A new start for the New Testament?

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Permalink Reply by Frank on May 1, 2012 at 3:57pm

Amen.

Yes, God has not changed!

I remember once hearing it explained that it was God the Father in the Old Testament, and the God the Son in the New Testament. One being harsh and punitive, the other soft a cuddly! Yuk.

Interestingly, the Hebrew scriptures are full of evidence of visitations of God on earth. God/Christ walked and talked on earth with Adam, Abraham, Joshua and perhaps many others. 

Micheal Ellis Childress said:

It is nice to see that ther are some that see the Kingdom message in the Spiritual light and understand that God has not changed the way He operates just the means through which He does.  In case that does not make sense, He has always wanted a relationship with us that leads us to being in the Law and not a following of the Law to get to a relationship.

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Permalink Reply by Frank on May 2, 2012 at 3:54am

Yes, God has always wanted a relationship with us, and that relationship has always been a family one. If we Christians are sons of Abraham, as Paul says to the gentile Galatians, and we are born again from above by the Spirit of God, then it follows that Abraham and all the OT saints were also born again. Yet, none of them had heard of the death of Jesus, nor confessed the sinner's prayer! (Oh dear here comes heresy.)

Can a man be born again without confessing the sinners prayer, or believing that Jesus died for him? Apparently it was so with all the OT saints.

When Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, it obviously had to be a possibility, yet the crucifixion was three years away, and not one of the disciples believed that Jesus would have to die. The minute Jesus mentioned such an idea, they all denied it!

Despite being righteous men, all the disciples refused the death and resurrection of Jesus until after the event. Not one of them would have prayed the sinner's prayer!

What about Cornelius? Here we have a devout man, a Roman centurian, who always sought after God and feared Him. A man who received angelic visitations and directions. When God gave Peter the visions, He rebuked Peter for calling someone unclean that God had cleansed.

Peter's opening statement Acts10v34 is, "of a truth, I see that God is no respecter of persons." Sadly the church is very much a false respecter of persons, setting false hoops to jump through before we will allow anyone to enter eternal life.

While Peter was telling his story to this bunch of gentiles, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. This was not the Gentiles being born again, so don't lets make that mistake. This was about the releasing of the Power of the Holy Spirit much to Peter's shock. (Peter was obviously a racist!)

So when was Cornelius or any of his friends born again? We have no answer to that except that it was a long time before Peter arrived. It was clearly a long time prior to comprehending anything of the crucifixion!

The fact is that a true understanding of the cross can only happen after the new birth. Yes, we may lead someone to Christ via the sinner's prayer based on Romans10, but any intelligent reading of those verses will see that all of Romans is addressed to the Roman saints, and not to unbelievers! For the church to redirect Romans10.v9 and 10 to unbelievers as a form of entry gate to eternal life is totally misleading, and doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Just some heretical thoughts!

Micheal Ellis Childress said:

It is nice to see that ther are some that see the Kingdom message in the Spiritual light and understand that God has not changed the way He operates just the means through which He does.  In case that does not make sense, He has always wanted a relationship with us that leads us to being in the Law and not a following of the Law to get to a relationship.

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Permalink Reply by Marc M on May 7, 2012 at 10:07pm

Interesting discussion to me, at least insofar as I have been reading one of my favorite authors of late, Jacques Ellul; specifically The Meaning of the City. Ellul was in the Reformed Church in France, having died in 1994 after having written as profoundly and profusely as any prophet could on the nature of life as it is in the here and now.

Anyhow, through his theological perspective, he could quite easily interchange the words Israel and Church, such as (I'm making this up because I don't have his book in front of me right now): "When the Church was wandering through the wilderness for 40 years..." My point is that it sounds like you are discussing some of the basic conceptual framework inherent in classical Covenantal Theology. It's been quite a while since I've had any specific learning of this major school of thinking, so please, anyone, help me out here! If I am right in this observation I am then curious to ask you, Frank, whether you are aware of this? (Asked without even a whiff of concern about heresy! Ellul himself was Universalist, which I don't believe I could embrace, but boy! did he have insights worthy of considering by any of the brethren who long to go "further up and further in."

OK, so anyone out there interested in Ellul's work, if you read The Meaning of the City, you need to tackle The Technological Society. They were meant to be read together. It doesn't matter which order you take them in.

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Permalink Reply by Frank on May 8, 2012 at 2:42am

Thanks Marc for your input.

I have never heard of Ellul, nor do I have any real understanding of what Covenantal Theology teaches. This doesn't mean I am not aware of the covenants of the bible, I am just not a theology scholar.

Nevertheless, I am taught of the Lord!

I have been accused of being a "Universalist" whatever that is, but just to repeat what I have already said in this conversation, that the salvation of anyone is dependent on the death of Jesus and His blood poured out for us.

I suspect that many today would also have accused Peter of being a Universalist. Peter initially refused God when he was told to eat of the various animals in his vision of Acts10. The interesting statement from God here is, "do not call anything unclean that God has cleansed". This clearly referred to the Gentiles of Cornelius's household, prior to them ever receiving knowledge of Peter's gospel. ie. they were already clean, or born again, before the entry of Peter to the house.

Peter sums it up in Acts10v34. "I now realise that God does not show favouritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him, and do what is right....."

Cornelius was already a devout and God fearing man who always sought after God, Peter just filled in the gaps. Just like Abraham, it could be said that "Cornelius believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness". That is sufficient!

Regarding Jacques Ellul's interchange of the word "Church" and "Israel", are you aware that the Greek word for Church, "Ekklesia" did not originate in the New Testament? The translation of the OT that Jesus and the apostles constantly quoted from, the Greek Septuagint, always used "Ekklesia" when speaking of the assembly of the Israelites before God. Therefore when Jesus, Peter or any other apostle used the word "Ekklesia", the initial understanding would most certainly be that it was referring to the Israelites. Only later did they realise that it included the Gentile believers.  

The often taught ideology, that the church was birthed at Pentecost is pure drivel, such a notion is a disgrace, (literally) as it divides the whole body.

I may sound to some like a Universalist, but I guess it depends on what the title means. I, like Cornelius, was born again decades before I ever heard the message of the cross. The same is true for my wife. As children, both of us had experiences of God intervening in our lives with heavenly revelations. Despite their manifest accuracy, those revelations did not include the cross, nevertheless we both personally knew God!

Marc M said:

Interesting discussion to me, at least insofar as I have been reading one of my favorite authors of late, Jacques Ellul; specifically The Meaning of the City. Ellul was in the Reformed Church in France, having died in 1994 after having written as profoundly and profusely as any prophet could on the nature of life as it is in the here and now.

Anyhow, through his theological perspective, he could quite easily interchange the words Israel and Church, such as (I'm making this up because I don't have his book in front of me right now): "When the Church was wandering through the wilderness for 40 years..." My point is that it sounds like you are discussing some of the basic conceptual framework inherent in classical Covenantal Theology. It's been quite a while since I've had any specific learning of this major school of thinking, so please, anyone, help me out here! If I am right in this observation I am then curious to ask you, Frank, whether you are aware of this? (Asked without even a whiff of concern about heresy! Ellul himself was Universalist, which I don't believe I could embrace, but boy! did he have insights worthy of considering by any of the brethren who long to go "further up and further in."

OK, so anyone out there interested in Ellul's work, if you read The Meaning of the City, you need to tackle The Technological Society. They were meant to be read together. It doesn't matter which order you take them in.

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Permalink Reply by John Brown on May 13, 2012 at 10:31am

Interesting discussion. Excuse me if I post more of a dissertation than a simple response. I'm a Christian thinker, researcher and writer. I challenge status quo.

I find it interesting how we, as modern westerners, products of a Greek & Roman culture, read an ancient semitic middle eastern documents as though it were written with our modern western mind set. Westerners want everything compartmentalized, defined, and minutely examined to produce a system of things. Having done that we assign titles and names to things to fit into our compartments and systems. The ancient semitics did no such thing. They spoke in word pictures, using a plethora of comparative figures of speech which westerners have often taken as pragmatic titles, ignoring the comparative figures.

This has happened in assigning the Body of Christ the title "The Bride" while the 'proof texts' are comparative figures to marriage, not pragmatic statements assigning a title. Interestingly, God calls himself Israel's Husband (Jeremiah 31:32). It's a figure of speech, both in the Old Testament and in the New. Following that statement by Jeremiah, is the prophecy about putting God's law within the hearts of Israel, which is the New Covenant. That is the nature of the New Covenant, never mind modern descriptions of it by denominational sectarian movements. It's the difference of God's righteousness being perceived from without versus from within.

As of Pentecost, this prophecy became a reality. The pouring out of holy spirit upon mankind, wrote the Law of God's righteousness within the hearts of men/women who accept His son as Savior. This permitted the joining of the all the nations (non Hebrews) together with Israel as God's people without the necessity of the nations practicing Judaism as had been the case up until then. (although it was a decade or so later until this reality was realized by the apostles)

So when did the New Covenant (New Testament) start? It started on the day of Pentecost but that is not a divisive thing but a unifying thing, an improvement in how men can relate to their Creator. Instead of priests, ritual and ceremony mediating sin, symbolic of the coming Redeemer, Jesus Christ was that Redeemer and mediated sin once and for all. Now men can approach their Creator without a human mediator or ritual of any kind. That does not in anyway mean division or annulment between the previous worshipers of the Creator under the Old Covenant and the New. It just means that the spiritual improvement Israel hoped for and Jeremiah prophesied, became a reality.

The whole thing is easiest to understand if one grasps the ancient middle eastern concept of Agency, where one represents another, like Aaron represented Moses. The atoning work of Jesus Christ was with a view to improving the manner and scope of humans relating to their Creator and representing Him in this life. Please realize that the future kingdom of God, when Jesus assumes his place on the throne in the Promised Land, will be populated by God's people from all times. There is even a word picture in John's Revelation to make this clear. Israel was God's first love but not His only love.

Then there is another typical misconception by modern western believers to think in ecclesiastical and theological terms when common street language was actually used to convey truth. This misconception is a hold over from previous centuries when theologians thought that there was holy spirit only definitions for the apostle's vocabulary. They even thought Koine Greek didn't exist outside of the New Testament! Now we know better but too often Bible expositors and especially the pew sitters are not up to speed due to tradition. This can most easily be seen in the ecclesiastical assignment of "Ekklesia", as meaning Israel or the modern church. It is neither. It is a generic word meaning an assembly of persons with a common bond. It originates in Athens meaning adults who were qualified to vote to retain or fire city magistrates. In Matt. 18 the word refers to the village elders or village adults. In Acts 19 it is used to describe a silver smith protest mob. These uses are most inconsistent when one thinks in ecclesiastical terms but perfectly normal when one abandons theological discussions and embraces the apostles as users of the common street language to speak to the people. The word has been found in non-biblical documents of the period used in its generic sense and defined by context.

Finally, if you want to understand Hebrew Agency in scripture, follow this link Divine Agents: Speaking and Acting in God’s Stead. You can also look up this book for more on the symmetry of the Old Testament with the New. They Never Told Me This in Church! Instead of a great divide between covenants, there is great symmetry between the Hebrew prophets, Jesus and his apostles. Where westerners see division, the original apostles saw unity but improvement upon the faith in the One God. It is only later gentile theologians (catholic priests and bishops or the 3rd and 4th centuries) who complicated things by applying philosophical methods to develop a gentile system of theology, foreign to the simplicity of the Hebrew Jesus and his apostles.The later gentile theological speculations and complexity still complicates things for believers even today and leads to arguments over minutia, while ignoring the broad stroke contexts, namely Hebrew thought patterns expressed in a Western language. Without respect to the cultural contexts of scripture, it is impossible to truly appreciate the original message of those semitic speakers.

Most speculation and confusion can be resolved by applying normal literary reading principles to scripture and realizing we're reading an ancient semitic document, written with an ancient Hebrew mindset. Doing so eliminates reading out of context, proof texting and applying suppositions based on our preconceptions of our modern western pragmatic interpretation overlaid upon literature never intended to be treated in such a way.

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Permalink Reply by Frank on July 15, 2012 at 2:48pm

Hi John,

You rightly said you posted a dissertation. It sort of hijacked the post and seems to have stopped all further discussion. If you put cart loads of points in one enormous comment, it just overwhelms everything anyone else thinks. I have started to reply several times in the two months since you commented, and then gave up because it was too big a task to respond.

Maybe you should do your dissertation as a fresh post and see what response it brings.

You say you like to challenge the status quo, well that is very the reason I posted this discussion.

I will respond to just one of your points.

You said the New Covenant started at Pentecost, a view that is in itself a common status quo argument. In my view, expressed in the original post, the New Covenant started when Jesus said it started, with the shedding of his blood.

Pentecost was about the New Covenant saints receiving the power of the Holy Spirit.

John Brown said:

Interesting discussion. Excuse me if I post more of a dissertation than a simple response. I'm a Christian thinker, researcher and writer. I challenge status quo.

I find it interesting how we, as modern westerners, products of a Greek & Roman culture, read an ancient semitic middle eastern documents as though it were written with our modern western mind set. Westerners want everything compartmentalized, defined, and minutely examined to produce a system of things. Having done that we assign titles and names to things to fit into our compartments and systems. The ancient semitics did no such thing. They spoke in word pictures, using a plethora of comparative figures of speech which westerners have often taken as pragmatic titles, ignoring the comparative figures.

This has happened in assigning the Body of Christ the title "The Bride" while the 'proof texts' are comparative figures to marriage, not pragmatic statements assigning a title. Interestingly, God calls himself Israel's Husband (Jeremiah 31:32). It's a figure of speech, both in the Old Testament and in the New. Following that statement by Jeremiah, is the prophecy about putting God's law within the hearts of Israel, which is the New Covenant. That is the nature of the New Covenant, never mind modern descriptions of it by denominational sectarian movements. It's the difference of God's righteousness being perceived from without versus from within.

As of Pentecost, this prophecy became a reality. The pouring out of holy spirit upon mankind, wrote the Law of God's righteousness within the hearts of men/women who accept His son as Savior. This permitted the joining of the all the nations (non Hebrews) together with Israel as God's people without the necessity of the nations practicing Judaism as had been the case up until then. (although it was a decade or so later until this reality was realized by the apostles)

So when did the New Covenant (New Testament) start? It started on the day of Pentecost but that is not a divisive thing but a unifying thing, an improvement in how men can relate to their Creator. Instead of priests, ritual and ceremony mediating sin, symbolic of the coming Redeemer, Jesus Christ was that Redeemer and mediated sin once and for all. Now men can approach their Creator without a human mediator or ritual of any kind. That does not in anyway mean division or annulment between the previous worshipers of the Creator under the Old Covenant and the New. It just means that the spiritual improvement Israel hoped for and Jeremiah prophesied, became a reality.

The whole thing is easiest to understand if one grasps the ancient middle eastern concept of Agency, where one represents another, like Aaron represented Moses. The atoning work of Jesus Christ was with a view to improving the manner and scope of humans relating to their Creator and representing Him in this life. Please realize that the future kingdom of God, when Jesus assumes his place on the throne in the Promised Land, will be populated by God's people from all times. There is even a word picture in John's Revelation to make this clear. Israel was God's first love but not His only love.

Then there is another typical misconception by modern western believers to think in ecclesiastical and theological terms when common street language was actually used to convey truth. This misconception is a hold over from previous centuries when theologians thought that there was holy spirit only definitions for the apostle's vocabulary. They even thought Koine Greek didn't exist outside of the New Testament! Now we know better but too often Bible expositors and especially the pew sitters are not up to speed due to tradition. This can most easily be seen in the ecclesiastical assignment of "Ekklesia", as meaning Israel or the modern church. It is neither. It is a generic word meaning an assembly of persons with a common bond. It originates in Athens meaning adults who were qualified to vote to retain or fire city magistrates. In Matt. 18 the word refers to the village elders or village adults. In Acts 19 it is used to describe a silver smith protest mob. These uses are most inconsistent when one thinks in ecclesiastical terms but perfectly normal when one abandons theological discussions and embraces the apostles as users of the common street language to speak to the people. The word has been found in non-biblical documents of the period used in its generic sense and defined by context.

Finally, if you want to understand Hebrew Agency in scripture, follow this link Divine Agents: Speaking and Acting in God’s Stead. You can also look up this book for more on the symmetry of the Old Testament with the New. They Never Told Me This in Church! Instead of a great divide between covenants, there is great symmetry between the Hebrew prophets, Jesus and his apostles. Where westerners see division, the original apostles saw unity but improvement upon the faith in the One God. It is only later gentile theologians (catholic priests and bishops or the 3rd and 4th centuries) who complicated things by applying philosophical methods to develop a gentile system of theology, foreign to the simplicity of the Hebrew Jesus and his apostles.The later gentile theological speculations and complexity still complicates things for believers even today and leads to arguments over minutia, while ignoring the broad stroke contexts, namely Hebrew thought patterns expressed in a Western language. Without respect to the cultural contexts of scripture, it is impossible to truly appreciate the original message of those semitic speakers.

Most speculation and confusion can be resolved by applying normal literary reading principles to scripture and realizing we're reading an ancient semitic document, written with an ancient Hebrew mindset. Doing so eliminates reading out of context, proof texting and applying suppositions based on our preconceptions of our modern western pragmatic interpretation overlaid upon literature never intended to be treated in such a way.

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