is because you made the comment that because Phaos is articular in the second clause and not articular in the second clause therefore it's indefinite rather than definite. Well, there's the definite article of whole in front of Phaos. That's right. In the third clause it says, and in that case Phaos is a preverbal predicate nominative which means not a God but is referring to what the word is by nature. In the Greek language it's very clear that the word is a person saying that the word is ordinarily used for an impersonal or abstract thing has no relevance contextually where it's being used here for a person and I'll tell you why. I've already pointed out that other terms that are otherwise abstract or impersonal like vines, branch, door are used as titles of Jesus. In fact the word light is used for Jesus. It's used for God. God is light. That is an otherwise abstract or impersonal thing but nobody would deny that in those contextually determined senses it is referring to a person. The same thing is true of John 1. John 1 throughout uses personal pronouns and other indicators of the personhood of the word and it emphatically identifies him as deity. So for example it says the word was with God. He uses a stative verb talking about someone who is in relationship towards another. It's clearly talking about a person. Now I would say that in verse 2 when it says who talks this one was in the beginning with God. The demonstrative pronoun this can sometimes be used for a neuter thing if or what have you. Contextually though that can't be what this means because in verse 3 as I pointed out. Well not only verse 1 is it used with a stative verb. The prostante on the word was with God. It's not talking about some abstract word existing alongside of a person. It's talking about a person being with another person but in verse 3 it goes on to say That must refer to a person. It's referring to agency. All things were created through him meaning the word. Verse 10 says the same thing. He was in the world and though the world was made through him. The world did not recognize him. It's referring to a person. In verse 12 it says that those who did receive him he gave the right to be called children of God. It's still referring to a person. So when it says in verse 14 the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory. The glory as of the only begotten from the Father full of grace and truth. By the way don't miss that he said to be full of grace and truth. That's an echo of Exodus 33 where God says that he is full of grace and truth. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon depending upon where you all are from. Hope you all are doing well. I hope you all are excited. I'm excited. You all should be excited.  All you smart Christians.  Even if you disagree you are adults disagree godly disagree in a proper fashion moderators. Again, we don't have a high tolerance for spamming and name calling and fussing and fighting.  And so the very first time you say anything moderators they have to go. Also I gave you guys this ample warning before. Some of you guys we got two triggers tonight two triggers right first trigger is we're going to be the Trinity. People get triggered over that word is not in the Bible. Okay, fine. Put your trigger shoes on make sure that you don't get too spazed out. And then also there is going to be Greek tonight. That is my favorite button. Matter of fact, I think I'll just push that button even if I'm talking about some Hebrew. I'm in love with that. But anyway, that being said guys, I want to bring on my brother Anthony Ryder. I don't know if you all remember. I forget how many months this was five, six, seven, eight. I can't remember how it was how many months it was, but it just blew up. Finally someone was able to get a hold of Brandon Tatum. You all remember Brandon Tatum, right? He's the guy that came on here a couple of times put in the chest and he come back and talk. He hadn't came back talk yet. Brandon still looking for you. If you go and talk about Biden and you go and talk about Trump and anything political. You said that you're Christian for anything else. You said you come back here and defend yourself. Dog on it, Brandon. Come on back here. But as hard as it is to get a hold of him. When Anthony Rogers showed up at, I think it was, I think it was Brandon's Instagram feed. Oh man, that was so classic. That was so, I think everybody on YouTube watched that thing. That was absolutely wonderful. And so to be able to get him on here. This is not my first time being with him, but to have him on here. I cannot tell you how happy I am. And so that being said, I want to go ahead and bring Anthony on. Brother Anthony, how you doing brother? Hey, hey, I'm doing great. Great to be on with you. Listen, before we get going guys, you all saw the topic, the title. We're talking about the Trinity and as it pertains to salvation. But before I do, I want to, for those of you who don't know who Anthony Rogers is. One, you're missing out. So just a little brief introduction by yourself, Anthony. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I am a kid that grew up on the streets of Southern California. I eventually got into a good bit of trouble in my teen years at 18 back in 1993. I was incarcerated for gang related activity and that sort of thing. And it was in prison that I came to know Christ or better yet, he took hold of me and revealed that he had set his love upon me from eternity. And since that time I got out in 1995. I've had no other desire that rivals my desire to tell other people about Christ. I have gone on to, well, first I had to get a GED because I didn't graduate from high school. I wasn't content with that. So I went and got an official diploma and then I went and got a degree from Christ College in Lynchburg, Virginia. And then I eventually went on from there to go to Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I graduated from there, passed ordination exams and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church of America. In that capacity I serve with Metanoia, which is part of the missions agency of the Presbyterian Church. It's specifically focused on, sorry about that, it's specifically focused on going into the prisons. So I serve as a pastor of prisoners. I service all the prisons in South Carolina. And I also, as you mentioned, do a YouTube page. So I love evangelism and apologetics as an aspect of that. That's pretty much me. Hey man, well, listen, I have an affinity for Christians who happen to have been in prison. I don't know what it is. And again, I'm not recommending that everyone go to prison, but it's just something about prison coming out how blessed you feel after coming out.  I wouldn't do it again. But from what I learned, I wouldn't change that experience for anything in the world. Again, I wouldn't go back again. But that being said, we're going to go ahead and just jump right into it. Again, guys, trigger warning. If you do have issues with the Trinity, I asked that you would just open your hearts and minds just to hear what we have to say. Anthony's going to do most of the talking. At least that's my goal. You're going to do most of the talking. And so I'm going to kind of question, but I'm also going to have my eyes a little bit on the chat as well. But Anthony, for them, how would you, granted, it's difficult to explain God's existence. But how would you explain the Trinity to the people? Yeah, well, in a few words, it's the belief that God exists in three persons. Stated more fully, though I don't know any more necessarily. We believe that the one God exists as Father, Son, and Spirit. So each person is a distinct person from the other and yet are fundamentally one in their essential nature and being. So God, unlike created things, does not consist of parts. So when we say the persons of the Trinity are one, we mean that the entirety of the divine essence belongs wholly without division to each person. Now, it's interesting to me, a lot of people think the Trinity is mysterious, but they don't see where the mystery really lies. And it's right here. It's in saying that each person possesses the entirety of the divine being. So the Son doesn't possess a third of the divine essence. The Father doesn't possess a third. The Spirit doesn't possess a third. Each person possesses wholly and entirely the one divine nature by which we denominate each person to be God. And so certainly that's something that transcends anything we've encountered in our experience. But in the nature of the case, since we're talking about God, that's the sort of thing we should expect. Everything about God really transcends anything we know from our experience. So let me ask you this, because I've seen people kind of get hung up on the word person. How would you, if you could use a different word or kind of make that word make sense to some of us who have a problem with the word, not myself, I'm just putting myself in their position, but the word person or persons. Yeah. Well, I would say a self-aware subject. Each person of the Trinity can say I with respect to himself and can say you with respect to the other.  So, OK, now we understand that the Son is not the Father, the Son and so forth. But now there's just troubling passage that comes up. And so I want to go ahead and put it on the screen and let you deal with it. See how, which is Isaiah 9, 6. Let's go ahead and put it on the screen. It says, for unto us a child is born, to us a Son is given. And the government should be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called wonderful counselor. Mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And so obviously the sticking point here is going to be on this word everlasting Father. And so if we say that the Son is not the Father, what do we do with this text right here? Yeah, well, the first thing I would say is to recognize that terms like Father and Son are relational terms. By which I mean that you use the term Father for someone in relation to another. And you use the term Son for someone in relation to another. And so, for example, while I can be both a Father and a Son, I'm not my own Father and my own Son. I am my Father's Son and I am my Son's Father. And so even if we had nothing else to say about that text in Isaiah 9, 6, it doesn't prove that Jesus is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, right? The New Testament witnesses clear that Jesus is the Son of the Father and the Father is the Father of the Son. But there's more that can be said here. In Hebrew, the word is actually avyad and the syntax is actually reverse the English, right? In English we say everlasting Father, but in Hebrew the term Father comes first, and then the term for everlastingness or eternality or what have you comes after it. And so literally it's saying he's the Father of eternity or the Father of everlastingness. This is an idiomatic way of speaking in Hebrew. Whenever you say that somebody's the Father of something, you're saying that he possesses that quality. So for example, if you call somebody the Father of strength, you're saying he's strong. You're not saying he gave birth to a child named strength. If you say that somebody's the Father of lies, like Satan in John 8, you're not saying that Satan has children running around that are called, you know, lie one, lie two, lie three.  And so here in Isaiah 9-6, when it identifies the coming Messiah as the Father of eternity or the Father of everlastingness, it's saying he possesses that quality. He is everlasting. And what's further interesting just to make slight note of here is the first term that's used here for the coming Messiah is the term wonderful. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, that term, and this is a lesson, I think, to people to read carefully, we're used to using terms like that very loosely. So we might say, you know, that was a wonderful show or, you know, that was a wonderful presentation or what have you. The Bible doesn't speak that way. The term wonderful is always only used for God in the Hebrew Scriptures. God alone is wonderful. God alone works wonders. The reason this is significant is because in Judges 13, when Minoa asked the angel of the Lord for his name, he said, why do you ask my name? It is wonderful. The angel of the Lord is the specific person in the Old Testament who identifies himself by this title. That's why the Jews, when they translated Isaiah 9-6 into Greek in the Septuagint, they translated it. This is the name by which he will be called the Angel of Great Council. Now, you know, as well as I do, when you look at the Old Testament figure of the angel of the Lord, it's a divine theophany. It's a divine person who is on the one hand divine. He's a fully absolute being person, but he's distinguished from another or others who are likewise identified as God. And so one example real quick so that people don't just think I'm making something up here. If people look at Exodus 23, God told Moses, he said, I'll send my messenger, my Melach. It's the Hebrew word angel. And the word, by the way, for angel, it doesn't denote a specific created entity. It's just a way of referring to a messenger. And so the term is used for men. Which word? Oh, Exodus 23-20. Okay. Yeah, so there it says, behold, I send an Melach before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Literally, it's listen to him. Do not rebel against him for he will not pardon your transgression. For, now this is the explanation, this is why this messenger is to be listened to and not rebelled against and why he has the prerogative to withhold divine forgiveness. For, my name is in him. So this particular Melach messenger bears the divine name. And that's why, again, I said I was going to be quick here, but it's interesting if you look at Exodus 24-1, just the very next chapter. Immediately after God tells Moses he's going to send this name-bearing messenger ahead of them. Listen closely to what verse one says. Then he said to Moses, come up to the Lord, you Aaron, they'd have an Abihu. What's striking here, and this is noted even by Jews from ancient times. What's striking is that God is the one speaking here contextually. It says, then he, meaning the Lord, said to Moses, come up to the Lord. He doesn't say, come up to me. He says, come up to the Lord, as though the Lord were another. Contextually, the one he's talking about is the Melach, who bears his very name mentioned in the previous chapter. So a contextual reading of this identifies the Melach as himself, Jehovah, or Yahweh. And Moses then goes up the mountain with three people to encounter him. Now, just to make a New Testament connection real quick, if you go to the Gospels and you look at the transfiguration account, immediately after the occasion of Caesarea Philippi where Peter confesses on behalf of the apostles that Jesus is, Son of God, Jesus then leads them up the mountain, three of them, right, Peter, James and John. And on the mountain, Jesus is transfigured before them. His glory radiates even before the cloud descends, which is a marked difference from Moses, right. Moses shines, his face shines as a result of being in the divine presence. But in the transfiguration account, Christ's glory radiates from him even before the cloud descends. And then when God the Father speaks from the cloud, he says, this is my beloved Son, listen to him. That's an explicit echo of Exodus 23 where God told Moses, listen to him, right. It's the same expression in the Greek translation. What's further interesting is who is it that appears to the disciples on the mountain with Jesus. There are two figures from the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah. So I've already mentioned Moses who encountered the angel of the Lord on the mountain. But Elijah also encountered the angel of the Lord on Mount Sinai in 1 Kings 19. So you have these two Old Testament figures showing up on the mountain having a deja vu experience. Here's God the Father speaking of another saying, listen to him. I know that went well beyond what you asked. No, no, listen, listen, that is one, here's what's funny. I'm sitting here and listening to you. And for some of you guys who are there on Saturday mornings at the Bible study, and we literally, Anthony and I have never talked about this before. But literally saying, I won't say literally, but it said just the exact same things that I brought out. And so it's just, here's what's also interesting. A lot of what Anthony said, even Jews would agree with those Jews. Obviously they don't believe in the Trinity. They don't believe that in this triune existence. But going back to Isaiah, they don't see that as being an issue. Whenever this son is going to be everlasting father, they see it as being idiomatic as well. And so that's not something that crosses a trinitarian up. Trinitarian up. And so, no, Anthony, everything you said is just wonderful. Now, how do I put this? What else in terms of looking at the Old Testament? Because obviously we know that Jesus did not just show up on the scene. And so where else would you say to go and look to prove or to demonstrate these Christophonies or theophanies, these appearances of Jesus, this pre-incarnate Jesus in the Old Testament, buttressing or building up this triune belief that we have? Yeah, well, so one thing, let me tie this in with something you just mentioned about the belief of Jews. One mistake that a lot of people make today is anachronism. Anachronism is the fallacy of reading contemporary ideas or beliefs or practices back into earlier times where we don't have any evidence for them. And here the mistake is that a lot of people think, well, hey, I know a Jewish guy, or I know what they believe down at the synagogue on the corner or something along those lines, or I've picked up this book by a contemporary Jew or I watched Tobias Singer or one of these contemporary anti-Mycianic rabbis, and they all say they don't believe in the Trinity. So the Trinity is not a Jewish idea. This is anachronism with a vengeance because nobody who's sufficiently well-informed with respect to what ancient Jews believe are of the opinion that, well, I shouldn't say no one. There's always, you know, some oddball out there that you could find saying anything. But I'll give you an example. Daniel Boyarin, who is a Talmudic scholar, he's a Jew. He's not a Christian. He doesn't believe in the Trinity. He doesn't believe in the deity of Christ, the incarnation. He's not a Christian. He has a book that he wrote called The Jewish Gospels. This is a quote from his book. He says, the ideas of the Trinity and incarnation or certainly the germs of those ideas were already present among Jewish believers well before Jesus came on the scene. Now, another Jewish person, Daniel Boyarin, can sometimes be very controversial because he's willing to acknowledge what's there in the sources. But another Jew who's widely regarded, highly regarded by Jews is Jacob Neusner. He's written, believe it or not, over 800 books. The guy is just phenomenal. But in his book, Judaism and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era, he wrote on page 275, earlier systems of Judaism resorted to the myth of the Messiah as savior and redeemer of Israel, even a God-man facing the crucial historical questions of Israel's life and resolving them. So here's Neusner. He's calling it a myth. But notice he's saying this was the view of earlier systems of Judaism. They expected a divine Messiah. And so it's just illicit. It's wrong. It's not true to say ancient Jews didn't believe this because contemporary Jews, your neighbor Dave doesn't believe this. That's not what we find in ancient sources. And I could easily go on with that. It's a topic I love. But we have to ask in light of this, what is it in the Old Testament that would account for this kind of belief? And by the way, throw in one more element here. The apostles in the New Testament not only teach that Jesus is God, but their base text is the Old Testament. They're constantly making reference to it and not only to prove the deity of Christ, but to prove what I call the real presence of Christ. Right now there's a difference here. For example, a New Testament writer could have appealed to Isaiah 9-6 to say the Messiah is God. That would be a proof text for the deity of Christ. He's called the mighty God there, El Gibor. But it's not the same thing as the real presence of Christ. And by that, what I mean is we often use that in reference to the Lord's Supper or something like that. But what I'm talking about are not just predictions about the coming Messiah and the fact that he is God, but texts that actually talk about him, active, involved in the Old Testament period. And so a couple of examples of the New Testament writers doing this. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul mentions the Israelites passing through the waters into the wilderness. They're being led by Moses through the waters. And then he says they were nourished by the spiritual rock that followed them. And then Paul says that rock was Christ. Right? Yeah, there you go. In verse 4, he says, all drank from the spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was Christ. Now, if you go down to verse 9, and it's pretty small on my end, but notice there it says we must not put Christ to the test as some of them did, meaning the people in the wilderness, and were destroyed by serpents. So Paul says not only that Jesus was the rock that followed them, but they put Christ to the test and he sent fiery serpents among them as a punishment. So Paul thought that Jesus was present and active. No, I said, how could that be? What was that? How could that be? Yeah. And I'll just quickly mention a few others people can look up, but in Hebrews 11, the Great Hall of Faith, we're told that Moses chose to suffer affliction along with the people of God. He chose the reproach of Christ over the pleasures of Egypt. What does Moses in the Old Testament choose the reproach of Christ rather than continue to benefit from all that would have been his as the grandson of Pharaoh, if you will? So Moses chooses to be reproached along with Christ and his people. In Jude 4, first of all, he says that certain people will deny the Lord their only master and Lord. And then in verse 5, it says, Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. So here's Jude saying the same thing that Paul did and the author of Hebrews. And I could go on with this. So the New Testament writers, along with Jews of the time, I just gave you some quotations from Jewish authority saying this, but they did believe that there was a distinct divine person in the Old Testament who is ultimately to be identified as the Messiah. The New Testament writers, of course, make that connection. Jews wouldn't have said it with Jesus, but they would have. Here's what's really interesting. When you see these theophanies, Christophanies, whichever you guys want to call, when you see this in the Old Testament, the people aren't all that alarmed and not denying it, whether it be Hagar, whether it be Gideon, whoever it is, they accept it that this is God speaking with him. And so one of the texts that I want to get your view on that comes up often, and I think this may have been two, three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago I explained this, but the Shema do the right of me, six, four. And so I'd love to hear your take on this particular passage. Yeah, so the Shema, I don't think that it teaches what Unitarians believe, but I also don't think it necessarily gives us everything that we believe as Trinitarians. I think some people make too little of it, some people make too much of it. But the text simply says, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. It doesn't say he's one person. It's simply, interestingly in Hebrew, this is a difficult text in the sense that it could be translated in a variety of ways. This is well known in the literature, but I accept the standard way of rendering it, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And a constant theme in Deuteronomy starting back at least in chapter four is the fact that there's only one God. There aren't any others. So for example, in Deuteronomy 435 and 439, it has these very clear expressions of monotheism and repudiation of polytheism, right? So in 435, it says, to you it was shown that you might know that the Lord is God. There is no other besides him. And then again in verse 39, it says, know therefore today and lay it to your heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no other. And so at base, I mean all this text in Deuteronomy 64 is saying is there's only one God. That's a fundamental tenant of Trinitarianism. We don't believe that the persons of the Trinity, that's where the plurality is, are different gods. I defined the Trinity earlier as belief that all three persons share the same divine essence or nature. There's one God, that one God exists in three persons. So all these verses are establishing as monotheism and they certainly don't preclude that the one God exists in a plurality of persons. Tell me what you think about this, because I've heard it put this way and I kind of agree that here we've got Moses saying, hero is or the Lord our God is one, why? Why does, if it's so evident and so, okay, obviously there's only one God. Why is Moses even bringing this up? What's the point? We already know there's only one God. Well, and I've heard people say this, that, well, you had people like Hagar and Abraham and so forth who have had these encounters with God and called him God. And so guys, to use a modern vernacular, don't get it twisted. There are no multiple guys. Our God is one. And so just to make sure you know, as you say, to keep this theme going, there is only one God. And so whether he's the guy that appeared before Moses or the guy that appeared before Gideon or the guy that appeared before Jacob, there's only one God. And so how would you assess that from, if someone said that to you? Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. You have to ask the question, why does it say this? What's the need for it? Why does Moses think that the people of Israel need to hear this? And I'll throw in one other thing here that's interesting. So although I don't try and establish the doctrine of the Trinity on the fact that plural nouns are used for God, right? For example, Elohim, the word for God is a plural. Adonim and Adonai, a plural, all sorts of plural nouns are used for God. Although I wouldn't say, oh, these by themselves are proof of the doctrine of the Trinity. It is striking that God refuses to use a plural term. And what makes this more striking is if you look at the pagan nations around Israel that actually believed in multiple gods, they only referred to the individual deity whenever it was in view, right? Any individual deity by the singular, right? So they would refer to the pantheon as Elohim, as gods. But if used for a singular being, they wouldn't use the plural typically. And so it's interesting, why does Moses and the other authors of the Old Testament prefer the plural term? Okay, so on the one hand, why does God say to the people of Israel, one, don't misunderstand. But then on the other hand, by far and away, choose to use plural terms for himself. And then here's what even throws this even more into our view. What's interesting is in Hebrew, it usually will use this plural term God in conjunction with a singular verb. So for example, the first verse of the Bible, it says Barashit Barah Elohim. That's in the beginning God created. The word create there is Barah. And if you just had that word, if you were to set it before a Hebrew speaker and say, what does this mean? He'd say, it means he created. He created, yes. It's singular, right? You might just say created, but there's a subject embedded in that form of the verb. And so literally it's he created. So you have on the one hand, in the beginning Elohim plural, Barah, right? Barah, he created. So you've got this plural noun in conjunction with a singular verb. So pretty fascinating. And guys, what he's getting at is, in English, we have to have, we use a pronoun before the verb. The good thing or the cool thing about Hebrew and Greek is that you don't have to. And so this word right here that he's speaking of, this word Barah, it means he. He created, I'm not gonna mean he means created, but it means he created. Now there's ways to say that she created or they created, but that's what he's getting at, guys. Yeah, at the bottom of your thing, if you put it back on Barah there, you could see it's a third masculine, right? Third masculine singular. So Barah is third masculine, he, right? Singular. So yeah, I'm not making it up. It uses Elohim with Barah. So a plural noun with a singular verb. Now again, nobody should misunderstand me. I'm not saying, voila, the Trinity on the basis of this. I'm simply pointing out that you've got this interesting phenomena. The Old Testament writers prefer to use a plural term for God. And Moses goes out of his way to tell Israel, hey look, Yahweh is one. In case you didn't get the memo, right? But why wouldn't they have gotten the memo? That would have been point one. That's just interesting because they didn't, the funny thing is they didn't have to use a plural. And again, like you said, there is no, it's not like, you know, case closed once you see that. Okay, but here's some evidence. Here's some evidence. Here's just the, all this collection of evidence that's laid before our feet. You have to be taught to walk away from the Trinity. You have to be taught to deny it because you can't keep denying all these different, and the only thing that people come up with is to disagree with it is it doesn't make sense logically. For example, and I've seen a couple of times in the chats already and I've heard over and over, I'm pretty sure you have just logical conclusions that people can't wrap their heads around. You mean to tell me that Jesus was praying, that God was praying to God, that he was praying to, that that makes sense to me. And I think the problem that happens is we get hung up too often on what does and doesn't make sense to us. Remembering that we are a few thousand years removed, we're not an Eastern ancient culture like they were. We are a Western modern culture. And so sometimes things don't make sense to us. Just like, hey, listen, if you are in your 20s or your teens, maybe in your 30s, there's things that you guys do or say that doesn't make sense to me, right? And so if that can happen in just a short one or two generations removed, certainly because things are said or spoken of or done a certain way a few thousand years ago, that don't make sense. That's not the issue. That's not the point. The point is, if logic is all you've got to go off of and there are, because you can't find, I'm still waiting for the Scripture. I'm still waiting, guys, for the Scripture that tells me that Jesus is not God. I'm still waiting for that passage. So I think we need to just, and I know it's hard, but sometimes just say, I'm going to do my best to divorce my logic from what's happening here. So anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there. And so you had some passages. I'm sorry, go ahead. Can I throw something in here real quick that I think will be helpful, hopefully helpful to people? Yeah. One of the things that people need to get settled for themselves quickly, as long as they're going to be talking about their beliefs being Christian or something like that, is that Christianity is a religion of divine revelation. And that doesn't mean that Christianity is irrational, but it does oppose what's called rationalism. Right? Rationalism is the idea that something has to make sense to us in order for it to be true, as opposed to saying what God has revealed to us is true. And our duty now is to try and apprehend as best we can. We're not in a position to judge God's revelation. We're subject to God and to what God has revealed. And here's how, this is what's helpful to me, is Jesus in Matthew 11 said, nobody knows the Son except the Father. Nobody knows the Father except the Son. And those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. So knowledge of God is a matter of divine revelation. God is the one who makes Himself known to us. God alone knows Himself, knows Himself fully and is in a position to tell us who He is and what He's like. We are not. We are His creatures and we're subject to His revelation. Now somebody at the end of the day wants to say, I don't accept that. It's not true and so forth. The better thing for them to do from my perspective is just to say, hey, look, I'm not going to pretend that I'm Christian. I'm not going to pretend that I'm following the Bible here. But it's fundamentally wrong for somebody to say, I'm following the Bible, but I'm going to reject anything that doesn't immediately make sense to me. Right now, I don't think there's anything unintelligible about the Trinity or irrational. But I do, and here's this one other point that I would make. A lot of times people confuse their experience with logic. So let me give you an example here. If I say that a unicorn exists and I've seen it and somebody says, that's illogical. No, that's not illogical. There's nothing illogical about a unicorn. A unicorn, the basic idea is a horse with a horn. There's nothing illogical in that. It doesn't violate any law of thought. It doesn't violate the law of non-contradiction, the law of identity, the law of excluded middle. No logical principle is violated if I say a unicorn exists. What is true, though, is that nobody has experienced a unicorn, and so they initially respond skeptically and say, yeah, I don't think that's true. What you're saying is not right. But that's the mistake, moving from experience to saying it's illogical. What you should be saying here is, we have no evidence for this or this is not consistent with my experience or something like that. Now, here's why this is relevant. People assume, because they've never encountered another being who exists in three persons, that it's illogical. But this is the confusion. They're confusing their experience of all finite beings being one person, one being, and then concluding, oh, this is illogical to say that God, who is infinite, is one being in three persons. No, that's not illogical. There's no violation of logic in the doctrine of the Trinity. It's not something that we can point to in our experience and say there's another being like this, but there's nothing illogical about that. Yeah. Do you think, though, and here's where we, where it gets rough for some people, and so I want to get your taken. I know you won't back down from this. Is it necessary from your, as far as you believe, that you must believe in the Trinity for salvation? Yes, but I would say that I'm not suggesting that people come with a perfect understanding of the Trinity. I think there's a rudimentary, experiential knowledge of God that anybody who's truly converted has and that will grow. For example, I mean, I knew myself as a saved person to have been saved by the Father through the Son in the Spirit. I mean, I couldn't have articulated all that theologically as I could now, but I knew this was my experience in salvation, that God, the Father, loved me, gave the Son who is one with him in nature. He is as Son what his Father is. The Son took on human nature and died for me, and the Divine Spirit came and gave me new life and the gifts of repentance and faith so that I could be united to Christ through faith. So that was my experience as a Christian, and as I'm reading the Bible, I'm learning about this God who loved me and saved me and growing in my understanding. But if somebody were to ask me to articulate that at the time, I'm not sure how badly I would have been fumbling around. I knew that God and I grew in my ability to accurately express and defend that. Now, the proof that this is fundamental, but first of all, I think it should be obvious to people that there's nothing more fundamental than God to Christianity. One way I like to put this is, hopefully nobody would deny that the gospel is fundamental to Christianity, no gospel, no Christianity. Well, the Trinity is fundamental to the gospel. Maybe we'll look at some ideas on this in a moment, but briefly, I would just point out that the gospel is what I was just basically describing, that the Father planned, purposed, redemption, sent the Son into the world to take on man's nature, our nature, live in our place, die on our behalf, and rise again, conquering death for us and thereby ascending into heaven, representing us before the Father and pouring out His Spirit by whom we are able now to call upon the Father through the Son. So this is a Trinitarian work at the basis of the gospel, and this is the God we come to know through salvation, right? That's why the fundamental right of Christianity, the initiatory right by which we signify that this person's been set off from the world is baptism into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is like point one in Christianity, right? A person comes to faith and this name is placed upon them. Just like the Aaronic priest would bless people. In number six, Moses, through God, instructs Aaron and the priest to bless the people, saying, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. So there's a three-fold repetition of the name there. But then Moses goes on to say, this is what's happening in this benediction. He says, so you shall put my name upon them. So in this blessing, God's name is being put upon His people, marking them off, saying, these are mine. That's what's happening in baptism. The name of Father, Son, and Spirit is being put upon the person coming to baptism in faith. And so this is the beginning of the Christian life. It begins as something fundamentally Trinitarian. And so again, I just to say, I wouldn't say a person has to be able to articulate this in the way a theologian might, though they should be growing in their ability to do so, reading the scriptures and good books and all that, and listening to the sermons. But yeah, this is a fundamental truth of Christianity, a saving doctrine.  People just get so, I think they get so wrapped up in the fact because they've heard somebody. By the way, guys, let me just say this. Just because of the condition of the world, obviously, guys, you ought to know that it's not like the world is getting better. We're not getting better. The world is not going up all of a sudden in 10 years, 20 years, 100 years, it's going to be a lot better place to live. No, that's not happening. God is not coming back. Christ is not coming back to a perfect world. He's coming back to a fallen world, more fallen than when he left it. And so what's going to happen is every doctrine, and I mean every doctrine, every doctrine, especially the key doctrines, the essential doctrines, they're going to be poked and prodded and whittled away. And so that everything that we believe, including did Jesus Christ literally die for us, those are going to be challenged. The more we live, the more we go on, all the key doctrines are going to be challenged. And so I think it's kind of funny. Here's something logical, guys, to think about. Does it make sense that all of a sudden more and more people are coming out against the Trinity? Does that make sense? In thinking about how we're going, think about it, guys. Pick a doctrine, any doctrine. Pick a belief of the Bible, and you're going to find that more and more people, if it's true, are going to deny it. That's what's going to happen, more and more. But the only one that you guys say is the truth, more and more people are adopting it, which is that there is no such thing as a Trinity. Does that even make sense? Everything else is going this way, but the Trinity is going that way. And if your issue is your hang-up is the Trinity, well, fine. I still have this ongoing thing, guys. If you can show me, if you can prove to me that Jesus isn't God, well, then you've done something.  We'll leave the T-word to the side because it triggers you guys. Leave the word Trinity to the side for the moment.  Can anyone out there deny that God did not take on flesh? Because, again, we've got these Old Testament verses where they're there, they call him God, and the Bible does not, nowhere in the Bible does that belief get refuted. And so it's clear that God takes on flesh. And it's clear that Jesus is called God, that Jesus is God. So I'm looking for someone who wants to take that challenge. Now, it won't be the same, Anthony, the challenge that I used to have, much the same with one saved, always saved. I would give them a passage, and I would have them to tear apart my Greek exegesis.  I would delete the channel. Now, obviously, there's a big difference, right? Delete the channel versus you delete your Google account. You can just go and pick up another Google account, right? But to do this all over again would be kind of difficult. And so thus far, Anthony, no one has refuted this. I said, well, go find a Greek scholar, go find someone to refute what I've said about this issue of eternal security. But then on this issue, as far as God's existence, still no one has refuted, whether it be John 1, whether it be any of the Old Testament passages, no one has refuted it. And so the only issue that people are left with is it just doesn't make sense to me. That's it. And if that's all you've got, well, I would say, I would pray, Lord, help it make sense to me and help me not to deny things that don't necessarily make sense to me. But that being said, I do want to cover some of the passages that we have. These are more dealing with the Trinity and Salvation, right? The ones that you gave me earlier? Well, no, I mean, we don't have to go there per se unless you want to continue to talk about Salvation. I just thought there's a good chance I might bring those up in the lead up to all this. But yeah, if you're... Well, let me ask you this question, because it keeps coming up. I want you to deal with it. I have answered this question over and over and over again, but I see it keeps coming up. Could you please address to some of the people, though I know not all are going to listen, but some will. This whole issue that the Trinity was something that was conjured up at the Council of Nicaea or some thing of the imagination of the Catholic Church, can you address that, please? Yeah, it'd be interesting to me. I see a lot of this stuff online now and you can't really ask the person certain questions like you could if you were face to face. Obviously, I've heard this in face to face discussions, but it'd be interesting to ask anybody who's currently bringing it up. What if you actually read on the Council of Nicaea, right? What scholarly works have you read and more importantly, what primary sources have you read? I can tell you that anybody who's making this objection can't answer well to any of those questions because, for example, if I bring up a number of names and I'm going to bring them up so that people can go check them out so that they can actually be informed as Christians on things like the Trinity in history and that sort of thing. There are a couple of names that are the go to guys with respect to the history of Nicaea and the stuff that led up to it. One scholar is Louis Ayers and he wrote a book on Nicaea. You can look it up. It's on Amazon. Another would be Khaled Anatolius which is called Retrieving Nicaea and then a third would be John Bear who's got a series of books on the Council of Nicaea and things that led up to it. So that would be some of the secondary literature and those are the upper crust of that literature in terms of current scholarship. But if you go to the primary sources besides the secondary stuff that I'm talking about where you'll learn the same thing because they're dealing with the primary stuff but you go to the primary sources. The Council of Nicaea was not called because the church seriously thought that Arius had a case and some wild-eyed bishops thought we need to come up with this other doctrine that nobody believed before called the deity of Christ or the Trinity. That's just not what happened. What happened was Arius was a parish preacher in Bacchus of Alexandria. So in the fourth century there were these different positions that people had and I don't buy all these ecclesiastical positions per se but he was a parish preacher so he preached at a particular church and there was a bishop of Alexandria known as Alexander. So Alexander of Alexandria. I actually named my son after Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria. Alexander was just teaching classic Christianity. He was the bishop, right? Arius was this preacher and he began to be annoyed at the stuff he was hearing from Alexander. So Alexander would say things like always father, always son and Arius was just driven crazy by that because he couldn't tolerate that kind of thing. Arius would say that didn't make sense to him. But now understand these are Greek speakers. Alexander spoke Greek. He could read the Greek New Testament not because he learned Greek but because that was his language. So he's just looking at it as he didn't have to go to seminary to learn the biblical languages. He just grew up reading it. Well, Alexander, based on something as clear as John 1.1 knows that the grammar there demands that Jesus is eternal. Right? We sometimes focus on the third clause where it says the word was God. But the first clause says in the beginning was the word en arche en halagos. In the beginning was the word and it uses what's called the imperfect tense, meaning that the word already was when everything else became. So the created universe became, but the word was. In fact, there's this intentional contrast in John between the word who was and everything else. So in verse 1 it says in the beginning was the word, but now look at verse 3. All things were made through him, but literally if you look at the Greek word there, it means became. Everything became. See that in the bottom of the screen there it says to become. So there's an intentional contrast between the word and the world. The word was the world became. And that contrast is found throughout John 1. So for example in verse 6 it says there came a man who was sent from God. But the Greek literally says there became a man sent from God. It's making a contrast between Jesus and John. John is not Jesus. Jesus is the word who was. John is a man who became, right? And this not only appears numerous times in the prologue, but also throughout the gospel. When Jesus said in John 8 58 before Abraham was I am, it's literally before Abraham became I am. Right? So it's the same word in verse 8 58. So it says So it says So if you go to Genesthai you'll see it's the same to become. Genomai. Agnetta in John 1 and sorry, Genesthai here in 8 58 forms of the word Genomai in Greek. Without getting into the explanation of all that they just are formed from that word. So it's this contrast that's being made. In fact in 17 5 of John it's Jesus said Father glorify me with you with the glory that I had with you before the world was. It's again became, before the world became. So okay long way to get at this John is saying that the word always was he identifies the word as the son in the prologue and in verse 2 it says the same was in the beginning with God. This is the basis of Alexander's remark always father always son in fact those are correlative terms right you can't have a father without a son a son without a father. So if the son's eternal the father's eternal the father's eternal the son's eternal and Arius objected to this abide by this. So he began to cause a stink about it and eventually this led to a council being called but what's interesting and this is what a lot of people don't know when the bishops met at Nicea from all over the Christian world there wasn't much discussion before Arianism was just booted out right it wasn't like yeah they were puzzled they're not sure what do we think the real dispute the real dispute among the council members was what word do we use to bring out what we're saying in other words how do we encapsulate this right whenever this is why it's funny when people object to the word trinity they don't understand how the language works. We use words as shorthand for larger ideas so that we don't have to use five sentences to say something to say in a breath with one word the term president for example is a way of encapsulating a bigger idea instead of saying the man who leads the country and all the other stuff that goes along with being what it means to be president we just use the word president so if the framers or the authors of our constitution didn't use that word or whatever it would have been entirely appropriate for somebody to come along later and use that word and say oh we're referring to these ideas found in our foundational documents right well the council members are saying how do we what word can we use to say this is what the orthodox faith is and we repudiate what Arius is saying and that's where they got hung up was over the choice of a term and sometimes the reason there was dispute over the term is because some people were saying well heretics could use a word this way so that's where a lot of the problem came in the real dispute was not over whether Christ is God it's how to articulate it in a way that steers clear of Arianism and the heresy of modalism that had already been rejected the heresy of adoptionism which is the idea that Jesus was just a man who was adopted into Godhood somehow there are all these notions and they wanted to use a word that would communicate the biblical truth without caring to heresy but I could easily read for you patristic citations before the council of Nicaea where the fathers of the church and I'm just using that term to mean people that came before us where they call Christ God they identify the spirit as God and they think of one God so I don't know if you want me to do that but I could while we're here it's kind of even while we even started off in the video with a little intro with you and Brandon just the grammatical rules that are here in John 1 with this predicate nominative as far as Lagos and Theos can you go ahead and let me say it so a fresh voice who probably had better than I could say it anyway go ahead and explain to them what you tried to you did a wonderful job explaining to Brandon even though he was not trying to listen but go ahead and explain this C clause of John 1 okay so first thing to note is that in Greek it's an inflected language which means that words change their form depending on the place or function they have in the sentence so if a noun is the subject of the sentence it has a certain form it's called nominative if it's the direct object of the sentence it'd be in the accusative form there's basically five right nominative genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative vocative is not used much in the New Testament but so one further thing here is that you can have a you could have a word that's not per se a noun that's being used as a noun and that's known as a substantive right so as an example to refer to somebody as you can say that somebody is an only begotten of their father right that's that can be used as a substantive as a noun so Jesus is called the only begotten right in John 118 well there's a textual barrier there without getting into it but there are words that can function as nouns even if they're not per se and so interestingly in that third clause there you've actually got two nouns in the nominative form right theos and laugos are both nominative and theos is the greek word for god and laugos is the greek phrase for word and in this case what's going on is the theos is being used so the subject of the sentence is the laugos and in this case that's indicated by the use of the article ha laugos right there's different ways to determine the subject of a sentence but in this case for simplicity's sake it's the word ha laugos the word and theos is a predicate nominative so it's predicating this of the word right theos it's saying the word is this now in greek ordinarily you'd have the subject you'd have something like laugos ha laugos and theos that would be a normal way of putting things so the predicate nominative would come after the verb however if it's placed for the verb you've got an unusual like it doesn't occur in greek but it's significant in its difference from ordinary ways of doing things when this happens it can have one of two possible meanings it can either be definite or qualitative it's not indefinite okay so explain a little more here in greek for those for the benefit of whoever can follow this if you have a word without the article it can be definite okay but that's usually how you would render something if it's indefinite you'd not use the article the article is a tip off that it's definite it can't be indefinite if it has the article but if it lacks the article that's how you would do it in english but again it's not always the case that if it doesn't have the article and it's after the verb that it's indefinite well a lot of people don't understand a predicate, a preverbal predicate nominative a preverbal predicate nominative doesn't have to be articular in order for it not to be indefinite right this is the mistake of the Jehovah's Witnesses they'll say because it doesn't have the article the greek word chi there just means and that's the conjunction and chi and theos god ain was ha the lagoos word so here theos the predicate nominative comes before the verb which is uncharacteristic and in these constructions it means that it's either definite or qualitative so if you were to pick up a greek grammar book by somebody like dan Wallace or somebody else they'd point out that when you look at the various occasions of this kind of construction a preverbal predicate nominative we have certain examples of it meaning something definite or something qualitative we have no certain examples of it ever being understood in an indefinite sense in other words it cannot mean the word was a god that's that's the first thing that the no certain examples of such a construction being used that way so the question is is it definite or qualitative in other words is it saying the word was the god which in the context here's the issue if it was the god articular it would mean he's the father right so if it's definite it would mean he's the father but that would contradict it in the second clause because what does the second clause say it says the word was with the god right so it means he was with god and the one he was with was the father if people just read the context they'll see it's the father that he was with verse 14 says the word became flesh and dwelt among us we beheld his glory the glory is of the only begotten from the father full of grace and truth verse 18 says no man has seen god at any time but the only begotten god who's at the father's side he has made him known so the one the word with was the father so so if it were definite here then it would be identifying the word as the father but it's not definite it's qualitative which means this here's the distinction so it's not definite meaning it's not saying he's the father it's not indefinite saying that he's something less than god it's qualitative meaning that he is by nature god he is what the father is he's not the person of the father but he is by nature what the father is now maybe you can ask me a question in case that's you don't think I was clear enough it's the sort of thing where a good bit of background is necessary to really the predicate noun tip describes what the what the Lagos is the predicate noun is in this case being Theos describes what the Lagos is or belongs to let me address this real quick there's a person I'm going to pull this back up on screen there's a person to see your name is critic I guess maybe critic that the greek says god was the word let me just stop you there what you're doing is you probably maybe you're looking at analenia or something like that and you're looking at it and you're seeing what this person is saying guys and god Kai Phaos and god Ayn Halagos was the word don't think that because you look at this and you see the word order that that's what it's saying it's not saying and god was the word there's a reason why Phaos is pushed to the to the front but don't just take and guys that's a good example of how sometimes especially if we don't fully understand something or we're trying to understand something don't quite get it and you see this word order and yeah the greek word order if we were just to render it in that word order says and god was the word but that's not how we say it in english there's a reason why you won't find english translation that says and god was the word it says and the word was god there's a reason why because word order doesn't matter we already know what the subject is and in this case the subject is halaga or the word and so it's not saying god was the word it's in the word was god that's the reason why so don't make that mistake because what you've done was you've built something off of a misunderstanding because you look at the word order and you applied it to your own understanding don't do that okay so I'm sorry I just wanted to bring that up you're about to make a big mistake yeah so I actually explained that right when we were going through the verse you did here what happens is this maybe like what happens is sometimes in the chats people you know how we do we get we get to paying into the chats and someone said something and so then I'm paying as to what Joe Bob said or what Mary Sue said and didn't hear didn't hear something that you literally just covered so someone says well why didn't Jesus declare the trinity he did he did declare the trinity he didn't say it the way and here's the thing if Jesus would have said the trinity there'd be something else that folks would have found to argue with people are going to find something to pull apart and so because he didn't explain it the way you want to or clearly as you would like to have done it he literally said it literally says that the word we know the word is Jesus that part's not disputed guys if you if you come away thinking that the word whatever whatever you think the word is if you think it's just a message it's just some philosophical thought whatever you think it is fine for the moment the word became flesh and we know who the word is we know that that's Jesus but John 1 says this grammatical rule that you cannot get around guys states that the word is God and so I don't know what you're looking for maybe some people are like Lazarus who Jesus said he wants to come back from hell and to warn his brothers some people that matter what the proof is you're not going to listen that's not on us that's not on the Bible that's not on Jesus or God that's on you clearly the word is Jesus and clearly the word is God Jesus in John 8 58 that Anthony was referencing he says he says he references Exodus the Jews understood that we understand that scholars understand that you don't understand that so the question is forget the scholars forget us even forget you the Jews picked up stones to kill him why? and he asked wait why do you want to stone me not for any good works anything that you've done or said no no no because you being a man you call yourself God now you don't have to take my word for it you don't have to take Anthony's word for it or any scholars today but the people who hated him what did they think that Jesus was saying they thought that he was saying that he's God and you know what Jesus did not say well no you guys got me confused no I'm not saying that at all no so I get that it bothers you but and I want to pull this passage up because I think it matters and I've covered this before you've covered this passage before this John 824 passage let me take this I don't know why I still have this up here this John 824 passage about why this is so important I'll go ahead and turn it back over to you Anthony but can you go ahead and explain to us what John 824 is actually saying actually so this whole text I mean I love John 8 let me make this observation several things really which to me it just shows not only the truth but the fact that it is the truth in other words you know it's telling us what is true but it's also demonstrating it to us in a way that I think it's there for the people that really want to see other people aren't going to learn these things but here's what's interesting so John's gospel begins in the prologue saying in the beginning was the word the word was God and then in verse 14 he says the word became flesh and dwelt among us right we beheld his glory the prologue the function of a prologue is to serve as a window to the rest of the narrative it's it's telling you how to view it it's telling you what to anticipate that sort of thing one of the things then verse 14 is signaling to us is that the word is himself the realization the reality that the temple was itself just a temporary shadow or type of right because the the greek in one 14 says the word became flesh and tabernacle among us it uses the same word used in the Old Testament to refer to God tabernacling among the Israelites his glory dwelling in the tabernacle and in the temple right so this is what John tells us and there was a whole feast that was instituted by God to celebrate this the time when God dwelt in their midst in a tabernacle in the tent and they dwelt in boost with him right in tabernacles the reason this is relevant because in John 7 through 10 the whole occasion is the feast of tabernacles that's the occasion that this is all taking place on one other element here that'll bring it into focus I hope in Deuteronomy 32 Moses gave Israel a song that they were to learn and sing in the future when they would commit a prophecy against him and he said he would turn his face from them in that day right so in Deuteronomy 32 you have the song in the chapter before it you're given the rationale for the song the song was to serve as a witness against Israel in the future so go down to verse 39 while I make this point the interesting thing is other things could be pointed out but Israel sang this song Sabbath of the feast of tabernacles so in the morning worship in the temple they would sing Exodus 15 the song of Moses at the deliverance from the sea and then in the evening they would sing Deuteronomy 32 so what I'm getting at is this song would have been ringing in the ears of the Jews on the occasion that Jesus was speaking in John 8 so look at verse 39 in verse 39 it says see now that I even I am he there's no God besides me I kill and I make alive I wound and I heal and there's none that can deliver out of my hand so the English here is not as exact as it should be the literal Hebrew expression when God says see now that I am he is any who it's literally I am in Greek it's rendered this is the song that the Israelites would have been singing now if you look at the Jewish of Deuteronomy 32 39 it paraphrases this listen to how the paraphrase goes it says when the word of the Lord will appear in the future to redeem his people he shall say to them I am he who is and who was and who shall be this is where John gets that expression that he uses in Revelation is from the Targams so according to the Targams the Jewish interpretations of this this is an expression that is spoken by the word right the memra in Aramaic the Dabbar in Hebrew Lagos in Greek so already in Judaism you have this concept of the word who speaks and acts and is worshiped and prayed to John identifies Jesus as that person here's this song in the Tabernacles God says I am and so on and so forth now if you go back to John 8 in John 8 Jesus actually says this I am expression three times one time it's referring to the past one time to the present one time to the future right so in 824 Jesus said you'll die in your sins for unless you believe that I am you'll die in your sins right so here you have this future or forward looking aspect to it in verse 28 Jesus says when you lift up the son of man then you will know that I am he I'm sorry in verse 24 he's saying unless you believe now right you'll die in your sins and then verse 28 he says when you lift up the son of man then you'll know that I am he in verse 22 that is the statement in Greek it's just ego and me and the third is in John 8 58 that's the crescendo right when the Jews want to kill them finally they get it it's like how to take you so long to get there so Jesus in this context I'm gonna show you one other thing in a minute but in John 8 during the Feast of Tabernacles when this expression is ringing in their ears a song that God said would testify against them and he'd hide his face from them.  When I'm lifted up then you'll know that I am, right, and then he says before Abraham became I am. What happens at the end of the chapter when the Jews reject Jesus? What does it say that Jesus did when they picked up stones to stone him? It says Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. Again, if you look at the Greek text here, compared to the Greek translation of Deuteronomy 31 and 32, numerous times God says he's going to hide himself from Israel on that day when they rebel against him. Okay, one last point. Go to John 10. In John 10, this is part of the whole context. In John 10, Jesus is going to say something and all of you are going to be hitting your foreheads saying, I never saw that connection. In John, out of his hand, yeah, okay, 28. In John, yeah, go ahead.  That is literally an echo of Deuteronomy 32-39. So Jesus had identified himself as the I am in John 8. In John 10, still dealing with the same basic context, Jesus picks up the rest of the language of Deuteronomy 32 and ascribes it to himself, there's no one that can deliver out of my hand. You pick up any Greek New Testament. But let's pause. Let's pause it for a second, Anthony. I don't know if you guys are catching that because it's almost as though God is saying, listen, for all of the rest of us who are a little slow, let me make this, let me put this in several different ways that you cannot miss this. The first thing that I would have hoped that someone would have seen that as you read this, and maybe people aren't actually paying attention, but it literally says, and there is none able to deliver you out of my hand. This whole issue that we're also getting rid of, tell into this issue about salvation is right there because what do people always say? Well, no one can snatch you out of my hand. We had this issue over and over again about this. And I focused on the C cause of John 10 over and over again, but guys is here and no one will snatch. I'm sorry, I focused on the B cause, but on the C cause, there it is guys. And so to me, I think it's evident, but it's also like, wow, look at you guys and how you just put these, what did Sherlock Holmes says there's nothing more deceptive than the obvious clue, and here are these obvious clues that are laid right here before us guys. And so the issue is maybe stop typing. Here's my typing guys. Stop typing and maybe just, just if you disagree or you're prone to disagree, just listen because what's not happening is even with my left eye, half my left eye on the chat, when you guys are disagreeing, you're not disagreeing with scripture, disagreeing with logic. I don't accept it. I don't like it. Well, you don't have to like it. You don't have to, it doesn't have to make sense to you in order for you to just say, you know what, I trust it. And that is, and granted, you have a basis to trust it guys. This isn't something Johnny come lately. Guy didn't just, you know what, I'm busy here in heaven. Let me just send some, you know what, you're not doing anything. Can you run and redeem these people? No, guys, that's not what happened. And that should, it should cause you, I'm holding back the preaching, but it should cause you to love him all the more where every other religion requires you to do something. He does something for you, something that you could not do. As a matter of fact, you would not do. You don't want to do, but he does the heavy lifting. He is the one that supplies his blood. And so I just, I don't know how, how, how many keys, how many clues that would need to be preached or put before you for you. So you know what, I get it. Now granted, I was slow too. And when I got, no one has ever became a believer in Christ, fully understanding the Trinity. No one. It's never happened because even as the more mature you get, you still struggle to find ways to fully explain it. We're trying to find the best ways to put it in words, but you cannot say that you have the Holy Spirit in you, that you are believer in Christ, which means you necessarily have the Holy Spirit in you and you are vehemently, aggressively rejecting this belief. Then the issue is going to be that you're going to have to ask yourself, am I really a Christian? Stop with the childishness, guys, with the foolishness saying that this is something that was put together by the Catholic Church. It was not. If there was something that was put together by, what's his name again, in 321, 325, what's his name? My mind just went blank all of a sudden. Alexander Athanasius. The Nicene Creed, that Constantine put this together. Again, like Anthony said, you guys don't have any proof for this. Someone told you this or you read a book about this, right? A book about a book that had a negative bent towards the Bible that have a, that has a desire to impugn the Bible. And so you've taken it and run with it. But there's no proof about what you're saying. As a matter of fact, all the proofs, they said the Nicene Council is not to invent something that no one else would have agreed with or the Catholic Church came up with this. So stop it, guys. Listen, you can fight it all you want to, but if you eat, we, let me put it back on the screen. Let me put it back on the screen.  And there's a reason why he puts it this way. So guys, do this at your peril. That's all I can say. And so let's, let's, let's move on a little bit. We may take a, take a few questions as we go, but how do you see the Trinity even working in our salvation? The involvement of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit involved in our, in our salvation. How do you, how do you bring that to light, Anthony? Yeah. Well, one thing to be said is that all of the acts of God add extra.  There's never, you know, one person's over here doing this and others over here doing that. There, there's always this working together on the part of all three persons. And so for example, if we ask about creation, right, just, just before getting to salvation, yeah. And who created? Well, I mean, sure, there are passages that talk about the Father. We believe in one God, the Father almighty, right, creator of heaven and earth that says in the creed. And there's passages that say that, right. Malachi two says, do we not all have one father did not one God create us? So creation is ascribed to the father, but it's also ascribed to the son. So for example, John one one, it says all things came into being through him. Colossians one says, you know, everything, all dominions and powers and rulers and authority, everything was created for him and through him and so forth. Hebrews one says, through him, he made the world, meaning the father through the son. Hebrews 110, it quotes Psalm 102, the father speaking about the son says in the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands, they'll perish, but you'll remain your years will never end and so forth. So the father says this about the son, you created everything. Right. So there are passages that say the son did it. And then there are passages that ascribe creation to the spirit. We see the spirit's presence already in Genesis one, two, and the language used there is it basically bespeaks that he is the one that's super intending holding it all together. Right. So it says the spirit of God was brooding over the surface of the waters. And that word for brooding is used only one other time in the Torah, the first five books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. In Deuteronomy 32, actually, where God is said to be hovering over his people like an eagle hovers over its young. And so there's an inclusion, right, where Moses begins and ends on kind of a similar note, the book of the law. And so the idea is that the spirit is the one that's maintaining things. But if you look at Job 33 and 34, it speaks of creation and the spirit is said to be the one that created man.   So all three persons are involved in the work of creation. And that's true of anything you want to talk about. So when we come to something like salvation, think first of all, of just like the historical events, because we talk about redemption in an objective sense, meaning its accomplishment, and then also its application. Right. There are certain things that happened in history that God did. And then there is the application of those things to us, right, the benefits of those things that are applied to us. So in terms of the history, the events themselves, we talk about the incarnation of the sun. So who is it that scripture attributes the virgin birth to? Well, I think most people would say the Holy Spirit, right? And that's true. That's true. The spirit is spoken of in Luke one.  So the spirit is thrown into the foreview, if you will, with respect to the incarnation. But interestingly, Jesus is quoted in Hebrews 10. So the author of Hebrews takes a Psalm from the Old Testament, and he says these are the words of Jesus, right? And in this, when the author of Hebrews is quoting Jesus from the Psalms, he says, sacrifice and offering you did not desire a body you prepared for me. So Jesus is predicting through the psalmist that the Father is the one who prepared a body for him. So now you have the spirit and the Father involved in the conception of Christ. But Philippians two, interestingly, attributes this to Jesus as well. In Philippians two, it says existing, although existing in the form of God, he did not consider the equality that he had with God, something to be used to his own advantage, but humbled himself by taking the form or nature of a servant, right? So the incarnation is something Jesus did. So there you see all three persons active in the incarnation. Now, I could do this with every aspect. I mean, you know, somewhat hyperbolically, it's not like scripture tells us everything. But it certainly gives us a lot and there's more than people often see. But if you think of the resurrection of Christ, who is it that raised Jesus from the dead? Well, ordinarily, it says the Father, right? So Romans 10 says, if you believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and confess with your mouth, God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved, right? So it's saying God referring here to the Father as the one who raised him from the dead. More explicitly, Galatians 1 1 says, Paul says he's an apostle sent not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. So the Father raised Jesus from the dead. But Jesus in various places identified himself as the agent of his own resurrection. And that I think people should expect that to be true. How can Jesus be, say to himself, I am the resurrection and the life, meaning that he is the source of eternal life for people. He is the one in whom they will all have life. If he doesn't have the ability to raise himself, then he can't make this promise, right? And he raises people from the dead and says he's going to raise them from the dead in the future, John 5 numerous passages.  And in three days, I will raise it up. And then John tells us he was referring to the temple of his body. In John 10, Jesus said, I have authority to lay my life down authority to take it up again. So again, identifying himself as the agent of his own resurrection. But then you have the spirit. The spirit is identified as the one who raised Christ. So 1 Peter 3 18 says he was put to death in the flesh, made alive by the spirit, or some translations will say in the spirit. Romans 1 says that of the God, it says that of Jesus, Paul speaking about the gospel of God concerning his son, who was born a descendant of David according to the flesh, but was declared to be the son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead according to the spirit of holiness. So what Paul is saying there is that in his humanity, he is a descendant of David, but the resurrection demonstrated him to be far more than that. And the resurrection took place by the spirit, the spirit raised from the dead. What is I think is interesting. And you don't have to be a scholar Hebrew or Greek to get to see this two things that link Jesus and God, the father and God, the son, two things that link them. One, and this is what you were kind of going over here, they function in the same way doing the same things. And so you can't keep again, if you ask who created the earth, well, God did God, the father, God, the son, God, the spirit who raised Jesus. And so but then also you start seeing some of these same or forgiving sins. That's only God can do that. The Jews made that clear, but then we see Jesus doing the same thing. Excuse me. We see Jesus doing things that only the father is taking worship. Only one person can receive worship that's God, but Jesus takes it gladly. And then we see both of them being characterized by some of the same names.  Well, we're told that that's God, but then also put themselves that that is Jesus. Who is the great judge? Well, God is as well as Jesus. And so you have these terms, these descriptive terms that are made of God, the father, but we also see them being attributed to Jesus. And so Jesus is a pretty blasphemous person if he isn't God. That's just, I think people miss that.  How do you say that John 17.5, he will share his glory with no one, but here Jesus is blaspheming, got to be, this has got to be blasphemy to say, give me back the glory that I had with you in the beginning, but we're already told that God won't share his glory with anyone. So we got a problem guys.  He's crazy. He's wacky. He's whacked out, right? He can't be. And so we need another sacrifice, or he really is who we say he is. And who calls him God? Well, Thomas calls him God. The Jews say that he's calling himself God, but then God calls him God in Hebrews. And so how many more witnesses do we need for you to say that, okay, God says he's God, and Jesus says he's God, and the Jews, his enemies call him God, well then maybe he is. So anyway, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but so we see the work of the Trinity present in salvation. Go ahead and continue. Yeah. So there I was just showing that in terms of the historical events by which our redemption is accomplished are works that involve all three persons. I could talk about the cross here and the activity of the persons. One thing I'll throw in in Hebrews where the author of Hebrews says that Jesus offered himself up through the eternal spirit to God. So there you have the spirit's involvement as an example. But yeah, you could just keep doing this with everything involved in the outworking of redemption, the accomplishment of it, the objective aspect of it, right?  And this involves at every step of the way the Father, the Son and the Spirit. But then when it comes to the application of it, it also involves the persons of the Trinity. So if you want to talk about being called, right, effectual calling that call of God that results in a person turning to Christ and being saved or you want to talk about, doesn't matter what it is, each person of the Trinity is somehow ascribed an involvement in that. So I mean, think for example of, well, one of my favorite texts on this, and I didn't mention it to you before Ephesians one, because in Ephesians one, you've got an outline really of moving from eternity to the objective accomplishment, to the subjective application of it to us by the Holy Spirit, right? So if you look at Galatians one, Galatians or Ephesians, I'm sorry, Ephesians one. Oh, hey, I just, I could blow up my screen so I can see two. So if you go to verse three, and this, you know, really interesting in Greek from verse three to like verse 14, it's all one sentence. So it's like a monster to try and diagram. That was one of these passages, one of those where you start learning Greek, they tell you, be ready for these participle phrases and so forth. If you don't get them, you're gonna have a hard time reading Greek. And so the longest sentence Paul has the longest sentences in the world. So in verse three, notice the focus here is the father, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which, or with which he has blessed us in the beloved. So notice here in these first several verses, the focus is on the father, right? He chose us, he chose us in him. We have all spiritual blessings by God's appointment in Christ. All this is his doing, right? And so this is why Paul can say to the praise of his glorious grace, that's going to be a constant refrain throughout these verses to the praise of his glorious grace. But now if you go to verse seven, the focus becomes Jesus. In him, because he mentioned Jesus, now he says the beloved, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we've obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. So there's that refrain again, right? So verses three through six are on, talk about the father's role in redemption, verses seven through 12, then talk about the son's role in redemption. Now verse 13, it says in him Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory, that third refrain. So father, son and spirit, and one way that this has been expressed in song, I don't know if anybody else has heard it. Often I say this and nobody seems to know what I'm referring to, but there's an old little song that just says, purchased or chosen by the father, purchased by the son, sealed by the spirit, blessed God, three in one, just a nice little encapsulation of Ephesians one. There you see all three persons in salvation. And if you want to talk about, well here, take the last statement in 13 and 14 where it says we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Now certainly the Spirit is the one who's primarily put into the foreground when it comes to this. That's his special act in redemption, but it's not as if it's the only thing he does. He's not involved in everything else or as if the father and the son aren't also involved in this. The whole idea here of the spirit as a seal, guaranteeing our inheritance is, among other things, there's more obviously, but the Spirit is the one who seals us. He's the one who protects us, keeps us, guards us. This salvation is ours. He is the assurance of our final attainment of what has been promised to us by the Father on account of Christ. And certainly, we've already read passages where Jesus says that he's the one who keeps his sheep. He says, I give them eternal life, nobody can take them out of my hand. So when it says here the Spirit's the one who seals us, it doesn't mean Jesus isn't involved. He's our shepherd. He's our king, our guard. He defends and protects us and camps around us as the psalmist says. So it doesn't matter what you want to talk about. In fact, even something as basic to the Christian life as prayer is fundamentally Trinitarian. We pray to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. Now this doesn't mean we can't pray to the Son or to the Spirit. It's just talking about this is ordinarily the mode of prayer that we pray to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. Even that assumes the divinity of the three persons. But Jesus made it clear that we can pray to him. In John 14, Jesus said, anything you ask me in my name, that I'll do. In 1 Timothy 1, Paul says, I thank Christ Jesus, my Lord. And he starts ticking off all these reasons for which he's thankful. He's praying to Christ. You have Stephen praying to Christ in Acts 7. He looks up and he sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God and he says, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And then he says, Lord, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. So Stephen prays to Jesus. You've got numerous examples of this in scripture. So whether you're talking about the accomplishment of redemption, whether you're talking about the application of redemption, whether you're talking about living out the Christian life, it's Trinitarian through and through. I think one of my, I get attacked for it, but I know you'll agree with this. But in John 3, this being born from above, this being when Jesus says that you must be born again, that is the spirit gathering. What's funny is sometimes how we almost, we forget about the poor Holy Spirit, right? Because sometimes we just forget about the Holy, we have these little theological discussions and we forget that there is the Holy Spirit there. But this is a work of him as Jesus states at the end of John, not the end of John 3, but in John 3. And he says, so it is how the wind goes here and there. No one knows where it's going. So it is everyone that's born of the spirit. And so here we see the work of the spirit before I'm doing anything. And this was said that God would do in Ezekiel that I, God, will put my spirit in you. And so I just, it's just amazing. Just how all of this just, it just comes together there. But this is how you guys, this is how you know your, your, your doctrine is, is, is good or if it's shaping up to be something good. When your own doctrine doesn't interfere with other parts of your doctrine, right? And so far nothing that was said tonight interferes with any other aspect. And what we didn't do was we didn't throw in again our logic. We didn't throw in because this would happen a lot of times. I'm just going to say his name just because, because I'm not saying anything negative about him, but what he does a lot, this is a latent flower. I'm sure you know who he is. One of the things that he does a lot, I'm not, I'm not coming at him, but I'm just saying that, that this happens is he uses an awful lot of stories, anecdotal stories. You know, here's the example of this. Here's exactly, you know, well, and someone says, said something about him using the Greek word, that doesn't seem to be a strong suit because oftentimes it's going to refute his point because words have meaning, right? These words have definitions and so choice meets.  But the point is this though, if all you have in the end are a bunch of stories or a bunch of examples that aren't necessarily, they might make sense to someone. But here we have Anthony has been just giving you scripture after scripture and kind of drawing them together, lining them together. And then if your only rebuttal is, so you're saying this or something logical or illogical, or you have a story to go with, some sort of anecdotal story, well then that's missing the main thing. The words are more important than how we would try to characterize it. Again, you don't ever have to use the term trinity to understand the trinity. You don't have to. You don't have to be able to put it in the words. As Anthony said, we try to find words to convey meaning and language is always ever evolving. The word cool today means something different than it did 40, 50 years ago. It just, it just does, right? Or the word bad. I remember when I was a little boy, bad did not mean good. Now it does. Now bad means something bad, horrible, not good now, or it also means something good. That's a bad boy right there, right? And so language kind of changes. And so the thing that we're always struggling to do is trying to find words to convey the actual meaning. But what he just went over, what was stated, I like that Montana Viking, what he just actually stated, you cannot deny that. He's even shown how it's woven through. And so how God is at work, why God? As a matter of fact, I think more than anything else though, guys. And I think you'll agree with this, Anthony. It shows the links that God would go through because could God have, if he decided to, decided to deliver us through some other means, he could have stated that, you know what, five Hail Marys is all it takes for you to go to heaven, right? It's all it takes. He's God. He could come up with any sort of rationale, any sort of reason, any sort of way to satisfy his own demands. He could have stated that, you know what, one calf and a fish, that's all, you know, but he didn't do that. He decided that the ultimate payment would be him shedding blood. I think that's amazing. I think that just shows the level of love that he has for his creation that what would satisfy the debt would be God the Son dying on the cross. I get floored every time I think of that, because you wouldn't do that for me. I wouldn't do it for you. You might do it for your child. You may do it for all your children, man.  But God did that for us. That's just, that's our triune God showing up and showing out as they say. So guys, let me go ahead. Let me say one thing real quick, because I love to make this point. You just gave me the occasion to do that. One thing that gets me about people who deny the deity of Christ is how they don't realize what they've done to a text as well known and as precious to people as John 316. John 316 says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. If you say that Christ is merely a creature and that's the supreme expression of God's love, you know, you're really missing the point of John 3. What does it take for God to make something? What cost is there? You know, God spoke the world into existence and he wasn't breathing heavily afterwards, right? I'm speaking facetiously.  How many archangels could he make? You know, as many as he wants simply by willing it to be so. The Son, on the other hand, is not a creature. It's not someone that God made. It's that one who has been with him from all eternity, right? In perfect fellowship and communion. That one that's described in John 1 who was with God, the language there means that he's face to face with him. They had this intimate union and communion for all eternity. And then when God brought the angel into existence, the Son was the ceaseless object along with the Father and Spirit of praise, right?  They do that day and night, it says. So the one that was given was that one who has always been with the Father, not a mere creature. And the one who came is the one who has always been with the Father in blessed communion. And when the angels were created was the object of ceaseless praise, he's the one who came into the world. That truly bespeaks the love of God. And for the life of me, I don't know how that isn't precious to people or how other people can look at something else compared to that and think that it does compare, right? I mean, you can compare it in the sense that, well, yeah, you can compare a penny to $50 billion. But I think most people realize why there's not a comparison there in another sense, right? So anyways, I just, I agree with you. I don't, I'm gonna steal that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal that. I like that. How you put it for him to create any other means of salvation. That would have been nothing for him. Just, you know, right here, here's a cow. Here's a lamb. He could, and so that just, that really does show his, as I say, he, he puts some skin in the game. Now, what I want to do, but we don't have time, this is what I'd like to do. And I want to kind of put you on the, put you on the spot, Anthony. How about we do this? Because there's a lot of questions and there's going to be more questions even after the video replays. What if we did this? Had a time where we don't, we don't start off with any introductions, no, you know, go through any passages or anything like that, but just let them come and just ask you questions. Sure. Okay, so we'll figure this out, guys. When, when's a good time? Hopefully, sooner rather than later, because I don't have a problem just sitting back and just letting Anthony just answer questions. And then just, you know, I'll just, I'll be the DJ, I'll DJ, DJ, God, DJ the scriptures and let you guys and ask whatever questions and let him just knock them out the park. So, Anthony, I want to thank you, brother. I would love to keep going.  I see you there. There's a bunch of questions, but I got to get out of here. And then we, because if I don't, if I don't get finished what I have to do tonight, there won't be the Bible study class tomorrow, tomorrow, Saturday. Yeah, it won't be the Bible study class. So I've got to get out of here. Plus, I got to eat too. I haven't eaten all day. I had a bowl of cereal and some, and some Cheetos. So I'm struggling right now. But Anthony, it's been wonderful, man. I'm so happy that you came. And so I want to make sure that we get that's why I put you on the spot because it's been hard for you to say no. So do you have anything that you want to say in closing? Well, I think I can answer the main question that everybody probably has very quickly. I shaved it off because it's summertime and I was getting too hot with that thing on. Nobody needs hair, Anthony. Nobody needs hair. I noticed that people use the picture when I had the big beard. And then I'm always thinking, oh, I'm going to go on the show and people are going to be like, I thought he was having that other guy on. Listen, it's like I tell him, God doesn't have a beard. The Holy Spirit doesn't have any hair. So I don't know. So listen, you guys get in line with the Lord. And unless you're a lady, guys, I don't say that mess off Montana Viking.  But listen, brother, it has been a blessing. Guys, I love you. I hope you were edified. I would say this for anyone that disagrees. Go back and watch the video and look at the things that he said. But more than that, if you want to, I would say this, guys, make sure also that you go to Anthony's channel. It won't be hard to find his channel because the name of his channel is Anthony Ryder. So go there. Guys, if you haven't subscribed, I think, listen, and I don't tell people to subscribe all the time. I usually say if it's someone with a channel, hey, go check the channel out. When I say subscribe, I think it's a worthwhile investment. You're not paying anything. So go to his channel. I say subscribe to it. You're going, listen, the guy's not, he's not a theological lightweight, okay? He's going to explain things thoroughly. And the beauty about it is if it's an hour-long discussion or a two-hour-long discussion, you can hit save to watch later. But I don't think you will regret watching him. I do. I'm not going to say how many times I've stolen something that he said, made it my own without telling him. But make sure you guys go there and check out his channel and subscribe. And then we'll do the best we can to get him back here. Again, when I say soon, I mean soon, I'm not talking about like, you know, in a month or two, I want to get him back here and just let him ask questions. I mean, answer questions. So guys, I love you all. I will see you all tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. for center time. You guys be blessed. Amen.