Before we begin, I'd like to give us sort of a reminder of why we're doing these ancient heresies. Part of them is because it's important to know where we've come from so we can know where we are now. But another important thing that I'd like to bring up this morning is that we need to understand exactly why we believe what we believe. You ever ask yourself the question, why am I a Reformed Baptist? Why am I a Protestant? Why am I a Christian as opposed to a Hindu? Am I a Protestant just because I'm not a Catholic? Or am I a Protestant by conviction because I understand what Catholics believe and reject? many of those doctrines, and embrace those that are more usually identified with the Protestant area of Christianity. Am I a Baptist because I believe believer's baptism is a proper mode of baptism, or is it just because that's what I grew up with? Why are we Reformed Baptists? Is it just because this is a church we've gone to for a long time? Maybe we're raised in, or is it because we are really convinced that we need to be Reformed in our soteriology? And so as we think through these issues, I hope that you're wondering in your mind, how does this apply to me and what I believe, what I hold to? What does the Bible really say about these issues? I don't expect that many of you will be confronted by, let's say, a modalist, although there are millions out there, as we'll talk about today, or be tempted in certain areas. Maybe you won't become a Hindu, but there are very many Protestants, evangelicals even, who have, let's say, gone to the Catholic Church from where they have been for many years, and largely that is because they were never really convinced Protestants in the first place. They didn't know why they were Protestants. Somebody comes along with a good story about how the Roman Church has been the church since the time of Christ, and unbroken continuity between then and now, and that is the true church through which God speaks today. and they believe that. They don't understand a lot of the history or the issues involved. And so I think it's incumbent upon me and Brian as elders of this church to do what we can to teach you what is true about God, what is true about salvation, so that at least God forbid any of you fall away from the true faith of Jesus Christ to fall into heresy or error, we can say that we did all we could to prevent you from that, at least from a doctrinal perspective. We can't change a heart, but we can certainly teach as best we can. So when you think about this, think about why, for example, in this case, you believe in the divinity of Christ, why you believe in the Trinity, as I go through some of these verses we'll look at in the coming weeks, so that it becomes your own. You don't want to just adhere to a doctrinal statement because you were taught it, because it was part of your catechism growing up, because you remember the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed or whatever creed, because you studied the 1689 London Baptist Confession, but because you truly hold on to that as your own, as something that you believe in. We talked last week a bit about early anti-Trinitarians, those who reject what has historically been called the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity. And there are some common non-Trinitarian views in just rough outlines. We talked last week about Adoptionism, that is, Jesus was human offspring of Mary, perhaps of the Holy Spirit as well, but he was merely a man. Some would say he was very pious, even some might say he's perfect without sin. But he wasn't the son of God from all eternity. God rather adopted him, maybe at the Incarnation or at his baptism. And they might also say that this Logos, which to some is really an attribute of God, like we would call the wisdom of God, the goodness of God, the holiness of God, or attributes of God. Some would say that this Logos that John the Apostle particularly talks about is an attribute of God. It would be something like God's reason or his power. And so this was placed into this man Jesus. And in that sense, he was adopted as God's son, not by nature God's son. We also talked about modalism, looked at modalism more today, but the term modalism comes from the idea that there are various modes of God's existence. There is one God who has different modes, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You might call them different hats or different costumes he wears. That's kind of a sarcastic way of referring to it, but that's the idea. You see God appearing as the Father sometimes, sometimes he appears as the Son, and sometimes as the Holy Spirit. You also hear the term patrapassianism, which means father passion. This makes logical sense in their mind because if the father is the son, and the son is the father, then if the son suffered and died on the cross, then the father suffered and died on the cross. It's a simple mathematical equation, really. And so patrapassianism means father passion. So it's the father who experienced the passion on the cross. Another term for this is Sibelianism, named after Sibelius, who is a man condemned as a heretic in the third century. He said that God's different modes appeared in three different ways. He was the Father in the giving of the law, he was the Son in the incarnation, and he appears as the Holy Spirit in inspiration, regeneration, and sanctification. Now, one other non-Trinitarian view is different. We have the Adoptionists who say there is one God who adopts a man, Jesus, and this is similar to the heresy of the Arians, which we'll look at in the coming weeks. Also, this is true of the modern Unitarians and Christian science. So we have a God with Jesus being either a man or some exalted supernatural being, something less than God. The other view, the view of the modalist, broadly speaking, is that there is one God and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are manifestations of the same person. A third view is that there are multiple gods, at least three gods, that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are separate persons and three separate gods. So, Trinitarians believe there's one God in three persons. There's some who believe that there's one God in one person. Others say there's one God in one person, but that person has different manifestations. The Mormons, in particular, viewed the view God as Father, I should say gods, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are different beings, different gods, different persons. In fact, for Mormons, there is a possibility of infinite gods. You may have heard the quote from the Latter-day Saints president, Lorenzo Snow. He was the president in the latter part of the 19th century. And he said, as man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become. So God what we call God the Father, and it was actually an exalted being who attained godhood, and we ourselves may also attain godhood, so that someday we may have our own creation, our own planets that we populate, just as God the Father does. So, in this Mormon view, which is somewhat distinct from the other non-Trinitarian views, there are three gods, at least, and they all have separate beings and personhoods. Now, today I want to discuss a little bit about how we look at modalist theology, that is, that God appears in three different guises, or three different modes, because we'll look at some of the other aspects of these non-Trinitarian views from biblical perspective after we look at the Arian controversy, which is a little bit later. And the question is, are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit distinct persons? Someone asked me last week how modalists address certain issues that come up pretty quickly to the mind of a Trinitarian, and I want to look at that today. I was researching it some this week, and it's an interesting way of approaching things. But let's look at this issue from a modern-day manifestation, if I can use that term, a manifestation of Sabellianism or modalism, and that is called Oneness Pentecostalism. I mentioned this last week. This is a a movement with millions of members today in the U.S. and elsewhere. And this particular movement actually started in 1913, when a lot of other Pentecostal movements started in the early part of the 1900s. Someone had a revelation that baptism should be done in the name of Jesus Christ alone. Look at Acts 2.38, and those people said, what shall we do to be saved? And he says, repent and be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And so they say, that's how you must be baptized. In fact, they have a formula. This is how you must be baptized. Any other baptism outside this particular formula, almost like an incantation, and your baptism is invalid. And so what they did is they took this verse, Acts 2.38, and verses like it in Acts, when you actually see people being baptized, And then you look at Matthew 28, verse 19, where Jesus says, So if you baptize in the book of Acts, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and you baptize based on what Jesus says in Matthew 28, 19, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, therefore, the Lord Jesus must be equal to the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's where they reasoned from as a starting point. So really, this view of one-disc Pentecostalism came from an outgrowth of a dispute over the nature of baptism. So again, you have a baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus, you have a baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, If they are the same baptisms, they must be the same persons you're speaking of. So the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in this view, are one and the same person. Let me read you some quotes from some Oneness theologians. David Bernard is a prominent theologian in this camp. He says, the basis of oneness theology is a radical concept of monotheism. Simply stated, God is absolutely and indivisibly one. There are no essential distinctions or divisions in his eternal nature. All the names and titles of the deity, such as Elohim, Yahweh, Adonai, Father, Word, and Holy Spirit, refer to one and the same being, or in Trinitarian terminology, to one person. Any plurality associated with God is only a plurality of attributes, titles, roles, manifestations, modes of activity, or relationships to man. And some Wendessee logians will say that the word, the logos, is the father, Others will say that the Word is not a person. It's an impersonal view of what the Word is. This theologian, David Bernard, continues, So, the Word is a plan or a thought, not a person, in this view. This thought was a predestined plan, an absolutely certain future event, and therefore it had a reality attached to it that no human thought could ever have. The Word can also mean the plan or thought of God as expressed in the flesh, that is, in the Son. What is the difference, therefore, between the two terms, Word and Son? The Word had preexistence, and the Word was God, the Father, so we can use it without reference to humanity. So this Word is distinct from Jesus' humanity. However, the Son always refers to the Incarnation. This is the kind of terms they'll use. The Son always refers to the Incarnation. We cannot use it in the absence of the human element. Except as a foreordained plan in the mind of God, the Son did not have preexistence before the conception in the womb of Mary. The Son of God preexisted in thought, but not in substance. The Bible calls this foreordained plan the Word." So that's a basic statement of what they view the nature of the Word as. Now, how do these modalists defend their position from Scripture? They would start from Deuteronomy 6.4, "'Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Look at Isaiah 44, and some of these statements about God and his uniqueness. Isaiah 44, you look at verse 6, it says, Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides me. Verse eight, do not tremble and do not be afraid. Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me or is there any other rock? I know of none. Verse 24, he says, thus says the Lord, your Redeemer and the one who formed you from the womb. I, the Lord and the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone. And then chapter 45, verses 5 to 7. So we have these singular Verbs here, singular pronouns, and the fact that God repeatedly calls himself the one and only. He created alone. So, Motilus would say something like this, Surely the coming of Christ did not in any way compromise the strict monotheism taught in the Old Testament. There is only one God. That God is our Father. If Jesus is a God, then Jesus is our Father. Again, they're sort of using inequality here. The transitive properties of equality are that if A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C. That's what it is. God is, or the Father is God, or Jesus is God, then Jesus must be the Father. That sort of logic is what they use. As to this deity, Jesus Christ is God the Father. Isaiah 9.6 clearly calls him the Father. It says that Jesus there, it's usually ascribed to Jesus, that he is the everlasting Father. or Father of Eternity. So there is a title given to this person that we normally identify with Jesus, and so he is this Father of Eternity, therefore he is this Father God. They would continue, the modalists, the reason we call God our Father is because He created us. John 1.3, Colossians 1.16, and Hebrews 1.2 tell us that all things were created by Jesus, therefore making Him our Father. Now the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, many times, is simply referred to as the Spirit of God. Yet Scripture also speaks about us receiving the Spirit of Christ. You know, a number of verses that talk about the Spirit of Christ. Romans 8, 9 says, So there he's called the Spirit of God. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, He does not belong to him. So here we talk about the spirit of God and the spirit of Christ in the space of two sentences, referring to the same person. Other places simply identify him as the spirit. And Ephesians 4.4 tells us that there is only one spirit. It says, there is one body and one spirit, just as you also were called in the hope of your calling. So they say, this must all refer to the same person, the one true God. As to his deity, Jesus is the Holy Spirit. To receive Christ is to receive the Spirit. So they make the argument that Jesus is the Father and Jesus is the Holy Spirit. One is Romans 8, 9. Yes, that's Romans 8-9, yes. And there are others, Galatians 4-6, Philippians 1-19, all talk about the Spirit of Christ. It's a relatively common term for the Holy Spirit. Look at John chapter 14. Jesus, of course, is speaking to his disciples just before he goes to die. And he's making some promises to them. He says in John 14, starting in verse 16, Read down to verse 18, he says, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him. But you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. So we have Jesus promising the Spirit of truth that the Father will send, he'll ask the Father, the Father will send the Spirit. And then Jesus says, I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. So they say here that Jesus promises, verse 18, he will come to them. In just the previous verse, he says, I will send the Spirit. So what he says is, Jesus will come back in the person of the Spirit. So this is the way that Jesus keeps his promise. Not that Jesus will send a separate person to them, but he will send, in effect, himself to come back to them in the person of the Spirit. Back a few verses to John 14, verse seven to nine. After Jesus has said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, he says, If you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you know him and have seen him. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been so long with you? And yet you have not come to know me, Philip? So Jesus was saying that he himself is the one that Philip was asking for. That's what a modalist would say. Philip says he's looking for the Father. Jesus says, I'm the Father, in effect. Not in so many words. But he says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Verse 10. Do you not believe that I'm in the Father and the Father's in me? He says, the Father is in me. This deity, they would say, is in humanity. So this Father deity is in this human Jesus. Now we might ask him, what about the fact that Jesus speaks of God the Father as someone else? Jesus often continually refers to the Father as somebody else. Well, One modalist says, one reason that Jesus so often spoke of God in the third person is that he did not want to appear unto men as God, but he wanted to appear as a man just like one of us. Then they will quote Philippians 2.5-8 where it talks about Jesus, verse 6, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and so on. So this is referring to the humbling of God coming as, in this human body, as Jesus, and it's only his humility that makes Jesus refer to God in the third person. Another one of the theologians says, many times the question is asked, if Jesus was Father God, why did he not say so? He also says, the answer to this question is so completely summed up in Philippians 2, 5-8. He was humble. He did not think it a good thing to flaunt his deity before men. He did not choose to appear better than men, although he was better than all men, for he was the creator of all men. He chose instead to have all men appear better than himself. And another theologian says, but that still leaves a question. Why does the New Testament make a distinction at times? The answer to this goes back to the dual nature of Jesus. In the capacity of being fully man, he was distinct from God. Not just distinct from the Father, but from being God at all. This is why we see references to the God of Jesus Christ. And he references Matthew 27, 46, and a few other places. So it talks about the God of Jesus Christ. This is obviously not the God of God. It is the God of a man. And so this view has to really separate the divine and human in Christ. We believe, of course, in the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Christ, both in full measure, but they're indistinguishable in the fullest sense. But for a oneness Pentecostal, they have to really separate these two natures. because it's the only way they can make sense of certain passages when Jesus is talking to the Father. Otherwise he sounds like some crazed person muttering to himself in the street corner. They have to separate the humanity of this person from his divinity so that when you have the human nature speaking to the divine nature, let's say in John 17 and other places. So when Jesus prays, it's the human Jesus praying to the divine person that indwells him because it is all one God. They would quote Colossians 2.9, for in him that is in Christ, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. So they would say, the fullness of the Father dwells in the man Jesus. And one other verse here, in Matthew 28.19, they would say, Jesus commanded the disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Yet they routinely baptized only in Jesus' name. as I mentioned earlier. Either they were mistaken, or they understood the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to be Jesus. Surely the apostles didn't disobey their Lord. A few other comments from David Bernard, this one the theologian, kind of sum up this argument here. He says, One, Jesus said that he would send the Comforter to us, but he also said that the Father would send us the Comforter. This is an argument that Jesus and the Father are the same person. Jesus said he'd send the Comforter, but the Father sends the Comforter, therefore Jesus and the Father are the same person. The Father alone can draw all men to God, John 6.44, yet Jesus said he would draw all men in John chapter 12. So if only the Father can draw men and Jesus can draw men, then therefore the Father and Jesus are the same. Third, Jesus will raise up all believers in the last day, John 6, 40. Yet God the Father quickens, that is, gives life to the dead, and will raise us up. Romans 4.17. So Jesus raises up, and God the Father raises up. Jesus and the Father are the same. Fourth, Christ is our sanctifier, Ephesians 5.26. And yet the Father sanctifies us, Jude 1. So if Christ sanctifies and the Father sanctifies, therefore they are the same person. And I would add there that the Holy Spirit also sanctifies us, so they must be the same person. Bernard continues, So, as I said before, they have to radically distinguish the human person from the divine person who were this being, Jesus Christ, in order to make so many statements in Scripture make any sense at all. And this view can be tricky to detect, since it does teach that Jesus is God. These aren't some people who just deny the divinity of Jesus. They would say that Jesus is God. And they also believe the Holy Spirit is God. He's not just some other power. And the differences can be very subtle unless you're able to ask very specific questions. Remember last week we looked at some of the doctrinal statements of oneist theologians, and it would say that they, it looks orthodox pretty much all the way through, but you see them make a statement that there's one God in three, they don't say persons, that's the normal way you look at the Trinity, they'll say three manifestations. And it's a subtle distinction, if you're sort of reading through it, you think, oh, this is good. I'm ready to sign up for this church. But it can be very difficult to determine where the error lies, as opposed to, let's say, other cults that view Jesus as just a man. They're very clear by this statement. You say, well, Jesus is God. Well, the modalists would say that, too. But they believe something different about who Jesus is than we do. We're about out of time, so we'll have to save our reputation for next Sunday. Remember for next week, the main distinction we'll see here, and the defense, is that The human nature and the divine nature are distinct and separate. That's how they get around, from our view, a lot of the verses that we would bring up to them. And let's pray as we close. Lord, we have only looked briefly at this false teaching and haven't really gotten into the discussion I wanted to about how to really understand who Jesus is, who the word is, who Christ is from scripture. And we pray that you would give us thoughts of Him during the week, maybe as we read the Scripture on our own, to consider carefully what the Bible says about who you are. We would not want to be led into false teaching. We want to shore up those places where our knowledge is lacking and insufficient, not to rely on our intellect, but so that we can be able to defend our faith, most of all to ourselves. For those of us who have questions about doctrine, for those who may be weak in some areas, wondering why we believe what we believe, may you grant us knowledge from your scriptures and from those godly teachers who have come before us to guide us into the truth so that our faith will be firm and unshakable. For Jesus' sake we pray. Amen.