Hello Steve! Thanks for your encouragement, my friend, and also for your challenge.
This is why I love writing on sites like Medium. We need places today to have conversations like this, to be able to talk about our disagreements like friends.
The first thing I'll say with you is that I agree -- there was someone else who was not Jesus who spoke at Jesus' baptism, who spoke at Jesus' Transfiguration, who Jesus prayed to, who Jesus called out to on the Cross.
The was the Father, as I'm sure we both agree.
Jesus isn't the Father. I don't claim that He is.
Clearly, there is distinction between them. As you pointed out, Jesus can pray to the Father, and the Father can speak from Heaven.
On all this, so far, I think we agree.
The only point I'm making in the article is that Jesus and the Father, while being distinct, are also both Yahweh, along with their Holy Spirit.
If that seems weird -- that Jesus could talk to the Father, yet they're both Yahweh -- think of your stomach and your brain.
You are one person, but you have various parts. Your parts can talk to each other and disagree. Your stomach can get hungry and crave food, while your brain can resist -- waiting for a meal, or perhaps fasting, or rejecting the junk food your stomach craves for healthy food.
How can that work? How can you be one person, yet your stomach and brain can get into a wrestling match on whether to eat something?
Because even though you are one being, you are a complex being. You have parts. Your stomach and brain are both part of you, but they aren't the same. Your stomach isn't your brain.
God is the same.
God is one Being, one God. He has parts, and these parts can talk to each other. Just as your stomach is not your brain, and your body is not your soul, Jesus is not the Father.
Yet your stomach and brain are both part of you. Your body and soul are both you.
Jesus and the Father are both Yahweh God.
Please feel free to write back with any pushback or challenges. These are the kinds of conversations worth having, my friend!
