Duty

tomjmacdonald's avatarThoughts of a Young Believer

So today I read in Matthew 6:19-20:

‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.’

Now this sounds great to me, and I can see that Jesus is saying that we should have an eternal outlook on life. To realise that anything we gain on earth will all rust and decay, because they are temporary and we cannot take them with us to heaven.

However, I got a bit concerned recently when I hear people discussing the good things they had done, saying that they were ‘storing up treasures in heaven’. It seems to me that if we are following God’s word and following his commandments in order to get more treasures in heaven…

View original post 323 more words

ABBA (FATHER): Not ‘Daddy’

the-prodigal-son[Not by Michael Snow; this is a link for an article by Glenn T. Stanton]

From the Gospel Coalition

FactChecker: Does ‘Abba’ Mean ‘Daddy’?

In the Aramaic language of the time of Jesus, there was absolutely no other word [than Abba] available if Jesus wished to speak of or address God as father. … it [Abba] is… the only possible form!

See full article

Be sure to read the “Comments” there for a clearer understanding.

As the only term available, the key emphasis, a la NIDNTT, is that ‘abba was “the familiar word used in everyday family life.”

Christ’s Coming: 1 Thessalonians vs. ‘Left Behind’

2ndcoming-01

First Thessalonians 4: The Coming of the Lord

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming* of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words. (English Standard Version)

Thessalonians is one of the earliest books of the New Testament. (Some think the earliest. F.F. Bruce suggested the possibility that Galatians preceded it. But overall, James was probably the first.) Understandably, these new Christians in this new church had questions and misunderstandings that needed answers.

KEY Context: As v. 15  shows, (with reference to those who are still alive) this section answers questions about “the coming* of the Lord,”  parousia* in Greek. I.e. the Second Advent–SEE Footnote. It begins in v. 13, the key verse of the context,  with Paul addressing their concern about fellow Christians who have already died. Were these who had died now at some disadvantage? What hope did those who still live have for them when Christ returns?

Verse 14 points to Jesus’ death and resurrection, the central theme of Christian hope concerning those who have died.

See 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul addresses the question of the resurrection. Christ’s resurrection was the first fruits, and the resurrection of Christians is the final harvest, v.23 “at His coming (parousia)” when “we shall all be changed—in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (verse 52).

[Hard to believe but ‘Left Behinders’  just cannot read or say “...LAST trumpet” No ears to hear; no eyes to see.]

Verse 15 gives the key point of this passage (addressing the concerns of the Thessalonians) that, when Christ returns,  the living Christians have no advantage over those who have died.

Verse 16 describes, in familiar terms (for us who have the NT), Christ’s return (parousia). This is no secret event.

This Coming is described in the same terms as other passages about the Lord’s coming:

“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God….in the clouds…”

Acts 1 “…a cloud took him out of their sight….’This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.'”

Dan 7  “…with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man”

Rev 1 “…Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him…”

Mark 13 “…then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven…”

1 Corinthians 15 “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. “

Verse 17 pictures the “we” who are still alive as following those who have died “to meet the Lord in the air…”

To meet [apantasin] the Lord… “When a dignitary paid an official visit (parousia) to a city in Hellenistic times, the action of the leading citizens in going out to meet him and escort him back on the final stage of his journey [to that city] was called the apantesis” (F.F. Bruce,I &2 Thessalonians, WBC).  R.C. Sproul vivdly describes this historical usage by Paul–starting at 10:20 mark, here. 

See N.T. Wright speak of this, here.

Verse 18  (This is no Gnostic revelation of some new doctrine of a secret ‘rapture’.) The whole point of this passage is to encourage each other in the hope given to us regarding death through Christ’s death and resurrection.

second-coming-icon-detail01sm

*Parousia. In the NT, parousia, with reference to Christ, refers exclusively to Christ’s Second Advent, his Second Coming, “…the coming of Christ at the end-time for the general resurrection, last judgment and the creation of the new heaven and earth.”--The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, s.v. “present” (II:899ff).

See two other posts: 1) NT Prof. Ben Witherington on origins of ‘rapture theory’ and 2) on the text of Mat. 24, “…taken and the other left”–the opposite of ‘rapture’ teaching. Here –-Amen. I Want to be Left Behind. 

And here is a third faithful witness to true Bible teaching,  this warning Corrie Ten Boom(link) gave against false teaching:  “There are some among us teaching there will be no tribulation, that the Christians will be able to escape all this. These are the false teachers that Jesus was warning us to expect in the latter days.” 

On 2 Thess. See https://textsincontext.wordpress.com/2023/01/20/the-protestants-purgatory/

Here is the new Prequel to these articles. Be sure to read it.

https://textsincontext.wordpress.com/2023/03/15/on-i-thessalonians-not-leaving-context-behind/

[CORRIE TEN BOOM Letter, Link: Warning of ‘Rapture’ Teaching]

N. T. Wright: “Rapture is an American Obsession.” It is not found in the New Testament

The Saving Dawn of Christ’s Crucifixion

Today, 5 May, is Pascha (Easter) in the East. Blessing upon all who celebrate our Risen Lord, Christ Jesus.

T Bobosh's avatarFraternized

TODAY CHRIST’S HOLY PASSION DAWNS UPON THE WORLD AS A SAVING LIGHT, FOR HE COMES OF HIS GOODNESS TO SUFFER:
HE WHO HOLDS ALL THINGS IN HIS HAND
CONSENTS TO BE HUNG UPON THE WOOD
IN ORDER TO SAVE MANKIND.

(Holy Monday Bridegroom Matins Hymn)

View original post

Yeshua Ha’Mashiach: Crucified

crucifixion

Isaiah 52:13ff

“Behold, my servant [Targ. adds “the Messiah”] will accomplish his purpose;

he will be high and lifted up, and very exalted.

Just as many were appalled over you–

his appearance was a disfigurement from the human

and his form from that of humanity–

so he will startle many nations…

He was despised, a rejection of people,

a man of pain, one who knows sickness

and like a hiding of face from him,

he was despised, and we did not pay attention to him.

But surely it was our sickness he carried,

our pains he bore.

But we considered him stricken,

smitten of God and afflicted.

But he was pierced through for our rebellion,

crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment for our peace was on him,

and his welts made healing  for us

All of us, like sheep we go astray,

each one to his own way we have turned;

but the Lord has caused to fall on him

the inquity of us all.

 From NICOT, Isaiah, by Prof. John Oswalt, Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary.

“High and lifted up are used in combination four times in this book (and no where else in the OT). In the other three places (66:1; 33:10; 57:15) they describe God….The same point may be made concerning exalted….only God can be lifted up. Is it here than being said that the nation of Israel [the explanation of some for ‘servant’] will be exalted to the place of God? Is it a prophet of Israel? In each case the answer must be no.  This is the Messiah or no one.”

53:7 …Like a sheep…

“the only extended metaphor in this poem involves sheep, the primary animals of sacrifice.”

“the Servant will be exalted to highest heaven…because it was all in order to carry the sin of the world away to permit God’s children to come home to him….redemption.”

“The text must still be read through the eyes of faith, but with that faith the mystery is no longer about how it is possible for sinful humans to have a healthy and whole relationship with God.  The only mystery is how God could love us like that.”

Xcross

 

 

Other Pascha/Easter posts Here

Holy Week–Hosanna!

Michael Snow's avatarTextsInContext

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.
–Zechariah 9

Jerusalem and The Passover Feast

The ISBE sets the scene:

Pilgrimage was made annually to Jerusalem for the Passover sacrifice…
Passover in NT temple days was a spectacle of excitement and devotion. Pilgrims near and far ascended to the holy city…
Days before Passover began, Jerusalem was a hubbub…Many pilgrims…arrived early to sell or barter their wares…

And numbers? Josephus’ assessment of 3 million Jews (including the city residents) is considered an “extreme exaggeration” or symbolic. But the throngs of pilgrims would have swelled to well over one hundred thousand.

Jesus and the Crowds

John tells us that “six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was…” (John…

View original post 468 more words

Reblog (Not by me)

[Reblog, Article is Not by Michael Snow]

For further reading on this topic, see Chapter One of

Exegetical Fallacies by D.A. Carson

nmcdonal's avatarScribblepreach

This week has been a fascinating walk through the world of “Word-Studies”. My guess is, you’ve encountered some sort of word story in the last couple of months: a Bible study, a sermon, a commentary, a quip about agape love or a defense of a biblical viewpoint you’re not sure of. But sometimes it’s hard to wade through the muck and know when you’re being short changed. How can a lay person (or pastor) know whether a word study is legitimate? Here are some bad ways to do a word study, courtesy of Dr. Jennings of Gordon Conwell and Dr. Grant Osborne of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School:

1. The Root Word Fallacy. You’ve heard this: “The word ekklesia is a Greek word for the church that literally means, “called out ones””. Technically, this isn’t true. While combining the two root words (“called out from”) does indeed create something like…

View original post 835 more words

Peter Cockrell's avatarAlready Not Yet

PACKER

J.I. Packer:

Most people in churches nowadays have never read through the Bible even once; the older Christian habit of reading it from start to finish as a devotional discipline has virtually vanished. So in describing the Bible we start from scratch, assuming no prior knowledge.

The Bible consists of 66 separate pieces of writing, composed over something like a millennium and a half. The last 27 of them were written in a single generation: they comprise four narratives about Jesus called Gospels, an account of Christianity’s earliest days called the Acts of the Apostles, 21 pastoral letters from teachers with authority, and a final admonition to churches from the Lord Jesus himself, given partly by dictation and partly by vision. All these books speak of human life being supernaturally renovated through, in, with, under, from and for the once crucified, now glorified Son of God, who fills each writer’s…

View original post 341 more words

I John: “God Is Love” vis-a-vis Heresy

God-is-Love

“God is love”—A most familiar phrase in

1 John 4

Leon Morris, the noted New Testament scholar, asks, “How do we harmonize the assurance that ‘God is love’ with the assertion that ‘our God is a consuming fire’? Most of us never think about such problems, and in the end our idea of love is indistinguishable from that of the world around us.”1   (Testaments of Love, emphasis added)

As we have noted in the two previous posts, in First John [as in all Scripture], context is an essential key to right understanding.

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God thus loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

First, we see in verse 8 that “God is love” is not only an incomplete verse, but an incomplete sentence, and an incomplete phrase (“because” is omitted).

And in verse 16, “God is love” is part of a compound sentence (the “and” [link] is omitted).

First John presents a few key tests so that those to whom he is writing can be assured that theirs is the true faith in contrast to those who broke fellowship with them and claimed a new knowledge and spiritual superiority.

In the first post, we noted the test of affirming the Incarnation, which was denied by those with their new knowledge.  That is also affirmed here in verse 9, which parallels John 3:16—“For God thus loved the world…he sent his only begotten Son…”   And now, the test of obedience to Jesus’ command to them to “love one another” receives strong attention.  If we do not love our fellow Christians, we do not know God who first loved us.

John drives this point home, using “love” over 40 times in this little letter.  John’s first  use of “love” [But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him….(2:5)] gives us the test of obedience: keeping God’s word, keeping his commandments.  In his commentary, F. F. Bruce writes, “Love and obedience are inextricably interwoven because all the commandments of God are summed up in the law of love.”

[And where there is disobedience, love requires discipline.]

It is the same test and warning which Jesus gives to us in John chapter fourteen.

In our day, many false teachers use “God is love” as a mantra to encourage disobedience to God’s word, to his commands.  For decades “love” has been used to promote abortion and acceptance of unbiblical divorces and marriages in churches.  And, today, the branches from this seed include whole denominations that embrace and promote sodomy.

Unless those who still believe God’s word become salt and light in our day, there is no hope that God, the consuming fire, will lift his judgment on our dying culture.  We must reclaim the basics from the world’s distortions which we, many times, have blindly accepted.  We must go back to the Word.

“For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?”—1Peter 4:17

***

Will we have the courage to draw a line, and to do it publicly, between those who take a full view of Scripture and those who have been infiltrated theologically and culturally? If we do not have the courage, we will cut the ground out from under the feet of our children, and we will destroy any hope of being the redeeming salt and light of our dying culture.

–Francis A. Schaeffer

The Great Evangelical Disaster

***

Read “…an excellent piece…one that many Christians need to hear”–R.C. Sproul

Love, Prayer, and Forgiveness: When Basics Become Heresies, 140 pp.

For Nook or PC

For Kindle

Three dollars for either.

Book Page w/Reviews

I John 2: Teachers versus False Teaching

Ichthys

But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him. (2:27, NKJV)

This verse, taken out of context, has been foolishly used by some Christians to reject the need for teachers in the Church and even to promote false teaching. But as Ephesians 4 tells us, Christ “gave some to be…teachers, for the equipping of the saints…”

Continuing from the last post [Who are “They”?], we now have the primary context in mind, along with some sense of the spirit of those times. The immediate context of this verse (2:27) begins at verse 18:  “…many anti-Christs have come…” Among them are  “they” who “went out from us” (v. 19).

In contrast to these apostates (with their ‘new’ knowledge), “you have an anointing from the Holy One and you know all things” (v. 20).

In the Gospel of John (16:13), Jesus told his disciples that when “the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth…”

In this epistle, John reminds his hearers that they already “know the truth” (2:21), and that they are to allow that truth to remain in them which they “have heard from the beginning” (v. 24; cf. 1:1,2). [That teaching of the Apostles.]

Verse 26 tells us “these things I have written concerning those who try to deceive you”  [with new ‘knowledge’], which brings us, now, to this post’s opening verse about needing no one to teach them (v. 27).

In contrast to these false teachers who present new teaching/knowledge which puts forth a lie about Christ, John’s fellow Christians “know” what “is true” from the “beginning.” They have “no need” for these new teachers.

In his Explanatory Notes, Wesley makes the vital point: “Ye need not that any should teach you, save as that anointing teacheth you – Which is always the same, always consistent with itself. But this does not exclude our need of being taught by them who partake of the same anointing.” [underline, mine]

And Calvin says, point blank: “Absurdly, then, do fanatical men lay hold on this passage, in order to exclude from the Church the use of the outward ministry.” [of teaching]

john-apostle

Here is the whole passage that was broken down in context, above.– 1 John 2 18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. 20 But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. 22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. 24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life. 26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. 27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

Details