
the Father. His second name, "Jesus," indicates that He is a human man,
the Son of man born of a human woman, God's Son. His third title
indicates His birth is by the Holy Ghost as the anointed Messiah to
Israel. They are never the same. But they are equal. Now, that's where
people have a rough time with the word of God. The Bible doctrine is
equal but separate. That is the basic Bible doctrine on the Trinity.
And if that were not enough, it is the basic Bible doctrine of the
people reading this booklet. When you die your spirit will leave your
body. James says in James 2:26, "...the body without the spirit is
dead." And when you die your soul will leave your body because Paul
said in II Timothy 4:6, "...the time of my departure is at hand." In
Genesis 35 we read that as Rachel died, "...her soul was in departing."
Therefore, to teach they are the same without distinction and to
indiscriminately mix them and integrate them without regard for their
various distinctions is a non-biblical approach to life, philosophy,
the universe and the truth.

   Equal with separate distinctions is the Bible approach to the
Trinity. As far as that goes, it is the Bible approach to everything
else. In Christ there is neither male nor female, they are equal (Gal.
3), but they are plainly separate and distinct physical creations.

   So, we see that there are two kinds of people who work on our minds
to try to get us to think like a bunch of morons. The first class is
trying to tell us that things are different and, therefore, because
they are different they are unequal. Then the second class of morons is
trying to tell us that they are all the same and since they are equal
there is no difference. Now, this idiotic ideology is what is known as
the American mentality of the twentieth century. It is the standard
college curriculum taught to produce people who cannot think straight,
clearly or honestly. This kind of people, when they approach a thing
like the Bible doctrine of the Trinity, come apart and the nuts, bolts,
pinwheels, kingpins, fan belts, carburetors and spark plugs fly all
over the highway.

   The Bible teaches a triune Godhead composed of God the Father
typified by your soul, God the Son typified by your body, and God the
Holy Spirit typified by your spirit. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the
Father and from the Son. The Son was regenerated and brought forth and
produced by the Father. The Father, God the Father, the Creator,
Jehovah of the Old Testament was manifest in this flesh as the Son of
God and manifest in this flesh as Jesus Christ. He was filled with the
Holy Spirit. He was the Holy Spirit incarnate. He was the Godhead
incarnate, and the Bible says in Colossians 2:9, "For in him dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." God is honored and God is
blessed when Christian people believe what they are supposed to
believe, and that is what you are supposed to believe.

   So, let us worship this great God, this One who is superior to us,
this great One, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the Ending,
the Almighty who can manifest Himself in three different ways: as the
Eternal Spirit He sustains the universe; as the Eternal Spirit in glory
sustains and upholds all creation, He knows all the thoughts of man,
His eyes are in every place beholding good and evil; He can manifest
Himself as a literal, visible human man in physical flesh, who can
suffer like we suffer, who was tempted like we are tempted, who died
like we die, and who shed blood like we shed blood. It behooved Him in
all things to be made like unto His brethren that He might be tempted,
that He might suffer, that He might die as a man, and that by the grace
of God He might "taste death for every man" so that He might be able to
take the sinner's place and save us poor wretched sinners. This Great
One can also manifest Himself as the breath of the wind of God entering
the defiled, degenerate, darkened body or vessel of the unholy,
cleansing that temple, sweeping it out and cleaning it, regenerating
that man and giving him a new life and a new birth and placing him into
the body of Christ and making sure of his eternal destination--to be
conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. He manifests Himself
as the Holy Spirit of God who teaches and guides us into all truth, who
inspired the word of God, for holy men of God "spake as they were moved
by the Holy Ghost." He preserved that word intact for us to this
day--the scriptures that He Himself had "God-breathed" and p