Kingdom Ready

By examining Paul’s writings to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, one can deduce what Paul believed about who Jesus was and his relationship to God, his Father. By examining these texts, we can see that Paul was had neither a Trinitarian or Oneness perspective. He believed that the Father was the only true God, the God of Jesus.

1. Paul believed there was but one God, the Father.

Galatians 1:1 Paul, an apostle not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead,

Installment #5 in my “Common Sense” series.

Biblical Common Sense – Jesus – The Messiah is suppose to be…

Then there’s the Biblical expectations regarding the Messiah. The Hebrew people have historically viewed (as Judaism still does to this day) the Messiah as someone that would be a real human being directly descended from the lineage of King David. And they have this view point because that is just what Scripture clearly describes – a real human man was promised, not God acting as a man.

The “Original” Testament starts such a path almost from the beginning with God giving a prophecy that one day a literal descendant of Eve would defeat the Serpent (Satan) in Genesis 3:15.

Installment #3 in the series.

Biblical Common Sense – Jesus – “This is MY son”

There are two different events recorded in the New Testament where God himself vocally indicates that Jesus is His son. First at his baptism we have the accounts the three synoptic gospels.

Matt 3:16-171 After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

This is from the 21st Century Reformation website:

Anthony Buzzard gives an extraordinary presentation to a conference of Bible students in Tennessee. Professor Buzzard gives a succinct evaluation of five prevailing views regarding Jesus Christ. He leads us through a consideration of the: (1) Trinitarian view; (2) the Arian view; (3) Binitarianism; (4) Oneness and (5) the “One God” view. In the end, Anthony makes a persuasive case for “View No. 5″:  that Jesus is the Christ of God, God’s literally begotten human Son. Anthony Buzzard’s “Five Options in Christology” has been one of the most popular features presented on 21stcr.org. It is too good to miss.

Joel Hemphill was a presenter/speaker at this year’s 19th Annual Theological Conference held in Atlanta, GA 4/25-4/28.  Joel did a terrific presentation on the need for “Removing Greek Philosophy From Christianity“.  If you’d like to view a video of it recorded there at the conference, you can watch it for free at Dan Gill’s wonderful 21st Century Reformation website: http://21stcr.org/multimedia/removing_greek_philosophy/removing_greek_philosophy.html.  On that same page you’ll find a down-loadable PDF version of another one of Joel’s tracts – this one about some “Shocking Admissions” from various Trinitarian scholars. I like it so much, I thought I’d publish it here in the KR blog.  I hope you enjoy as well.

Easter Sunday is tomorrow. And as such we must clearly focus on “the reason for the season” (to borrow a line from Christmas time) – that it is really all about the resurrection of Jesus.  This was THE proof that he was indeed God’s Messiah.  This was the proof that he was who he said he was. The sign of Jonah was fullfilled.  After three days and three nights in the belly of the earth, God would not allow his holy one to see corruption and raised Jesus back to life.  And not just mortal life, but to eternal life. Just as those of us who follow Jesus will also be elgible for at Jesus’ return in power one future day (I Corinthians 6:14).

A few weeks ago I posted an article (“From Trinitarian to Unitarian“) that was a faith story of a woman that had been a long-term main-stream trinitarian Christian who came to take a long hard look at her beliefs versus the truth of Scripture.  After doing so, she changed her beliefs to align with what she actually found in Scripture.

Back in 2004 when Victor and I were at the Atlanta Bible College we developed the tract Did Jesus Think He Was God?. Hundreds of this tract have been printed and handed out over the last five years. Recently, Matt Elton, a fellow Christian brother who is on his way to attend Messiah College to study videography in the fall, emailed me to let me know that a friend of his recently published a critique of our tract on Scribd.com. Though I do not respond to every challenge that comes through email, I thought it would be helpful to respond to Matt’s friend. This is because his friend is a “Jesus Only” or “Oneness” believer and we have not interacted much with this viewpoint on KingdomReady.