Kingdom Ready

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.

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!

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):

Installment #8 in my “Common Sense” series.

Biblical Common Sense – Jesus – Not Equal, Not the Same!

The following common sense arguments regarding how The Bible clearly demonstrates that God and Jesus are not the same being are ones that tend to come up quite often among those promoting Jesus as God. Many times I have been told in discussions with those wishing to support a Trinitarian or even a Oneness/Modalist viewpoint that these are simply tired old arguments.  Yes, the arguments are centuries old and people often tire of them. But that doesn’t mean that they still aren’t valid objections. And their validity remains all the more significant due to the fact each of these are easily answerable when one uses common sense as their guide.

Installment #7 in my “Common Sense” series.

Biblical Common Sense – Jesus – Two Adams

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans and 1st Corinthians detailed comparisons of Jesus and Adam.  Paul even termed Jesus the “Last Adam”.  This is because he recognized critically important parallels between these two individuals.  Adam, the father of the human race brought death upon everyone because his disobedience took away the ability for humans to live eternally. The perfect obedience of the Last Adam, Jesus the Messiah, gave humanity a way to overcome death and live eternally as originally planned.

The fabric of our lives is what makes us who we are, that fabric should be interwoven with God! It is God who has made us. He desires to be the Fabric of our lives. I was recently at the beach there was an announcement over the loud speakers that there were lost children looking for their parents. One of the children was a 5 years old, the other was 3 years old, and there was a 1 year old. After the last child’s parents were located the life guard station politely announced “could parents please stop drinking and keep an eye on your children”. We know that alcohol was a factor, because the police had been there checking and confiscating alcoholic beverages right before we arrived. A women sitting across from us was commenting on how could any parent lose track of their children. If you look at the marriage status in this country today you will see that statistically 1 out of ever 3 marriages fails. I feel as though from talking with people that the number is more like 9 out of every 10 fails. It seems everywhere I turn people are either getting a divorce or there marriage is on shaky ground. I think that there is something seriously wrong with the fabric many people are choosing to weave their lives out of today,  NO GOD only themselves!!!

Back in Sept 2010, I presented some facts and stats about God. It became apparently clear that the Bible teaches that the Father, whose name, according to the OT, is YHWH, is the only God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not all God subsisting in one Godhead. YHWH of the OT, of whom Jesus continually addressed as Father – He is the only God; therefore, we’ve come to understand that God is truly unipersonal, not tri-personal.

(Installment #4 in the series.)

Biblical Common Sense – Jesus – The Anointed of God

The term Messiah is the English translation for the Hebrew word “Moshiach” (or “Mashiach”), which means “God’s anointed, or “the anointed one (of God)”. The term was used to describe anyone who was “anointed” with holy anointing oil (e.g. Israel’s Kings, prophets, & priests) to signify being chosen for a task ordained/authorized by God. And in a deeper eschatological sense, Messiah also stood for the coming of THE final “Moshiach” from the Davidic line who would usher in the Messianic age (the “Olam Ha-Ba” or “the world to come”) and whose “kingship” would reign forever.

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.