Kingdom Ready Blog

Here is the second installment of my paper (“A Common Sense Approach to the Biblical Presentation of Jesus, Death, & THE Devil“) with us getting into the first main subject – Jesus.  Keep in mind that within each of the three main subject areas (Jesus, Death, & The Devil), there are many sub-topics.  We’ll cover these smaller sub-topics in individual, manageable posts here on the blog.

Biblical Common Sense – Jesus – “God’s son”

Understanding who Jesus is and how the Bible presents him is not all that difficult when one stops and uses good ol’ common sense to recognize the meaning behind many of the words of Scripture.

I’m now embarking on posting here on the KR blog the paper that I wrote and presented as a speaker at Sir Anthony Buzzard’s & the Atlanta Bible College’s “20th Theological Conference” in Atlanta, GA on 5/13/11.  Originally this paper was titled “A Common Sense Approach to the Biblical Presentation of Jesus, Death, and THE Devil“. However at 20 very long typed pages it is just too much to post on the blog.  In talking with Sean there at the conference about the KR blog, he brought up Victor’s thinking that more people will read short articles than long ones.  I think that’s a smart approach and is something I will try to do here where possible. Plus this gives me a lot of subject material for quite some time!  Keep in mind though, that I wrote this as a long-form paper and its topics won’t always break into similar sizes – in other words, some of these segments will be nice and short and others will be considerably longer.

As an attendee and presenter at this year’s Theological Conference put on by Sir Anthony Buzzard and the Atlanta Bible College, I guess I’m qualified to write a brief review of what went on and how things went.  With so many of us that post here on Kingdom Ready there in attendence, I would have thought that somebody would have beat me to  it already.  But maybe everyone else thought someone else would write something too.  So here goes.

This is what Easter is suppose to be about. When you strip away all the commercialism and pagan customs, it is about remembering why we can escape the death penalty we all deserve as sinful humans.  It was this one human man, the 2nd Adam, the Messiah of Almighty Yahweh that died an undeserved death in our place and became the FIRSTFRUITS of those who are asleep!

Acts 17:30-31

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.

As I was going through my mail the other day, or should I say “junk” mail since that seems to be all that ever comes besides bills, I noticed a little community newspaper.  It was one of those small papers that are 80% ads (how they get sent out to every resident for free) and is mass produced by a local publishing company that markets it to local businesses (or as they term it – “customizing community news”) as a way to reach potential consumers.  

Here’s an interesting piece from Ivan Maddox of West End Bible Fellowship in Atlanta GA.  He brings up some intriguing points concerning the trees in the story of the Garden of Eden.

Presupposing that both God and Satan exist, why has God not already prevented Satan from trying in influence mankind?  This type of question has been asked for centuries.  It is the old “problem with evil” question.  Why does a “good” God, allow “evil” to exist?

If there is an evil supernatural being like The Devil/Satan, many ask why God created such a being in the first place?  Even if God created him to be good yet like man he had the freewill ability to turn away from God, then why did God not destroy Satan instead of letting him roam around and influence Eve (and less directly Adam) into sinning and bringing the curse of death upon humanity? Why is Satan free to tempt mankind all the way up until the end of the age at Christ’s return? These are good questions.

I’ve always thought that atheism is disingenuous. How can you ever get to the point that you know without a doubt that there is no God?  Agnosticism I get.  Plain and simple you’re thinking you’re not totally sure there is or isn’t a God and mankind may never know for sure.  An agnostic is at least honest enough to allow for himself to be wrong – however remote he/she may feel that might be.  An atheist by definition has already ruled out any & all possibility.  I think that is irrational.

Modern day Judaism – especially Counter Missionaries, like to dismiss that the “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah 53 perfectly fits Jesus of Nazareth. The typical response from them is that Isaiah 53 is about the nation of Israel and not the Messiah. Therefore Jesus doesn’t fit it because it is not even about him in the first place.  But is that really proper exegesis?  Does the text really point to Israel? Or does it more properly belong to the promised human Messiah?

Music has always been a big part of my life.  My parents often listened to classical records, big-band stuff, and had their own personal favorites (mother – The Sound of Music soundtrack, father – Johnny Cash records).  As a kid of the late 60′s & all through the 70′s and then coming to age in high-school & college during the 80′s, music for me meant rock & roll (now termed “classic rock”) and its emerging sub-genres of the day – “new wave” and “modern rock”. Of course a little cable channel start-up in 1981 that played “music videos” 24/7 also had a big impact back in the day in culturing my fondness for these new “alternative” rock bands.