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Not at all. God just started things in the middle. It's the intellectually proud who rule out God as a starting assumption and then work backward to find how it all started. God doesn't need to do anything but allow human nature to run its course. The blind leading the blind and you're all patting yourselves on the back as to what great intellects you are.

If you were a little smarter you would realize you can't disprove the Biblical story of creation because God is not bound by natural laws, He created them. If you can't disprove the Biblical story of creation then you can't prove any alternative. The simple conclusion is that what you believe about God or even his non-existence you believe on faith and faith alone. You're in the same boat as us Christians, so what do you have to be proud of?

Well said MacLorry. Very well said. You know what the good book says about fools, right?

That's the Calvinist position and it's based on the idea that God is sovereign, so there can be no free will, because if there were, God wouldn't be sovereign.

The problem with that logic is that if God is sovereign then He can choose to make man in His Own image, and being God has free will, so must his children or they wouldn't be made in His Own image. The Calvinist is thus reduced to telling God He can't do that, which violates his own logic.

Being sovereign God can choose to not know something and not control something (there are biblical examples). Who is man to tell God He can't do that?

Life, the Bible, and God are all about freewill. God gave man freewill. And Jesus is not the Father but he and the Father are one. The Holy Trinity is three separate entities that work together in unity as one.

Oh boy...here we go...

You're misunderstanding predestination. Many do. God in his omniscience and sovereignty knows exactly what we'll do and what choices we will make. He knows who will get in and who won't. But he doesn't send anyone to hell. Our individual choices do that. He just knows what those choices will be before we even make them.

You know just enough to get yourself into trouble.

Very well said.

In a similar way that I am a father, I am a son, and I am a Husband. Three different persons in one at the same exact time.

God is so all knowing that he even knows what is going to happen, if, what is going to happen doesn't happen.

No, they are indeed three separate persons. Else who did Christ spend all that time praying to? And remember Christ said, "why callest me good? There is only one good and that is the Father". Who would it have been that turned his back as Jesus was dying on the cross if he was God himself?

Who raised Jesus from the dead?

God raised Jesus from the dead: "...that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9).

"In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands...by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11-12)

"He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God." (1 Peter 1:20-21)

"And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power." (1 Corinthians 6:14)

"Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it." (Acts 2:23-24)

"But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses." (Acts 3:14-15)

"But God raised Him from the dead. He was seen for many days by those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are His witnesses to the people. And we declare to you glad tidings -- that promise which was made to the fathers. God has fulfilled this for us their children, in that He has raised up Jesus...And that He raised Him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, He has spoken thus: 'I will give you the sure mercies of David.'...For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and saw corruption; but He whom God raised up saw no corruption." (Acts 13:30-37)

"Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will..." (Hebrews 13:20-21)

To wit, the Father of glory:

"Therefore I also...do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him...according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places..." (Ephesians 1:15-20).

"Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." (Romans 6:4)

"Paul, an apostle (not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead)..." (Galatians 1:1)

"For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come." (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).

But wait, God the Son raised Himself from the dead:

"Jesus answered and said to them, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' Then the Jews said, 'It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?' But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said." (John 2:19-22)

"Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father." (John 10:17-18)

Not to be left out, the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead:

"But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." (Romans 8:11)

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit..." (1 Peter 3:18)

So what Biblical conclusion can be reached from these facts? That God has authored confusion? Or that the one God who raised Jesus from the dead is Father, Son and Holy Spirit?






Now, I could keep going but I am sure people are tired of this already...

You Alone are Holy

Who alone is Holy? Only One, in the fullest sense: the Lord God Almighty: "Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of the saints! Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are Holy..." (Revelation 15:4).

"No one is holy like the LORD, For there is none besides You, Nor is there any rock like our God." (1 Samuel 2:2).

Or Jesus?, "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses." (Acts 3:13-15).

"For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption." (Psalm 16:10).

The Holy Spirit: "But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things." (1 John 2:20).

Not to mention the Father: "Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are." (John 17:11).

The One God, worshipped and adored, is alone Holy:

Who was Jesus praying to when he asked if this cup could be removed from him? Who was he referring to when he said " not my will Father but thine"? His will and the Fathers weren't lining up at that moment (until he came around to God's way of thinking) so how could he be the exact same person as God the Father? Is God schizophrenic?

Who Sanctifies Believers?

God the Father sanctifies believers: "Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ: Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you." (Jude 1:1-2).

The Holy Spirit: "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied." (1 Peter 1:1-2).

"But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14).

The Son: "For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: 'I will declare Your name to My brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.'" (Hebrews 2:11-12).

"By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all...For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." (Hebrews 10:10-14).

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish." (Ephesians 5:25-27).

To sum up, the One God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit sanctifies His people:

"Speak also to the children of Israel, saying: 'Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you.'" (Exodus 31:13, Leviticus 20:8);

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

What you're not understanding is the three work together as one and can often be used interchangably. You're picking at nits.

Billy Graham said of the Trinity;" Explain it, I cannot, but I know it exists in a form we cannot know."

I guess it's good that some of y'all are more gifted than Billy.

Take this concept and apply it to your questions about three separate beings....

You're telling God that He can't be One. Applying the limitations of man to God, when Scripture is full of proof that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are one being, one person, one God...

Again I ask?

Billy Graham put his shoes on the same way the rest of us do. He was a great preacher but I won't set him on a pedestal above anyone else who does the will of the Father.