What you have offered is 'personal interpretation' that does not exist in truth. Not ONE line of the Bible says what you say. Not once does the Bible say that if one does not accept Christ 'as God' that they 'do not accept' Christ in TRUTH. In fact, the Bible says that there is only ONE God and ONE 'only begotten SON of God. It does not say that Jesus is God. That is 'interpretation' without there actually being a single line that says that Jesus is THE God and Father.
What I have read states that we MUST accept Christ as God's SON. Nothing I have read tells us to 'believe' that Christ is God Himself.
And then I am forced to ask this: Who did Christ STATE that He IS? Not asking what men have 'come up with'.
And who, when asked, did the apostles SAY Christ is?
Not once did an apostle, when asked, state that they believed Christ to BE GOD.
Each, when asked, stated the 'same thing': the SON of the Living God.
And then there is 'this': upon the cross, when Christ uttered His last breath, He shouted out: "My God, my God why hath THOU forsaken ME"?
Hmmmm...........If Christ 'were God', could He have uttered such words in TRUTH? How does God forsake HIMSELF?
And when Christ was Baptized, if He were God, how do you suppose that John witnessed the SPIRIT of God descend upon Him?
For 'trinity' to be TRUTH, it must stand up to it's claims.
'Trinity' claims that the Father and that the Son are EQUAL in 'all respects'.
Yet we have the words of Christ Himself stating that the Father is GREATER than the Son. Now what kind of equality consists of two things being equal but one being "GREATER" than the other?
When I went to school we learned to use arrow signs that pointed to one thing being 'greater than' or 'less than' another. If we were to use this 'sign' in reference to Christ's words, it would look like this:
Father, (God)>The Son.
This is what Christ STATED. Our Savior, the one 'entity' that is crucial to our very Salvation, stated that His Father, (who we KNOW is God), is greater than the Son, (Himself). Not my words, straight out of the Bible.
But if what 'trinity' defines is the truth, it would look like this:
Father, (who is God)=The Son of God.
But that is not what the Bible tells us. The Son was SENT by God. The Son's power was 'given Him' by God. The Son prayed TO God. And then there is this:
Almost every epistle of Paul's starts something like this:
Ephesians 1King James Version (KJV)
1 Paul,
an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace be to you, and peace,
from God our Father, (this plainly states that the Father IS God),
and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ
Wow, talk about confusing? If Paul recognized Christ 'as God', these words sure are confusing. 'from God OUR FATHER, and the Lord Jesus Christ'. You gotta be joking. Two SEPARATE entities: one BEING God, the other being our LORD.
And then the clincher: Blessed be THE God and FATHER OF CHRIST. Wow, no 'three in one' here. God, the Father, is THE God and Father of Christ. Christ's Father IS His God. I don't think that there can be much confusion about these words. They are pretty simple. Not designed to be confusing I can assure you. But if I were to consider 'trinity', then they become UTTERLY confusing. They are NO LONGER 'simple words' but words that one must try and alter their simplicity in order to MAKE them fit anything other than what they were MEANT to portray.
And then there is this:
2 Corinthians 11:3
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ.
The 'simplicity' that is IN Christ. Hmmmm............I have listened to just about any and everything that could be offered concerning 'trinity'. I find "NOTHING SIMPLE" about it. It is not only a very complex doctrine that even those that 'created it' admit still remains a 'mystery' even after being divinely revealed.
The very idea that one plus one plus one equals ONE is confusing. For in every other aspect of our lives, this equation equals THREE. Nothing 'simple' there. And once one can be convinced that one plus one plus one equals ONE, golly Miss Molly, is there anything that they couldn't be 'brainwashed' into believing? That to me is no different than convincing someone that blue is really red and red is really blue. If you could somehow convince someone to 'accept this', what couldn't you influence them to accept?
'Trinity' INSISTS that Father and Son are EQUAL in every respect. Christ's own words deny this.
So what do you think I place my faith in? The Bible and the actual words of Christ? Or men that came along later and introduced this 'idea' of 'trinity'?
Blessings,
MEC