Our Life and Times : Biblical Reasoning for a Modern Age
BLOGGER · THEOLOGIAN · APOLOGIST
Norman Harold Patterson Jr.
Counterfeit Christianity: Trashing the Trinity
If I had to identify the top three attacks on Biblical Christianity, I would say it is on the authority of the self-attesting Bible, the Deity and Humanity of Jesus Christ, and the Trinity.
If you've read any of my work, you will quickly see that when I refer to the Trinity, I call Him the one and only self-existing Trinitarian God revealed in the self-attesting Bible who exists in Three Persons; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Why so many qualifications? Because we must define the doctrine of the Trinity by and through God's self-attesting Bible. Any changes, adjustments, or redefinitions are trashing the Trinity.
The Trinity is being trashed in our day by many groups and individuals who claim to be Christian. Apostate "churches" clearly and unequivocally trash the Trinity, such as Oneness Pentecostals or the Unitarian "Church." At least they are honest; I'll give them that much.
However, others aren't so transparent, though their Counterfeiting is easy to detect once you know what you are looking for. For example, here's a blog that trashes the Trinity by referring to God as "Godself; his/her/it."
Here is a typical trashing of the Trinity by Jesuit and a United Methodist calling God the "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier."
But why should we be surprised after many mainline Counterfeit Christian colleges and seminaries agreed upon the Inclusive Language Policy as articulated by Duke Divinity School?
The exclusive use of either masculine or feminine pronouns for God should be avoided
Metaphors showing God's personal relationship with humans should be used, but need not be gendered: God is parent to us all
God and Godself can be used as substitutes for he/she and him-/herself: After God created the world, God rested
God knew Godself to be great
A variety of gender-specific metaphors can be used: God is the father who welcomes his Son, but she is also the woman for search for the lost coin
Counterfeit Christian Seminaries are right in line with something I found published by Gnostics on Gnosis.org, where their Catechism questions 7-9 state:
7. Is God a Holy Trinity?
Yes. The Gnostic tradition has always affirmed the existence of God as the Holy Trinity consisting of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
8. What are the properties of the three persons of the Holy Trinity?
The Father is characterized by activity, the creation of beings and their attraction; the Son by articulated intelligence (LOGOS) and the will to redeem; and the Holy Spirit by inspiration, fortification and vivification. In short: The Father is creator, the Son redeemer and the Holy Spirit sanctifier.
9. God being called "He" and Father and Son being masculine names, do we need to assume that the godhead is of the male gender?
No. God is totally beyond the limiting characteristics of gender. The ineffable qualities of the Divine, when receiving names in human language, have come to receive the common articles of "he", "she" and "it". It is not uncommon to find terms for God in Gnostic scriptures which are androgynous such as "Mother-Father" (METROPATOR), and the third person of the Holy Trinity (the Holy Spirit) is regarded by Gnostics as feminine.
Right in line with the gnostics is Trinity Trasher and popular Counterfeit Christian pastor/author/theologian, Dr. Greg Boyd who wrote in the introduction to his book Inspired Imperfections: How the Bible's Problems Enhance its Divine Authority:
As you may have already noticed, I will use "God" and "Godself" (rather than "he" and "himself") when referring to God, the first Person of the Trinity, or when referring to God as Trinity. For obvious reasons, I will use "he" and "himself" when referring to Jesus. And, since "Spirit" (pneuma) is feminine in Greek, and since there is some precedent for this in the church tradition, I will use "she" and "herself" whenever I refer to the Holy Spirit. I'm sorry if you find this a little distracting, but I encourage you to press on. You will (I hope) eventually get used to it.
There are other signs of Counterfeit Christianity. If your pastor seems to innocently or ignorantly pray to Mother God, they are trashing the Trinity. It is because they bought into Counterfeit Christianity. They are trashing the revelation given to us in the self-attesting Bible by the one and only self-existing Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Trash the Trinity, and you have Counterfeit Christianity.
I was going to end there, but I thought it would benefit my readers if I provided some links that would help you understand the self-existing Trinity according to the self-authenticating Bible.
Counterfeit Christianity: And The Counterfeit Christ
Counterfeit Christianity has a Counterfeit Christ
Note: All Biblical references to "God" as “Him” or “Father” have been removed to avoid offending any Counterfeit Christians.
Counterfeit Christianity seeks for people to accept Christ. The person who accepts Christ has done God a great favor by alleviating God's distress because of our rejection of God. It makes God's well-being dependent upon our response to Christ. Jesus is God "fishing" for people to see who might or might not respond to God's offer of the sacrifice for sin.
God is depicted as a desperate lover seeking to woo us. The Counterfeit Christian believes God puts no ultimate demand for holiness, purity, and obedience. Since we do God a favor by accepting Christ, there's no need for God to demand anything of us beyond being “nice.” All that matters is that people accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. This warms God's desperate and lonely heart.
God's love through the Counterfeit Christ opened a way for all to participate in the wedding feast of the Lamb. God welcomes sincere believers of all faiths. God includes everyone in eternity, much like Aslan accepted the Tash-worshipping Emeth in The Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia:
...the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me... I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oaths sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he knows it not, and it is I who reward him...
God's grace is God's ability in the Counterfeit Christ to overlook a person's sin while at the same time welcoming the sinner into God's presence. Any problem with sin is not our problem; it is God's problem. The good news is that God has made Godself acceptable to the sinner by providing a way for the sinner to be welcomed into God’s presence. In the end, the death of Jesus Christ was more for God's benefit than ours.
The Counterfeit Christ makes it possible for God to change. God is still speaking so God is still changing God’s mind. What God once called "sin" has now been rebooted by the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. God now sees through blood-stained glasses. God peers through the eyes of Christ. Now God's love is all-inclusive, ultra-tolerant, and universal.
The God of the Counterfeit Christ is no longer wrathful. God spent it upon Jesus. Christ has proven that God desperately loves us, and God includes all. This Jesus has ascended to the pantheon of gods and goddesses of all religions. And if we follow Christ, we will obey Christ's teaching that the ultimate work of Christians of all faiths seeks to eradicate injustice, prejudice, and intolerance.
The churches of the Counterfeit Christ are all about making everyone feel good. The sermons focus on 10 steps, 3 principles, or a self-help guide. The programs encompass the campus. The non-confrontational gospel is that we are making a difference in the world by walking in the wide path of peace at all costs.
God is the God of compromise, of middle ground, of tolerance; the God of the Counterfeit Christ.
We find the Dominion Mandate for Bible-believing Christians in Genesis 1:26-28:
Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
For Christians, this means that God has given us the responsibility to take dominion over the entire world. We have God's approval and authority to "fill the earth and subdue it." Add to this Christ's call in Matthew 28:19+20 to:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
And 2 Corinthians 10:3-6:
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.
While God called Christians to be separate from the world in holiness, He doesn't give us the option to isolate ourselves from the world physically. As Jesus said:
I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. John 17:14-15
Because of false piety and a lack of understanding of these and other Dominion affirming Biblical texts, Christians far too often vacate the world, leaving an "influence vacuum." As the old saying goes, "nature abhors a vacuum." Because of this, instead of taking Dominion over the arts, sciences, court systems, political offices, universities, and so on, Christians withdraw into isolated communities only to leave the world unoccupied.
As a result, anti-Christ people and philosophies have readily taken over virtually every facet of life. The greatest antithesis to Biblical Christianity has understood and intentionally implemented the Dominion Mandate for their own sinister ends.
The most dangerous of all are those espousing Cultural Marxism. Briefly, Cultural Marxism is an expansion of Classical Marxism, which focuses primarily on the economic philosophy of Karl Marx. Cultural Marxism is much more all-encompassing than Classical Marxism.
Ultimately, Cultural Marxism is about liberating humanity from the moral constraints of Biblical Christianity. The Bible prohibits same-sex intimacy, adultery in all forms, polygamy, bigamy, bestiality, pedophilia, and so on. God created man and woman in His image and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply; the Dominion Mandate!
The method Cultural Marxism employs to propagate its insidious agenda is through applying the Biblical Mandate. The plan has been and continues to be for those who oppose Biblical Christianity to infiltrate and dominate every known sphere of influence. As Voddie Bachem pointed out, their strategy is to take over the "robes" of society; professors, pastors, and judges, for example.
R.J. Rushdoony and the Christian Reconstructionists proposed the same tactic, taking over the "robes" of society. However, instead of a great "Amen" from the rest of the Church, Christian Reconstructionism has been vilified as patriarchal, extreme, and misguided.
In the meantime, Cultural Marxism is dominating the universities, media, churches, courts, arts, etc. They are putting Christians and Christianity to shame by their ardent intentionality to dominate the world for Self.
As the degeneration of our culture continues, so will the hostility toward Biblical Christianity. And just as Marxism tried to destroy Biblical Christianity through the reign of terror in anti-Christ regimes like the Soviet Union and Communist China, modern Marxists will not rest until Biblical Christianity is destroyed.
The good news, however, is the promise of Jesus Christ. He said that the "gates of hell" will not prevail against the Church. (Matthew 16:18) The image Christ was giving was not a Church that was cowering in the corner, battening down the hatches until the storm of hell subsided. Just the opposite. Hell is under attack, and its filthy gates are no match for the power and glory of the Risen Christ and His Bride.
Christians can no longer cower in corners. It is time for us to take up the battle cry and assault Cultural Marxism and any other "high place" (2 Corinthians 10:3-6) that dares to raise itself against the knowledge of God. Our weapons are not of the flesh (Ephesians 6), but they are weapons nonetheless and are worthless if left unused.
It is time for Christians to take back our country, our world for Christ. We must do it according to the means and methods of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, which means we must take Dominion and occupy all walks of life for the glory of the crown rights of Jesus Christ.
Subscribe to our newsletter.
Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.