To my brothers and sisters in Christ,
At a church I once attended, the Pastor stood up and said, 'Because of the church's failure to teach the church doctrine, we have fallen victim to many cults.' This is a very agreeable statement - the apostles in the bible taught doctrine (a word that just means teaching), and Paul instructed Timothy to give his attention to doctrine in 1 Timothy 4:13-16, that we should meditate on the teachings of the bible and immerse ourselves through exhortation, public reading, exercising the things of the Word - a careful attention to doctrine. Lets be people that know what the Lord Jesus Christ taught, that are eager for these things. Address the hard questions of faith - why does God allow suffering? How is God triune? What was accomplished at Calvary when Jesus Christ died on the cross? I tackled the question, Why did Jesus die to set us free from sin, when I was being delivered from sexual immorality by God, and that was a turning point in my life that I remember nearly every day, and God was at work at those times. God opens our ears and causes us to hear His voice and understand scripture. Lets give God our hearts in careful attention to doctrine!

The Jehovah's Witness cult believe that Jesus is not divine when the bible indisputably says that He is God. They'll even quote Greek out of context to prove their faulty theological foundation! Really, there are hundreds of scriptures that directly say that Jesus Christ is God, not just a handful. But they cannot reconcile the thought because they have rejected the teaching of the trinity. This is what the bible declares, and they've rejected it! The Oneness pentacostals are the same - they completely reinterpret every verse that they see to fit the cultic view of God that they have - even in Matt. 28:19, when it says, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, speaking individually in the Greek that the 'name' is distributed among the three, they reinterpret to fit the Oneness Pent. view they've been indoctrinated into and that of the 'Apostolic' movement say that it's saying, 'In the name singular, so it's saying just Jesus. Father, Son, and Spirit are just Jesus - that's not only modalistic, but it's heresy. God isn't - He was the Father, then He became the Son, and now He's the Holy Spirit. That's modalism, a known heresy that the church has rejected for thousands of years. The scriptures declare the pre-existance of the Son, making each distinct from the other before the creation of the world and before Christ's incarnation into a flesh body, adding humanity to His deity - the Father is the Father while the Son is the Son while the Spirit is the Spirit, distinct from each other. But unless you've seen it in scripture, you wouldn't know! You'd get fooled by someone else's opinion of God, that the Bible doesn't declare, whereas these cults cut-and-paste scripture together in order to support their very carnal interpretations of scripture. As Luther said to Erasmus, their theology is too human. The grace of God comes from God - not men. The doctrines the apostles taught aren't from human origin, but come from Jesus Christ!

And if you didn't know your church history, they could fool you there, too. The teaching of the trinity is apostolic, believed on by the early church, seen in the writings of first century church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Polycarp, and so on (google them! they're great). The word 'trinity' just wasn't used to reference or describe the teaching until later, but the teaching of the trinity has always been with the church, the true view of God. The fact that Jesus Christ is God and is divine wasn't something that came out of some 4th century church meeting (they'll usually say, Nicean meeting).They met not to decide on what it is or concoct it or anything of the sort. The word 'trinity' was first used to relate it to God by Theophilus, 6th bishop of Antioch, Syria, in 168 AD! It was in his work, 'Refutation of Autolycus.' Also, there are numerous quotes from early church fathers you can use that are all trinitarian. I'd also be familiar with the heretical views, too - God is triune, as opposed to a Unitarian view of God or a Binitarian view. There's not 3 Gods in 3 persons, or 1 Person in 3 Gods, that would be Polytheism, when the bible so clearly says there's only one God (Deut 6:4). Even then - there's not 1 Person in 3 persons, yet one God. There's not 3 persons in 1 person, yet one God. Those would be modalism - different modes or manifestations of God. But the bible says that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there's only 1 being called God. Each individual person - the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - is fully God individually, eternally existing as distinct from each other, yet as 1 being. This can get very confusing - but God is three persons, 1 being. They'll quote you an example - You have a son. The son is your child, and so how can there be only 1 being if Jesus is the Son? But to be the Son is to be the second person in the Godhead - their example doesn't fit the teaching of the bible. Instead, here's a better illustration - you yourself are a triune being. You have a distinct body, soul, and spirit (1 Thess 5:23). Your body is you, your soul is you, and your spirit is you. The bible says 'the Word of God is quick and powerful, even dividing the soul and spirit' and makes a distinction between the two. The trichotomy in ourselves reflects the fact that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet 1 being - since we're 1 being. It's not 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, it's 1 x 1 x 1 = 1 !!!

Lets study it! Doctrine isn't just for theologians and pastors - it's for us! The whole body of Christ. Lets spend some time with God at His feet, hearing His good doctrine, just as in John says about Mary sitting at Jesus's feet, hearing His good doctrine - it wont be taken away from her, Jesus says.

In order to spot fake money, bank tellers train to familiarize themselves with real money, so that when the fake money hits their hands, they know immediately - because they've spent time learning what real money is like. Lets spend time with the real Jesus, learning about His every way, and imitating and becoming like Him. If you don't have the Son, like the different counter-Christian cults, you don't have the Father. If you have the Son, you have the Father. Lets keep ourselves from idols with the correct vision of God!