Daniel 7 and the Eclipse of the Kingdom of God

 by Anthony F. Buzzard

In order to lay before you my approach to getting at the Truth of the Christian faith I want to begin with a quotation from Professor A. Lukyn Williams, DD, Cambridge professor and Hebrew scholar, delivering a series of lectures on the Hebrew Christian Messiah (1916):

With the Lord Jesus, as with every Jew, the Old Testament was the court to which, in the last instance, all appeal was made. It was the head from which flowed the waters of spiritual life in unadulterated purity and strength. With him again, as with every Jew of Palestine, the limits of the Old Testament did not exceed those of the present Hebrew canon.

Within that canon Jesus of course must have been familiar with the Book of Daniel and it was in that book that he found the vision of the Son of Man and his investiture as sovereign in the Kingdom of God. (The same vision is found also in the Similitudes of Enoch, but we will not press the evidence of that document since it may have been written after the time of Jesus. At any rate it simply reflects the Danielic vision of the kingdom of God.)

Again I want to emphasize the critical matter of establishing Daniel as a “base of operations” for the study of Jesus and the faith. Howard Clark Kee points out most usefully that Mark’s account of Jesus shows a “disproportionate interest in Daniel.” He notes that in Mark, “Daniel alone among all the OT books is quoted from every chapter. Moreover, Daniel is of the highest level of significance for the NT as a whole as a result of its overwhelming importance for Mark. Mark has been influenced directly by Daniel in his representation of the career and intention of Jesus” (The Community of the New Age, 1983, p. 45).

The vision of Daniel 7 gives us a marvelously simple pattern of the development of world history, a veritable theology of world history out of which the NT works. Its scheme is not complicated. It speaks of the replacement of bestial governments by the government of the Son of Man, the ideal of humanity, what man was intended to be. We know that the book of Daniel was read avidly by the Qumran community and it is obvious that it leaves a clear imprint on what Jesus has to say about his own career in Palestine and in the future. The appearance of the Kingdom of God in Daniel 7 is placed only after the demise of the fourth beast, of which the last stage is marked by the appearance of a kind of chaos monster, the little horn who exhausts the saints for a brief period.

It is on the ruins of that last, fourth beast with its evil tyrant that the Kingdom of God arises. The Kingdom of God is clearly as much a government as the preceding beast powers. Its arena is obviously the earth, since it is to be set up “under the whole heaven” (Dan. 7:27). The Son of Man, as a corporate figure representing the saints, is unmistakably the agent of God for the administration of sound government on the earth. The nature of the Kingdom of God as Daniel foresaw it may not be subjected to the disastrous “spiritualizing” tendency typical of much commentary. The sober comments of the International Critical Commentary warn us not to sacrifice common-sense and sound mindedness in the interests of trying to force on Daniel some sort of abstract Kingdom or present social ideal. Nebuchadnezzar would have been amazed if anyone thought his kingdom was mainly an abstract idea. The empire which follows the demise of the fourth evil empire is clearly just as much a visible concrete worldwide rule. It is in fact God’s revolutionary government, a true theocracy, a regime destined to do away with all present human governments. The International Critical Commentary says (p. 178):

“The last Kingdom replaces the first Four in the dream, and is, in the idea of the scene, spatially bound as are its predecessors; the Mountain fills the whole earth and is not a ‘spiritual’ Kingdom of Heaven.”

John Goldingay in his illuminating commentary on Daniel (Word Biblical Commentary, state of the art in evangelical commentary) notes:

When God’s time comes, His Kingdom requires the destruction of earthly Kingdoms rather than his working through them. They are God’s will for now, but not forever; and when His moment arrives, His Kingdom comes by catastrophe not by development. Daniel promises a new future, one which is not merely an extension of the present. It is of supernatural origin. But it is located on earth, not in heaven.... Daniel envisages no dissolution of the cosmos or creation of a different world. His understanding of this Kingdom is more like the prophetic idea of the Day of Yahweh than that of some later apocalypses. The problem of politics and history can only be resolved by a supernatural intervention that inaugurates a new Kingdom, but this involves changing the lordship of this world, not abandoning this world. The new Kingdom fills the earth. History is not destroyed: other sovereignties are… Daniel has not turned the Kingdom into something individualistic (His  kingship is to be realized in the individual believer’s life), or otherworldly (it is to be realized in heaven). He reaffirms the universal, this-worldly, corporate perspective of Isa 40-55. Daniel is talking about a reign of God on earth and that continues to be more and more an object of hope than of sight. We still pray, ‘May Your rule come’ (Luke 11:2) and — in the light of Daniel’s revelation — have to be referring to a rule which is temporal, worldly, and social. Precisely at moments when such a vision is difficult to believe, Daniel’s readers are urged, via his final declaration to the king (v. 45b) to take it with utmost seriousness (cp. 8:26; 10:21; Rev 19:9; 21:5; 22:6). (from  pp. 59-61, italics are his).

 

These facts have enormous importance for the teaching of Jesus about the Kingdom, about the Gospel in fact. We should not forget that the Gospel as it fell from the lips of Jesus and Paul has a specific label. It is always “the Gospel about the Kingdom of God.” Jesus uses his Kingdom message (the reason for which he was commissioned (Luke 4:43) to recruit the saints whom he gathered around him. This is core of the subject matter of the Gospels. And the Old Testament text plot from which this matter is taken is certainly the book of Daniel and principally the seventh chapter of Daniel (along with the 2nd chapter which likewise teaches us about the Kingdom which is to supersede present nation-states, not by development but by catastrophe (Dan. 2:44). The Kingdom, it is quite clear, will not come by evolution but by revolution. But such revolution is appropriate only when the Messiah returns. The Kingdom of God was not set up in Acts when the spirit came, much less in AD 70, as is fantastically suggested by Preterists.

      Of course Daniel 7 is not the only passage of Scripture to speak of the Messiah and His service for the Kingdom of God. We must include in the same picture the righteous sufferer in the psalms and of course the rejected prophets and the suffering servant of Isaiah. The thread which holds together all these “saints” (of whom Jesus is the chief) is their destiny. This involves temporary, if intense suffering, followed by vindication when the Kingdom of God becomes theirs. According to the pattern laid out in Daniel, that vindication comes only at, and not before, the demise of the final evil ruler, who arises out of the fourth and final beast power. The NT echoes this scheme when it summarizes the faith by saying; “Through much tribulation we are destined to enter the Kingdom” (Acts 14:22).

Daniel 7 and the Christian Gospel

What, then, is the importance of this for our understanding of the Christian Gospel? When Jesus came into Galilee and launched his opening salvo: “The Kingdom of God is at hand: Repent and believe in the Gospel, i.e., about the Kingdom.” It is a fatal mistake of interpretation to ignore the background to the Kingdom of God in Daniel 7. To do this is to distort the Gospel. Yet this is what so often happens in contemporary evangelism. When I recently inquired of the Atlanta Church of Christ what Jesus meant by the Gospel of the Kingdom (not that this term Kingdom appeared in their own account of the Gospel) I was handed a print out of all NT Kingdom texts. I then asked them to define the Kingdom from its Hebrew, apocalyptic background in Daniel 7. This, I am convinced, is the right hermeneutical thing to do. Jesus must be understood in his own context, not ours. The peril is too great that we simply impose on Jesus our own ideological agendas and construct a Gospel to suit ourselves. History shows that we human beings are fond of attaching the label Jesus to our own projects and ideals and thus baptizing them as genuine expressions of the will of God. This method must be avoided.

We cannot afford to misunderstand Jesus when it comes to the Gospel because “whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospel’s will save it…Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, in this sinful and adulterous society, of him the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father” (Mark 8:35, 38). Notice how the Gospel is parallel to and defined as the words of Jesus.

The Kingdom of God Defined by Daniel 7 and a Standard Lexicon

The term “Kingdom of God” is perhaps the most important word in the Bible. As someone has said, the whole genius of the Christian faith is concentrated in the words “Kingdom of God.” Jesus said that the whole point of his mission was to proclaim the Gospel about the Kingdom of God (Luke 4:43; cp. Acts 8:12).

So what is this Kingdom of God? What, in fact, is the Gospel which Jesus commands us to believe (Mark 1:14, 15)? Sometimes Christians would do well to go back to a standard Bible lexicon to find a proper definition. Let’s look at the famous lexicon by Thayer for enlightenment. Under the entry “Kingdom of God,” the lexicon gives the information from Daniel which provides us with this idea of the Kingdom of God, the subject of the Christian gospel:

Daniel had declared it to be God’s purpose that after four vast and mighty kingdoms had succeeded one another and the last of them shown itself hostile to the people of God, at length its despotism would be broken and the empire of the world would pass over forever to the people of God (Dan. 2:44; 7:14, 18, 22, 27).

 

Thayer then speaks of the foundation of the Kingdom which has already been laid in the preaching and miracles of Jesus in his ministry on earth. Then he refers to the primary meaning of the Kingdom of God:

But far more frequently [i.e. than any references to the “presence” of the Kingdom] the kingdom of Heaven/God is spoken of as a future blessing, since its establishment is to be looked for at Christ’s solemn return from the skies, the dead being called to life again and the ills and wrongs which burden the present state of things being done away, the powers being hostile to God being vanquished: Matt. 6:10, “Thy Kingdom come,” 8:11, Luke 13:26:  “When you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom,”  “until the day when I drink the wine new with you in the Kingdom of God,”   Luke 22:28: I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom shall come,” Mark 9:1: a reference to the second coming (See vv. 2:2-9 and Peter’s interpretation of the transfiguration as a vision of the Second Coming (II Pet. 1:16-18), Mark 15:43: Joseph was waiting for the Kingdom of God, just as Jesus is still now waiting for his enemies to be put under his feet (Heb. 10:13); Luke 9:27 with its fulfillment in the transfiguration in vv. 28-35; Luke 14:15; II Peter 1:11,: “everlasting Kingdom”; also in the phrase “enter the Kingdom of God,” (Matt. 5:20; 7:21; 18:3; 19:23, 24; Mark 9:47; 10:23, 24, 25; Luke 18:24, 25; John 3:5; Acts 14:22; James 2:5: “heirs [not yet inheritors] of the Kingdom” (James 2:5): “inherit the Kingdom of God” (Matt. 25:34; I Cor. 6:9; 15:50; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5).

 

 Thayer speaks of the Kingdom of God as occasionally a description of persons (Christians) who are being made fit for admission into the Kingdom of God when it comes (Rev. 1:6). But it should be noted that the first and dominant meaning of the Kingdom of God is the one given us by Daniel 7, from which the whole NT idea of the Kingdom of God is derived.

Note carefully the time-sequence given us by Daniel. In the vision of chapter 7, there is a sequence of four beasts and a final tyrant (horn). Following these four beasts and the horn the Kingdom of God is introduced. It will be governed by the Son of Man (Dan. 7:13, 14). Note again most carefully the time sequence. Where does the Kingdom come in relation to the other events? The answer is very simple. First the Beast power is slain and his body is destroyed by being given to the flame [the lake of fire] (see Dan. 7:11; “I watched until the Beast was slain...”). At that same time the dominion of the rest of the beasts was taken away (Dan. 7:12). Only after this is the Kingdom given to the Son of Man.

Note now how the interpretation given to Daniel reinforces a proper understanding of the Kingdom in the sequence of events. First there are four Beasts (Dan. 7:17). After that, the Kingdom is given to the saints (Dan. 7:18). No less than three more times, this sequence is emphasized. First the 10 horns of the fourth Beast appear, as does the little horn (vv. 20:21).  And then (and here we have our answer about the timing of the Kingdom of God) “the time comes that the saints possess the Kingdom” (Dan. 7:22). Again the same point is made: Verses 23-25 first describe the rule of the Beast power which culminates in the arrival of a final tyrant (horn) who persecutes the saints. But this is only for a limited time (v. 25). The dominion of the little horn is removed and he is consumed and destroyed (v. 26). Following the removal and destruction of the Beast the Kingdom of God on earth,  “under the whole heaven, ” is given to the saints and all nations and languages serve and obey them” (Dan. 7:27, GNB; RSV, etc.)

From this essential background in Daniel, it is a very simple matter to understand that the Kingdom of God is, as Thayer says, “far more often spoken of as  a future blessing.”

The Book of Revelation which of course develops the themes of Jesus’ teaching and particularly the matter of the Kingdom in Daniel, tells us exactly what we would expect from our study of Daniel 7. First the Beast is slain in Revelation 19:20 by being thrown into the lake of fire. This event happens when the rider on the white horse appears as a warrior king accompanied by the armies of heaven (Rev. 19:11-15). His arrival in these verses is, as all agree, his second coming which, of course, has not yet happened. He comes in fact to “rule [i.e. set up the Kingdom over] the nations with a rod of iron” (Rev. 19:15). This same event is the one also described in Rev. 11:15-18, when “the Kingdoms of the world will become the Kingdom of God and Christ.” This happens at the 7th trumpet, the trumpet announcing the resurrection of the faithful dead. If this has not yet happened, then obviously the Kingdom of God has not yet arrived.

This sequence of events — first four Beasts, culminating in final anti-Christ, then the Second Coming of Jesus to establish the Kingdom — is exactly the sequence laid out by Daniel 7, as we have seen. There are three critically important “inceptive aorists” telling us about the Kingdom of God in Revelation: In Rev. 11:17: “God has begun to reign,” at the time when the Kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of God at a future crisis. So in Rev. 19:6: “Hallelujah, because God has taken up his reign,” at the time of the future marriage banquet. And again in Rev. 20:4 the saints “came to life and began to reign with the Messiah for the 1000 years.” As Mounce says (Comm. on Revelation, New London Commentaries, 1997, p. 354) Daniel’s vision of the 4 beasts, their judgment and the passing of the kingdom to the saints of the Most High is undoubtedly the background for much of John’s presentation.

 

Why does all this matter?

“What about consumers of the Gospel? Are they getting the pure untainted message? Or are they getting the gospel loaded with American or post-Constantinian additives?” The question was asked by Jim Reapsome, director of the Evangelical Missions Information Service and editor of Evangelical Missions (Christianity Today, Oct. 2nd, 1995). I would like to add: “Are consumers getting the gospel in a depleted form with essential nutrients missing? Jim Reapsome continues with words which call forth from me a hearty “amen.” He says, “As I look back over nearly half a century of work in world missions, no question worries me more. My greatest worry is not about money for missions, people for missions or the strategies and management for missions. It’s about the content in the package we call the gospel — the cure for people sins — and whether we have administered the right medicine.” I once attended,” he goes on, “a study conference where missions scholars and executives wrangled for a weekend, trying to define the meaning of conversion. But I have never been to one where the Gospel itself was addressed. We just assume we know. This can be a fatal assumption.”

Could it be that the single most valuable pearl has been lost from the string of ideas presented to potential converts interested in salvation in Jesus?

If I could leave you with a single point for meditation it would be just this question. Is it sufficient to quote 3 verses from Paul (typically I Cor. 15:1-3) to the effect that belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus is all that he taught as the Gospel? Can we afford to overlook the obvious fact that Jesus and the Apostles preached “the Gospel of the Kingdom” without at that stage saying a word about the Messiah’s death and resurrection? Can it possibly be right that the phrase “Gospel of the Kingdom” is not the way we describe the Gospel, though Luke insists that the Kingdom was the content of the Gospel which Paul (following Jesus) always took to the people both Jews and Gentiles? (Acts 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31. Cp. Acts 8:12).

Surely it must be the part of wisdom to adopt the “standard of sound words” recommended by Paul as a sort of creed II Tim. 1:13 by habitually using the very words of Jesus as the basis of our teaching? These words of Jesus Paul calls “health-giving words” (1 Tim. 6:3). Without the words and the Gospel of Jesus (Rom. 10:17; 16:25) we are as, Paul said, ignoramuses. And John could not have warned us more vigorously when, late in the NT period, he said, “Anyone who ‘progresses’ and does not remain in the teaching of Christ does not belong to God. He who remains in that teaching has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 7-9).

Revival and unity amongst believers will be under way when the Hebrew Bible again takes its place as the repository of divine truth lying at the basis of what Jesus believed and taught. When the doctrine of man as a whole person needing to acquire immortality through resurrection is reinstated believers will be able to identify with the Apostles for whom the hope of the Kingdom and immortality in it was the great driving force behind Christian living and evangelism. The re-orientation toward the future must not be blocked by arguments about the need for some other gospel in the present — often a plea for the reduction of Christianity to ethics. But the NT Christianity is not just ethics — its ethics are set in a very particular and Jewish setting which cannot be discarded. Calling the Danielic, apocalyptic setting of the NT a useless husk from which we must extract a valuable kernel of timeless ethics is dishonest practice, an excuse for unbelief. The teaching of Jesus is to be accepted lock, stock and barrel. Only then can we do what Jesus calls “doing well”: You call me teacher and Lord and you do well. For so I am” (John 13:13). Do we hear enough about accepting Jesus as Lord (meaning that we are to obey all his commands), and how seldom is there a plea to accept him as “rabbi/teacher” in all his splendid Jewishness and as the model preacher of the saving Gospel?

While the cry goes out that “doctrine divides” and ethics unite, we will not achieve unity. Let us indeed unite, not however to comfort ourselves with easy optimism that all is well with the status quo, but to dialogue and admonish one another to return to the basic teachings of Jesus, under the overarching theme of the Gospel about the Kingdom of God. Unity in the Bible is unity in the truth as it is in Jesus. This can be achieved when tradition (however long-standing) yields after careful inspection to the truth of Scripture. Opportunities for the necessary Berean exercise are available to all of us in this information-packed early 21^st  century.

Let me summarize. The basic teachings of Jesus are the basis for establishing a relationship between ourselves and God. Truth, not error, is essential if we are to serve God “in spirit and truth,” in the holy spirit, in fact, which is the “spirit of the truth,” and the operational presence of God, his vitalizing energy (Ps. 51:11), and the mind of Christ. The Gospel is the vehicle of that energy and must not be tampered with (Rom. 1:16; I Thess. 2:13). The Gospel is to be defined first by the words of the historical Jesus and not first from isolated texts in Paul. Jesus’ own example forces us back to the Hebrew Bible and especially the Book of Daniel in order to get our feet firmly planted on solid exegetical ground. Contemporary statements about the Gospel are in danger of promoting a vague gnosticism unless they are rooted in the Hebrew soil of the Bible. I think the Church is ready for a change of approach to Bible-study, one that sheds the unwanted accretions of Greek philosophy against which Paul warned. The Gospel as the technical term par excellence must not become a kind of wax nose to be bent into various shapes and defined in a myriad of different ways (Certainly not divided into 8 different gospels as Bullinger [Companion Bible] proposes!). The Gospel is in the NT, a fixed quantity understood by reader and writer.

When we ask how Paul went about creating faith and love in the Church, we find that it was often by pleading for a clear idea about the content of hope. He speaks about “faith and love which spring from hope” (Col. 1:4, 5 ). No wonder he prayed for the Ephesians to have their mental eyes opened to the hope of the future inheritance (Eph. 1:14-18). Paul recognized that it was because of future joy that Jesus endured the cross (Heb. 12:2).

The Jesuanic covenant, based on the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants made by God with Jesus, was the gift of the Kingdom of God (Luke 22:28-30: “Just as my Father covenanted with me... so I covenant with you to give you the Kingdom”). Ruling the world with Jesus is likely to provide a much better stimulus to good ethics now than Platonic promises of disembodied life in heaven! News about the Kingdom is anyway the heart of the Gospel as Jesus preached it, and the spreading of that news to the far corners of the world is the task of the Church until the Messiah arrives (Matt. 24:14). “Fear not, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom,” he had said earlier (Luke 12:32).

I finish now where I began with the fact that Kingdom of God, the heart of the Gospel as Jesus preached it, concerns a yet future world-order initiated by the future coming of Jesus. It will be God’s revolutionary government. That message must grab us in the present and the spread of that message is the church’s concern and commission. In no text of the NT does anyone say that we are now reigning with Christ, much less that the dead are. Paul urged the Corinthians not to believe that they had already become kings (I Cor. 4:8), while he wished the time had come (which it had not) when they would indeed become kings together (ibid.) In Rom. 5:17, as also in 2 Tim. 2:12, the “co-ruling” word (“we shall reign”) is again deliberately in the future tense” We shall reign in life” — “life” being a synonym for the Kingdom (see Matt. 19:17, 23). As Eric Sauer says so well, “The Church is the official administrative staff, the ruling aristocracy of the coming Kingdom” (From Eternity to Eternity, 1993, p. 93). Moffat caught the spirit of this astonishing teaching in his translation of 1 Cor. 6:2: “Don’t you know that the saints are going to manage the world, and if the world is to come under your jurisdiction…The unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom” (1 Cor. 6:9). To inherit the Kingdom is parallel to managing the world with Christ. Why do Christians insist on obscuring the biblical hope with their vague talk about “going to heaven”? Jesus said that “the meek were going to inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5), and they will rule with him on the earth (Rev 5:10).

Is this not a beautiful, realistic, comforting and inspiring prospect for all believers — so easy and straightforward and asking only for a child-like acceptance on our part?

And in I Cor. 15:50 Paul says that apart from a new body at the resurrection it is impossible to inherit the Kingdom of God. Such is his fight with Gnostic attempts to move the future into the present and thus have no future. You can have June’s weather in April, but you cannot pretend that April is really June.

And finally, please may we do Luke the honor of noticing that early in Acts he sets up his scheme of redemption with precision. The spirit is to come in a few days (Acts 1:5) but the coming of the Kingdom is to be at a time unknown in the future (Acts 1: 6, 7). Therefore the Kingdom of God was not inaugurated at the ascension, though the spirit as a downpayment of that future kingdom was poured out. That fact is likely to have a profound effect on some received traditional understandings.

The following is a useful confirmatory quotation from a leading NT scholar (Edward Schweitzer, Mark, pp. 45-47):

The Kingdom of God. “When Jesus proclaims that the Kingdom of God is near, he is adopting a concept which was coined in the O.T...... [the Kingdom] is primarily God’s unchallenged sovereignty in the end-time (Isa. 52:7). Judaism spoke of the reign of God which comes after the annihilation of every foe and the end of all suffering.... In the NT the Kingdom of God is conceived, first of all, as something in the future (Mark 9:1, 47, 14:25, Mat. 13:41-43; 20:21; Luke 22:16, 18; 1 Cor. 15:50, et al. which comes from God (Mark 9:1; Mat. 6:10; Luke 17:20; 19:11. Therefore it is something that men can only wait for (Mark 15:43) [Had Joseph missed the boat?!], Matt. 6:33, receive Mark 10:15, cp. Luke 12:32 and inherit I Cor. 6:9; Gal 5:21; James 2:5, but he is not able to create it by himself.”

Steel Magnolias by Barbara Buzzard

Let me first describe for those not fortunate enough to have seen a magnolia tree. It is a staple in southern gardens, having huge white, pink, or yellow fragrant blossoms in early spring. The tree can be massive and can withstand gale force winds. The bloom is said to represent nobility and purity. A “steel magnolia” is a term given to a woman who exemplifies both traditionally feminine traits and uncommon fortitude, often a southern woman who is strong and independent, yet feminine. She is unflinching in character and is often the backbone of the family. A steel magnolia possesses indefatigable strength, determination and resolve. As one writer put it, the image of a steel magnolia “melds beauty with perseverance, softness with backbone, delicacy with durability, sweetness with stamina.” (Sounds awfully like that Proverbs 31 woman!) A steel magnolia is very powerful but she uses that power judiciously.

One biblical steel magnolia was Joanna who was one of Jesus’ main followers. She was the wife of Chuza, Herod’s financial steward. She was obviously a woman of means. She accompanied Jesus during his ministry for at least two years and financially backed much if not most of the disciples’ cost of living.

I am certainly not the first to credit Mary Magdalene with being a steel magnolia. While not from the South, she was a source of strength throughout Jesus’ ministry. She is mentioned fourteen times in the gospels; in eight of these accounts she is named with other women, but she always is first in the list. It is noteworthy as well that she was the first to see Jesus after his resurrection. What an honor!

It is also noteworthy that she and the other women stood steadfast at the crucifixion (as the men fled) until the very bitter end. She followed Jesus on his last journey to Jerusalem, was there at the trial where he, who was without sin, was pronounced guilty. She must have witnessed Jesus being spat upon and violently beaten, and yet she was still there. She would have seen his dreadful walk to Calvary and the torture of being nailed to the cross. How did she bear this? She would have heard Jesus’ agonizing cries and been heart-broken as the spear thrust into his side pronounced him dead. Was Jesus comforted by their presence, by their closeness which displayed their love and loyalty? Her presence throughout this vicious ordeal spoke volumes about her. The anguish of watching Jesus die and the hideous passions of those who mocked him and wanted him dead did not cause her to abandon her watch. She never ran away. She remained steadfast there until the very bitter end. I think her fierce love for Jesus and her courage (and that of the other women) is utterly remarkable, almost unimaginable. She was the last to leave the cross, staying close to Jesus’ body. She allowed nothing to disrupt her witness, her loyalty to Jesus. She watched as Joseph of Arimathea sealed his body in the tomb and surely went away with one of the greatest griefs known to humankind.

But then, her world was shaken by our all-powerful God and she was allowed to be the first one to witness history’s most important event ever. Not only is Mary the most unlikely of candidates for this honor, but her story reveals Jesus’ going against what is expected, working via surprise (as is God’s method as well). The fact that Jesus and his Father used one of the most unlikely is in itself a wonderful testament to the fact that if we allow ourselves to be used, God will do totally amazing things (Luke 7:43).

When Mary realizes it is Jesus who is speaking to her, she addresses him as Rabboni, which means teacher, and obviously in this case, her beloved teacher. (It is interesting that before she recognized who it was who was speaking to her, she addressed the man as “sir,” — kurie, “lord,” a title flexible enough to be applied to God and a gardener!) Mary was then the first commissioned to tell the twelve, and no doubt she told and re-told her teacher and lord’s victory over death for the rest of her life. What a witness she had as the most pre-eminent witness to resurrection! She would have spoken with passion about the resurrection of Jesus. What she experienced — seeing him with her own eyes go from death to resurrected life — would be the preview and model for his followers.

All reactio

ONE NEVER MEANS MORE THAN ONE!

 According to any standard Hebrew lexicon the word "one" (echad) is the ordinary counting number “one,” appearing more than 900 times throughout the scriptures.

The word functions just as the word “one” in English. For example, "eleven" in Hebrew is "ten" and echad; Abraham was “echad,” i.e., "Abraham was only one person” (Eze 33:24, NAB, Holman, et al.).

When echad is used with collective nouns like “family” or “bunch,” echad retains its standard meaning, e.g., "one family” not "two families"; "one bunch" not "two bunches.” Any idea of plurality comes from the collective nouns (i.e., family, bunch) and not from the word “one" itself.

Ask yourself, how do you know "one family" is not more than "one"? Well, by the simple fact that the word "one" always retains the meaning of the ordinary counting number.

Again, the word “one" is never plural!

We must not transfer the plurality in the collective noun to the word “one” or, even worse, to the word LORD in the phrase “one LORD."

So, for Trinitarian scholars, linguists, apologists and pastors to do this is misleading to say the least, and at worst deception!

Commentaries on "pastors" "elders"

 Word Biblical Commentary (p. 249-251).

[Pastors and teachers] were overlapping functions...while almost all pastors were also teachers, not all teachers were also pastors...Though the noun pomen, 'shepherd, pastor' is used of Christ himself in John 10:11, 14; Heb. 13:20; 1 Pet. 2:25, it is employed for church leaders only here in the NT. The cognate verb does, however, describe their function in Acts 20:28 and 1 Pet. 5:1-4 and Peter's activity in regard to the Church in John 21:16. It suggests the exercise of leadership through nurture, care and guidance. Significantly, the concept of the shepherd and tending the flock is often found in association with that of the bishop or overseer and overseeing (cf. Jer. 23:2; Ezek. 34:11; Zech. 11:16...; Acts 20:28, where those appointed bishops of the church at Ephesus are to shepherd the church of God; 1 Pet. 2:25; 5:2; Ignatius Rom. 9:1; Phil. 2:1, where the bishop is also called a pastor). It is probable, then, that the pastor of Eph. 4:11 fulfills the functions denoted in Paul's writings by such terms as 'to rule, manage' (1 Thess. 5:12; Rom. 12:8), 'administration' (1 Cor. 12:28) and episkopos, 'bishop, overseer' (Phil. 1:1)...Because the general notion of overseeing had close associations with the shepherd in Jewish thought, it is understandable that the term 'pastor' could become interchangeable with 'bishop' in the Christian movement. It is the equivalent to presbyteros, 'elder' of Acts 14:23; 20:17; 1 Tim. 4:14; 5:17, 19; Titus 1:5; 1 Pet. 5:1, 5; James 5:14." 

International Critical Commentary, Eph 4.11

This much is clear, that pastors and teachers differ from the preceding classes in being attached to particular Churches. The name "pastors" implies this, and this term no doubt includes episkopoi and presbuteroi. Compare 1 Peter 5.2 (addressing the presbuteroi; 1Pet 2.25; Acts 20.28). The "pastor" of a Christian Church would, of course, be a teacher as well as a governor; it was his business to guide the sheep of the flock; cf. 1Tim. 3. 2; also Tit. 1. 9. But there would naturally be other teachers not invested with the same authority and not forming a distinct class, much less co-ordinate with the episkopoi.

TDNT, vol. 6, p 498.

"Only once in the NT are congregational leaders called shepherds, namely in the list of offices in Eph. 4:11...These shepherds are the leaders of the local church (elders in 1 Pet. 5:1; Acts 20:17; bishops in Acts 20:28)." 

A STUDY OF THE TERMS “ELDER,” “BISHOP,” AND “PASTOR” AS USED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

 by Bill Wachtel

Acts 11:30  “and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. The first mention in Acts of church elders, those of the church in Jerusalem.

Acts 14:23 “when they had ordained them elders in every church” Paul and Barnabas named elders for every church, presumably the churches  located in Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch—cities in Asia Minor.

Acts 16:4  “they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem” The elders of the Jerusalem church, in a leadership role with the apostles.

Acts 20:17 “he [Paul] sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church” Paul, being in Miletus, sent a messenger to Ephesus to call the elders of that church to come and meet with him in Miletus.

Acts 20:28 “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers [episkopous, bishops], to feed [poimainein, to pastor or to shepherd] the church of God”

From this text (as well as 1 Peter 5:1,2) the elders are identified as being synonymous with bishops or pastors. 

No distinction is made within the eldership, as though some elders are not bishops or pastors.

1 Peter 5:1-3 “The elders which are among you I exhort. . . .  Feed [poimanete, serve as pastors to] the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof [episkopountes, being bishops]. . . . Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.”

The elders, as Peter describes them, are per se also pastors and bishops.  Again, he makes no distinction as to these functions within the eldership.  This suggests that ALL N.T. elders are ALSO both pastors and bishops, as well as elders. 

1 Timothy 3:1ff. “If a man desire the office of a bishop [episkopes, overseership, bishopric].

No mention is made here of the term “elders,” but it is assumed from the above texts that these “bishops” are also the same men elsewhere called elders and pastors, within a given congregation.

1 Timothy 5:17 “Let the elders that rule well. . . .”

Paul ‘s words suggest the possibility that not all elders do well in the task of leadership or overseeing the congregation, but they do not imply that there are SOME  elders who do not have the responsibility of overseeing.  Taken at face value, his words imply that ALL elders have that responsibility, i.e., they as elders are automatically “bishops” and “pastors”—that is, they as teachers and guides of the flock are responsible to lead by example and by teaching.  We have already seen that their leadership must not be coercive, as would be that of “lords” or “masters” over the brethren.  But nevertheless it is seen that “elders” are, by virtue of being elders, men with pastoral and supervisory responsibility.  In other words, elders are bishops and are pastors.  I see no way to escape this conclusion, based on the textual evidence and sound hermeneutics.

Philippians 1:1 “To all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.”

“Elders” are not mentioned here, as the deacons are.  This suggests that Paul is simply using the term “bishops” as referring to those whom he also calls “elders” and “pastors” in other contexts.   

It is hard to escape the fact that Paul seems to use the terms “bishop” and “elder” and “pastor” as synonyms referring to the same men.

Titus 1:5,7 “That thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city. . . .  For a bishop must be blameless. . . .”  

It is clear that in this context Paul is using the term “elder” and “bishop” synonymously.  He is not implying that there are “elders” who are not at the same time “bishops.”  Thus, in Paul’s total usage, a man who is an “elder” in the congregation is likewise a “bishop” and a “pastor.”  Any attempt to see that there are congregational “elders” who are not therefore “bishops” and “pastors” seems fruitless.

Notes on the word “pastor” [poimen, shepherd]

Ephesians 4:11 “He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers [poimenas kai didaskalous—this construction makes it likely that “teachers” is epexegetical to “pastors,” yielding the idea “pastor-teachers”].

Since the terms “elders” and “bishops” is absent in this text, the term “pastors” must be understood to be referring to the same men also called “elders” or “bishops.” Compare also Heb. 13:20, where Christ is called “that great Shepherd [poimen, pastor] of the sheep” and 1 Peter 2:25, where He is called “the Shepherd and Bishop [episkopon] of your souls.”

In 1 Peter 5:4, Christ is called the “chief Shepherd [archipoimen], who at His return will reward the under-shepherds of His flock, the “pastors-bishops-elders” who serve Him and His church faithfully during the present age. 

3rd Human Jesus Conference: Barbara Buzzard

For the Love of Jesus: The Mark of Jesus

We are marked men and women (or we should be).

What mark has this human Jesus left on you?

There should be no “life as usual” after an encounter with Jesus and his message. While it can be said that the O.T. can be summarized in saying that God spoke — the people didn’t listen, the New Testament offers new possibilities, i.e. because of Jesus — the disciples became bold, even to the point of losing their lives. They were marked by Jesus with character changes, previously unknown passion, and love for fellow men and for the words of Jesus.

Someone put it this way: I was in a dark room. I backed into a light switch and what I saw was such that I could never un-see it. That could be what an encounter with Jesus might look like.

You can only follow Jesus if you can determine which direction he went — not geographically, but spiritually — what he believed and stood for.

What is ahead after a Jesus encounter? Danger, falling rock, construction, delays, roadside crews. But Jesus and his Father through the Scriptures provide guard rails. Staying the course can only happen if you are going — moving — in the right direction.

Having a continual and profound affirmation of Jesus’ humanity will give us the possibility of so much more of a relationship with him than for those who think he has two natures. We can interact with ALL of him without having to divide him or split him up. The deification of Jesus hinders our identification with him.

Our affirmations of Jesus’ humanity make the parallel between Adam and Jesus so much more striking.

Our assertion of Jesus’ humanity gives us common ground. His perfect obedience was not based on the memory of a prior existence or a previous experience. Jesus’ assurance as he lived a persecuted life was based on the same thing that ours must be — based on the assurance of the promises — inheriting his Father’s Kingdom.

Jesus paid the price of living according to Scripture all during his life — as he was dis-believed, questioned not only about his identity but his sanity as well.

It was Mark Twain who said that the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and day you found out WHY. This surely is energizing.

Consider this in relation to the “mark of Jesus”: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.”

Our Environment

An odious means of cultural destruction is underway in the form of sabotage of the language — a conspiracy to change the meaning of words to suit the purposes of the ones in charge. Words that at one time had a negative connotation are turned into positives, and vice versa. 

Before we look at Jesus’ teaching, we must reckon with the world we have inherited. George Orwell in his book 1984 identified the technique of changing the meaning of words — leading to doublethink as a technique which allows a person to hold two contradictory thoughts at one time and hold both to be true. As is obvious, it is a form of lying. We see this most clearly in theology and now in very many aspects of our world. 

Lying has become such a universal and acceptable behavior that one is “marked out” by telling the truth. Lying has become a primary way of life for some. There are institutions and practices such as abortion wholly built on lies. Since we live in a world of lies and deception, the ability to detect these lies is a major difference separating the foolish from the wise. We have been warned that most human grief and sorrow and man-made disaster didn’t come from ignorance but from the consequences of lies. “It’s not from things we don’t know, but things we know that aren’t so.”  And Twain was the one who originated the saying that “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”

Lying takes such subtle and unexpected forms: “Our hearts still fall into that same satanic groove [as did Eve], quickly moving from confessing ‘I believe in God’ to talking about ‘the God I believe in,’ to making the most dire and pretentious utterance of all: ‘I could never believe in a God who…’” We do not notice the disparity between saying “I believe in God” and “the God I believe in.”

We all have a propensity to create our own idea of God or of His Messiah. We all have a bent to fabricate a God and a Messiah out of our own wishes, and the real possibility is that we could create them out of falsehoods.

We have a huge capacity for self-deception but that is the most dangerous of all forms of lying — lying to one’s self. It takes the form of justifying our actions, being delusional about our own wrong doing. We are very good at fooling ourselves, lying to ourselves. We are rather good at making it up — i.e. “the God I believe in would never do such a thing,” or “I could never believe in a God who…” We twist God to our liking and then pronounce our “creation” as the real thing. Jesus was very aware of this as was David when he prayed: “Keep me from lying to myself.”

A vivid example here is the “principle of dissimilarities,” which is to say that if something sounds Jewish, then Jesus could not have said it! Please be suitably shocked. And there was also a so-called Jesus Seminar where actual votes were cast as to the question: “Could Jesus have said that?” These were some of the leaders in unbelief, but we have sophisticated the field with much subtler approaches.

Could this be the meaning of 1 John 5:21: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols,” i.e. creating Jesus as we would like him to be.

Jesus or Bambi?

When we add to our tendency toward self-deception, the philosophy adopted almost universally as advocated in the movie Bambi and said by Thumper: “If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all” — then we have a combination that just could be dangerous. Please don’t get me wrong — I love the Bambi movie and don’t mean to demean it. I also respect that there are times to hold one’s tongue, and I do believe in being “nice.” There are many Scriptures about guarding our tongues. What I am calling a “Bambi philosophy” is a sweet sentiment and many times is probably good advice. However, it has taken on a role and a life of its own as a valued philosophy of Christian behavior. But is it valid? Did Jesus operate this way?

No, he did not. Jesus was direct (sometimes shockingly so). Jesus shoots straight and he knows his audience.

He manages to indict us all as he speaks about those character flaws that must be acknowledged and repented of and changed. Jesus’ words were so right on every occasion and with reference to everyone. He spoke so truthfully about the nature of man and his proneness to do wrong. Jesus’ words always get you. Spot on. They nail everyone. No one gets off scot free. Man is true to what had been written: “deceitful in all his ways.”

It seems that we make “not to offend” our modus operandi. That has become the measuring stick of being a good person. Our aim is to make those around us feel comfortable. And this certainly has its place, for instance at the Thanksgiving table. I am all for tact and diplomacy and good manners. But as one writer said: “We’ve got too many people being quiet so other people can be comfortable.” 

Could any of the prophets or biblical authors have adhered to this “see no evil, speak no evil” philosophy? The problem is that it stifles critical thinking, which is essential to the process of honest living. In its wider context it stifles the telling of Truth. Could it possibly be the most subtle of lies? We must balance that Bambi philosophy with this brilliant insight: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil; God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” 

There are situations where we have the responsibility to not remain silent. Martin Luther King put it this way: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Hand in hand with the “see no evil, speak no evil” Bambi philosophy goes our substitution of sincerity for Truth. Jesus’ love of Truth must not be exchanged for sincerity. And I move from Bambi to a rather more sophisticated source: the noted and brilliant writer Wiley Jones:

“Saul and others ‘verily thought’ that they were doing God service when they were ‘making havoc of the church’ by cruel persecutions, but did their sincerity turn their crime into a virtue?..Sincerity will not render harmless the believing of error any more than it will the drinking of poison. The modern theory of sincerity is not found in the Bible…And Paul did not preach to them that modern gospel of sincerity (which is a delusion and a snare), but faithfully declared to them ‘the gospel of the kingdom,’ as the Master commanded (Mat. 24:14, Acts 20:25).”

This is a challenging statement: “Everyone on some scale of life is compelled to be an intellectual force. They must think. They must value. They must act. Avoidance of such is the very nature of depravity and the root of society’s ills.”

Jesus and his Teaching — i.e. Jesus and his Mission

“It may be said that the teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God represents His whole teaching. It is the main determinative subject of all of His discourse. His ethics were ethics of the Kingdom; His theology was theology of the Kingdom; His teaching regarding Himself cannot be understood apart from His interpretation of the Kingdom of God.

“And it may not only be said that all His teaching had relation to the Kingdom, but also His action, everything He did from the days of His baptism…all the events of His life until the final culminating event, the crucifixion, had reference to the coming of the Kingdom. From His baptism on, His whole life was dedicated to the mission of announcing the Kingdom’s approach and of calling men to prepare for entering it upon the conditions which by divine authority He announced.”

Jesus spoke much about deception. And he spoke much about discernment. His love for us required that he warn us of the obstacles to come — of the nature of the beast. Our nation is sometimes referred to as a Christian nation. More correctly, it is a prodigal nation, guilty of idolatry, complacency and pride. 

At the very heart of Jesus’ teaching is repentance, a condition of entry into the Kingdom. His teaching about repentance and his requirement of it are distinct features of his teaching. 

This requirement dictates that sin has to go. As we know one cannot repent and continue in sin. Today, this requirement of repentance is often missing. We have lost a critical factor in not seeing the connection between repentance and our beliefs. Repentance has as much to do with wrong ideas as it has with wrong behavior. The Mark 1:14-15 scripture is the model for us to follow and to utilize in evangelism: “The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in that Gospel.” In this case repentance refers to a thought process and the turning or repenting requires a change to a belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom. Not only must we repent of moral wickedness but of wrong thinking, and that wrong thinking would be non-acceptance of the Gospel of the Kingdom.

Jesus did not leave us in any doubt about what he meant by obedience. Could he have been any more specific than in the Sermon on the Mount? But this kind of obedience is radical and costly. That is why it is explained away or only obeyed with lip service. Let’s not play down how extremely difficult these teachings are: for example, we are told to love our neighbors (we naturally love our friends), but then Jesus adds this radical new element: we are told to love our enemies as well. Who is left?

This encompasses everyone. No exclusions — no way out. An incredibly tough assignment!

Are we antagonistic in any way to anything he said? A self inventory would be valuable. Is any part of it unacceptable? Do we succumb to this — “the Jesus I believe in” would not…?

Something is expected of us! It is only reasonable that Jesus expects us to demonstrate in thought, word and deed that we are giving our very best efforts to obey all that he directed.

Jesus knew the spectacular difficulty of obedience. That is why he promised the spirit of his Father and of himself to transform us with a new nature to enable us to obey.

The thing is — anything short of obedience is rebellion. It is treachery.

“If you want to be my follower you must love me more than your own father and mother, wife and children, brother and sisters — yes, more than your own life. Otherwise you cannot be my disciple.” 

One of Jesus’ favorite sayings was “It is written.” One of our biggest problems is that we want to behave as though it had not been written. We want optional extras when there are none. We want an “it’s all good” type of freedom. We want to have our own Truth. We want negotiables when there are none. We pretend that in the controversy over same sex marriage there is no mandate. There is a mandate — it is written. Our instructions and guidelines have been written. The case of our not liking what is written does not give us license to erase it, or ignore it, or change it. It is written — a non-negotiable for believers.

Image Bearers

Jesus’ words are to be engraved into the depths of our being. They will provide us the strength to remain strong in times of moral conflict. Moral courage will come from imitating Jesus; this is our vocation. We are to be doing what Jesus did.

How striking it is that texts that were applied to Messiah are now applied to Christians. The text in Psalm 2:8-9 is repeated in Revelation 2:26-27, but this time the promises are applied to Christians. This is the most amazing proposition: that what Jesus gets, we get! That we share in his inheritance is a not-to-be-missed, enormous Promise. Jesus was inclusive before we even knew it as a word. Jesus’ plan to share with us the administration of justice is what makes our roles in God’s Kingdom so exciting.

Praying Like Jesus — The ABBA prayer

“It was a characteristic of Jesus’ approach to God in prayer that he addressed God as ‘abba’ and that the earliest Christians retained an awareness of this fact in their own use of ‘abba.’”

“Abba Father” is one of the most significant names we can use for God. The word is Aramaic and translates as “Father” or “dear Father.” It denotes a very close relationship. This relationship is unique in that, while God is the Creator of all children, all children are not children of God until they become that through faith and obedience. This relationship should heighten our sense of brotherhood with Jesus. That we, like he, can call God our Father is an amazing thing. It’s all about relationships — as God’s children we have access to His throne room.

This has been spoiled for us in a way. It was at one time said by author Jeremias that Abba meant “Daddy” as in the language of a small child. And that idea became very popular. However, Jeremias later retracted this and said that Abba isn’t “Daddy,” but instead it is the language that grown-up sons and daughters would use. Unfortunately the previous error lives on, and as is often the case we remember the erroneous version rather better than the correction. Some pastors still teach that “Abba” equates to “Daddy.”

Dunn speaks of the Abba prayer as something distinctive, a distinguishing mark of those who shared in Jesus’ inheritance. By this, we are invited to be on intimate terms with the Father.

The Creed of Jesus — The Shema

“If this creed, and this prayer, was important to God’s people in the time of the Messiah, and important to the Messiah himself, then it’s imperative that we, as the people of God, give consideration to The Shema, not just as a creed, but as a prayer.” Interestingly, by praying the Shema we can learn, we can follow, and we can obey. There is an expectation of action due to listening. Listening entails and demands action. This author points out that the pronouns for humans in the Greatest Commandment are not singular but plural, and so he renders this possibility: “YHVH is OUR God. And y’all will love YHVH y’all’s God with all y’all’s heart, and all y’all’s soul and all y’all’s strength.”

What sustained Jesus? What therefore can sustain us? It appears that as with the prophet Jeremiah, Jesus would say: “Your words are what sustain me.” Jesus put it this way: “It is written.” Again, this favorite saying of Jesus actually occurs some sixty times in Scripture!

It can be said that we “know” how Jesus would react to abortion because we “know” his heart. He has revealed his thinking in his teaching; his words reveal his heart. What he would find blasphemous we should find blasphemous. He was familiar with the words of Jeremiah who commanded the people to stop murdering the innocent.

The mark of Jesus on our lives is reflected in our living out his words. He warned us to “Beware of false prophets,” “Beware of the scribes,” “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” (which is to say hypocrisy), and “Beware of covetousness,” and many other cautions.

As N.T. Wright says, “What stops us from being genuine human beings bearing the divine image is not only sin, but the idolatry that underlies it. What is required for God’s new world and for renewed humans within it is for the power of the idols to be broken.”

One of those idols might just be being spiritually sedentary — just watching the world go by. We surely all know that sin is rebellion, but indifference — does that qualify as rebellion? But of course, because faith is a thing we do. Indifference is an attribute of non-active faith. Consider this please: Indifference, not hatred, is love’s opposite. 

We have all been told that we mustn’t hate. Which is to say we mustn’t hate anyone. Matt Walsh asserts that indifference, not hatred, is love’s opposite. He argues that whether it is a good hatred or a bad hatred depends on what it is aimed at. Of course, hatred aimed at a cancer patient is bad, but hatred aimed at the patient’s cancer is good.

“The Bible repeatedly speaks of this holy and righteous hatred, and commands us—not merely allows us, but commands us—to have this sort of hatred in our hearts.” Please see the several Scriptures that attest to this.

It is right that God’s children raise their voice in protest against immorality.

It is right that we stand in opposition to godless trends.

It is right that we join the battle to save unborn lives. (After all, you have to join the side you are on.)

Anything less than that is tantamount to surrender (!). It is capitulation to the “evil one.”

For moral courage — imitate me, says Jesus. Get rid of your fear of being different. Rejoice in it!

This is a challenging statement: “Everyone on some scale of life is compelled to be an intellectual force. They must think. They must value. They must act. Avoidance of such is the very nature of depravity and the root of society’s ills.”

It is not right that pastors should consider some moral issues off-limits, as in “This won’t preach.” How can we say we love Jesus and cower at his radical demands? Is it true, as Matt Walsh writes, that we have a Church of Cowards?

What Would Jesus Say and Do?

Not only is our vocabulary being perverted — but since words are the building blocks of thought, so too does thinking become corrupted. “Tolerance is never commanded or even mentioned in the Bible because it is a false virtue. A Christian …should tolerate the color of his neighbor’s car and the shape of his neighbor’s head. But he should hate his neighbor’s wickedness just as he should hate his own wickedness. And the more he loves God, the greater this hatred will be. If he cannot hate wickedness …then he is nowhere in the vicinity of loving God.”

Acceptance and tolerance are being treated as if they are more or less interchangeable. They are not. Our culture is now demanding acceptance and even celebration of moral choices and lifestyles that cannot be approved of by a Christian. The culture further demands that in our acceptance of sinful lifestyles, we “acquiesce or assent to those sins.”

As our world takes a dive into the unthinkable, we must prepare ourselves and our responses. We must ask ourselves what is required of us; Jesus would have agreed with Micah: walk humbly with our God and do justice. For the love of Jesus and for the love of our fellow man and most urgently, for the love of children, we must opt out when society contradicts Scripture — and consider most importantly what Jesus would say or do.

How Do We Get to Be With Jesus?

This is not a child’s question — but a most excellent question from an adult. I wish it could be one of the primary topics that we teach children because they can relate to it in a way that no amount of mythical teaching about knocking on the door of your heart could possibly compare. It is our responsibility to foster this desire and this Truth in children — to undo some of the fairytale thinking and to make this ambition real. We have a very distinct advantage in our Christology of Jesus being human and I am not sure that we use it to our full advantage. Children naturally want to be with their heroes; the idea that this is not only possible but is The Plan should be taught and reinforced at every possible opportunity. We have the decided advantage here in our teaching of a human Jesus and we need to make the most of that advantage for the sake of the children.

We are so very blessed to have the notion of being with Jesus, the best friend we could ever have, in our thinking as an attainable goal and within our grasp — so if we identify him early as our hero, our brother in the faith, the one who had our backs, the one who received the highest possible praise from the Father, the one to whom the Father gave everything — we would do well.

Sometimes we have things a bit skewed. We hear constantly the earnest and genuine plea for people to “accept Jesus.” It is probably more biblical, however, for Jesus to accept us. “But now that you know God, or rather are known by God…” And also the fact that “We love because he first loved us.” This is important because it puts the responsibility on us to follow, to obey, to be found acceptable in his sight. It is important because we are all prone to be people pleasers — another idea we need to repent of — and the more we consciously work to please both Father and Son, the better. This concept of becoming acceptable in the sight of God and His Messiah needs to be in the forefront of our thinking so that it may dislodge and outweigh the pressure to please men.

We get to be with Jesus by responding to the Truth he teaches. He wants and deserves a response, not a passive acquiescence but an active, participating hearer (which means doer) of his teaching. These attributes are the same, whether we are living at the time of Jesus’ return or whether we have died — and in that case it is resurrection which will allow us to be with Jesus.

For the love of Jesus it follows (at least it does to me) that what Jesus is against, we must be against; what Jesus hates, we must hate. To do otherwise would be to consign our brains to an off mode.

We must hate and despise falsehood as does Jesus, as does his Father. “I hate and despise falsehood.”

We must tell The Truth about the lies, lies more toxic than DDT. And again, we must broaden or correct our thinking about what unrighteousness actually means: “Loving truth means refusing to believe what is not true, and standing up for this. Believing falsehood debilitates and dilutes the energy of the spirit of the truth which is designed to animate and invigorate us. Truth is life-imparting and falsehoods undermine our very being. Falsehood is a poison to our system and not better than adding cyanide to our coffee. Believing what is untrue is to be rejected with maximum conscientious effort. The antichristian threat is that we would not love the truth but believe what is not true, and thus love unrighteousness (Paul in 2 Thess. 2: believing the truth is contrasted with ‘believing what is false, and being unrighteous.’)”

We are not free to ignore evil, cover for it, appease it, accommodate to it, compromise with it, excuse it, or be blind to it. We are saturated with approved ways to keep our noses clean, not get involved, keep our heads down, and all that nonsense. But the fact remains that God hates evil. An astonishing corollary is that, according to Scripture, it is evil to be deceived. This unpleasant fact that it is a sin to be deceived is often ignored or not even recognized. But, nevertheless, it is there. We are told that “Wicked people and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived.” How carefully we must read the Scriptures! How tenaciously we must apply these principles! How diligently we must pray for protection from the evil one! How aware we must be of the evil one’s desire to derail us!

As we are to imitate Jesus, we must note that one of his characteristics which brought him his Father’s approval and anointing is that he “loved righteousness and hated wickedness.”

The End of the Matter

And so — we fight the language perversions and we know that they are only a minuscule picture of the cultural perversions. We fight our human nature, those traits that Jesus shone a light on. We fight the societal and governmental lies that surround and envelop us.

But Jesus is bound by his own righteous character to help us. As one writer put it: he is a man for others.

The resolve that we shall have to have is exhibited by Paul when he says, “We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the Truth of the Gospel might remain with you” (Gal. 2:5).

Jesus exhibited a kind of royal law of love which we must employ — with loyalty, perseverance, and dedication. He was the second Adam, the perfect Adam who “had our backs” long before the expression was even born. 

Jesus lived the life we were created to live.

One of the most wonderful scriptures for meditation and encouragement is surely this picture of the Kingdom and beyond: “But there are also many other things that Jesus did. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). I look forward with great anticipation to finding out what all these things were. Boredom will be impossible!

May we be challenged by the honest words of Christian and humorist Erma Bombeck who says: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”

Loving Jesus and loving the Truth must be done full strength. Dilution is dangerous. Do not dilute!

“But you must continue to believe this truth and stand in it firmly.”

In response to Jesus’ love of us and our desire to be disciples, his confession of faith must be ours. May we show the love of Jesus!

And may we love his appearing (2 Tim. 4:8).

May we all develop a strong compulsion to recognize and accept our duty to bear witness to the Truth, and to stand to defend it. Integrity demands that we do so.

For the love of Jesus we:

• Love our neighbors and our friends and our enemies.
• For the love of Jesus we hold firm to and remain faithful to “the faith of Jesus.” His confession must be ours.
• For the love of Jesus we cherish and protect “the faith of Jesus.” We do not allow it to be manipulated, diluted, compromised, or explained away. There are constraints, and prohibitions. If these are not honored, we have broken faith.
• For the love of Jesus we exercise our greatest powers of discernment and continually seek wisdom.
• For the love of Jesus we imitate his courage and act boldly to speak the Truth.
• For the love of Jesus we testify to and for his cause: giving Jesus the greatest possible respect by showing that we recognize his commission (Luke 4:43) and want to be a part of it. 
• A hunger for Truth is the noblest possibly way to show our love for Jesus because it is his Father’s Truth that we are seeking.

We are invited to seek that quality of love for Jesus which really does obey.

3rd Human Jesus Conference: Anthony Buzzard

               John 1:1-14: The Classic NT Passage

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was fully expressive of God Himself. This was with God in the beginning. Everything came into existence through it, and without it nothing of what came into being existed…And the word became a human being” (John 1:1-3, 14).

The great prologue of John 1:1-14 is arguably the greatest section of holy Scripture, dedicated to the “word” (not Word with capital), meaning the reason and whole point of the Genesis creation, recalling the light and life of Genesis 1 where 10 times “God said.” The “word” is the most precious and yet also vulnerable and twistable word in Scripture, since as Jesus observed in Luke 8:12, “whenever anyone is exposed to the word [of the Kingdom, Matt. 13:19), the Devil is there ready to snatch that Kingdom word/Gospel from his/her heart, so that he/she cannot believe it and be saved.” This must be one of the greatest intelligence reports to come from the lips of Jesus. It tells us about how to be saved and how not to be saved!

These then are issues of salvation! According to Jesus it matters very much how we understand “word,” and the Devil understands that well and so works to make the “word” unintelligible. I think he has succeeded well even among unitarians. Paul made the same point when he warned that Christians must have “a love for the truth in order to be saved” (2 Thess. 2:10). This reminds us too that “salvation is given to those who obey Jesus” (Heb. 5:9), and thus not given to those who disobey Jesus – not given to those who do not have a love for truth.

That Gospel of the Kingdom word (Matt. 13:19) was finally embodied uniquely in Jesus (John 1:14), who is never in John or the epistles of John ever called “the word” (exception in Rev. 19:13). This is the central truth of Scripture.

I think that the Bible writers show us here that they deliberately reserve the word “word” for what God and Jesus say, and they avoid the confusing proposition that “Jesus is the word” or “Jesus is the Gospel.”

John is deliberately working against the appalling idea that Jesus is other than a genuine human person, i.e. “flesh.” John also wants you to know that Jesus is the first and authoritative Gospel-Message speaker. Everything depends on what Jesus says. Our culture however has been propagandized to think that what really matters is the work of Jesus, his death and resurrection, to the exclusion of the words and message of Jesus. Hence the memorable saying of Billy Graham that “Jesus came to do three days’ work — to die, be buried and rise.” Clever! But what got left out? The word and words of Jesus and Jesus’ own summary purpose statement that his own mission was expressly to “proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom” (Luke 4:43).

Some argue that “In the beginning” in John 1:1 means the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. But as the Pulpit Commentary notes, “From early times expositors have perceived…here a comparison with the ‘in the beginning’ of the first verse of the book of Genesis. This can hardly be doubted…The Socinian view that it referred to ‘the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel’ [is] not now seriously maintained.”[1]

So also a former schoolmate of mine, Don Cupitt, later a professor of theology at Cambridge: “John’s words ought to be translated, ‘the Word was with God the Father, and the Word was the Father’s own Word,’ to stress that the Word is not an independent divine being, but is the only God’s own self-expression.’” This preserves monotheism.

In John 1:1 “the word” cannot be a person. The preposition pros in the “word was with God” is used when a thing, not a person, is with a person. Thus the word cannot be a person, but rather the word or Gospel Message. When John means a thing with a person he uses pros, as in John 1:1.

Note too, the neuter “light” of John verse 5 becomes the masculine person, Jesus in verse 10. That is, the “it” of the light becomes the “him” of the Messiah who as the prologue develops, appears as the uniquely begotten Son, there being almost certainly a reference to his virginal begetting in John 1:13 (reading “he who was begotten by God”).

Then in John 1:14 “the word became flesh” describes the same transition and transformation as the “water became wine,” and “stones become bread.” The word “became” here marks, of course, a vivid superseding of water by wine. Thus also the word becoming flesh means that the word changed from one thing or form to another. It is logically impossible for the “word” of John 1:1 to be Jesus!

Such a reading would empty the word “became” of all meaning. The point can be made like this. When egeneto = “became” is found with a complement, in the form A became B, then B cannot equal or be the same as A. Thus Jesus is a human being who perfectly speaks the word or message of God his Father. The “word” of John 1:1 has assumed an exciting brand new definition (v. 14), a human person, Jesus. God now speaks uniquely, as Jesus keeps saying.

The meaning of “became flesh” is agreed by all the standard lexicons. The word became flesh (o logos sarx egeneto). “Of persons and things, which change their nature, to indicate their entering a new condition: become something” (Bauer’s Lexicon). As also in: “I became a minister.” “It became a large tree.” “He did not exalt himself to be made high priest.” “Water became wine.” Lot’s wife “became a pillar of salt.” The “staff became a snake.” Daniel Wallace: “as in sarx egeneto [became flesh], sarx [flesh] expresses the state into which the divine word entered by a definite act.”

Compare, by contrast, “the word was God” (John 1:1: een, verb ‘to be,’ not ‘become’). There is no change or becoming in verse 1! “Was” in verse 1 is not the same as “became” in verse 14. “Observe the contrast between the egeneto (became) of John the Baptist’s appearance [v. 6] and the een (was) of the logos, between the man John, sent from God, and the ‘word became flesh.’”[2]

As Goppelt says so well, Jesus is what the word became, not one-to-one equal to the word: “The logos of the prologue became Jesus. Jesus was the logos become flesh, not the logos as such.”

“Became” in verse 14 marks the transition. Note how obviously Jewish all this is:

 “One of the most interesting correspondences in the Qumran literature is in fact with John 1:3: ‘By his knowledge everything has been brought into being. And everything that is, he established by his purpose; and apart from him nothing is done’ 1QS 11:11). The equation Knowledge = Wisdom = Logos would not be hard to make.”[3]

Compare this with Genesis:

“‘And God said’ at the beginning of each work of creation including the two providential words of verses 28, 29 — ten times in all (hence the later Jewish dictum: ‘by ten sayings the world was created,’ Aboth 5:1)…In the fact that God creates by a word, there are several important truths implicit. It is an indication not only of the ease with which He accomplished His work, and of His omnipotence and also of the fact that He works consciously and deliberately. Things do not emanate from Him unconsciously, nor are they produced by a mere act of thought…but by an act of will of which the concrete word is the outward expression. Each stage in His creative work is the realization of a deliberately formed purpose, the word being the mediating principle of creation, the means or agency through which His will takes effect. Cp. Ps. 33:6, 9, also 107:20, 147:15, 18 in which passages the word is regarded as a messenger between God and His creatures.”[4]

All this information is meant to help us avoid the very false capital “W” in John 1:1 in almost all translations, which: 1) destroyed both monotheism and 2) the human Jesus (which is antichrist, 1 John 4:2, 2 John 7-9). “That Jesus has come in the flesh separates belief from unbelief.”[5]

So the docetists (docetism is belief that Jesus only appeared to be a man, but really was not) ended up twisting John, who was deliberately wanting to be anti-docetic!

Today we still have to oppose the false notion that “the word” was a person, before it finally became a person in the summary verse 14. We see then that 1 John (the Epistle) is John’s own effort (with its 7 times, including 2:24, repeated “that which,” not “he who”) to frustrate and correct the error being created out of his Gospel! Of all errors, the greatest error!

Any Jew would hear wisdom = word. Jesus is the incarnation (not “Incarnation,” capital “I”) of wisdom and word. He is fully human, and to say otherwise, i.e. that he preexists, makes him not human! “Preexistence” creates apostasy and polytheism! Kegan Chandler (The God of Jesus in Light of Christian Dogma) wrote a whole chapter on “another Jesus,” the Jesus who cannot be really human because he begins as non-human.

On a related subject, I note that we do not pay enough attention to the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. These surely tell us that Jesus was human! The only Jesus there is! God can obviously not have a genealogy!

The celebrated work by Lord Hervey on the Genealogies of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (free online) shows that the royal line from Solomon came to a screeching and tragic end when Jehoiachin was cursed and not permitted to have sons as royalty fit to sit on the throne of David (the ultimate privilege and honor). So what has to happen? They brought in a legal successor to Jehoiachin as in Matthew 1:12. His name was Salathiel and he was descended from another son of David, i.e. Nathan. This ensured that Jesus was the true Messiah who, to qualify, must be a descendant of David, and could not be via the Solomon’s line cursed in Jehoiachin (Jer. 22).

You see how important the genealogies are! They prove the human Jesus, just as we prove it also by his “begetting” (coming into existence: Matt. 1:20, Luke 1:35). Salathiel replaces the cursed line in Jehoiachin. This guarantees continuity for the royal line from David to Jesus! There are not two Salathiels, but just one who appears in the Matthew and Luke genealogies to repair the damage done by the failed and cursed Jehoiachin (Jer. 22). These are not small issues, which this conference is tackling. We need to make sure we have taken the information in and are ready to pass it on to others, which is what the Great Commission demands.

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[1] “The Gospel of John,” Pulpit Commentary, 1950, p. 4-5.

[2] Ibid., p. 11.

[3] J.A.T. Robinson, Twelve More New Testament Studies, p. 75

[4] Driver, Commentary on Genesis

[5] New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 1, p. 678