Commentary on Raoul Dederan's Reflections on the Trinity Doctrine

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Dear Reader,

Notice in the footnotes at the end of Raoul Dederan's article, that he quotes numerous non-Biblical sources without even once quoting Ellen White, who revealed to us in precise terms just who the Holy Spirit is. At first, I thought Dederan was trying to cover the subject from a Biblical only point of view, but that is not the case!

 

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Doctrine of the Trinity

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Reflections on the Doctrine of the Trinity. Raoul Dederen. Andrews University. Berrien Springs, Michigan. Reprinted from: Andrews University Seminary ...

 

To his credit, Dederan beats all around the truth of the matter that the Holy Spirit is the former life of Christ before the Incarnation, given as a regenerating gift to us, and to satisfy the demands of the Testator Covenant that the Testator must eternally die the eternal death that was ours, that we might live the eternal life that was His. This is the beautiful and all necessary truth of the matter according to the Everlasting Covenant testated between the Testator Christ, and the Father, concerning the means of coping with the sin problem.

 

Dederan's "Beating's Around the Truth" Without Seeing the Answer

 

Here are Dederan's observations which actually closely equate with Ellen White's statements that the Holy Spirit is the Impartation of the Life of Christ, and is the very Soul of Christ:

 

"The Holy Spirit is thus described as the Lord indwelling the mind and heart of each individual believer." Dederan, p. 4 (if you print out the Article).

 

"The meaning of Christ's apparent equation of the Spirit with the Son was taking on a deeper significance for them (early Christians in context)." ibid. p. 4.

 

"....as well as to dwell in Christians as His temple (1 Cor 31:16: 6:9." ibid., p. 5.

 

Christ is the head and we are to be the body of Christ. This is how Christ dwells in us, and this occurs by our partaking of His Divine Nature, His Holy Ghost life that He laid aside for us at His Incarnation.

 

"He (Christ) gives Himself." ibid. p. 5.

 

Christ gives Himself via the Bread and Blood, His Body (Word) and the Wine (Spirit--Blood). The life is in the blood and Christ gave His life for us. At the Incarnation, it was the Life of the Son, not a separate and distinct person in the form of the Holy Spirit, that Christ gave to and for us. However, at that time, the former life of Christ became the Holy Ghost, and operated as His successor:

 

Ellen White's Statements Which Define the Holy Spirit as the Former Life of Christ Prior to the Incarnation:

 

“Cumbered with humanity Christ could not be in every place personally, therefore it was altogether for their advantage that He should leave them to go to His Father and send the Holy Spirit to be His successor on earth. The Holy Spirit is Himself divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. He would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit.” E.G. White, (Manuscript Releases Volume 14 (No’s 1081-1135) MR No.1084.

 

"The Holy Spirit is Christ's representative, but divested of the personality of humanity, and independent thereof. Cumbered with humanity, Christ could not be in every place personally. Therefore it was for their interest that He should go to the Father, and send the Spirit to be His successor on earth. No one could then have any advantage because of his location or his personal contact with Christ. By the Spirit the Saviour would be accessible to all. In this sense He would be nearer to them than if he had not ascended on high.
This promise belongs to us now as surely as it belonged to the disciples.... Let every church member kneel before God, and pray earnestly for the impartation of the Spirit." E.G. White, God's Amazing Grace, 191.

 

"The Holy Spirit is the breath of spiritual life in the soul. The impartation of the Spirit is the impartation of the life of Christ. It imbues the receiver with the attributes of Christ. Only those who are thus taught of God, those who possess the inward working of the Spirit, and in whose life the Christ-life is manifested, are to stand as representative men, to minister in behalf of the church." Desire of Ages, 805.

 

"Christ gives them the breath of HIS OWN SPIRIT, the life of HIS OWN LIFE. The HOLY SPIRIT puts forth its highest energies to work in the heart and mind." Desire of Ages, 827.

 

"The Spirit was given as a regenerating agency, and without this the sacrifice of Christ would have been of no avail." E.G. White, Review and Herald, May 19, 1904, The Promise of the Spirit, pr. 3,

 

"Christ declared that after His ascension, he would send to his church, as His crowning GIFT, the comforter, who is the Holy Spirit,--THE SOUL OF HIS LIFE, THE EFFICACY OF HIS CHURCH, THE LIGHT AND LIFE OF THE WORLD. With HIS SPIRIT Christ sends a reconciling influence and a power that takes away sin. In the gift of the Spirit, [HIS LIFE--THE SOUL OF HIS LIFE] Jesus gave to man the highest good that heaven could bestow." E.G. White, Review and Herald, May 19, 1904. Book 5, p. 42.

 

Conclusions

 

Raoul Dederan's article beats all around the truth of the Godhead, but falls short of identifying the following facts of the Godhead:

  1. The Testator agreement between the Son and the Father demanded eternal death of the Testator (or a laying aside of the original life of the Son)
  2. The Trinity doctrine denies that Christ laid aside His original life forever as His crowing, greatest gift to man.
  3. The Trinity doctrine denies that the Holy Spirit is the Holy Ghost of Christ's Original First Estate Life, that He gave to us as the greatest good, and the greatest gift He could give to man for his regeneration back into the image of God. Thus, the Trinity doctrine, is the greatest heresy known to Christianity, in that it denies the greatest gift the Godhead gave to mankind. This is the OMEGA APOSTASY, because it has to do with the personality and presence of Christ, and Ellen White said this was involved with the Alpha and the Omega of Apostasy, Selected Messages, vol. 1, 202.
  4. The Trinity doctrine attributes what was really the original life of Christ before His Incarnation, to another distinct person from Christ. This is blasphemy. This is the greatest apostasy possible.
  5. The Trinity doctrine fails in comprehension of the fact that prior to the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit existed is the ONE, ETERNAL SPIRIT of Christ and the Father, and that Christ laid aside that Spirit at His Incarnation, even though He was dependent on it after His Incarnation. It was then that the Holy Spirit became the successor of Christ in the form of a third person, to give the following constituency to the Godhead:
  6. God the Father and His ONE ETERNAL HOLY SPIRIT ESSENCE. Hbr 9:14 "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"1Cr 6:17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

1Cr 12:13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether [we be] Jews or Gentiles, whether [we be] bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

Eph 2:18 For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

Eph 4:4 [There is] one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;

Jhn 4:24 God [is] a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship [him] in spirit and in truth.

  1. Jesus, the Son of God, eternally combined with humanity--Fully Divine--Fully Human, which is the mystery part of the Godhead that we do not understand.
  2. The Holy Spirit (Ghost) which became the Son's successor when God the Son laid aside His former life (ONE ETERNAL SPIRIT ESSENCE) at His Incarnation, at which time that life became the successor to Christ in the earth--the third person Holy Ghost. Scripture (Rev. 13:8), speaks of the Lamb (Christ) as having been slain from the foundation of the earth. This is another part of the mystery not fully understood. The ONE ETERNAL SPIRIT ESSENCE existed eternally with the Father and the Son as their innate substance. It was covenanted from the foundation of the earth that the Spirit of the Son's first estate of Being would become His successor at His incarnation, when He would lay aside that LIFE as a gift to us, and to satisfy the terms of the Testator Covenant.

 

The Trinity doctrine is pure and erroneous speculation as to who and what the Holy Spirit is. Ellen White defined precisely who, what, when, where and why the Holy Spirit is. As is common nowadays, the leaders such as Dederan, consulted and credited all manner of sources other than the Holy Spirit gift to the church via Ellen G. White. This is returning to the iniquities (errors) of our forefathers, Jeremiah 11:9-15. Please read this all important practice, and pray for the Holy Spirit, that you will be able to interpret verses 14 and 15 properly. There could be no greater apostasy other than cursing the Holy Spirit, which is the pre-Incarnation life of Christ, and the two are equal in their evil and misapprehension of God.

 

Serious Implications

 

The SDA Church is now (since 1931) embracing the most heretical doctrine of Babylon, the Trinity Doctrine, Rome’s Central Doctrine, as part of its stated Fundamentals of Belief. Both the Church Manual and the 27 Fundamentals of Belief, teach this greatest of all heresies. This is a return to the iniquities of our forefathers. This is a "removal of God, 1SM 205." This is a fulfillment of every specification of the Omega of Apostasy, stated in Selected Messages, Bk. 1, 204-5.

 

This great apostasy has everything to do with the Atonement and the Sanctuary Message. If Christ did not give us His former, pre-Incarnation Holy Spirit Divine Nature life in the Sanctuary at the Incarnation; if He is not the Holy Spirit, then no Atonement was made, because the Atonement demanded by the Everlasting Covenant, was the eternal death of the Testator and the Atonement on the Cross was of no avail without the fulfillment of the Testator Covenant—eternal death of the Testator to His former Holy Spirit Divine Nature ONLY, to then be combined with the nature of humanity forever.

 

The wages of sin is death, eternal death. Any Atonement for sin would of necessity include eternal death to something and in this case it was eternal death of the Son of God to His Holy Spirit Divine Nature ONLY existence which was His essence and substance before His Incarnation. After the Incarnation, He became the Son of God “in a new sense.”

 

"(See EGW on John :1-3, 14). The Son of God in a NEW SENSE.--Christ brought men and women power to overcome. He came to this world in human form, to live a man amongst men. He assumed the liabilities of human nature, to be proved and tried. In His humanity He was a partaker of the divine nature. In His incarnation He gained in a NEW SENSE the title of the Son of God. Said the angel to Mary, 'The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.' While the Son of a human being, He became the Son of God IN A NEW SENSE. Thus He stood in our world--the Son of God, yet allied by birth to the human race." E.G. White Comments, SDA Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, p. 1114.

 

One of the greatest evidences that Christ laid aside His Son of God life at His Incarnation, and that it remained in heaven while Christ was on earth, is John 3:13. Jesus is speaking face to face with Nicodemus, yet He says the Son of Man is in heaven:

 

"And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." John 3:13.

 

Jesus was on earth when speaking the above words to John. But His pre-Incarnation Son of Man was in heaven at the time. He and the Father shared the one eternal spirit as their essence and substance. That is what makes them one God.

 

"The Spirit was given as a regenerating agency, and without this the sacrifice of Christ would have been of no avail." E.G. White, Review and Herald, May 19, 1904, The Promise of the Spirit, pr. 3.

 

Hbr 9:16 For where a testament [is], there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.

 

Hbr 9:17 For a testament [is] of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.

 

The Atonement Gone! The Sanctuary Gone!

 

What you have just read is an account of precisely how the Atonement and the Sanctuary were seen by Ellen White as GONE:

 

Sanctuary Gone Atonement Gone -- "In a representation which passed before me, I saw a certain work being done by medical missionary workers. Our ministering brethren were looking on, watching what was being done, but they did not seem to understand. The foundation of our faith, which was established by so much prayer, such earnest searching of the Scriptures, was being taken down, pillar by pillar. Our faith was to have nothing to rest upon--the sanctuary was gone, the atonement was gone." E.G. White, The Upward Look, 152.

 

"A new order of things has COME INTO the ministry. There is a desire to pattern after other churches and simplicity and humility are almost unknown. The young ministers seek to be original, and to introduce new ideas and new plans for labor. Some open revival meetings, and by this means call large numbers into the church. But when the excitement is over, where are the converted ones? Repentance and confession of sin are not seen. The sinner is entreated to believe in Christ and accept Him, without regard to his past life of sin and rebellion. The heart is not broken. There is no contrition of soul. The supposed converted ones have not fallen upon the Rock, Christ Jesus." E.G. White, Selected Messages, Bk. 2, pp. 18, 19.

 

God bless,

 

Ron Beaulieu