Land and Bible

Or, Three is One and One is Three To listen to this teaching on a podcast, click here .   Does “The LORD our God, the LORD is one” mean that the LORD is “three-in-one”? “The Shema” is the statement found at Deuteronomy 6:4: שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֶחָֽד   “Hear, O Israel: YHVH our God, YHVH is one” Or, “YHVH (is) our God, YHVH is one”.   Jesus said this was “ the first (or greatest) of all commandments (Mk.12:29 ). Cf. Deut. 4:35, 39, 5:6, Zeph. 3:9, Zech. 14:9. That the God of the Bible, YHVH is one, is a difficulty for Trinitarianism. In about AD 530 the Christian Byzantine Emperor Justinian even banned the recitation of the Shema since he considered it to be a denial of the Trinity. But modern Trinitarianism takes a different approach, claiming that “one” can mean three because “one” can mean a compound unity . Three things together can make up one of something else.   A couple of biblical examples are put forwar...

No, Peter does not call Jesus “our God” in 2 Peter 1:1. Click here to hear this podcast teaching . RSV 2 Peter 1:1 Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ :   RSV note: or, “ righteousness of our God and the Savior Jesus Christ ”   So the question is, was Peter referring to only one person: “our God (and Savior) Jesus Christ”; or, to two persons: "our God, and (the) Savior Jesus Christ"?   Two “messianic” Israeli friends of mine recently presented this verse as evidence that "Jesus is God". The Hebrew translation is:  בְּצִדְקַת אֱלֹהֵינוּ וּמוֹשִׁיעֵנוּ יֵשׁוּעַ הַמָּשִׁיחַ I can see why my friends would use this verse to claim “Jesus is God”. The translators’ presuppositions have affected their translation. But even with this translation, there is ambiguity. Put a comma after “our God”, and oh-oh, now Peter is referr...