Land and Bible

Outline notes for One God Report Podcast #18 To hear the full podcast click here . In the previous podcast, Rivers and I reviewed reasons for understanding the first phrase of John’s Gospel “In the beginning” as a reference to the new beginning that God is bringing about through Jesus the Messiah. 1. In this podcast we consider how to best understand what or who John meant in by the word “word” in the phrase: “In the beginning was the W/word ”. The Greek word for “word” is logos . We will often refer to the word, “word” using this Greek term, logos . 2. As with the phrase “in the beginning” the meaning of logos, “word” in John’s prologue is best understood and defined first and foremost by other uses of the same word in John’s Gospel. We shouldn’t ignore or dismiss how the author himself uses logos and go looking for its meaning in other extra-biblical literature.   Logos and in its various forms occur nearly 40 times in the Gospel of John, and in the vast majority of occu...

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...

The Gospel of John and the New Creation: Jesus is the Beginning of God’s New Creation   To hear the podcast of this text, click here . “What about John 1:1?” Ever since I came to understand from the Bible that God (Yehovah, YHVH) is one, and that Jesus is God’s human Messiah (Christ) whom God raised from the dead, people say to me: “What about John 1:1?”. For my friends who believe in the “deity of Christ”, John 1:1 is biblical evidence that Jesus is God. I think they are missing a main point of what John 1:1 and the entire Gospel of John are declaring. That main point is that through the life and ministry of the human person Jesus the Messiah, God is beginning His promised New Creation. Jesus is the Beginning of God’s New Creation. As the words and deeds of Jesus recorded by John are evidence, the ultimate evidence that Jesus is the beginning of God’s New Creation is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (John 20). As John records in another place, Jesus is “the...

People have said that I’m part of a cult. They mean it, of course, in a derogatory sense. These same people that derogatorily accuse me of being part of a cult believe that God is somehow a combination of three persons in one essence. They also believe that one of those persons of the three-person god also has a human essence (or nature). So, this belief system that accuses me of being part of a cult has for their god three persons in one essence, but one person in two essences.   Three persons in one essence, but one person in two essences. But I’m the one, supposedly, who is part of a cult with a strange belief system. And they don’t notice that in their definition of who God is, they have eliminated the possibility that Jesus the Messiah (Christ) is a real human person. Otherwise their description of their god would be three persons with two essences (a divine essence and a human essence). Wait, check that. Their description of their god should be four ...

A review of The Restitution: Biblical Proof that Jesus is NOT God  by Kermit Zarley * _ _ _ _ _ Anyone who thinks that the Bible claims that God is a Trinity, or that the Bible claims that Jesus Christ is God, should read this book. The Restitution: Biblical Proof that Jesus is NOT God  is a comprehensive study of biblical Christology. What does the Bible say about who Christ (Messiah) is? For some 1700 years Christian churches have answered that question by saying that Jesus is God, or a God-Man. Former Trinitarian Zarley challenges that answer. He maintains that the biblical view is not “God is Christ”, but “God in Christ”. That is, the One God of the Bible, Yahweh, worked in and through His human Messiah, Jesus, to reveal Himself to mankind (John 1:18, Heb. 1:1), and to reconcile the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19). In the first part of the book Zarley reviews the historical development of deity-of-Christ and Trinitarian theology. The standard church narrative ru...