Kingdom Ready

Introduction

Many of the events that took place in the Old Testament were “foreshadowings” – or “types” – of the events that would happen in Jesus’ life. In other words, the events in question “point” us to Jesus.

One rather obvious example of such a foreshadowing was God telling Abraham to sacrifice Issac. Abraham was told to sacrifice his beloved son – and Isaac was willing to be sacrificed. This definitely points to God allowing his beloved Son Jesus to be crucified – and Jesus willingly being crucified.

It is evident that the average church-goer has no real grasp on the biblical meaning of Messianic titles such as ‘Son of God,’ ‘Christ,’ or ‘Son of Man.’ According to Dr. Hugh Schonfield, author of The Passover Plot, the majority of the Christians he conversed with “were not even aware that Christ was simply a Greek translation of the Hebrew title Messiah (Anointed One), and supposed that it had to do with the heavenly nature of the Second Person of the Trinity.”[1] The significance of such titles is clearly being overlooked. However, their importance is not to be understated, for Jesus himself said that it is “upon this rock,” namely the fact that he is the Christ, that “I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matt 16:16,18). Thus, it is essential to have a correct understanding of such Messianic titles, for a vague or unbiblical understanding of Jesus’ titles will lead to a corruption of the gospel message he preached, and ultimately, his identity.

Alright, time to get back in the habit of posting new content here on KR!  Sorry everyone for being absent from around here. I’ve got a ton of stuff from last month’s Theological Conference in Atlanta and this month’s One God Conference in Austin to share and publish here.

I’ll start today with a paper I just received the other day from Dr. John Roller on the importance of Conditional Immortality.  I really enjoyed it and I hope you will too!

How Important Is “Conditional Immortality”?

by Dr. John H. Roller

Introduction

I read this article awhile back and found it interesting.  And I thought it would be good to post here on the KR Blog.  I hope you find it interesting as well. Enjoy!

Biblical Unitarianism from the Early Church through the Middle Ages

by Mark M. Mattison

The term “biblical unitarianism,” as used in this journal, denotes a non-Trinitarian theology which is consistent with the inspired Word of God. It is our belief that this understanding of the Scriptures is not new, but has been propagated at various times and places throughout church history. The purpose of this article is to lay a foundation for the future discussion of this topic.
 
First, however, we must define our terms.

Here’s the 6th installment in this series:

Biblical Common Sense – Death – An ENEMY!

The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:26 says: “The last enemy that will be abolished is death.” Now everyone knows what an enemy is. It is someone or something that harms or opposes us.  However the typical sentiment one hears at a mainstream Christian funeral is that death has taken the deceased to a “better place”.  Other variants often expressed can be “God has called so and so home”, or “The Lord needed another member of heaven”.  But does anyone stop and think about what this actually means?  Such ideas mean that death isn’t so bad.  For the saved, death would be taking us to the best possible place we could ever hope to be!

Joseph’s paper as promised! Thanks Joe for the hard work on this and agreeing to post your work here as a KR Guest Author!

Judges 6 and the Hebrew Masoretic Vocalization of ADNY – Trinitarian Arguments Challenged

By: Joe Jerde

Key:

MS – Manuscript

MSS – Masuscripts

MT – Masoretic Text

TJon – Targum Jonathan

LXX א – Septuagint Codex Sinaiticus

LXX A – Septuagint Codex Alexandrinus

LXX B – Septuagint Codex Vaticanus

VetLat – Vetus Latina, Old Latin

Vg – Latin Vulgate

Pesh – Syriac Peshitta

Alright, time for me to get back on track and start the New Year right with a post in Week #1!  So here we go with something short & easy.

Before Christmas I uncovered in a packed-away attic box – a TON more pamphlets, books, leaflets, and other treasures of theology that my parents had collected back in their day.  There’s a ton of stuff from individuals, Advent Christian publishers, The Restitution Herald (in Oregon Illinois), and the Layman’s Home Missionary Movement.  This particular one here is from the Layman’s – or LHMM for short.  There’s no copyright or published date on it so I’m not sure from when it originates.  But I’d guess from the 1940’s – 1960’s.  I saw the title listed on another site associated with the LHMM, but not the actual content of the piece.  Therefore I thought I would re-publish it to the world-wide-web for all to enjoy.

To understand this term, one must also seek to understand other closely related phrases, like sons of men and children of men. Firstly, all of these terms are applied to mankind in general. These terms indicate the difference between God and the human race. The phrase son of man is the strongest way to distinguish between deity and humanity!

Psalm 115:16 (usage – children of men)
Consider the contrast between God and mankind: God dwells in heaven; man dwells on the earth.

Psalm 145:10 – 13 (usage – sons of men)
Here’s another contrast between God and mankind: God is big, strong, powerful and eternal; man is small, weak and temporal.

Well, it’s been quite awhile since I’ve posted an article here.  Far too long in fact.  I apologize for my hiatus. No real good excuses, just the usual things in life that pull us in all directions – job, kids, family commitments, home projects, watching too much football (yes I really do enjoy watching college and professional football – maybe too much), etc..  And probably the worst and certainly dumbest thing is just getting out of the habit.  Of course it seems that may be the case with a lot of my fellow KR contributors.  But let’s see if I can start a trend of coming back to the well here.  Let’s see if I can start off easy and work back into pushing out some fresh content for those have kept coming here and visiting the site.

I thought I would publish here on KR an excellent paper by Ken Westby.  Ken runs the great One God website www.Godward.org  – also known as “The Association for Christian Development”.  This paper actually just ran as a paid-for full-page ad in “The Journal”.  This is the little newspaper that the Churches of God put out.  And the interesting thing here (some might call it a bold move), is that the Churches of God (off-shoots of the Armstrong World-Wide movement) are decidedly Binitarian (the “God Family” belief).  Ken sent a pdf copy of the entire newspaper (link is here) along with a note saying that his article (on page 19 – and printed here below), was followed up by a 9 PAGE rebuttal in support of the binity belief. I think he may have struck a nerve!