THE APOSTATE CHURCH?

 

Is your church apostate?  Everyone’s natural reaction to that would be an, ‘absolutely not’.  And I know they’d answer my question that way, because if someone thought that their church was an apostate church they wouldn’t still be a member of it.  However, could you be a faithful member of a good church which is founded on apostate doctrines which go back to the 4th century and are not even consider to be apostate doctrines today?  I can answer that question after you tell me if your church teaches that God is a Trinity God. If your church teaches that God is a Trinity God, your church has accepted an apostate doctrine as one its founding principle.  Let me explain why I say that; 

 

According to the Scriptures there is only one God and God is one, so there can be no Trinity.  So you ask, who was it in the Scriptures ever said that?  Yahoveh God said it, so did Jesus, Isaiah, King Hezekiah, King David, Hannah, Nehemiah, Asaph, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Zechariah, Malachi, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Jude, and Paul.  They all said God is One, not three.  Read the following sample of verses;

 

 Yahoveh said, Exodus 20:2a-3, “I am YAHOVEH your God…You shall have no other gods before Me”

Moses said, Deuteronomy 4:35, “To you it was shown, that you might know that YAHOVEH Himself is God; there is none other besides Him.”  And again in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: YAHOVEH our God, YAHOVEH is one.”  (Not three!)

Isaiah said, Isaiah 44:6, “Thus says YAHOVEH, the King of Israel, And his Redeemer, YAHOVEH of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God.” and again in Isaiah 45:6, 37:20 45:18.

King Hezekiah said, 2 Kings 19:15, "You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth."

King David said, 1 Chronicles 17:20, "O YAHOVEH, there is none like You, nor is there any God besides You"

Nehemiah said, Nehemiah 9:6-7, "You alone are YAHOVEH...You are Yahoveh God"

King David said, Psalm 18:31, "For who is God, but YAHOVEH? And who is a rock, except our God"

Asaph said, Psalm 83:18, “That they may know that You, whose name alone is Yahoveh, Are the Most High over all the earth.”

Hannah said, 1Samuel 2:2, “No one is holy like YAHOVEH, For there is none besides You, Nor is there any rock like our God.”

Jeremiah said, Jeremiah 22:9, “Then they will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of Yahoveh their God, and worshiped other gods and served them.’ ”

Hosea said, Hosea 13:4, “Yet I am YAHOVEH your God Ever since the land of Egypt, and you shall know no God but Me; For there is no savior besides Me.”

Joel said, Joel 2:27, “Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel:  I am YAHOVEH your God And there is no other. My people shall never be put to shame.”

Zechariah 14:9, “And Yahoveh will be king over all the earth. On that day Yahoveh will be one and his name one.”

Malachi said, Malachi 2:10, “Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously with one another By profaning the covenant of the fathers?”

Jesus denied he was God when he said, Matthew 4:10, “The Jesus said …  For it has been written, You shall worship Yahoveh your God (our Father), and Him alone shall you serve.”

Jesus denied he was God when he said, John 14:1, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.”

Jesus denied he was God when he said, Matthew 6:9, “In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.”

Jesus denied he was God when said, Mark 12:29, “Jesus answered him, “The chief of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, Yahoveh is our God, Yahoveh is one.”  Jesus didn’t say to the Jews, ‘your God’, he said, ‘our God’.

Jesus denied he was God when he said, John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God (YAHOVEH, the Father), and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

Paul said, Ephesians 4:6, “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”

Paul said, 1 Timothy 2:5, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,”

James said, James 2:19, “Thou believes that God is one; thou doest well: the demons also believe, and shudder”

Jude 1:25, “To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

 

The Scriptures simply don’t support the idea of God being a Trinity.   While today’s Christian Church believes God is a Trinity, a true ‘Christian’ cannot believe in the Trinity, because a true ‘Christian’, by definition, is a follower of Christ’s words and teachings, and Jesus clearly did not believe in the Trinity, and spoke contrary to the idea of a triune God.  Jesus’ words in each of these verses: Matthew 4:10, Mark 12:29, Luke 4:8, John 14:1, John 17:3 and John 20:17 will completely obliterate, or destroy, any idea of a Trinity or triune god.  There is no Trinity.  The Trinity is an invention of the 3rd and 4th Century Church, who created it for non-scriptural reasons, and easily convinced the mostly illiterate and Pagan churches that it was true.  And they were then forced to accept it or suffer the penalty of death. That false doctrine became a founding doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and was inherited by all the Protestant Churches.

 

I believe God has allowed the Doctrine of the Trinity to ‘infect’ all Churches to test us, in the same manner that God allowed Satan to test Job’s faith and loyalty. The test is whether we will accept God’s word at face value, or will we give greater authority to the Church and accept what our religious leaders tell us.  It’s a test of faith and loyalty.  People are told by the Churches that they have to believe in the Trinity to be a Christian, and if they are not a Christian they cannot be saved.  However, that is not true according to the Scriptures, and if we trust the Scriptures we will reject the doctrine of the Trinity.

 

 If being a ‘Christian’ means I have to believe that God is a Trinity or the Jesus is God, as today’s Christian Churches teach, I can’t be a Christian.  I will accept what the Scriptures teach about God, rather than the teachings of the Christian Churches. Every writer in New Testament: Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Jude and Peter each referred to God with masculine singular nouns (‘God’), and they used a masculine singular pro-noun (‘He’).  Never did they refer to God using plural names or plural pro-nouns, so again they all confirm that there is one God and God is one, not three.  Never did they call Jesus ‘God’, and never did Jesus say he was ‘God’. There’s not even a hint of God being more than one person. To claim that Jesus is God we would have to say that every writer in the New Testament, and including Jesus, were all confused, misguided, ignorant or liars.  I think we’d have to all agree that we would rather conclude that the 3rd and 4th century church leaders, who invented the Trinity, were confused, misguided, ignorant or liars.  I suspect that the 4th Century Church’s goal to exalt Jesus as God, and that was a honorable goal, but thoroughly misguided. 

 

When someone accepts the doctrine of the Trinity, and worships Jesus as God they greatly dishonored both Yahoveh God and Jesus, by their disobedience to Yahoveh’s commands and Jesus’ commands to worship Yahoveh God alone (Exodus 20:2-3, Matthew 4:10).  So by accepting the Doctrine of the Trinity we are spurning (or rejecting) Yahoveh’s divine authority, violating His First Commandment (Exodus 20:2-3) and spurning Jesus’ authority by violating what he call the ‘chief’ of all commandment (Mark 12:28-29 and Matthew 4:10).  Also note, God will never accept the worship of someone who spurns His divine authority, such worship will be in vain according to Jesus (Matthew 15:9, Mark 7:7).

 

Jesus denied that he was God when he always referred to God as someone other than himself, such as Mark 12:29, “Jesus answered him, “The chief of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, Yahoveh our God, Yahoveh is one.” John 14:1, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me”, Matthew 4:10, “Then Jesus said … For it is written, ‘You shall worship Yahoveh your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ” and John 17:3, while praying to the Father, Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”  Matthew 24:26, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” And a common phrase in Paul’s and Peter’s epistles; “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” clearly makes a distinction between God and Jesus – Peter and Paul did not consider Jesus to be God.  These verses all completely destroy any idea of a triune god.

 

Jesus prayed to Yahoveh God (Matthew 6, John 17) and worshiped Yahoveh God (John 4:22-23), and said Yahoveh was his God and the Father, who had begotten him (John 20:17).  Jesus said his God, and Father were the same God and Father as his disciples had.  The doctrine of the Trinity says there are three co-equal and co-eternal gods, but according to Jesus, he is not co-equal to his Father, for Jesus said the Father was greater than he was (John 14:28).  In Matthew 24:36 Jesus said only the Father knows the day of the Second Coming. And Jesus called Yahoveh his Father, because Yahoveh begot him, so they are not co-equal, co-eternal or co-omnipotent.

 

The Trinity is an invention of the ‘Great Harlot’ (Roman Catholic Church) in the 4th Century and it refers to that Doctrine of the Trinity as their central core doctrine.  That RCC is unknowingly serving the serpent ‘Beast’ (Satan) by spreading the false Trinity Doctrine which results in idolatry and false worship. That false Trinity doctrine is also accepted and taught by the Great Harlot’s deceived daughters (the Protestant Churches).   We read in Revelation 12:9 that the serpent (or beast) has deceived the ‘whole world’ (with it’s false doctrines), and in Revelation 13:3 we read that the whole world follows after the beast (accepting those false doctrines), it says that she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication (Revelation14:8b). Revelation 14:9, tells us that those who follow the ways of the Beast will receive his mark, i.e., the mark of the beast. 

 

There is no Trinity according to Yahoveh (Exodus 20:2-3), according to Moses (Deuteronomy 4:35, 6:4), according to the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 44:6, Isaiah 45:6, 37:20 45:18.), according to King Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:15), according to King David (1 Chronicles 17:20, Psalm 18:31). According to the Prophet Nehemiah (Nehemiah 9:6-7), according to Asaph (Psalm 83:18), according to Hannah (1Samuel 2:2), according to the Prophet Jeremiah, (Jeremiah 22:9), according to the Prophet Hosea (Hosea 13:4), according to the Prophet Joel (Joel 2:27), according to the Prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 14:9), according to the Prophet Malachi (Malachi 2:10), according to Jesus (Matthew 4:10, 6:9, Mark 12:29, Luke 4:8,  John 17:3), according to Paul (Ephesians 4:6, 1Timothy 2:5), according to James (James 2:19), and according to Jude (Jude 1:25).  No writer in the Old or New Testament acknowledges, defines or mentions a triune god.  Even those who don’t believe in the Trinity acknowledge that there is a Father, a Son and the Holy Spirit, but they are never defined as three gods, or a trinity.

 

Therefore, worshiping the Trinity is idolatry. It is violating God’s First Commandment (Exodus 20:2-3), “I am Yahoveh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 You shall have no other gods before Me.”   We must worship Yahoveh alone, for He alone is God, just as Jesus told us (Matthew 4:10, Luke 4:8, Mark 12:29, John 17:3).  Jesus said no idolater will enter the Kingdom of God, Revelation 21:8, 22:15.

 

APOSTATE CHRISTIANS?  OR APOSTATE JEWS?

 

It’s interesting to note that at the time of the writing of the New Testament, there was no such thing as a ‘Christians’.  There were Jews who believe Jesus to be the Messiah, who were later labeled as ‘Christians’.  So, these ‘Christians’ in the earliest church practiced Judaism, that is, they worshiped Yahoveh alone as their God, just as Jesus commanded (Matthew 4:10, Mark 12:29), kept God’s Old Testament ‘law and the Prophets’ just as Jesus commanded (Matthew 5:17-20), which includes keeping the Sabbath day, celebrating Passover as well as the rest of the Jewish feast days, and they all ate kosher.  So the ‘Great Apostasy’ is not a falling away from the Christian faith, it is referring to the ‘Jewish Christians’ a falling away from the practices of Judaism.  Today’s Christians are apostate form of Judaism, forsaking the worship of Yahoveh alone and the keeping of the ‘law and the Prophets’.

 

THE GREAT APOSTASY

 

The world wide acceptance of the idolatrous Doctrine of the Trinity, and the lawlessness that accompanies that doctrine, has produced what the Scriptures call the ‘Great Apostasy’.  It seems that when people accept Jesus as their God, because of the Doctrine of the Trinity, they believe that his authority and the Holy Spirit’s authority are equal to Yahoveh God’s authority, so the people are easily convinced to forsake Yahoveh’s Old Testament ‘law and the Prophets’ and simply follow Jesus’ New Testament commands instead.  And they claim that Jesus only told them to keep the Ten Commandments (with a modified First Commandment to allow the worship of the Trinity, modify the Sabbath Commandment to mean Sunday instead), and to love their neighbor as themselves.  And even then they don’t feel it’s too compelling of an issue to keep the Ten Commandments, because they believe that Jesus died to take the punishment for their sins – so to break one of God’s laws is no real big deal, Jesus’ suffering and death will cover it.  And, so lawless abounds in the Christian world today – as a result of the Doctrine of the Trinity.

 

WE ARE LIVING IN THE TIME OF THE GREAT APOSTASY

 

The Great Apostasy has happened and is here today in the Christian Churches.  If you don’t believe me, compare what the earliest churches believed and practiced to what today’s Christian Churches believe and practice.  The earliest church, was called the ‘Way’, and it was established by those who were personally trained by Jesus – so we can be assured that they were believing and practicing according to Jesus’ teachings and according to God’s desire.  And we know what the ‘Way’ believed and practiced from the Book of Acts; Acts 24:14, “But this I confess to you, that according to the ‘Way’ which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets.”  The earliest church, the ‘Way’, worshiped “the God of my fathers” (i.e., Yahoveh God) and kept the ‘Law and the Prophets’.  Today’s Christian Church is an apostate church, doing just the opposite of the ‘Way’.  Today’s Christian Church tells us to worship a Trinity of gods and it tells us that we don’t need to keep Yahoveh’s Old Testament ‘law and the Prophets’.  Yet Jesus told us to worship Yahoveh alone (Matthew 4:10, Mark 12:29) and to keep the ‘Law and the prophets’ (Matthew 5:17-20).

 

We are told that we don’t need to keep the ‘law and the Prophets’ because we are saved by ‘grace through faith apart from obedience to the law’.  And while it is true that we are not saved by our mechanical obedience to God’s laws, it is also true that God will not give His saving grace to those who despise His word, greatly dishonor God by their blatantly disobedience to His commands, rejecting His divine authority, thereby displaying a lack of faith in God, lack of love for God, a lack of honor and respect for God, and a lack of godly fear.  And the fact that they rejected God’s divine authority means that they have some other authority they consider greater than God’s authority, which means they have another god – they are idolaters.

 

  The real issue is one of authority.  Jesus fully submitted to Yahoveh’s authority, worshiping Yahoveh alone, and keeping His ‘law and the Prophets’, and then Jesus told us to do the same.  If we reject Yahoveh’s Old Testament ‘law and the Prophets’, we are rejecting His divine authority.  And we are also rejecting Jesus’ authority because Jesus told us to keep God’s Old Testament ‘Law and the Prophets’ (Matthew 5:17-20) and to worship Yahoveh alone (Matthew 4:10).  

 

We can’t worship Yahoveh God and at the same time reject His divine authority by our blatant disobedience.  And that’s not saying we need perfect obedience, but it does mean we must desire to have perfect obedience and then repent when we fail.  Submitting to Yahoveh’s authority in obedience honors Him and is the greatest form of worship, while rejection of His commands is the greatest dishonor we can do. 

 

John 3:16 doesn’t excuse our disobedience, because to truly ‘believe’ in Jesus is to obey Jesus and to truly ‘believe’ in Yahoveh is to obey all He said.

 

GOD’S FINAL WARNING TO AN APOSTATE CHURCH…

 

The Bible is full of warnings in regards to the final Judgment, especially the Gospels and the Book of the Revelation.  However we do see some warnings in the Old Testament as well.  The Book of Zechariah is an apocalyptic book speaking of end-time events. And in that Book we see a warning in regards to the last test of loyalty towards God which mankind will face before the ‘end’.  We know that it is the last test at the end of time, because at the time of its occurrence of this test, two-thirds of the people on earth are already dead.  Only the surviving one-third will go through this final test.  We are told about the test ahead of time, as a warning for us, so we will know how to pass the test.

 

We find that final test in Zechariah 13:8-9, “And it shall come to pass in all the land,” says Yahoveh, “That two-thirds in it shall be cut off and die, But one-third shall be left in it:

9 I will bring the one-third through the fire, Will refine them as silver is refined, And test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, And I will answer them. I will say, ‘This is My people’; And each one will say, ‘Yahoveh is my God.’ ” 

 

At the time of this passage two-thirds of the people are dead, and the last one-third that is left is being tested (This is perhaps happening between Revelation’s 6th and 7th Trumpets?).  That one-third will be tested with fire, that is, the fire of pain, persecution, suffering, hunger, etc.  In the midst of their suffering, those who believe in a god will cry out to their god to deliver them from their horrible circumstance.  Those who believe in Yahoveh will cry out to ‘Yahoveh’, and that identifies them as Yahoveh’s people, whom Yahoveh will protect them or remove them from their dire situation.   

 

Those who have accepted the false Doctrine of the Trinity will be calling out to Jesus instead of Yahoveh.  However, those who have rejected the Doctrine of the Trinity and the other false doctrines of man, who have instead accepted by faith the teachings of the Scriptures alone, will be calling out to Yahoveh for deliverance, and will be delivered.

 

Whether or not this is speaking about the final end-time event, or not, is immaterial, the principle remains the same. Yahoveh God will save those who call on Him.  “And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of Yahoveh shall be saved.” (Joel 2:32a).