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.

By popular demand (2 requests!), here is the article from my website.

Introduction

One of the most hotly contested passages of Scripture is so well known that it has a name – the Comma Johanneum, or Johannine Comma. In this case, “comma” refers not to punctuation but to a clause. In the KJV, I John 5:7-8 reads as follows:

I John 5:
7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

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.

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.