Difficult words

Picture a child faced with a word like Saviour and the concept of Jesus being able to save them from what bad deeds they might otherwise do in life. I remember the difficulty growing up in a church environment hearing words like Saviour and singing the word in hymns, it was so frustrating not understanding the words but being expected to just go along with whatever they meant despite not knowing what they meant. Some end up as adults still not understanding. Yet I also had dreams in which I learned how Jesus can and does save me from dire situations, especially when I was in trouble on His behalf for standing up in support of His veracity. So I did know Him as my Saviour even before I knew this by that word. Now I realise how saving me during troubles is all part of how He saves me from committing sins which could render my life forfeit, and saving me from having to take matters into my own hands. So this leads to a dynamic peace in which to live for Him, which is what His way is all about. Just a pity the English language doesn’t have easier ways of expressing it so a child can understand. Yet heaven filled that gap once I started to believe in Jesus. Today I know it as by His crucifixion, dying to sin in order to live to Him.

Not in His own name

If the Son of Man came in His own name, what glory would that be? It is His glory that He comes in Yahweh, His Father’s name and the glory is that it is not His own name. So the glory of the Father is seen in Him. Rejecting this truth blinds a person to seeing the glory of Yahweh in the face of the Son. 

Your God

People look for a better option than 911. Very sensible. Especially if a pandemic ever destroyed the health services. For a better option than 911 you need an entity to call on who hears such calls, loves you enough to answer, powerful enough to help. Enter the human, Christ Jesus, always heard by the Father, crucified out of love the Father has for us, raised from the dead by the power of the Father to save. And in His name the Father sends believers the Holy Spirit, working miracles among those who believe His message. This Father is God. Make Him your God.

Son of Man

The Book of Enoch repeatedly teaches us about the Son of Man. Jesus repeatedly called Himself the Son of Man. The Book of Daniel chapter 7 links the Son of Man with the Book of Enoch. It describes the Son of Man just the same way Enoch did using such similar words and concepts that they could not be coincidence. Revelation chapter 1 links Jesus with the Son of Man in the Book of Daniel chapter 10. It describes Jesus just the same way Daniel described the Son of Man using such similar words and concepts that they could not be coincidence. So this Son of Man is the same in all three scriptures and is Jesus. So what is so important about the term Son of Man applied to Jesus? Jesus’ own teachings tell how the reason God gives Him authority to judge is because He is the Son of Man. In scriptures we see God makes His teachings targeted at all of us no matter what stage we are in life. God takes this to the ultimate degree by targeting the very beginning of human life. So He made His Son start from the very beginning of what it is to be the tiniest stage of human life and grow from there to bring God’s teaching to all making it relevant and fit for the tiniest human to the greatest. For this Jesus became what a son of man is. A cell growing to an foetus to a baby to a child to an adult. So God can put everything into Jesus that He wants to give for the benefit of humans. All authority, all of the Holy Spirit, all of His glory, all of His life, even the life force authority to raise the dead. All because Jesus is the Son of Man. But Jesus had to be human unto death. Yet also human unto resurrection from the dead. And now Lord to fill the universe with His authority and glory. Do you believe all this? You need to believe it.

Still human

Jesus, the Son of God is still human, hence He will still be called the Son of Man even when He manifests Himself soon. “Men will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven.” He can act as spirit though, reaching out from the throne of God to a believer to strengthen them, as He did with Paul, coming and standing at Paul’s side in the night. He did it even to me a couple of times. Others testify to it too. He can reach out by ‘His angel’. He entered the upper room His disciples were meeting in even though the door was locked. Yet He at that time told them “a ghost does not have flesh and bone as you see I have” so He is not a ghost. He is really a unique first being who is raised from the dead and human having been mortal but is now immortal, and He had some angel-human-like existence from before Abraham was born and was before all things yet became flesh. 

Jesus before John but born after John

It is a bit bizarre to me that people think that the only way Jesus could exist before becoming flesh was for there to be a Trinity or for Modalism to be true. Neither is true. Jesus called Himself Son of Man because there were scriptures in His time showing the Son of Man in prophesy having existed centuries beforehand and John the Baptist proclaimed Jesus was ‘greater than me because He existed before me’ even though John was born first. Jesus was happy to be regarded as a deity in a loose sense, the sense in which any great, mighty person who judges can be regarded as such but Jesus is not in any sense the God He called the Father. He is not God in that sense. He was not telling anyone to break the first of the Ten Commandments. 

A right spirit

Heritage, birthplace, race. It is not what matters. What matters is spirit. The kind of spirit we each of us has within. We need to discern the spirit within us. We need to have a spirit acknowledging that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Thinking of Jesus wrongly hinders our salvation through Him. He is human. The Father is not human. When Jesus says ‘God is spirit’ He means the Father. When Jesus says ‘a ghost does not have flesh and bone as you see I have’ He means Himself. We each need to check what our inner spirit leads us to think and if it is not like this, then to ask God ‘Renew a right spirit within me’.  We also need to believe that Jesus is ‘before Abraham was born’ for our salvation. It is essential. It is all about pursuing saving faith and a right spirit within.

If it were not so

When Thomas exclaimed “my lord and my god!” Jesus could have said “blessed are you Thomas for you have discovered the Trinity!” But He didn’t. He had already assured them He would not keep from them anything important for them to know “if it were not so I would have told you”. So this would have been a perfect opportunity to tell them about the Trinity. Obviously Jesus knew the Trinity was not so.  So He did not tell them about it.

Misconceptions about the Bible

It is a misconception that the Bible comprehensively describes the faith of Christianity. There are important aspects of this faith which are only very briefly mentioned and only believing itself provides the clarity of what those verses mean to make them unambiguous to the believer. For more comprehensive descriptions of the Christian faith it is necessary to look at books of scripture such as the Book of Enoch excluded from the sixty-six book Bible and included in less known canons such as the Ethiopian Orthodox greater canon and other sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. On certain matters of belief it is necessary to refer to later Christian writings. Indeed much of the modern norm of Christian doctrine is not found in scripture at all. So scripture has only ever provided a springboard and reference for major Christian beliefs. Many believers claim their beliefs come as much from the work of the Holy Spirit among them as they do from the Bible. Of course there are questions as to how much other influences have crafted doctrines, and limits of a sixty-six Book Bible might account for divisions over debated doctrines and dogmas.

Faith is Persuasion

If you are persuaded to trust the veracity of something then you have a belief, but who or what persuaded you? If your persuasion, your faith, is from human argument and reasoning, will you be persuaded later that those arguments were wrong and then have to change your practices based on those persuasions? If your persuasion comes from miracles you have witnessed or which those you trust have witnessed, and from works the Holy Spirit has done in you or those around you, perhaps in church or meditation, then the persuasion is from God and is religious faith. This is more rock steady than faith based on scientific arguments.

Washing our robes in the blood of the Lamb

We consider that His blood absolves us from the guilt of what we sinfully used to do so we do such things no more, once we are sure they are wrong but also sure that the sacrificial covering of His blood is for past sins and sure that to continue wantonly to repeat those sins mocks that sacrifice. Sins we later learn are sinful as time goes on, we set aside too, as and when we recognise them, understanding and believing that the blood pays for the guilt of these as well.

How old is Jesus?

It is extremely remarkable (and therefore hard to believe because it is rare for things to be so remarkable) that Jesus actually is, right now. Even those who believe this because of the resurrection, yet deny the existence Jesus had before conception,  have to concede this means extreme longevity, and never dying or ceasing to exist in the future means such longevity only increases. Personally I find the evidence compelling that Jesus existed an extremely long time even before conception as a being similar to angels yet far more like a human than they are and in a more special sense the Son of God the Father. John the Baptist is recorded in gospel of Apostle John as having said Jesus is greater than him because Jesus existed before him, despite John having been born before Jesus, and Jesus said “Before Abraham was born, I am”. Daniel the prophet saw one exactly matching Apostle John’s Revelation description of Jesus. The Book of Enoch said Enoch went up to the Son of Man and gives descriptions of the Son of Man which match Jesus. The name power and authority over all Nature ascribed to Jesus by the Holy Spirit only makes sense for a person, a being, existing from before the beginning of Nature. Apostolic statements affirm this.

How to follow Jesus

Many teach the way of Jesus and you might know teachers commended to you in some way by miracles and loving care. Teachings of Jesus Himself I find are best suited for me because I don’t really know very much about others who serve Him. Jesus Himself always helped me even when teachers and leaders failed me. You have to find the best teachings of Christ’s way that are available to you. I use the Bible to tell me Jesus’s teachings and this works for me because I have learned gospels such as John’s gospel all my life. Alright so how do we practice these teachings? If it were me (suggesting otherwise would be hypocrisy) I would go through all His teachings and see which are clear enough to me to practice, then keep practicing them, while aiming to bring on board His other teachings and teachings of those He sent (Paul and other apostles and maybe modern teachers we know are ultimately from Him) as soon as I can understand how they apply. All this while holding to the belief that He exists and is always there to help and intercede for us with God and that His blood seals it. Then God does miracles and gives signs by the Holy Spirit in our lives to seal it for us individually and together.

The New Covenant

The Gospel of John chapter 8 is like the terms and conditions for God’s covenant through Christ, while the covenant itself came later - the crucifixion. The woman caught in adultery is like the definition of terms for you and I. The “he who is without sin cast the first stone” is the sample of what Christ, the Son of Man has on offer - able to negotiate a way out even for a convicted felon on death row - on condition they go sin no more and trust His continuing support forever. Details come later - terms are as follows: You believe He exists, then you hold to His way, His rules, His sayings, His teachings. He leads you to truth. Truth sets you free from the sinning that could get you killed, that could lead to a fatal demise. That means lying too. Lying is prime example of what you, I, need freeing from to become a permanent child of God (only kind there is). Then soon after giving this formal statement of intent, the covenant is sealed and put into force by His crucifixion. God shows good faith by the resurrection, a promising turn of events for us all raising our prospects anew as a kind of rebirth coming directly from God Himself, the Father Himself. Now the Holy Spirit has been given us because Jesus took His completed victory back to heaven, to God, mission accomplished. Not bad at all.

Saint Peter’s Dream

The dream of Peter recorded in the Bible, in the Book of Acts, is perhaps the most groundbreaking scripture of all scriptures. It happened in the first stages of the spread of Christianity, not long after the crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of Christ and initial growth of the church before it spread to include Romans or Greeks. Peter would possibly never have preached to Romans or Greeks directly or allowed the church to include such people if it had not been for this dream. It was while he was praying that he fell into a kind of trance sleep and saw a vision. Now move forward two thousand years to today when Christians tend to insist no dream can ever change Christian doctrine or add anything to Christian mainstream beliefs and teachings which is contrary to what is found in scripture. Yet this ignores the dream of Peter. He saw in his vision dream a cloth full of unclean animals the eating of which is explicitly forbidden in scripture. Yet despite the scriptures and in direct contradiction to them, Peter was told by the vision from Heaven to “kill and eat” these animals. In spite of his protests the heavenly vision told him not to regard as unclean what God called clean. Peter accepted it. Yes Peter always tested visions so as never to be deceived by misleading spiritual experiences, and taught doing so. Yet Peter did not use scripture to rule out accepting this vision or reject it as phoney. He accepted it as coming from God and accepted that God may overturn scripture. Wow! Eat that!

Mediation

The idea of living nowadays by the Torah, the Old Testament Law, is not understood by those who teach it. The Law imposed a slavery system on Israelites by requiring the execution of family members or even entire villages who stopped worshipping God and starting worshipping gods of other nations instead. This harshness is little known even though it is hidden away in the Old Testament. The answer was the coming of a mediator who would stand between humans and the Father who commanded this harsh imposition of Law. The alternative these days is to imply there is a distinction between the God seen in the Law and the Father worshipped in Christianity. That is not the way Christ taught. Rather we can acknowledge this God is the Father and is one throughout history but the mediation of Christ mitigates this harsh scenario by providing a once-and-for-all crucifixion sacrifice of His blood and pleading for mercy on our behalf, just as is recorded in the beginning of John chapter 8 regarding the way Jesus mediated for a woman about to be legally stoned for adultery according to the harsh Law, the Torah. He is alive forever now to continually mediate this way, setting before God the sacrifice He has made by God’s loving will.

Inaccurate Doctrine

Saying Jesus is God is a prevalent religious tendency these days but God is the Father and is not human. Jesus existed before coming in the flesh. He was even a kind of human, hence called the Son of Man. Becoming flesh did not mean He had not already been a kind of human; angelic but human as distinct from other angels. His preexistence was called Son of Man. That is what He meant in John 8 and 9. So insisting Jesus is God is too inaccurate and prone to misinterpretation.

How reliable are the gospels?

How reliable are the gospels, since they are by far the greatest source of information about Jesus’ ministry in the first century? That depends what kind of person you are, whether you take them on trust, because those who do so find the promises within them are fulfilled in their lives, which proves for these people the gospels’ veracity. Believing in the veracity means believing in the Christ. Believing the Christ leads to understanding that these gospel writers influenced by Christ were influenced to hate lies and lying and learned veracity of word, which in turn would mean they would write truthful accounts about their trusted Master. Those who trust the gospels discover their trustworthiness.