It’s nonsense! No, it’s a mystery!

No, it’s mystical.

Why such a potent attraction to mysteries? What was the draw? People died to ward off the trinity formulation. People murdered to establish the new dogma. This was foretold in divine foresight. “And when He had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.” (Rev. 6:3,4).

“Thus, the Athanasian creed, which is a later composition but reflects the general conceptions of Athanasius [the 4th-century Trinitarian whose view eventually became official doctrine] and his school, formulated the conception of a co-equal Trinity wherein the Holy Spirit was the third ‘Person’; and so it was made a dogma of the faith, and belief in the Three in One and One in Three became a paramount doctrine of Christianity, though not without terrible riots and bloodshed…”

“The on-going disagreements were at times violent and bloody. Of the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea, noted historian Will Durant writes, ‘Probably more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in these two years (342-3) than by all the persecutions of Christians by pagans in the history of Rome’ (The Story of Civilization, Vol.4: The Age of Faith, 1950. p. 8.)

This second seal period followed the white horse period of church purity, and it preceded the black horse period of a spiritual darkening into midnight spiritualism. This apostatizing early church fathers period was the transition from obedient apostles and rejoicing people in the grace of God through His only-begotten Son.

How could Christians kill Christians during the red horse seal? What kind of madness possessed them to do such a thing? So far the two quotations above have come from the small paperback entitled, “Is God a Trinity?” And even though I am a Seventh-day Adventist and this book was published by the United Church of God, an International Association, its historical facts are well documented.

Here’s what it continues to say that I believe explains the bloodshed and the determination to make the Trinity doctrine official:

“‘The Trinity only made sense as a mystical or spiritual experience…. It was not a logical or intellectual formulation but an imaginative paradigm that confounded reason. Gregory of Nazianzus made this clear when he explained that contemplation of the Three in One induced a profound and overwhelming emotion that confounded thought and intellectual clarity.

‘“No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One. When I think of any of the Three, I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me”’ (A History of God, p. 24). Little wonder that, as Armstrong concludes, “‘For many Western Christians...the Trinity is simply baffling’” (Ibid.). Please, don’t be doubtful toward the authenticity of this statement. Starving people, people whose souls are suffocating from lack of life and peace and hope, do extreme things and stretch further than those who are blessed with a society of peace and love, even if they take all their blessings from heaven for granted.

So, what was really going on here? A religious doctrine causing all of this extremism and chaos? The author quoted in my paperback begins to look for the goings on, but then pulls back from going for the real purpose for the confounding. Here’s what I see happening:

When the soul is separated from the living God, death ensues. And the church had lost its first love by this time. “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” (Rev. 2:4,5).

But, history attests to the fact that the church did not repent. Therefore its spirituality went dark. Spiritual death ensued: anxiety, depression, a dark world surrounds, no joy, no purpose in life. Such a case is as painful as Job’s boils. Such an existence is as horrific as a drug abuser badly in need of another fix. What to do? The Christian is not dying for an opiate. The Christian is not dying for tobacco or alcohol. He is clean from those intoxicants. But he is desperate for something to lift his spirits. He has what King Saul got after losing his first love and conversion into a new creature—the Christian is disturbed by Satan. “But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.” (1Sam. 16:14).

Centuries before, Israel was warned about this, but the warning was in writing, and the little red books were never read.

“Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; and it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: the LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.” (Deut. 29:18-20).

Like no other nation, Israel was to dominate the world by being spared the devastating emptiness that haunted the rest of the humanity. The remedy given them was the Law, and the curses of the Law. This would give them something to truly seek God for. It would give them something real to pray about, and really pray. Thus, Jehovah, the living God, the only true God, would draw near each heart and soul that experienced the exceeding sinfulness of sin. And some Israelites did just that. “But before faith came, we were kept under [‘the curse of’ (vs. 13)] the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” (Gal. 3:23,24).

Saul never read the Law, like he knew to do. “And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them.” (Deut. 17:18,19).

If the Israelites had kept themselves before the Law with all of its rightful curses and condemnations for their sinfulness, then the Spirit of truth would have faithfully brought them to Christ to be continually comforted because of the faith created by the pointed condemnation of their sins.

Here is the cause of the woeful need for the post-apostolic Christians’ peace and rest. They had adopted the pagan rule of lawlessness. Even though their behavior looked upright, “O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say My people, We are lords; we will come no more unto Thee? Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number.” (Jer. 2:31,32).

Therefore, the next words of Jeremiah would soon apply to them. “Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these. 

Yet thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely His anger shall turn from me. Behold, I will plead with thee, because thou sayest, I have not sinned. 

Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? Thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria. 

Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them.” (Jer. 2:34-37).

But, they weren’t idolatrous like the heathen around them! “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, 

Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: 

Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” (Eph. 4:17-19).

No, they weren’t beyond conviction, but they soon would be. A veiled idolatry would consume them without their slightest knowledge that that was happening. An intellectual fornication, a mental practice, a strange psychological trick, fixating on a self-hypnotizing, mathematical mantra would be their beloved idol. This was not a new invention, but was done anciently by the god-forsaken, Chaldean priests of Nimrod. This philosophical, western form of meditation would keep them publicly clean and apparently holy, but would accomplish the same ill effects as eastern mysticism. And the same devil possession would be their sad cases, and would lead to the same occult perdition and total depravity as characterized the Greco-Roman civilization.

The western style of meditation comes in two forms: the secular logical, and the religious illogical. Either form of meditation is a refuge for the empty sinner to create his own little, personal monastery. Both secular and religious sought salvation, deliverance from the death of joy, the emptiness of soul, and the purposelessness of life. Both were and are atheistic; neither seek the living God. Both logic recreation and illogic recreation are salvation by works, salvation by human means, the works of our own hands, salvation by our own doing, by a religious temporary recreational high. By this engaging the mind in an impossible, nonsensical Trinity formula the church would fall into the same trap that took down the Jewish nation.

“Through heathenism, Satan had for ages turned men away from God; but he won his great triumph in perverting the faith of Israel. By contemplating and worshiping their own conceptions, the heathen had lost a knowledge of God, and had become more and more corrupt. So it was with Israel. The principle that man can save himself by his own works lay at the foundation of every heathen religion; it had now become the principle of the Jewish religion. Satan had implanted this principle. Wherever it is held, men have no barrier against sin.” Desire of Ages, p. 35.

Christians would, like the rest of the ungodly world, attempt a band-aid on their mind’s cancer. They would seek the fig leaves of Eden to fill their empty soul, to supply their missing fortitude. Primitive Catholicism was born and would develop as Satan would syncretize it with every world religion. Spiritualized Christianity would become a giant sucking machine for every pagan method that could turn off frontal lobes and ease the throbbing consciences.

“By thy sorceries [pharmekeia] were all nations deceived.” (Rev. 18:23). Every form of idolatry would be offered to attempt to satisfy their raging anxiety and nagging depression. Pagan doctrines, pagan substances, pagan rites and practices (modern contemplative, centering Spiritual Formation by no means excepted), all would be intoxicants to every frontal lobe and to every God-given conscience. All of this “the great dragon..., that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” (Rev. 12:9), would abundantly supply all the nations to attempt to ease their death-like, occult-serving torpor. The Trinity god would make “the people and kindreds and tongues and nations ... they that dwell upon the earth” (Rev. 11:9,10) slaves to the fine wine of Mystery, Babylon the Great. Therefore, in their torments and in their drunkenness, they could never cry to the living God who listens for every heart’s repentance, return to His Law and gospel, and be reconciled to Him.

And the wine that they drink represents Semiramis’ avenging cup of martyrs’ blood. Under the authority of Satan, she and her perpetuated daughters who wear scarlet slippers, are the woman who rides the governments and nations to avenge Nimrod’s execution. “They that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is” (Rev. 17:8).“And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.” (Rev. 18:24).