When a preacher is heard to shout that, "God is a family," he means rather that "God is a family of gods" and the word "God" can be stretched to cover a multitude of God-beings.  This is a deceit.  That this idea cannot be found in the Bible is immaterial, it is still being taught with sincerity and vigor.  But it is a sincerely taught false and deceptive doctrine.  The sincerity of a teacher does not attest to the correctness of his doctrine.

This gets tricky.  Certain preachers use the biblical idea of the "family of God" (God's family) and thoughtlessly transpose it into "the God family," sometimes in the same paragraph or sentence, as though the two phrases were synonyms.  They are not.  There is a world of difference between these two phrases. On one hand, "the family of God" denotes possession by God as the head of his family.  He, Yahweh your God (the Father), is an individual called God (a title) who has certain children.  This is entirely biblical.  On the other hand, "the God family" foolishness denotes a family or a tribe called "God," not a single individual being that exists in the Universe.  Rather than God being God, the family has become God.  It is a stupid idea.  Compare this with "The family of Mike," "Mike's family," and "the Mike family."  This last phrase makes little sense.

Denying the biblical singleness of God, false prophet H. W. Armstrong wrote: "Many think God is a single individual supreme Personage…  God's Word reveals that God and the Word—two supreme personages—coexisted always—and before anything had been created…  No third person is mentioned…  Is God then limited to only two persons?… But God is not limited.  As God repeatedly reveals, his purpose is to reproduce himself into what well may become billions of God persons."  (Mystery of the Ages, pp.33-37).  This "reproducing" idea is nowhere taught in the Bible.

In the seriously problematic notion of man becoming God, of man grabbing his "share" of the "Godhead," the Creator is divested of his individuality and uniqueness.

Follow me on this.  Suppose a father named George has a family.  It is called "George's family" by outsiders and denotes a family unit with George as the head.  In a sense, he "owns" the family.  Each member of the family carries George's last name.  To say George's family is "the family of George" would be incorrect because the family name (or tribal name) is not George.  The physical family example is not strictly analogous of God's family because God does not have a last name and we do, although God does have a family in a similar sense.  Here is how it all gets worked out.

ONE: A number of popular teachers and preachers in our experience want to assign God a last name, except they don't tell us this little detail.  This invented last name of "God" then becomes Jesus' last name.  Now we have "Father God" and "Jesus God."  Devotees generally do not use these direct terms but rather say "God the Father" and later, "Jesus is God," agreeing with orthodox Christian views of God comprising the Father and the Son, except the holy spirit is not included as a person.  Thus, Jesus as God and God as God totals two Gods, both supposedly equal in all respects, unless Jesus assumes a lesser position as a minor God.  Tally: one plus one equals two.

TWO: The "last name" of "God" becomes a believer's last name when he is resurrected on the last day and "born" into the "family of God." But we are already children of God (1Jn.3:2)!  At the end of the day, the resurrected human becomes God, but in reality only one of many Gods, due to the numbers of new "Gods" in the general resurrection.  The resurrected or changed person becomes God only because of this distinctively clever tribal name manipulation.  And of course, if he is God, then he must naturally inherit all the attendant powers thereof.  But it is all a lie, folks.  Humans are NOT going to become Gods in any way (Isa.43:10-11).

This can be a complex issue.  One part of the problem involves the meaning of the Greek word "logos" translated "Word" in most Bibles. Another part deals with the difficulty of claiming that Jesus is an eternal "infinite" God and justifying that claim by manipulating the biblical statement of Deut.6:4 that God is one by claiming it denotes one "family" that includes a preexistent Jesus.  But God is not two, three, or many.  "To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD himself is God; there is none other besides him" (Deut.4:35).  Jeremiah writes: "But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King" (Jer.10:10a). Samuel writes: "Therefore you are great, O Lord GOD.  For there is none like you, nor is there any God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears" (2Sam.7:22).  Isaiah writes: "Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me" (Isa.46.9).  David was a man after God's own heart.  His prayer: "Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord; nor are there any works like your works" (Psa.86.8).

Some foolish folks teach that Jesus was the God of the Old Testament (OT).  Yet, passages from the Old Testament testify that there are no other Gods like the God of the OT!  This God of the OT says: "I am the LORD, that is my name; and my glory I will not give to another, nor my praise to carved images" (Isa.42:8).  The English word "LORD" here is the Hebrew H3068 YHWH, the Tetragrammaton basis of Yahweh, the Self-Existent, infinite and singular, Eternal God.  (Continued...)