Kingdom Ready

In the first part of this investigation into the holy spirit and translation bias, I limited my focus to relative pronouns used to refer to the holy spirit.  In what follows I will broaden my inquiry to include several other key texts and important concepts related to the God’s spirit.  First I will discuss in detail the primary texts used to prove the personhood of the spirit on grammatical grounds, before I make the case that the biblical concept of God’s spirit resists categorization.
Key Texts Used to Establish Personhood[1]

Before jumping in to exegete each of the primary texts commonly used to affirm the personality of the spirit, I will begin by citing Millard Erickson’s words to show how the argument typically works:

Translators have historically held incredible power to influence millions of Bible-readers over the eons.  Many impressive developments have occurred in the field of textual criticism and lexicology over the last century.  Today we can access dozens of English translations, Greek interlinears, and lexical aids online for free.  In no other age have Christians had better access to biblical tools for personal study than today.  Even so, rather surprisingly, many Bibles contain wild distortions, especially on texts related to dogmas long ago etched in the stone of infallible tradition.  The uninformed Christian walking into a local bookstore sees dozens of Bible translations lining the shelves and picks the one that best meets his or her needs—the Green Bible, the Extreme Teen Bible, the American Patriot’s Bible, the Catholic Holy Bible, the Archeology Study Bible, the Life Application Study Bible, and so on.  The number of translations produced in the last sixty years is even more impressive.  Here are some of the major ones in chronological order.

• wholesale jerseys In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1).
• Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4).
• So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17 NASB).
• Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17).

These are all familiar passages of scripture that demonstrate the importance of “the Word.” Much has been said about the importance and integrity of the Word of God. But what exactly is the Word?

In trying to get back in the swing of posting, I ‘m publishing an article here from one of my Facebook friends.

This was something he wrote and posted on FB last month and I really liked it a lot.  I told him I would post it here later so that others could read it as well.  Hope you enjoy it too.

We recently finished a series in our fellowship relating to the parable of the sower and bearing fruit.  We spent the last two weeks looking at the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit which Paul outlines in Galatians 5.  As we finished our time together last night detailing the fruit of the spirit, a brother approached me and asked the following:

I was thinking about my grandmother as we described each of those things.  She exhibits all of those.  And she is an admitted atheist. How does that work!?

Can someone without the holy spirit produce the fruit of the spirit?  A couple quick thoughts:

“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.”

I was taking a break from most everything when I was out-of-town on vacation last week. This week I’m taking a break from getting into the second section of my paper/series to post something I ran across on the web awhile back.  While I haven’t fully had a chance to dig real deep into this site’s content, what I have found I believe to be quite good.

The site I’m talking about is called “The Trinity Delusion” and you can find it at this address: http://www.angelfire.com/space/thegospeltruth/trinity.html

Not only does it contain an immense wealth of content (which I invite everyone to check out for themselves), I find the guy who started it and writes it, to be very interesting.  Here’s a little of his story (as he lists on his own “About” page):

In the last two article I wrote I talked about feeling the emotion, pain, and feelings of other. Also how the root of this stemmed from Jesus and his ministry. I would like to relate more as to what kind of affect Jesus should have on us especially with his departure from Earth. Yet Jesus still has an ever growing connection to mankind. It seems that the question is always, are God and Jesus present, or is it because we just allow them to exist simply in our minds? Are they physically present? How real is the presents of Yahweh (GOD) and the roll and presences of Yahushua (Messiah) Jesus our Lord and Savior? I ask is the weight that we put on knowledge sacrificing our actual spirituality? Is the weight that is put on analyzing the scripture, with our own minds drowning or at least quenching the spirit with in us? The verses below present an interesting view. Is the Love of God present in our lives, which includes our Love for God, and our belief in His son(Or Faith In), our belief in who he was and what was his mission was will directly affects our purpose and mission in life, and most important our status to the coming Kingdom.

In being effective ministers we must be able feel peoples emotion, when working with people it is always better to meet them where they are. To meet them on their level of emotion.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” Romans 12:15 (NASB)

Webster’s dictionary definition of the word Sacrifice
“a: destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else b: something given up or lost the sacrifices made by parents”

The interesting part of this definition is the the word surrender. We know that Jesus sacrificed his very soul for everyone whether they wanted it or knew it, yet he give and sacrificed his own soul anyway. Yes, he really did it without anybody really knowing what he was doing for them. So are we to sacrifice our souls for Jesus? Well, yes in a sense, on a cross like him? No, we are to surrender our souls in the sense that we surrender our wills, as did the apostles.