How Many Gods Are There? What is God like? Is he male or female or neither? Is there really any such thing as gods or a God at all? While some people do not believe in the existence of any kind of god, many others do. Among the various world religions there are widely differing views of their respective gods.

The Oxford Dictionary‘s first two definitions of “god” are as follows:

(In Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being. (In certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.

Example: The Hindu god Vishnu

Source: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/god

There are actually three “monotheistic” (belief in one God) world religions:

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; yet even these three religions have widely differing views of God.

A “ polytheistic” religion holds to belief in many gods. Many Westerners are surprised when they read that in the country of India, for example, it is said that there are 300 million gods. Where is the truth found? Is there only one God, or are there many gods? It is impossible to answer this question in our limited understanding as human beings whose knowledge is limited. But in fact, there is a clear answer given for us. We read in the Book of Genesis in the Christian Holy book called the Bible, these words in the first sentence at the very beginning of this book: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1) We see here that before anything else existed in our universe, God existed, and he, in fact, created everything - all the stars and galaxies and planet earth. As we read on in Genesis chapter1 we learn that he also created all the plants and animals on the earth, as well as the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve. As we read on in the Bible we learn that this creator God is one in his essential being. In the fifth book of the Bible we read:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4) To this one nation, this group of people living in the Middle East called Israel, God chose to reveal himself; he revealed his nature, what he is like. Then several thousand years after God created Adam and Eve he did an amazing thing: he left the throne of heaven and was incarnated by the Holy Spirit in the womb of a Jewish virgin named Mary. When this child was born he was named “Jesus” as an angel had directed his father, Joseph. The word “Jesus” means “Savior from sin.”

So the eternal creator God took upon himself our full human nature so that he grew up in a home with loving, godly parents and became a carpenter like his father. During his 30th year Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power so that he went around teaching the people the truths about the nature and will of God, as well as performing great acts of healing and delivering people from demon oppression.

Yet he was rejected by the religious leaders of his nation who refused to believe he was the Messiah (or Christ – the promised one anointed with the Holy Spirit). They, in fact, conspired with the local Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to have him executed by crucifixion (death by being nailed to and hung from a cross.) This man, who came to be known as “Jesus Christ” (literally meaning the Savior from sin who is anointed with the Holy Spirit), was taken down from the cross and buried in a borrowed tomb by his friends. A Roman guard of four soldiers were stationed at his tomb to be sure that none of his followers would try to steal his body. But the precautions of the Roman governor were overruled by God who raised him from death within the tomb so that Jesus came out, resurrected in his same physical body. Over the next 40 days he appeared on ten different occasions to his disciples (followers) when he would continue teaching them. On those occasions he invited them to touch him to verify he had been physically resurrected. He even ate food with them, showing that he was not just a ghost or a spirit, but a physically resurrected man, the very Son of God. On the 40th day after his resurrection from the dead, Jesus was taken up from before the eyes of his disciples and went back to heaven from where he had come.

There he sat down at the right hand of God the Father. He was crowned with glory and honor and given all authority in heaven and earth. Ten days later God poured out the Holy Spirit from heaven on his disciples who had been gathering for prayer every day, and on that day, called the Day of Pentecost, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and received power and courage to begin preaching the Gospel (“good news”) that Jesus Christ had come in human flesh, that he lived a perfectly sinless life, that he healed the sick and even raised people from the dead, that he was crucified yet raised from the dead after three days, and that he ascended back to heaven where he was crowned by God the Father as sovereign King of all things in heaven and on earth. As Jesus himself and his followers taught, his death on the cross had cosmic significance for all peoples of the earth. When Jesus hung on the Roman instrument of execution, a wooden cross, he was actually carrying the sins of all his people of all time and places, and suffering the outpouring of the wrath of God against those sins in his own body. He suffered the punishment of hell in place of his people who deserved that punishment.

The fact that God raised him from the dead was concrete evidence that his substitutionary sacrifice in their behalf had been accepted by God the Father, so that all those who believe in him receive the benefit of forgiveness and cleansing from sin. In addition, when Jesus returns to earth at the end of human history, he will raise his followers(the Christians) from death and clothe them with resurrection bodies like his own resurrected body so that they will live with him in never-ending fellowship and worship. This will be a physical existence in the newly renovated earth that God will bring about. So to return to our original question, how many Gods are there, the Christian answer (based on the Bible) is that there is only one God who created all things in heaven and on earth. Yet within this one God there are three “persons,” the Father, the Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. These three persons have different functions or roles to play in the salvation of God’s people. The Father, for example, sent the Son. The Son came to live among us and save us by his death and resurrection.

The Holy Spirit was sent from heaven to indwell God’s people and communicate to them the

presence of the living God. The one true and living God eternally exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Bible clearly teaches that there is only one God, his name is “the LORD” or “Yahweh,” (see Exodus 3:13-14 – “Yahweh means “I AM THAT I AM”) and this God is a Trinity in unity – three persons in one God. This revelation is not easy for us to wrap our minds around, but God is greater than us humans of limited knowledge and perspective, so he has graciously revealed his nature through his revelations to humankind recorded in the Bible. The key to understanding the nature of God is found in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came into time and space history to reveal the invisible God, and die and rise for the salvation of his people from their sins that merit the wrath of a holy God.

One of Jesus’ earliest followers was a man known as the Apostle Paul. Once when Paul had gone to Athens, Greece, to carry the message of the Gospel of the salvation found in Jesus Christ, he preached the following message to a group of philosophers who had gathered on Mars Hill:

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,

28 for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

30 The times of ignorance God over looked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all

by raising him from the dead.”

Acts 17:24-31 So this Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead has been appointed by God to be the Judge of all people at the great Judgment of the holy God that will take place after Jesus returns to earth. The proof that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and the coming Judge of all humans, is that he was raised from the dead. No other person in history has come back from the dead in resurrection power except Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

He also stated in John 17:3: And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Won’t you consider this God who came in human flesh to rescue a people from their sins and give them eternal, unending, physical life? You must repent of your sins (turn away from them)and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Then you must confess him in the waters of Christian baptism and follow him all the days of your life in the fellowship of his people, the church. Doing this by God’s grace, you will receive a rich welcome into the kingdom of God at the end of this age.