Kingdom Ready Blog

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.

This is a phrase that has been heavily thumped to us by churches, ministries, denominations, pastors and the like. The warning and pleading to take hold of truth and discard tradition. You’ve now got books, sermons, documentaries and websites that all use this phrase as their title and label. What does this all mean? What is the message behind this phrase? How are we to respond to it all?

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.

One of the speakers at this year’s 19th Annual Theological Conference in Atlanta GA (4/25-4/28/10) was Kermit Zarley who was formerly known on the web (and covered here quite a bit on Kingdom Ready) as “Servetus the Evangelical”.  Kermit Zarley has been a professional golfer for over 28 years (18 regular tours, 10 Senior tours) and has also been a life-long student of the Bible. He has participated in, established, and led bible study groups on the PGA tour for several decades.  He has written quite a few books over the years which include works such as The Gospel, The Gospels Interwoven, Palestine is Coming, and The Third Day Bible Code.

If you subscribe to Anthony Buzzard’s excellent monthly newsletter “Focus on the Kingdom“, you probably are aware this year’s version of his annual Theological Conference (the 19th) is coming up at the end of next month.  KingdomReady’s very own Sean Finnegan has attended in year’s past, though his busy Masters school schedule will keep him away this time around.  However I’m planning on attending for the first time, and I wanted to invite all of you to attend if you have the opportunity.  There are so few chances for fellow truth-seekers like ourselves to get together in person and learn from one-another, fellowship, and hopefully build lasting friendships in our all-too-small (but hopefully growing) faith. Below is a nice overview from Anthony’s last newsletter.  Hope to see you there!

This post below is from one of our frequent visitors Jaco.  It is an article by Nehemia Gordon.

Thirty yeas ago this June while attending summer church camp as young teen, I sat in the open-air tabernacle listening to the evening evangelist give a dynamic and passionate sermon about Jesus’ 2nd coming.  The words he spoke, the Scripture verses he read aloud, the entire tone of his message struck a chord in my inner being.  In fact his sermons each previous night of the week-long camp were just as good and weighed heavily in my mind progressively.  But this final sermon of the week – on the final night of camp, seemed like God Himself was speaking through this man to give that particular sermon to ME.  At the alter call at the end of that service this minister asked if anyone else there in attendance wanted to accept Christ as their Lord & Savior (many had the previous nights & were also baptized).  A warmness overtook me and though at first my feet felt like they were nailed to the ground, the moment I decided I had to walk towards the front of the tabernacle, I could have sworn I floated like a feather down the aisle and up the front.  With tears in my eyes I knelt and confessed with my words and every emotional fiber within me, that I believed in and accepted Jesus of Nazareth as my Savior.  The next day before camp broke up, I was baptized in the same stream that my own grandmother had been baptized in some 50 years before.

FYI . . . over at Parchment and Pen, Rob Bowman just announced that he will be having a “debate” with Christadelphian Dave Burke concerning the doctrine of the trinity.  The date is a ways off (April). Notice that Kingdom Ready is represented in the resource section of the post. They are limiting themselves to 5,000 words per post–that’s probably less than some of the recent posts on this site. I’m not familiar with Dave Burke.  Any one know about him?

Many of us here at Kingdomready have talked about “Agency” in Scripture before and how much it is a part of the Hebrew thought world & the culture of the biblical writers. A “shaliach” or agent/emissary represented someone and was treated as that individual because legally they were.  In our modern society, the closest we get to that is to appoint “Power of Attorney” to someone.  They can make legally binding decisions for us because we have designated them to serve in that capacity for us.  But in ancient Hebrew culture, the shaliach (or sheliah) wasn’t just that person in a legal sense only.  They were also respected, treated, and thought of AS THE ONE THEY REPRESENTED.  Back in 2005 a man by the name of David Burge of New Zealand wrote a terrific article about how much this Hebrew ”law of agency” plays out in God’s dealing with man throughout Scripture and how vital it is to understand the concept in order to prevent a host of biblical errors.  Here’s the article in its entirety.  It is long, but extremely well done!