GODS MISUNDERSTOOD FAMILY ARITHMETIC

AND THE THREEFOLD GODHEAD!!

By Derrick Gillespie
Often those who oppose the Trinity (even the three holiest beings in heaven version of a Trio of
beings, as taught by Adventisms E.G. White) they are predictively seen triumphalistically applying the
man-made and shortsighted arithmetic of 1+1+1 = 3; while patting themselves on the shoulder in selfcongratulation, and crowing proudly that they have somehow debunked the three in one Godhead
notion, while stating quite emphatically that in no way can three be one. Well, I will prove it beyond
the shadow of a doubt that when it comes to family relations, and Gods arithmetic for the family, their
applied equation is totally in error, and in fact I can prove that even more than three can be still one
when it comes to a true family. In fact millions in a family can still be one. Am sure that by now you must
be raising your eyebrows at this seemingly crazy notion, and am sure you are anxious to see me prove
it. Well, it is one of the easiest thing to prove and straight from the Bible too. You know, the Bible
makes plain that spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and it is because of the lack of spiritual eye
salve why so many reject the notion of (using actual phrases from Adventisms pioneer, E.G. White)
how a threefold Godhead can be a Great Threefold Power (singular), having three holiest beings in
heaven involved (i.e. the three living persons of the Father, His Son, and their Holy Spirit) and yet
there still remains one God, the Father (1 Cor. 8:6); not three Gods.

"Have you been born again? Have you become a new being in Christ Jesus? Then co-operate
with the three great powers of heaven *who [notice all three called who] are working in your
behalf. Doing this you will reveal to the world the principles of righteousnessGod says, [notice
after this whom she means says this] "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, . . . and
touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall
be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." This is the pledge of [*not one person, but]
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit [i.e. the *pledge to receive and be a Father to you];
made to you if you will keep your baptismal vow, and touch not the unclean thing In order to
deal righteously with the world, as members of the royal family, children of the heavenly King,
Christians must feel their need of a power, which comes only from the [three] heavenly
agencies that have pledged themselves to work in man's behalf. After we have formed a union
with the great THREEFOLD POWER [singular; collective], we shall regard our duty toward the
members of God's family with a sacred awe.
-E.G. White, Signs of the Times, June 19, 1901
The foregoing description is that of a family of divine beings, where they are all related generically, i.e.
the Father is the Source of His only begotten Son, and of His omnipresent Holy Spirit (His seed of
life, as it were), and they all bear the one name (singular) of the Father whos called THE LORD or
Jehovah (see Matthew 28:19). But in all of this there still remains one God, the Father (1 Cor. 8:6), and
not an equation of 1+1+1 = 3 so-called Gods!! Thats easy to say, you might think, but hard to prove,

so now let me prove it.

GODS FAMILY ARITHMETIC

The Bible itself proves that Gods family arithmetic is always a self-multiplication process of 1X1X1=1,
and while that process ALWAYS results in separate persons/beings being derived, and yet there remains
one head of the group, with all the family relations being the same in nature as the head of the group,
with all involved bearing the same name of the head of the group, and they together can be called the
same thing IN THE SINGULAR!! Biblical proof? Well here it is, as it has always been right under our noses,
but with many failing to see it. For instance, God said to Abraham:

Genesis 26:4 And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will
give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth
be blessed
God in Isaiah 51:2 said he called Abraham and Sarah alone and blessed him (notice him) as a great
nation, yet it was not literally by himself that Abraham would multiply, but in oneness with his wife
whos deemed one flesh with him. Notice carefully, when it comes to a family Gods arithmetic of
increasing the size of that family is always MULTIPLICATION of the original by itself to produce other
beings in that same family. And this was so from the very beginning where Eve was taken out of Adam,
or Adam was multiplied and became two persons. God did not produce Eve from a separate lump of
clay (or the family oneness would have been defeated), but multiplied the original lump (as it were)
and took Eve from Adam, and hence it is 1X1 = 1 flesh, and that is why despite they are clearly two
persons or separate beings resulting, God still called both of them one flesh (Genesis 2:24), and
even called both of them together Adam (singular) as seen distinctly in Genesis 5:2 --

Genesis 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created
Man, in the likeness of God made he him;
Gen 5:2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name
Adam [singular], in the day when they were created.

They were so one that when God chased both Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden here is what
God said about that reality (what some have read over and over and never saw):

Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us,
to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of
life, and eat, and live for ever:
Gen 3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden.
Now, this oneness of the family of Adam has remained so (despite all the persons involved, even in the
millions), so much so that God himself still referred to the family of Adam (males and females together)
by the singular pronoun he even when millions resulted from the multiplication process of the original
Man, as seen below (note carefully the singular pronouns):

Genesis 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the
earth, and daughters were born unto them,

Gen 6:2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they
took them wives of all which they chose.
Gen 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that *HE
also is flesh: yet *HIS days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of *HIS heart was only evil continually.
What is worthy of note is that this referring to Man (male and female together) in his
thousands/millions as he (as seen even further in Psalm 8:4-6) was not because humans are literally
one being in person, but simply because, firstly, that expression is acceptable as far as generic language
go, secondly, it depicts in Gods own way the oneness of the family of Man, and, thirdly, it also has a
deeper meaning than many realize. All of Man (humanity) that is sinful is part of the original first
Adam who share a spiritual oneness as a fallen or sinful Seed that was multiplied, while all of Man
(humanity) that is now born again is considered part of, or are members of the second Adam
(Christ), who are still called one Seed (not seeds), as seen clearly in Galatians 3:16, 29 and 1 Cor.
12:12---

Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith
not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
Gal 3:29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed [singular], and heirs
according to the promise.
1 Corinthians 12:12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the
members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.
Born again Christians are spiritual family members of one Christ (the second Adam), just as all of sinful
humanity were biological members of the family of Adam together called he despite existing in
multiplied millions. Thus that is why Jesus Christ, as our Forerunner and the First-fruits of restored
humanity, he becomes the representative in Heaven of all who will be saved and all who will rule (in the
human sphere) as the saved of humanity in the earth made new (as seen clearly in Ephesian 2:6 and
Daniel 7:13, 14, 27).
Calling many and multiplied members of a family he, because they are related generically or
biologically, is further seen all over the Bible, including the family of Jacob or Israel (Abrahams seed)
being spoken of together in the singular as he, as seen below:

Deuteronomy 32:9 For the LORD'S portion is his people; Jacob [singular] is the
lot of his inheritance.
Deu 32:10 He found *HIM in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led
HIM about, he instructed HIM, he kept HIM as the apple of his eye.
Deu 32:11 As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad
her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:
Deu 32:12 So the LORD alone did lead HIM, and there was no strange god with HIM.
Deu 32:13 He made HIM ride on the high places of the earth

Now, the above passage is pregnant with truths that are often missed by the casual reader or by those

lacking the spiritual eye salve. In the above (read all of Deut.32:8-18 to see) it is plain that Jacob or Israel
is the people of God (named after the head or patriarch of that family) in all their experiences with
God over the centuries, and yet God calls them he. And despite their multiplied millions as the seed
of Jacob, or the seed (SINGULAR) of Abraham, there remained one Israel or one Jacob (both in the
sense of the individual head or patriarch, Israel himself, and in the sense of the family bearing the one
name of Jacob or Israel). No one in their right minds would ever say that because Israel had many
members being considered one, it results in many Israels or Jacobs; just as no one in their right
minds would think that because Christ has many members spiritually as one body, as seen in 1 Cor.
12:12, that this results in many Christs. There remains one true Christ; despite all his members are
intimately one with him (so that when Paul persecuted the Church he was seen as persecuting Christ
himself). All members of Christ can be called christ, or annointed members of the one body of
Christ (remember Christ simply means anointed) because that is how a family works in Gods eyes.

EARTHLY FAMILIES ARE AN IMAGE OF THE GODHEAD

Now, when God made the first family at Creation notice carefully that it was a family that was made to
be a reflection or image of persons or beings speaking as us (Genesis 1:26-28), and the Bible made
plain that this us was the Father speaking to and about His Son in relation to himself. That is why we
later learn that Creation was a TEAM effort, whereby the Father spoke to and created through the Son
(see Gen. 1:26 with Heb. 1:1-3, 8-12) and their Holy Spirit did their bidding as that Spirit was sent to
execute the creative process (see Psalm 104:30 with Psalm 33:4).
In addition, the Bible makes plain that God also has a Son (Jesus Christ) who was begotten or brought
forth from Him from everlasting (see John 3:16 with Micah 5:2 and Proverbs 8:22-31 with 1 Cor.
1:24), and despite His Son, a separate being, (by the divine multiplication process) is fully God in
nature like His Father (Isaiah 9:6 and Heb. 1:8 with Titus 2:13, 14), to the point where he is
acknowledged as OUR Lord and God (see John 20:28, 29), and is even a Father to us by ay of creation
and redemption (see Heb. 2:11-16 with Is. 9:6), yet there still remains one God, the Father (1 Cor. 8:6),
one Jehovah, and one divinity; just as there remains one Israel or one Christ, despite all the members
involved in that family of like individuals together called he. And upon the authority of Gods Word it
is plain that if separate beings closely related in a family on earth can together be called HE, then so
can all the united members of the divine Family, or the Godhead, who all have the same name and are
united in the same purpose (just as the members of Israel and Christ are), and yet they remain
separate beings. They also together can be deemed one God, and speak as one Almighty or one
Jehovah (as the earlier quote from E.G. White shows), just as there remains one Israel and one
Christ having several members of like nature.
In the end, the Bible explains its own self and refutes and debunks all mistaken ideas trying to apply the
1+1+1 = 3 arithmetic; when it is plain that its the 1X1X1=1 arithmetic that God himself recognizes when
it comes to the oneness of the family of Man, and the oneness of the family in the Godhead. I rest my
case.
To delve more into this awesome topic, see on the Scribd.com website the FREE booklet Identifying
Errors About God Made Easy, written by this same author (Derrick Gillespie), or email me at
ddgillespie@live.com to get your free copy via email. God bless you as you continue to study these
issues humbly, ever recognizing that the things of God are not always the way unregenerate humans see
things. See Job 11:7-9 and be humble before God.