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From Ken Raggio's Book"Greatest Doctrines of the Bible" The Oneness of God A Biblical Explanation of God By Ken Raggio
WHO is God?
If there is no God, you do not need to read this article. But if there really is a God, NOTHING is more important than knowing exactly who He is! Who is God? What is God like? NOBODY has any right to define God outside of Biblical terms. What does the BIBLE say about the nature and identity of God? The Bible is the most ancient and most primordial source of information about God. If the Bible is not right, nothing else is. What can YOU study that is MORE IMPORTANT? What is potentially more rewarding than the knowledge of God? Football? Politics? Getting rich? A thousand times, "NO!!" Knowing God is more exciting than an expedition to the most exotic place on earth. Knowing God is more exciting than star-gazing or space exploration. If ANYTHING can capture and hold your attention for a few moments, it should be the study of the God who made Heaven and Earth! You are not an atheist, are you? Atheism is a foolhardy state of mind. "The FOOL says in his heart, 'There is no God!'" (King David, Psalm 14:1). If you resist the knowledge of God, you choose to be a fool. Only a fool could genuinely believe that the entire universe and a more-than-amazing human race came about without a Creator. Evolution? Something from NOTHING? Don't you believe it! There IS a God. He is real beyond any imagination. He controls all the affairs of heaven and earth, and of men and angels! Reject every UNBIBLICAL notion about God. The Bible is the most ancient and historically substantiated declaration anywhere about God. There is no greater authority from antiquity on this subject. The Bible is and should be the textbook of choice for anyone seeking to know God. If the Bible does not give a convincing revelation of God, then we are free to invent our own. we are HOSTAGE to its Truth! Outside the Bible, men ascribe pathetic titles to God - MISNOMERS! "Divine Providence," "the Universal Consciousness," "The Force," or "the Man Upstairs." The use of such epithets are dead give-aways that the speaker does not know Him at all. The true and living God of the Bible is magnificent and mighty, and we should make every effort necessary to discover Him according to the eternal, absolute Truth. The TRUE God is the one and only GOD OF ALL THINGS! WHOEVER the true God is, He has to be the FATHER and CREATOR of ALL things. Ambiguous titles for God grossly misrepresent and even MASK His true identity. For those reasons, let us totally ABANDON trite or inaccurate sayings about God - FOR THE SAKE OF HIS HOLINESS! Inaccurate vernacular of God is misleading. It confuses and deceives us, and may even leave us doubting His very existence. Let us STOP speaking ignorantly of God! Let us STUDY HIS OWN WORDS about Himself, and see if they are TRUE! If His words are not true, then we can abandon all notion of God if we like. But if HIS WORDS reveal a LIVING GOD, we will have discovered the most priceless treasure known to any man! He should be perfectly able to REVEAL HIMSELF to mankind! Let Him speak for Himself! If He can and does, we should utterly surrender ourselves to Him! What God is not... Make no mistake about it - we did not create Him. He created us! He is not made with hands. He is not an idol. He is neither carved nor molten. Neither is He the figment of human imagination. No mortal mind can possibly concoct all that He is. No philosophy or ideology can ever substitute for His essence. Either He is self-existent and self-revealing, or He is no God. All the world's religions claim to know Him. But NO God of any religion anywhere on earth PROVES HIMSELF more perfectly than the God of the Bible. Unless and until someone can demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that the God of the Bible either does NOT exist, or is proven inferior to any other gods, we should carefully consider that: 1. He is defined in exact terms. 2. Those terms are His terms. The most ancient and primordial of all the Sacred Texts is the Holy Bible. The Bible claims for itself to be the Word of God. Read the Bible, and let God tell US what He is like. No extra-Biblical descriptions of God carry more weight than those He provides for Himself. Let the Holy Bible have its say right now. See if it reveals God to us. If it does, let us believe both it and Him. God says He is the ONLY GOD. that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself" (Isaiah 44:24). The God of the Bible claims to be the Creator, and He claims to be the ONLY ONE of His kind! As the SOLITARY Deity, He says He has no peers and no counselors. There are no others like Him. Moses declared, "the Lord our God is one Lord," (Deuteronomy 6:4). "Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any," (Isaiah 44:8b). "I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God," (Isaiah 44:6b). He is LIFE! He is the Father of all life. He is the Father of all spirits. He is, at the same time, our God, our Father, our Lord and our King. David asked, "Who is this King of Glory?" then answered, "The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory," (Psalm 24:10). The Father Himself said, "I am the Lord, your Holy one, the creator...your King," (Isaiah 43:15). We know these things because He revealed them to us by His Word. God made Himself known to men for all times with His Word. It is because of His Word that we know what we know about Him. The ancient men who were moved upon by His Holy Spirit spoke His words. He inspired what they wrote. Their explanations of Him were actually His explanations of Himself. So the more we read His Word, the more accurately we will comprehend His true nature. Let us look closer. Can men SEE Him? Did Old Testament Men actually see God? Is God a voice in the wind? Adam and Eve HEARD a "VOICE" walking in the "cool (Hebrew: wind) of the day," (Genesis 3:8). The invisible God manifested Himself to Adam and Eve as a VOICE in the wind. Nothing in these scriptures suggests that the voice came from any particular body, but obviously came from thin air, in the same manner that it was later heard by the young child Samuel (I Samuel 3), by John the Baptist (Luke 3:22), and by Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:4). Is God a vision, a man, or an angel? The invisible Spirit (Father, Lord, and King) manifested Himself to Abram in a "vision" in Genesis 15:1. He manifested Himself as a "man" in Genesis 18:2, 22, 23, 33; but the "man" was apparently an "angel," according to Genesis 19:1, 10. Is God a dream? Then God manifested Himself to Abimelech in a "dream" in Genesis 20:3. Later, Jacob also "saw" the Lord in a "dream" (Genesis 28:12), standing at the top of a ladder that reached into heaven. God manifested Himself to Jacob as a "man" in the wrestling match of Genesis 32:24,30, but the prophet Hosea identified that "man" as an "angel" (Hosea 12:3,4). God's Spirit again "appeared" as an "angel" to Moses in the burning bush of Exodus 3. The "angel" said, "I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Yet God is not a mere angel. He only occasionally appeared as one. Is God fire, smoke, thunder, lightning, a thick cloud or an earthquake? In Exodus 19:10-19, God "appeared" to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. They did not actually "see" Him however, because He "descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." There were "thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount." God is A SPIRIT! "Moses spake, and God answered Him by a voice," Exodus 10:19b. Moses and seventy elders of Israel "saw" an apparition of God, which must have been ghost-like: "and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in His clearness," (Exodus 24:10). God is not a man. This was a translucent manifestation of an invisible Spirit, not a flesh and bone appearance, because "God is not a man," according to Numbers 24:19 and Job 9:32, and the Son of Man, Jesus, testified that "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have," (Luke 24:39). "A cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses," in Exodus 33:9b. Then, "the Lord spake with Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to a friend," in Exodus 33:11. Even though God was "face to face" with Moses, Moses did not actually see a face. "Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me." The only physical manifestation was a cloud, for in Exodus 33:20, God said, "thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live." The cloud obviously did not satisfy Moses, so he said, "Shew me thy glory," (Exodus 33:18) to which God replied, "I will make all my goodness pass before thee," (Exodus 33:22-23). Was His glory or goodness a body? God agreed to put Moses in a "clift of the rock" and "cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen," (Exodus 33:22-23). Even Moses never saw God. God said His "hand" would "cover" Moses. Was God's hand six feet tall? And how could an invisible Spirit extend a "hand"? Exodus 34:5-6 describes exactly what happened: "And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him..." The hand of the Lord must have been the cloud, because in fact, that is all Moses saw. Again, Moses did not actually VIEW God! You can look as painstakingly as you like for a description of what Moses "saw," but there is absolutely no evidence that Moses saw any literal physical body of God at all. Only a cloud. But God had not promised to show him a body; only the "back parts" (Exodus 33:23) of "my goodness" (verse 19) and "my glory" (verse 22). What did the "back parts" of God's "goodness" and "glory" look like? Read the Book of Genesis, and you will see the back parts of God's goodness and glory. Read the Creation story. Read the history of Adam and Eve, Enoch, Noah and Abraham. Those stories are back parts of God's goodness and glory that Moses saw that day! When or where else did Moses get those revelations? In one last Old Testament story, we read of the prophet Daniel's great vision of Daniel 7. Daniel "saw" the Father God, as the "Ancient of Days," "whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool," (Daniel 7:9). Then Daniel "saw" that "one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before Him," (Daniel 7:13). Since this was a VISION that Daniel was having, we cannot say that he was actually "seeing" God in real time at all, but was viewing an allegorical representation while in a dream-like trance. Keep in mind that in the beginning of Daniel 7, Daniel "saw" a lion with eagle's wings, a bear with three ribs in its mouth, a leopard with four wings and four heads, and a fourth dreadful beast with iron teeth and ten horns. No one would construe these to be literal beasts, but FIGURATIVE ILLUSTRATIONS - of a series of world empires in a prophetic allegory. "No man hath seen, nor can see..." When we take into account that "God is a SPIRIT," (John 4:24), we must conclude that Daniel's vision of the Ancient of Days was an ALLEGORY: a figure - an illustration - of the God who is the "blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen," (I Timothy 6:15b, 16). In addition, the "son of man" that Daniel "saw" was also a prophetic allegory, that represented, in the FUTURE TENSE, the coming Messiah, who would not be conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary for several hundred years to come. At the time Daniel "saw" the "son," the son of man did not even exist. The "Only Begotten of the Father" would be MADE OF A WOMAN only "when the fulness of the time was come," (Galatians 4:4). Of the forty-four so-called "appearances" of God in the Old Testament, no one in fact ever "saw" God at all! The overwhelming evidence shows that the Lord God, Father and Holy Spirit of the Old Testament NEVER HAD A BODY AT ALL! What was "seen" was a wide variety of manifestations of God. Voices, dreams, visions, fire, smoke, clouds, whirlwinds, earthquakes, angels, men, and even ghostlike figures. None of these forms were actually the fullness of God in a bodily form. They were only temporary, nameless manifestations of the invisible, omnipresent, Holy Spirit who calls Himself our Father. They saw many things, but they never saw His body. He never had one. Jesus verified that God is invisible. He told the Pharisees, "Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape," (John 5:37). "You have never seen His shape." John declared, "No man hath seen God at any time," (John 1:18a). It is impossible to believe anyone truly "saw" God, when we are told specifically and repeatedly that God simply cannot be seen. He is invisible! That brings us to the magnificent miracle that was manifested at the Birth of Jesus Christ. "The Lord [invisible Spirit] shall go forth as a mighty man," - Jesus Christ! It was that tiny baby in a Bethlehem stable that Isaiah had referred to when he wrote, "The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man," (Isaiah 42:13). Jesus Christ was the embodiment of all God had ever said about Himself. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," (John 1:14). God chose not to remain invisible, but to become visible! The invisible God had manifested Himself in many forms in the Old Testament, but the highest revelation of God in the Old Testament had been by His Word. It was the Word of God, spoken and written by holy men and prophets, that manifested the most consistent and reliable revelation of the invisible God to the Old Testament world. God CREATED a BODY for Himself: Jesus Christ! The invisible Spirit had planned all along to take on a human form. He planned to come into the world as a man. "...The only begotten Son... he hath declared Him," (John 1:18b). Webster's Dictionary defines the word "declare" as meaning "to show or reveal." Jesus Christ, the Son of man, shows and reveals the invisible God. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Philip asked Jesus to "show us the Father." Jesus replied, "Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father," (John 14:8-9). Unfortunately, the human race has not begun to comprehend the overwhelming reality of our Father's appearance nearly 2000 years ago. The excitement of it all has been lost in the confusion of who Jesus Christ really is. John 1:10 tells us that "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew him not." That could only refer to the Father God. Most people do not realize that... Jesus Christ is the ONLY permanent, physical incarnation - embodiment - of the one Holy Spirit, our Father. Jesus is NOT the second person of the trinity. He is the BODY in which the FATHER dwells!! Two natures dwell in one body. Spirit and human. Jesus is divine. Jesus is human. The divine nature communicates with the human nature, and the human nature communicates with the divine nature, but a dual nature in a single body does not comprise a trinity. He is only ONE GOD [one Spirit] inside ONE (human) BODY! THAT is the TRUE nature of God. Paul described the mystery to Timothy: "God was manifest in the flesh," (I Timothy 3:16), and to the Colossians, "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead (Greek: Deity) bodily," (Colossians 2:9). If the concept seems different from modern teachings, remember John's observation that even the Jews refused to believe that their Father was in this man: "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not," (John 1:11). The same God who was always everywhere, can now be manifested somewhere in particular - in the body of Jesus! Isaiah prophesied that His name would be "Emmanuel," which means "God with us," (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). Jesus is the Father "incarnate" - in flesh! Whereas God, in the Old Testament, had been revealed through His spoken and written Word, God, in the New Testament, is revealed in flesh. Hebrews 1:1 says that He "spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets," but verse 2 says that "in these last days He hath spoken unto us by His Son," and verse 3 tells us that the Son is "the brightness of His glory, and the express image of his person." The IMAGE of the invisible God The Corinthian church was taught that Christ is "the image of God," (II Corinthian 4:4). The Colossian church was taught that the Son is "the image of the invisible God," (Colossians 1:15). "It pleased the Father that in him (the Son) should all (the Father's) fulness dwell," (Colossians 1:19). That is why John said "the Word was made flesh." Jesus Christ is Jehovah Savior come in the flesh. In fact, the very meaning of the name "Jesus" is "Jehovah Savior." Jesus explained, "I am come in my Father's name," (John 5:43). Jesus is not a clone of God the Father. He is not a duplicate deity. He is not Jehovah, Jr. He is not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. Jesus IS the Father (the eternal Spirit) manifested in the Son (the man)! Jesus, speaking as a man, insisted that He was NOT equal with the Father when He said, "My Father is greater than I," in I John 14:28. The Father is greater than the Son! Jesus said it. The Father said, in Isaiah 42:8b, "My Glory will I not give to another." So, the Father and the Son are NOT co-equal or co-eternal. Jesus Christ is not the second member of the Godhead. He is the man in whom the Father dwells. So the oneness of God refers to the Spirit (Father) in the Human Body (Christ) - God in Christ. God the Father never invented or created a "GOD the Son." That is a blasphemous, heretical misnomer. The phrase "God the Son" NEVER occurs in the Bible. The Son of God was "made of a woman," (Galatians 4:4), and was "conceived...of the Holy Ghost," (Matthew 1:20). "Conceived of the Holy Ghost" means "The Holy Ghost is the Father." Matthew 1:20 shows us that the Holy Ghost is actually the Father, since John said the Son of Man is the "only begotten of the Father," (John 1:14). The human body of Jesus was not only conceived by His Holy Spirit Father, but was also a visible shell which actually housed the Father. If God is a Trinity of three persons, and if Jesus is the fullness of God bodily, then there are three persons in the body of Jesus! But we know that is not the case. God is not three persons. He is ONE SPIRIT, and that Spirit is the Father, who is incarnate in the body of Jesus. The fullness of God is the Father. And HE is in the body of Jesus. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself,"(2 Corinthians 5:19). He was the fullness of God bodily. The Son is in perfect oneness with the Father by virtue of the incarnation. If you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father. Otherwise, the Father is invisible. But in the flesh, you can see Him. Many Trinitarians take 1 John 5:7 to "prove" that God is three persons. "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one," 1 John 5:7. In point of fact, this verse does not say that God is three PERSONS. The word "persons" is not used. But that is not the biggest problem with this verse. THIS VERSE was NOT in the original GREEK TEXT: It was added by the Dutch humanist, Erasmus, to the 1516 version of the Textus Recepticus. The Greek scholar A. T. Robertson, author of A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in Light of Historical Research, and the multi-volumed Word Pictures in the New Testament, (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, 1933, reprinted 1960, Vol. 6), says on pages 240-241 of Word Pictures: "At this point [1 John 5:7] the Latin Vulgate gives the words in the Textus Receptus, found in no Greek MS. save two late cursives (162 in the Vatican Library of the fifteenth century, [No.] 34 of the sixteenth century in Trinity College, Dublin). Jerome did not have it. Erasmus did not have it in his first edition, but rashly offered to insert it if a single Greek MS. had it, and 34 was produced with the insertion, as if made to order. Some Latin scribe caught up Cyprian’s exegesis and wrote it on the margin of his text, and so it got into the Vulgate and finally into the Textus Receptus by the stupidity of Erasmus.” In The Divine Trinity - A Dogmatic Treatise, 1912, page 35, author Joseph Pohle, PhD, refers to 1 John 5:7 by its theological nomenclature: "Comma Ionneum" also known as "Comma Johanneum," which refers to the "comma" in the book of John. "Comma" indicates a GAP - a missing element. For centuries, scholars have tried to figure out how this verse got into the Bible. Pohle observes, "The most weighty objection raised against the authenticity of 1 John 5:7 is based on the circumstance that the text is missing in all the older Greek codices without exception. Not until the fifteenth century does it begin to make its appearance in the manuscript copies of St. John's first epistle. Moreover, not one of the Greek Fathers who combatted Arianism [the Oneness doctrine] ever cited this strong passage, which would have dealt a death blow to the heresy... the only rational explanation is that the COMMA IONNEUM was not there." What does this mean? From the evidence of the Greek texts, the entire statement that the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit are “one” was NOT in the original Bible. The entire statement was added to the Word of God by men, and thus has no weight of truth." Therefore, 1 John 5:7 has NO WEIGHT in the entire discussion. It was NOT in the Bible, but added in the 1500s by Roman Catholic scribes to the side notes, and later added to the main text by Erasmus. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ Remember that Moses had desired to see the glory of God's face, but it was impossible in Old Testament times. However, 2500 years later he was resurrected from the dead to see "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," (II Corinthians 4:6, see also Mark 9:4). Moses finally saw the invisible God in the face of Jesus Christ. By the same definition, anyone who sees the face of Jesus Christ is also seeing the Father and the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, the Spirit cannot be seen. Isaiah 9:6 said, "...His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince Of Peace." Jesus is the Father and the Son. As SPIRIT, Jesus is the Father and the King. As HUMAN, Jesus is the Son and the Prince. Jesus plainly answered the Pharisees' question, "Where is thy Father?" by saying, "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." Then He stunned them with this conclusion: "If ye believe not that I am He [the Father], ye shall die in your sins," (John 8:19, 24). God the Father came to this earth nearly 2000 years ago in the body of a man who was named with His own name, and He was "despised and rejected of men," (Isaiah 53:3) but "hereby perceive we the love of God, because He [the Father] laid down His life for us," (I John 3:16). His Spirit was in that man. The Father was in the Son. That is the essence of the Incarnation, purely and simply. You and I should thrill to know that the man on the cross was the one true God, our Father, and Creator. This is the great Apostolic doctrine: the doctrine of the Apostles! This is the doctrine of the Oneness of God. "The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are CLEARLY SEEN, being understood by the things that are made, even HIS ETERNAL POWER AND GODHEAD," Romans 1:20. 
"The Lord Is One" A mezuzah is a piece of parchment inscribed with specified Hebrew verses from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21). These verses comprise the Jewish prayer "Shema Yisrael," which begins with the phrase: "Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is One" A mezuzah is affixed in a decorative case to the doorframe in Jewish homes to fulfill the mitzvah 
(Biblical commandment) to inscribe the words of the Shema "on the DOORPOSTS of your house," (Deuteronomy 6:9). The verses are written in black indelible ink with a special quill pen. The parchment is then rolled up and placed inside the case. Traditionally, when entering the door of the home, one "kisses" the Mezuzah by touching it and saying, "The Lord is One."
All this tradition reinforces the doctrine of the Oneness of God. Christians would do well to remind themselves every day that the LORD is ONE - not three! Please watch the VIDEO below for historical proof.
Now, you should be able to understand
why it is so important to be BAPTIZED in the Name of Jesus! And you should also be able to understand What's wrong with the Roman Catholic Church What about God's statement, "Let US make man in OUR image..." Who was God speaking about - "US" and "OUR"? "And God said, Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness..." Genesis 1:26. "Majestic plural" is the grammatical term that applies to the statement "Let US make man." A Monarch uses a plural pronoun to speak not only for himself, but his entire kingdom. It is also called the royal "we". Queen Victoria spoke to the ladies of her court saying "We are not amused." Czar Nicholas of Russia abdicated his throne saying, "We have thought it well to renounce the Throne of the Russian Empire." ONE person speaks for an empire. My Apostolic friend from India (now living in Texas), Priti Kujar, informed me, "Being a speaker of Hindi language, I can relate to the fact that monarchs in India mostly used to use the plural 'we' rather than 'I' when referring to themselves. It reflected their stature and authority. There are still some community which uses 'we' instead of 'I' for referring to oneself." The use of the majestic plural - or "royal 'we'"in no wise proves that God is a trinity. See also: "The Early Church Was Absolutely Unequivocally NOT Trinitarian" Sign up for
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