“Come ye near unto me, hear ye this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the LORD God, and His Spirit, hath sent me” (Isaiah 48:16).

It is significant that Biblical Christianity is the only trinitarian religion—and therefore the only true religion—in the world. Most religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, etc.—are pantheistic and humanistic, denying the existence of an omnipotent God who created the space/time cosmos. There are two other major religions, however, that are monotheistic, believing in the God of creation and in the creation record in Genesis—Judaism and Islam.

However, these two fail to understand that the Creator must also be the Redeemer, and therefore they also become humanistic, believing that man must achieve salvation by his own efforts. Further, they also fail to acknowledge that God’s objective work of redemption must be made subjective in each person by the indwelling personal presence of the omnipresent Creator/Redeemer.

All this is beautifully revealed in the New Testament in the doctrine of the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—one God in three Persons, incomprehensibly human, but very real (see John 15:26; etc.).

This wonderful revelation of the Godhead was foreshadowed in the very beginning—the Father creating; the Spirit moving; the Son speaking (Genesis 1:1; 1:2; 1:3). In our text above, again it is the Son (as the living Word of God), prophesying about His coming mission of redemption, saying that “the LORD God, and His Spirit, hath sent me.”

Then, when He had finished His work and could return to the Father, He promised the coming of “the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name,” and that He would “abide with you forever” (John 14:26,16). HMM