This is the ‘one’ word definition of the Gospel.
Who do you Worship?
God is overthrowing satan in his authority here on earth*, and God is taking over. Period.
*Revelation 12.9 And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
Filed under Kingdom of God
What is it?
Where is it?
Why is it?
Who made it?
When is it for?
Answer these questions, but do not rely on the things that a pastor,laymen, or parents have told you they were, but rely on yourself to search the scriptures for the answers. Do not just look at a verse as an answer, but let the answer be defined in the context that it is being used in, if it leads to a previous use in another context from someone else compare the two examples. Let the context and the allegory uses that they show you on the definition and use of the word “Heaven”.
Now, compare the understanding of the word “Heaven” that you already thought you knew, and the new definition of the word that you will see in its use now.
Hearing the use of a ‘definition’ or a concept in the bible over and over from someone, is not always to say that they are right in their knowledge in their use of the concept. It is thru our studying the scriptures, with the foundation of the time period, the society at the time, the perceived reality of God,(gods) that should all come together to understand the concept of anything that we read in the bible.
It has been an injustice for us as christians to use the scriptures, and used it as a continuing concept in our time and place.
It was being used for the people of the time, separate people with different ideals, but with the touching of us thru history and God’s Eternal Purpose that it is meant for us now!
If we could only see it!
Filed under New Perspective
Christians, We have a problem!
Our identity is in disarray? And it’s our fault.
The looseness of our use of the word “church”and our actions,rituals, has and is not defining who we are as Christians. I see to some extent that maybe we have put the cart before the horse. We as christians have assumed that we are exemplifying the attributes of a christ like life, when in fact we are just a very weak example of a concept of a christ like ideal.
First, the realization of what God’s intention of his creations and their purpose from God’s chosen people,the jews, and then to spread the love for all to be included in his purpose. It is where we need to see the real meaning of what God was telling and showing the children of Israel that it was all about Him, in everything for everyone. This understanding for the children was the practice of the details to comply with God’s identity. It was their manual to be “God’s people”, and their was no other way to this identity. This has in some respects bled thru in the christian life.
God gave them the law and it was written in stone!, so it could not and would not change,no additions or subtractions.This is the method that God speaks for his intentions for his people.
Put ourselves in the mindset of a jewish sect in the various kingdoms that they were a subset in that will bring us to the understanding of their mindset of what God was going to free them from tyrant kingdoms that kept them in slavery. It was to become a flesh issue in their lives, but not an eternal one.
Secondly, with the inclusion of gentiles it was the dissolving of everything that jewish life was all about as to the rituals that ‘God’s people were and what they were. It couldn’t include the gentiles, unless they succumbed to the rituals of the jews. This is what the issue with Paul and Peter was in the book of Acts. This united group was just not kosher with the jewish elite. It just couldn’t work in so many ways. This pronouncement that the old way of knowing of who God’s select people were, was not by the written and systematic ways of his people, but by who they were in God, and later to be thru Jesus,the messiah.
It is this second realization that we need to see that, we too need to drop our rituals and ways of becoming ‘God’s people’ as did the jewish community had to realize with the addition of the gentiles in the purpose of God. We have become stuck in the ways of our thinking of ‘creating the kingdom’ that we have missed the fact that we are the kingdom because of our belief in Jesus and his messianic life that, He is the new king of the new kingdom that has given us a new life in not the world but of God’s Life!
Christians need to be the ‘light on the hill’ to be reckonized as ‘God’s people’. This will be who Chirst is. Nothing more,nothing less.
The definition of ‘the Church’ is ‘God’s people’. and nothing else.
God’s desire for Adam in the garden was not slavery, but life. Adam chose slavery, God rectified Adam to bring us to life in Christ, which he shows us in Revelation 21-22.
Filed under Our walk
Executive Director of CSNTM & Senior Research Professor of NT Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary
I want God to ignite my words with a match made in Heaven so that they burn in the heart of everyone who reads them or hears them, making them a furnace that spreads God’s warmth and light around the world.
Thoughts on books, reading, and life
God's purpose of getting us back to the garden.
Early Christianity in Greco-Roman Context
Engaging Conversations on Bible and Theology
Comments on the New Testament and Early Christianity (and related matters)
Commenting on biblical studies, archaeology, travel and photography
The Eternal Purpose 