Isaiah 48:16d

"And now the Lord God has sent Me, and His Spirit."

This is the last line of Isaiah 48:16. Throughout this chapter God is speaking to Israel. Then at the end of verse 16 God says the above line. What is God saying?

In this section of chapter 48 God is talking about deliverance. While doing this the Trinity that is God is revealed.

We can see that this is not the Father speaking in chapter 48, but the Son. The Son is saying the Father has sent him and the Holy Spirit. So we obviously have three separate persons mentioned in this verse.

Yes, the Trinity is in the Old Testament.

The Trinity is a very difficult concept to understand. It is God in a relationship with Himself. Here is one way to understand the Trinity:

God is omnipresent. This means God is everywhere. God is with you right now, and He is with me right now--at the same time.

God is omnipotent, meaning He can do whatever He wants. For example, God has the power to appear to Moses as fire in a bush, and God has the power to appear as a dove in the air. If He so choses, He has the power to manefest Himself to us in any way He wishes.

Since I brought up Moses, let's use his experience as an example.

God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. Since God is everywhere, He was in the flame in the bush, and at the same time He was still everywhere else. That means, at the same time He appeared in the burning bush, He could choose to appear in a second burning bush just to the right of the original burning bush. He could then appear in a third burning bush to the left of the original burning bush.

The point is that since God is everywhere at once, and He has the power to manefest Himself anyway He wants, He could do what I just described. In fact, if God so wished, the flames in the three bushes could each "talk" to Moses individually, or even talk to each other.

Yes, we know the flames aren't talking, it is God talking. But to Moses it appears as though flames in three separate bushes are talking to him and to each other.

All of this is within the ability of God to do.

This is what God does in His relationship with us. And it's the same thing you do in your relationships.

You are also three persons in one human person. (Let's use an adult male for an example.)

1) You are the son of your father.

2) You are the father to your children.

3) You are an employee to your boss at work.

You are the father. You are the son. And you are the employee. The major difference between you and God, however, is that you can't be all three at the same time in three different places. But God can.

One of those burning bushes I used in my example is God the Father. One is God the Son. One is God the Holy Spirit.

Why does God do this?

Because sometimes God relates to us as a Father. Sometimes God relates to us as the Son of the Father. And sometimes God relates to us as a teacher and guide (the Holy Spirit). And at times He relates to us as all three at once. Or He relates to Himself, for example God the Son relating to God the Father, so we can see what a proper relationship with God looks like. (He shows us a real-life example.)

Just as you are three people, and in each role you act and do different things, God is telling us that He relates to us in three different ways. We see each of God's roles (relationships with us) as a different person - just as your father sees you as a different person than your children do - so we say that God is three persons in one God.

But, not three gods. (That is blasphemy!)

One final thought. What is Christianity? Is it a religion? No. Christianity is a relationship. Christianity is based on love, and love requires a relationship. This means that God must be a relationship. That's why there are three persons in one God--because God is in a loving relationship even before we had been created.