Land and Bible

Notes for One God Report Podcast #17.   Exegesis of John 1, part 1 “In the beginning was…” Bill Schlegel with Rivers O Feden To hear the podcast click here .  As we begin an exegesis of the Prologue to the Gospel of John (John 1:1-18), in this podcast we give more evidence (see this previous podcast ) for why the Prologue should be understood as an introduction to the ministry of Jesus the Messiah, and not as a direct reference to the Genesis creation. The topics discussed in the podcast include, but are not limited to the following: 1.        The phrase “In the beginning” and the word “word” of John 1:1 are best interpreted by comparing them first and foremost with other uses in the Gospel of John, in other Johannine literature, and then in other New and Old Testament literature. "In the beginning" occurs other times in the New Testament, and over 30 times in the Old Testament, none of which refer to the Genesis creation. When this comparis...

Dear friend who believes in the “Deity of Christ”, I was once like you. I took it on authority, and thought that the Bible presented Jesus as a God-man. I knew Jesus was a human, but I thought there were a handful of biblical verses that also showed that Jesus is God, a Second Person of a Godhead that took on flesh. I now see that those handful of verses that I thought showed the deity of Jesus, don’t. To interpret those handful of Scriptures as evidence that Jesus is God does injustice to the Scriptures, and brings only confusion and contradiction. There are better ways to understand those handful of Scriptures. Over the last year a number of biblical texts have been presented to me to show that Jesus is God, and that God is a Trinity. I have translated some of those biblical texts, starting with a few texts from the Book of Genesis, in the way that my Trinitarian (or Deity of Christ) friends are reading them. In later articles I plan to post translations from other ...