Sorry without reading through everything, do you believe that the father is the holy ghost? I'm just wondering as to how other people believe, and if you so, why do you think this? Thanks
I see the holy ghost as separate the father. He comes from the father but he isn't him.
I understand the Holy Ghost as referring to God as he works in in this world as spirit. This is God himself, not one of his created angels.
I understand the Father to how Jesus chose to refer to God above when he walked among us as a man.
The titles may not have identical meaning but would refer to the same that created both the heavens and the earth.
For clarification,
I understand that we have One God who created the heavens and the earth. In the Old Testament he spoke to Adam, to Abraham as "I AM" and later to Moses and Israel as the LORD Jehovah. At various times he spoke with men by means of dreams, visions, and even by literal verifiable physical appearance. Although he can take physical form when he wishes, God is a spirit, and the creator of all other spirits.
I believe that God chose to appear to us in a special and unique fashion: he would come to us as born like a child, walk among us in our shoes, and offer himself as a willing sacrifice for our sin that he might draw men to himself that they might be saved. God may have before appeared in the flesh (such as with Adam, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua) but this was not merely for appearance, but that he might demonstrate to us that he had endured all things as we did. I understand that when God walked among us in this form we called him Jesus.
As to how exactly this worked I may speculate that God simply managed to be in more than one place at once. Surely when he appeared to Moses and talked face to face as a friend he wasn't absent from heaven, and he must have the power to multi-task if he can listen to all of our prayers at once. What would make this different would be that one part of himself could experience would work through our limited human frame and mind, even to the extent of limited knowledge and experience.
Can God do this? I suppose that he could. Can I do this? Not exactly. We have the occasional movie where a person splits themselves into multiple locations at once and operates independently. I cannot say how exactly this is done, so I rely on clear statements from scripture and Jesus himself (as opposed to my own reasoning) and let the gray areas fill themselves out.
So when Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth and John that Jesus created all things, to me that means God equals Jesus. When the Lord of the Old Testament says that he is the first and the last, that is his name, there is no other God, and he will not share his glory with another, and Jesus also introduces himself as the first and the last, that also forms a clear equivalence in my mind. God appeared to men by other names in time past, but the name which he now makes himself known is by the name Jesus.