THOU SHALT HAVE NO

OTHER GODS BEFORE ME

The Trinity—A False Doctrine

The relationship existing between Jesus and God, has long been a question of contention. The teaching that God is triune consisting of three separate entities—a split personality if you will—is false. Where can the origin of such teaching be found?

The following extensive quotes (*) are from “The Two Babylons” by Hislop:

“If there be this general coincidence between the systems of Babylon and Rome, the question arises, Does the coincidence stop here? To this the answer is, Far otherwise. We have only to bring the ancient Babylonian Mysteries to bear on the whole system of Rome, and then it will be seen how immensely the one has borrowed from the other.” [*page 12]

“In leading proof of the Babylonian character of the Papal Church, the first point to which I solicit the reader’s attention, is the character of MYSTERY which attaches alike to the modern Roman and the ancient Babylonian systems. The gigantic system of moral corruption and idolatry described in this passage under the emblem of a woman with a “GOLDEN CUP IN HER HAND” (Rev. xvii.4), “making all nations DRUNK with the wine of her fornication” (Rev. xvii. 2; xviii. 3), is divinely called “MYSTERY, Babylon the Great” (Rev. xvii. 5). That Paul’s “MYSTERY of iniquity,” as described in 2 Thess. II. 7, has its counterpart in the Church of Rome, no man of candid mind who has carefully examined the subject, can easily doubt.” [*page 4]

“In the unity of that one Only God of the Babylonians, there were three persons, and to symbolize that doctrine of the Trinity, they employed, as the discoveries of Layard prove, the equilateral triangle, just as it is well known the Romish Church does at this day. In both cases such a comparison is most degrading to the King Eternal, and is fitted utterly to pervert the minds of those who contemplate it, as if there was or could be any similitude between such a figure and Him who hath said, “To whom will ye liken God, and what likeness will ye compare unto Him?” [*page 16-17]

“The Papacy has in some of its churches, as, for instance, in the monastery of the so-called Trinitarians of Madrid, an image of the Triune God, with three heads on one body. The Babylonians had something of the same. [*page 17]

“In India, the supreme divinity, in like manner, in one of the most ancient cave temples, is represented with three heads on one body, under the name of “Eko Deva Trimurtti,” “One God, three forms.” In Japan, the Buddhists worship their great divinity, Buddha, with three heads, in the very same form, under the name of “San Pao Fuh.” All these have existed from ancient times. [*page 17, 18]

“Yet there is evidence that, at a very early period, an important change had taken place in the Babylonian notions in regard to the divinity; and that the three persons had come to be, the Eternal Father, the Spirit of God incarnate in a human mother, and a Divine Son, the fruit of that incarnation. [*page 19]

“In Papal Italy, as travelers universally admit (except where the Gospel has recently entered), all appearance of worshipping the King Eternal and Invisible is almost extinct, while the Mother and the Child are the grand objects of worship. Exactly so in this latter respect, also was it in ancient Babylon. The Babylonians, in their popular religion, supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother’s arms. From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth.

“In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the names of Isis and Osiris. In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; in Asia, as Cybele and Deoius; in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy...and even in Thibet, in China, and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find the counterpart of Madonna and her child as devoutly worshipped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.” [*page 20, 21]

“The original of that mother, so widely worshipped, there is reason to believe, was Semiramis,...who, it is well known, was worshipped by the Babylonians, and other eastern nations, and that under the name of Rhea, the great Goddess “Mother.” [* page 21]

“Now, could any one possibly believe that all this coincidence could be accidental. Of course, if the Madonna had ever so exactly resembled the Virgin Mary, that would never have excused idolatry. But when it is evident that the goddess enshrined in the Papal Church for the supreme worship of its votaries, is that very Babylonian queen who set up Nimrod, or Ninus “the Son” as the rival of Christ, and who in her own person was the incarnation of every kind of licentiousness, how dark a character does that stamp on the Roman idolatry. [* pages 87, 88]

“What will it avail to mitigate the heinous character of that idolatry, to say that the child she holds forth to adoration is called by the name of Jesus? When she was worshipped with her child in Babylon of old, that child was called by a name as peculiar to Christ, as distinctive of His glorious character, as the name of Jesus. He was called “Zoro ashta,” “the seed of the woman.” But that did not hinder the hot anger of God from being directed against those in the days of old who worshipped that “image of jealousy, provoking to jealousy.” [Ezek. 8:31] Neither can the giving of the name of Christ to the infant in the arms of the Romish Madonna, make it less the “image of jealousy,” less offensive to the Most High, less fitted to provoke His high displeasure, when it is evident that that infant is worshipped as the child of her who was adored as Queen of Heaven, with all the attributes of divinity, and was at the same time the “Mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” Image worship in every case the Lord abhors; but image worship of such a kind as this must be peculiarly abhorrent to His holy soul.” [* page 88]

“If these things be true (and gainsay them who can), who will venture now to plead for Papal Rome, or to call her a Christian Church? Is there one, who fears God, and who reads these lines, who would not admit that Paganism alone could ever have inspired such a doctrine as that avowed by the Melchites at the Nicene Council, that the Holy Trinity consisted of “the Father, the Virgin Mary, and the Messiah their Son?” [*Page 89

The prophet Daniel, in chapter seven, told us of coming events, illustrating them by a beast with ten horns, and there was another little horn that came up among the ten, plucking up three of the former horns by the roots. The angel, in giving the interpretation, said:

“The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon the earth, And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; And he shall subdue three kings.” (Daniel 7:23, 24).

According to history the Roman Kingdom is the one represented by this ten horned beast. The ten kingdoms of Rome existed down to the time of the rise of the papal power, and the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for the plucking up of these three horns, (or kings).

Doctor Arius was a noted theologian and profound teacher of his day. The point of contention by this man and the Roman Catholic Church, was the doctrine of the sonship of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, or what is commonly called the Trinity. While the Catholic Church recognizes the formula of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in the ceremony of what they call baptism, their teaching is quite to the contrary.

The Catholic Church taught that the virgin Mary was the mother of God, that Jesus was actually God upon earth and while here was absent from heaven. When He ascended back to heaven Peter took his place on earth, and thus the succession of popes from St. Peter down, as they claim, each has stood in the place of God on earth. Hence they have, all along in every period, considered the pope “God.”

Jesus is just what the Scriptures declare Him to be, and no more, viz., “The only begotten (not incarnated) Son of God,” conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, and called the “Lamb of God,” and sacrificed on Calvary for the sins of the whole world. Paul also speaks of Jesus:

“God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory” (1 Tim. 3:16).
We see how this was possible by reading a verse in Hebrews. Jesus was not God he was the express image of God.
“Who being the brightness of his [God's] glory, and the express image of his [God's] person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;” (Hebrews 1:3)
There is no trinity (or Dual) Godhead taught in the Old or New Testament. Let us read the Scriptures:
“But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1 Corinthians 8:6)
The Nicean council created a Gentile triune godhead, one god, three persons. Debate and confusion about more than one person in the true God of the Bible came after the death of the Apostles of N.T. times. Jesus and the N.T. writers all taught and identified the heavenly Father as the only “true God.” See the prayer of Jesus for his positive statement: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3)

Jesus taught that the Father was the God that had life in himself:

“For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;” (John 5 :26)

The life that Jesus had on earth was given to him by the Father and it was the Father that raised Jesus, his only begotten son from the grave to eternal life.

“Because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ:” (1 Corinthians 15:15).

“Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31)

Notice that God would judge the world by that man whom he hath ordained. What assurance does God give us?:
“In that he [God] hath raised him from the dead.” Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:” (Romans 1:3,4)
This is the center of the Gospel, our hope is in that resurrection of Jesus from mortality to immortality. This proves to us that if a man follow Christ in keeping God's laws, accept Christ’s death as their own, have the same spirit in us as Christ did, we too can be raised to immortality eternal life.
“But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Romans 8:11)
These Gospel truths prove that men [mortal, human, as Christ was] can also become the sons of God and have eternal life. We have no Bible teaching for a co–eternal triune, or dual Godhead. Paul did not teach a dual, or triune Godhead. Paul is very positive about the matter.
“And there is none other God but one....as there be gods many...But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things and, we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6)

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”(1 Timothy 2:5)

Since our Saviour went to heaven, and is our mediator, Paul still calls him “the man”, not “the God.” True he is given all power in heaven and earth from God the Father, but he is not the God, but the mediator between God and man. Have we created another God that the Bible does not teach? Remember that Israel had “But one God, the Father.” To this Jesus agrees in every way. All that he had came from the Father. In the letter to the Ephesian Church Paul states:

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

“Who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” (2 John 7)

It is a known fact both by Scriptures and history that Israel had but one person as God. With the first and great commandment in Deuteronomy 6:4, 5 the preface in verse 4 says: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.” Jesus used this preface in Mark 12:29. He knew that his Father was “the only true God.”

“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3)

“Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10)

“For I am God, and there is none else;” (Isaiah 46:9)

“For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created if not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.” (Isaiah 45 :18)

In speaking of creation God says:

“Beside me there is no God....ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any....that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.” (Isaiah 44:6,8,24)

If God didn't know of any other God sharing power with him, where is the Scripture that teaches that he had one or two more with him at creation sharing power? So who was the God of the O.T? Let us read the Scriptures:
“The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus.” (Acts 3: 13)
This Scripture proves that Jesus was not the God of the O.T. It was his Father!
The council of Nicea (A.D. 325) creates a Gentile triune Godhead. (See the first of this booklet). After the death of the Apostles, apostasy came in fast, and soon those in the early Church began to remodel Israel’s Monotheism, [or one God doctrine].

In the Council of Nicea the climax came and they officially gave the Church the Trinity doctrine of one God in three persons. It was three persons, co–eternal and co–equal in all things, of the same substance, etc. The doctrine that Jesus was a God man, God incarnate was born early among those Greek Fathers, they knew that in both old and New Scriptures, there is only one God, the Father, but they must blend their Heathen Triune god belief with the one God of the Scriptures so they could have a lot of followers.

The Babylonians had a triune godhead, one god, but three persons. This Pagan Doctrine came through strong in the Apostasy and resulted in “The Holy Trinity,” the Pagan Triune Godhead created and given to that Apostate Church.

Those who held to any other doctrine were branded as Heretics. This became a central doctrine of the Roman Church and was so firmly implanted in the minds of the people that it was carried over by most Protestants to our time. For more details read about the Trinity in “The Two Babylons” by Hislop, and in Vol. 2 of “History of the Christian Church” by Philip Schaff.

Three persons (or two)—yet one God—is not Biblical nor reasonable. Incarnation doctrine came with the Trinity doctrine, from Apostasy not the Bible. Building upon a false premise is dangerous:

“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached into you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:8)
The origin of this false Trinity doctrine began with the false premise by the Greek church fathers that our Saviour had to be a divine being (or God) “before his incarnation” in order to save mankind. And their interpretation of John 1:1-3: “Gave a mighty impulse to Christian speculation” as recorded by Schaff 's "History of the Christian Church."
Where in all the Sacred Scriptures is there one statement that says, or indicates, that only a “God incarnate,” or a God becoming “Man at Bethlehem” could save fallen men? What does the Scriptures say?

“For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” (1 Corinthians 15:21-23)
“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” [immortality at his resurrection] (1 Corinthians 15:45)

The record that God gave of his Son (1 John 5:10-12) teaches that Jesus was to be, and is God’s “only begotten Son” (John 3:16,17); both prophecy and N.T. record confirm that fact. Jesus is the only Son that God begat. He was the seed of the woman and was without sin. “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” (Gen. 3:15)
It was foretold in Isa. 7:14, and fulfilled in his son born at Bethlehem as all Bible students know. He came by begettal and birth, not by incarnation. They are not the same.

The first Adam came by creation, the second Adam came by begettal in the womb of “A virgin” and born a man. He was the son of God by begettal.

Let us not mis–apply John 1:1-3 as though it is an established fact that the words: “Word was God” was another person with the Father. It was God's own Word!

In John 1:1 the word of God was God, just as your word is with you and is you! The word made all things, (e.g. “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” (Psalms 33:6)

See Genesis 1 for how God used his breath to create all things in heaven and earth in six days. This included woman by which God brought Jesus forth in the end of time.

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” (Gen 3:15)

He was still the wondrous and glorious word of God until the time came for the Holy Spirit to implant this word, [God’s Holy Word], in Mary and it became a human being. We must see that all Scripture must harmonize because his word is truth. “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent:” (Num. 23:19). God is a spirit being. Jesus was called “the son of man” many times.

This same spirit makes all those that are his, [God], his children, but not begotten. This was not the normal actions of a man and a woman. The holy spirit of God enabled the seed that was spoken of in Gen. 3:15 to grow and be born a man. His begotten son by birth.

Revelation 18:4 informs us of a great danger we must avoid:

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”
The Trinity doctrine was borrowed from the pagan religions. It tried to makes Jesus a God instead of the “Son of God.”
Heathen pagan customs came in step by step unto the Church of God at Rome as the Roman apostasy grew and then outright heathen doctrines were adopted and taught as Christian. Paul warned about grievous wolves coming in after his death, speaking perverse things. Read Acts 20:27-31.

Revelation 17:3-6 gives us some more information:

"So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

“And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.”

Rev 18:1-8: “And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

“For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues...For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities....”

Matthew warns us in 7:19-23:
“Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."
“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Some information about the wafer is found in Hislop’s The Two Babylons, pages 163, 164:

“And when the wafer is so placed that the silver “SUN” is fronting the “round” wafer, whose “roundness” is so important an element in the Romish Mystery, what can be the meaning of it, but just to show to those who have eyes to see, that the “Wafer” itself is only another symbol of Baal, or the Sun. If the sun divinity was worshipped in Egypt as “the Seed” or in Babylon as the “Corn” precisely so is the wafer adored in Rome. “Bread corn of the elect, have mercy upon us,” is one of the appointed prayers of the Roman Litany, addressed to the wafer, in the celebration of the mass.”
Another item of interest concerning the heathen aspect of the Trinity are the three letters I.H.S.
“In regard to the Pagan character of the “unbloody sacrifice” of the mass,...There are letters on the wafer that are worth reading These letters are I.H.S. What mean these mystical letters? To a Christian these letters are represented as signifying, “Iesus Hominum Salvator,” “Jesus the Saviour of men.” But let a Roman worshipper of Isis....He will read them,...“Isis, horus, Seb,” that is “The Mother, the Child, and the Father of the gods,”—in other words, “The Egyptian Trinity.” Can the reader imagine that this double sense is accidental? Surely not. The very same spirit that converted the festival of the Pagan “Oannes” into the feast of the Christian Joannes, retaining at the same time all its ancient Paganism, has skillfully planned the initials I. H. S. to pay the semblance of a tribute to Christianity, while Paganism in reality has all the substance of the homage bestowed upon it.”

COME OUT OF HER MY PEOPLE

Some history books that are helpful to read along with the Bible:

“The Two Babylons” by Hislop, Dowling’s “History of Romanism” and many others.

Let us not worship “other gods.”
(Red emphisis mine)

HOME | BELIEF | LITERATURE | EMAIL US

Affiliated with
7th Day Church of God
3103 Pioneer Ave. S.E., Cedar Rapids, IA 52403
e-mail: shinelt@mchsi.com
All information on this site is free for public use if used without being edited.