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authority, Psalm 110:1. Everyone knew that the second lord was not God, but the Man Messiah.
Jesus had argued this also from the same Psalm (Matthew 22:42-45). Intelligent Bible reading re-
quires that we know who God and Jesus are.

The study of this important issue of the identity of God and Jesus will be facilitated if one
remembers that:

1) Elohim, the Old Testament word for God, is not plural in meaning. Though it has a plural end-
ing, this does not in this case mean that more than one is God. There are numerous examples of He-
brew nouns with grammatical plural endings referring to a single person. The idea that Elohim
pointed to a plurality of Persons in the Godhead was not mooted until a thousand years after the
New Testament period.

2) The word for "one" in Deuteronomy 6:4 defining who God is means strictly "one single." God
is said to be "one Lord" (cp. Mark 12:29ff.). This excludes any possibility of a second or third
Person being God. Jesus quotes and affirms that central creed of Israel (Mark 12:29ff.). The word
for "one" in Hebrew works like the English word "one." It does not mean more than one! It means
one and not two or more than two. "Echad," one, is the numeral 1. "Eleven" in Hebrew is ten and
one. "One" is correctly rendered, amongst 950 occurrences, as "a single," "solitary," "unique."
"Abraham was one [person]" (Isaiah 51:2). An amazingly distorted argument has arisen in some
quarters, to the effect that one really means more than one! The argument goes like this: Adam and
Eve were "one flesh." So one really means two. Thus God who is one could really be two or
three!

The logical fallacy in this argument is as follows. In the sentence about Adam and Eve
there are two human beings uniting as "one flesh." They were not however "two fleshes." One still
means one, as it always does. It is of course true that the numeral adjective "one" can modify a
collective noun like team or cluster. But we still have "one" team, which does not mean two or
three teams. We still have "one" cluster and not two clusters. To argue that "echad" really means
in itself "compound unity" is little better than saying that one means three in the phrase "one tri-
pod," or that one means a hundred if we speak of "one centipede."

Denominations should aim to unite under the banner which Jesus proclaimed (in addition to
his Gospel of the Kingdom): that GOD IS ONE -- in strict Biblical fashion.

Skeptical of the Peaceful Label

Cal Thomas

One sees many white, Anglo-Saxon, mostly Protestant members of Congress and others on television to-
day vouching for the "peaceful" nature and intent of Islam. Oprah Winfrey has done a show on "modern Muslim
women" -- none of whom would be allowed to dress in contemporary clothing, be educated, or even appear on tele-
vision if they lived in radical Muslim states.

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