The issue of leaders who fail to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, or the Trinity, came up.
The obvious example being Vox Day, who has claimed to not believe in the Trinity, and who is right in the middle of a great deal of what we see going on in the world today.
He has a logically-structured argument in an old blog post, which starts with a very specific definition of the Trinity:
"1. The Trinity is God as three divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial. These three divine persons are combined in one being we call God."
He then proceeds to argue that since God is omniscient (which he does not believe either), then Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not God.
I personally doubt that the nature of God is very comprehensible to us. What Jesus said was that blasphemy against the Son would be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would not be--see Matthew 12 and Mark 3. Which strongly implies that the Holy Spirit is God.
It seems to me that the Temple layout reflects the three Persons: the Holy of Holies God the Father, the inner area where priests made sacrifices Jesus the Lamb--and also the High Priest as Hebrews tells us, and the outer areas the Holy Spirit.
At the "cleansing of the Temple" (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, John 2), it was the animal dealers and moneychangers that Jesus went after. I've been told they were in the court of the Gentiles. Jesus did not go after the priests or the high priest at that time, and did not enter the Holy of Holies at that time either.
Christ's actions there fit the pattern of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit being unforgivable sin--it is not only opposition to God, but also it severely hinders the spiritual progress of others. That is what Jesus dealt with first.
We are in a spiritual war, as Vox Day has also said. Maybe he has been able to get this far without much help from the Holy Spirit. I have not; there have been critical points where specific direction and help were given to me.
A smaller example: People at church reminded me earlier this week of Ephesians 2, where God the Father, Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all mentioned.
A boomer apologizes, albeit without much clarity.
"It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs," Jesus said; Matthew 15:26.
I recently understood that I am spending my life in rebuilding spiritual and practical foundations that had been foolishly undermined by previous generations.
Several months ago I was reading a nonfiction book by Christian author Paul Tournier, and made it about three-quarters of the way through before being drawn away to other things.
When I picked it up this last week and finished reading it, I found references to about a dozen Bible passages that had come up in my daily Bible readings in the interim, mostly obscure Old Testament personages with a variety of afflictions; Tournier was a Swiss doctor famous for connecting his Christianity with his medical practice.
I also read a Christian fiction book this last week: Deadline, by Randy Alcorn. One day, what I read in the book mirrored my morning Bible reading on that same day.
"A work of creation was three-fold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly; the Creative Idea, timeless and passionate, which is the image of the Father; the Creative Energy, begotten of the idea and working in time, which is the image of the Word; the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the individual soul, which is the image of the indwelling Spirit."
-- P. D. James, summarizing Dorothy L. Sayers' description
