Jesus/God the same?

Hi Believer. This is wise of you to seek understanding in these things as a new believer. I hope you read something in your Bible today and prayed to the Father in Jesus's name also. It's good to do this first, sometime in AM before you get the day going as this way you put God first and have his blessing for the day.Having said the above, to get to your questions, lots of Christians, including some with divinity degrees have erroneous ideas concerning the trinity. I did a trinity thread here in one of the forums some time ago. Possibly a search of it would bring it up.Go to the Bible for your answers.
1. Jesus always referred to god the father as "Father", or "God". On the cross he called him, "my God." In John 14 he said that whoever has seen him has seen the father. This is a qualified statement, because later in the same chapter he said "my Father is greater than I." How can this be? What he first meant is "if you've seen me, you've seen what my father is like. The second statement he made was in the sense that the father is always greater than the son. He came to do the father's will.2. The apostles in the New Testament books called the epistles (most of these follow the 4 gospels) always began their letters with something like "from God our Father and Jesus Christ the Lord." This means the father is the god of us and Jesus is the lord of us, or our master.3. Jesus is the mediator or the way/ambassidor to get us to God. That's why it is important to pray to the father in the name of the son, Jesus. Jesus taught us this in the Lord's prayer when he instructed his desciples to say "Our Father who are in Heaven." He also taught this in John chapters 15 and 16. Read those.There is a literal heaven where there is a literal throne where God sits to govern/manage the universe. After the resurrection, Jesus rose to sit on the right hand of God. You're right, he didn't sit in the place of God. He's on his right hand. So they are separate, in that one is the Father and the other the Son. They have different functions also.How is God the father and Jesus the son one? They are one in that the spirit of them both is the Holy Spirit. That's also why we can call god Father, because when we receive Jesus as saviour, his spirit and the spirit of the Father comes into our bodies, souls and minds. We then become the children of God.Don't expect to ever comprehend or totally understand the Trinity, but here are some Biblical givens for your and other readers to ponder.

But Ned, in order to substantiate the veracity and accuracy of the Bible, forums like this and Faith and Belief within EvC provide the avenue to go on for that. If the Bible, for example, is not consistent and sensible on matters of the trinity, it's gona be hard to argue for it's creation story.

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Does the Bible or does Christianity enumerate any "Creations" (other than the standard, New Testament miracles, attributed directly to God's Son, Jesus, or is "Creation" specifically an act reserved for YHVH? Please give chapter and verse for any evidences of Old Testament creations attributed to Jesus.

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Hi Abshalome: When the NT refers to creation relative to Jesus the Greek, as well as the ASV used the word, "through" rather than "by." For example, see John 1:10:
"He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not.Explanation: Imo, this is explained by the fact that Jesus was born from the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit which did the actual creating according to Genesis 1:2 and Psalms 104:30 Genesis also says that God created, but Psalms 104 explains how he did it, i.e. sending forth his Holy Spirit to create. So if God the father did it by sending forth the Spirit and the Son came forth from the Spirit, it would be sensible to say the world was created through Jesus as we see in John 1:10.[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 12-09-2003]

The trinity concept is simply a way of articulating the divine administration of the kingdom of the Bible. Each member of what we call the trinity has a unique function.1. Two members of the trinity are mentioned in the very first two verses of the Bible, i.e. God the father and the Holy Spirit. The Father gives the orders and the spirit of the Father which is multipresent activates them.2. In the NT, we read in John 1:10 that the world was created [/i]through[/i] the son, Jesus. So Moose, though you folks in science don't have an appreciation of this, we who are speaking for the Bible must go by what is taught in the entire Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments.3. The son/messiah is alluded to in several texts in the OT, usually in the area of prophecy. The Jews believed this and looked for his appearing. Many still do. So in a sense, for Christians, both Jew and Gentile who receive Jesus as that messiah, the trinity was not actually a reality on earth until Jesus was born. That doesn't mean, however, that he did not exist in spirit before he was born.

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I just don't like seeing the more valid aspects of Christianity (possibly including the Trinity) getting dragged down though some undeserved association with creationism.

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Then why do we have Biblical accuracy and faith/belief forums? It has been my understanding that these forums were for this purpose?? Every fundamentalist Christian carries and uses the complete Bible. They are fundamentally inseparable. The apostles and Jesus used the OT extensively and based everything they taught on the foundation of the OT.

You've been making good sense and using the quoted texts masterfully, Wmscott! This Genesis 1 thing is like I had a dog in the yard. The dog's name is Butch. I could either say I'm going to feed doggie, or I'm going to feed Butch because Butch is the dog. Jehovah/YHWH is the god/Elohim of Genesis as well as the NT. The text makes it clear that Jehovah is being referenced.