Dear Reader:
What follows is an explanation of the Trinity doctrine by an SDA minister. The minister made the following explanation to an Internet SDA chat group. He conspicously neglected to say that the "another comforter" promised by Jesus, was defined by Scripture as non-other than Jesus Himself, as testified by the following scripture:
"And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; Even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you , and shall be in you." John 14:16, 17.
The SDA minister quotes John 14:16. He does not quote verse 17, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, he does not quote verse 18, which clearly says that Jesus is speaking of Himself:
"I will not leave you comfortless: I [JESUS] WILL COME TO YOU." John 14:18.
Verse 18 (above) proves that Jesus is refering to a form of HIMSELF when He says that He will send another comforter. So why does He say ANOTHER Comforter. Because He is referring to His first life that He laid aside at His Incarnation, as a regenerating agency for us. Thus, we do not deny that the Holy Spirit is a PERSON. What is important is who that PERSON is. That person is the former life of Jesus Christ, which He laid aside for us at His Incarnation as a regenerating agency gift to us. That PERSON is not another totally different person not associated with Christ, existing from eternity as a totally separate and distinct person, which is what the Trinity doctrine teaches.
Thus, the Trinity doctrine teaches the greatest heresy known to Christianity, and it thus denies the Atonement and the Sanctuary Message, because if Jesus did not lay aside His first pre-Incarnation life, there was no Atonement, because the Testator Covenant required the death of the Testator and the Testator was Christ before He assumed humanity, and not the humanity of Christ. No human, not even a perfect human, could atone for sin. Thus, the Atonement and the Sanctuary Service is totally violated by the Trinity doctrine.
"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.
Is there more evidence that the Holy Spirit is the same as Christ? Yes:
"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." II Corinthians 3:17, 18.
How many Spirits are there? How many Lord's are there? Just ONE in either case, according to Scripture. Yes, the Holy Spirit is a person, but it is the person of the Son of God before His incarnation. Therefore, it is Christ in another form of Being, before being combined with humanity after the Incarnation. Christ laid aside His former pre-Incarnation life (Being), as a gift to us for the purpose of regenerating us back into the image of God. As II Corinthians 3:18 says: "....changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as BY THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD."
What follows is the perversion of this simple truth by an SDA minister, who does not understand, just as Isaiah 56:10-12 says they cannot understand, and just as The Upward Look, 152, says that the ministering brethren cannot seem to understand, so that the Sanctuary and the Atonement of Christ are gone:
The Perversion of the Godhead by an SDA Minister
The following item appeared on an SDA Internet chat group on December 16, 2002. I will not reveal the name of the minister per the rules of the chat group involved:
"Some Adventists have discovered that practically all of our pioneers were anti-Trinitarian and have concluded that the church today should reject the doctrine of the Trinity. The truth is that the Lord guided this movement to a more biblical understanding of God. Today, based on the Bible, we affirm the truth of one God in a plurality of Persons. I mention here just some of the biblical support available.
1. The Spirit as Power. The opinion that the Spirit is not a person is partially based on the fact that very often He is described as a power coming from God, falling on people, and enabling them to do certain tasks (e.g., Judges 3:10; Acts 2:4). Moreover, the Greek word for "spirit" (pneuma) is neuter, that is to say we can refer to the Spirit as "it," implying that He is not a person. But that is a phenomenon of Greek grammar that doesn't necessarily have any theological significance.
2. The Spirit and Jesus. With the coming of Jesus our understanding of the Godhead was greatly enriched. Because Jesus was God in human flesh (John 1:1; 20:28; Titus 2:13), distinct from the Father (Matt. 3:17) yet one with Him (John 14:10), His followers began to realize that there was in the mystery of God a plurality of persons. The mystery increased when Jesus described the Spirit not as something but as Someone, who would take His place in the experience of the disciples: "I [Jesus] will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor . . . the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16, NIV).
Jesus introduced His disciples to the mystery of a Godhead that consisted of three distinct Persons: Jesus, the Father, and the Counselor/Spirit. In this particular passage the Spirit is not described as an impersonal power but as a person. Jesus refers to Him as "another [Greek allos] Counselor," one who intercedes for someone else. He is called "another" because Jesus is also a counselor (1 John 2:1). Only a person can function as a counselor.
But there's more to it. If the Spirit was going to continue the function of Jesus as counselor, then, He had to possess the same nature Jesus had, that is to say, He had to be divine. Jesus said that "no one [allos] else" could do the work He did (John 15:24, NIV), but He clarifies that there is One who, like Him, will be a new counselor. When Jesus refers to the Spirit as counselor using the masculine pronoun (He), Jesus is identifying Him as a person: "He will testify about me" (verse 26, NIV). Hence the Holy Spirit is both divine and a person.
3. The Apostles and the Spirit. When the disciples received the Holy Spirit they experienced Him as a power poured out on them by God (Acts 2:33); but they also recognized Him as the divine Person promised to them by Jesus.
In the narrative of Ananias and Sapphira we find a clear view of the disciples' understanding of the nature of the Spirit. Peter confronted the guilty couple with their sin by saying to them, "You have lied to the Holy Spirit. . . . You have not lied to men but to God" (Acts 5:3, 4, NIV). We have here two important pieces of information. First, the Spirit is a person because we can lie only to persons, not to things. Second, He is divine, because lying to Him is the equivalent to lying to God.
Throughout the New Testament we find clear evidence that the apostles
believed the Spirit was a person at par with the Father and the Son. They knew that the Spirit speaks (Acts 21:11), exercises His will (Acts 16:6), sends messengers (Acts 13:4), reflects theological truth (Acts 15:28), can be grieved (Eph. 4:30), apportions gifts (1 Cor. 12:11), intercedes (Rom. 8:26, 34), gives joy (Rom. 14:17), etc. These are all characteristics of persons that allow us to definitively refer to the Spirit as a person. By mentioning Him in conjunction with the Father and the Son the biblical writers were testifying to the unity of the three Persons (2 Cor. 13:14; 1:21, 22; Rom. 15:30; Eph. 2:18; 1 Peter 1:2; Rev. 1:4, 5). As a church we simply proclaim the biblical teaching without attempting to explain the mystery of God's unity."