For Getting to know Jesus

The three new websites are there on the net to bring people closer to the promised one who brings salvation for those who want to accept him and believe that he is the send one from God, the Kristos or Christ, the Messiah long awaited.

Because today there are still lots of people who do not want to accept what Jesus really says and really has done. They keep saying it was impossible for a man to do such thing as Jesus did. By saying so they nullify the act of Jesus and create a position where God could be thought of as a cruel God Who created human beings and imposed on them a Law which He knew they would never be able to keep.

We may not forget what happened in the Garden of Eden and how God provided a plan offering mankind a Redeemer.

On the newly created site "The human Jesus" Xavier Carlos Jimenez writes

 The first we are aware of this is at Genesis 3:15, where we see the seed of the woman, that is a descendant of Eve, is the future Messiah. Jesus Christ is prophesied throughout the OT, but does not come into existence until the NT where his birth was foretold by the angel Gabriel to Mary (Luke 1:26-38).

In the knowledge that God is an eternal Spirit, having no beginning (no birth) and no end (cannot die) much more Christians should wonder who they praise and Who they should worship. We also know from the Biblical account that the Nazarene man Jeshua was going to be called a god, a special some one. though never was it the intention to have him being called the god son.

In Luke 1:32-33 Gabriel says,

“He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever, and his Kingdom will never end” (cp. 1Chron 17:10-14).

Through a biological miracle God procreated Jesus in the womb of Mary, who was a virgin. “For this reason alone”, and no other, Jesus became the Son of God, descendant of King David of the tribe of Judah through Mary (Luke 1.35).

We should remember that it was only some two millennia ago that Jesus became an existing being on this earth. Before that he may have been written down in the books of life and death, but he did not exit yet as a real person. Already before Abraham was born he was in God's head, like Abraham, Isaac but also we are already in God's head and in those books. It was only after the prophet Mica and earlier prophets of the Hebrew writings that the send one from God became a reality in the flesh.

At the time of Joseph and Mary.

This was the moment when Jesus was begotten, that is, brought into existence. There is no pre-existence of Jesus Christ, and it is when we become aware of this fact through our prayerful study of Holy Scripture that we really get to know him as the human being that he was and remains.

Too many who call themselves Christian never read the whole Scripture (Old and New Testament) and often they only read some passages with their doctrinal glasses on.

Let yourself not being carried away by human doctrines but listen to the proper words of the Holy Scriptures. Read what is really written there. when there is written "son of God" do not read "god the son" or do not think "God" but think "Jesus" or just what is written their "son of God".

Knowing the truth about who is Jesus, we begin to see him in a whole new light. The scriptures open up to us more fully and we see how the prophesies in the OT are brought clearly into focus in the NT through the Good News of the Kingdom of God. We see our future as heirs ruling with Jesus in the Kingdom on earth, and we are humbled to think of such a privilege to be with our King. It is when we understand the true nature of Jesus Christ, that he is a man, and not a pre-existent God or part of a trinity, that we can really get to know him as our brother.

“For there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human” (1 Tim 2:5).

- See more at: http://thehumanjesus.org/2016/06/01/getting-to-know-jesus/#sthash.mWP8u96P.dpuf

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Preceding articles:

• New website and forum: the Human Jesus
• Focussing on the man Jesus and the relationship with God

About a man who changed history of humankind

Sometimes it is not bad to take your dictionary and historical books with you in the Bible Study class.

With the times developing we can notice that several ideas enter the belief of people, though they are not always as it is written in the Holy books they say they take as their guide.

Like every religion Christianity could not escape the human thoughts and people who brought in their own teachings which they wanted that the whole community would take. In several denominations in Christendom we can find rules or teachings which can not be found in the Bible.

About the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ many pages were filled with painstaking, sedulous penstrokes. The figure has been some one of much controversy and of opposition.

Though we may not forget that we have a man in the picture with a real historical case. We cannot deny his existence. But some say he existed already more than two millennia ago or even from the beginning of times.
At the Belgian Christadelphian Ecclesia Brussel-Leuven the turn of the year brought some interesting lectures about the birth of Christ and its celebration in many Christian homes.
May we recommend to have a look at the series which goes into debt in the origin of Jesus the person who is been called the Christ or Messiah.
In the articles you shall be able to see that this special man from Nazareth was able to interest many people but also to annoy many others. He came on to this world on a special manner and grew up in an ordinary workers family to become an incredible master teacher, who got many followers and by his death and resurrection changed history and  a lot of hearts of many men and women who got hope for the future.

Please do find the series in English:

1. Jesus begotten Son of God #1 Christmas and Christians
2. Jesus begotten Son of God #2 Christmas and pagan rites
3. Jesus begotten Son of God #3 Messiah or Anointed one
4. Jesus begotten Son of God #4 Promised Prophet and Saviour
5. Jesus begotten Son of God #5 Apsotle, High Priest and King
6. Jesus begotten Son of God #6 Anointed Son of God, Adam and Abraham
7. Jesus begotten Son of God #7 A matter of the Future
8. Jesus begotten Son of God #8 Found Divinely Created not Incarnated
9. Jesus begotten Son of God #9 Two millennia ago conceived or begotten
10. Jesus begotten Son of God #10 Coming down spirit or flesh seed of Eve
11. Jesus begotten Son of God #11 Existence and Genesis Raising up
12. Jesus begotten Son of God #12 Son of God
13. Jesus begotten Son of God #13 Pre-existence excluding virginal birth of the Only One Transposed
14. Jesus begotten Son of God #14 Beloved Preminent Son and Mediator originating in Mary
15. Jesus begotten Son of God #15 Son of God Originating in Mary
16. Jesus begotten Son of God #16 Prophet to be heard
17. Jesus begotten Son of God #17 Adam, Eve, Mary and Christianity’s central figure
18. Jesus begotten Son of God #18 Believing in inhuman or human person
19. Jesus begotten Son of God #19 Compromising fact
20. Jesus begotten Son of God #20 Before and After
21. The Beginning of the life of Jesus Christ
22. Christ having glory
23. The Seed Of The Woman Bruised
24. On the Nature of Christ
25. Written to recognise the Promissed One

Preexistence in the Divine purpose and Trinity

There is one God, the Father (1 Cor. 8:6), the one God of the creed of Israel affirmed by Jesus Christ (Mark 12:28ff).There is one Lord Messiah, Jesus (1 Cor. 8:6), who was supernaturally conceived as the Son of God (Luke 1:35), and foreordained from the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:20).

Many Christians are unaware that philosophical, mystical ideas invaded the church from the second century onwards via the "Church Fathers," who were steeped in pagan philosophy and laid the foundation of the creeds now called "orthodox." In several articles you from the Belgian Biblestudents you shall be able to read more about it. There and on a.o. the writing of Anthony Buzzard you shall be able to find that 'The seed of Trinitarian doctrine' was planted in the thinking of Justin Martyr, the second century Christian apologist who "found in Platonism the nearest approach to Christianity and felt that no break was required with its spirit and principles to pass into the greater light of Christian revelation."

The New Testament never suggests that the phrase ‘Son of God’ just means ‘God.’ [Yet evangelicalism and certain major groups insists on that equation if one is to be considered a Christian!]

But in the world we do find lots of serious lovers of God who accept the Nazarene Jew Yeshua or Jesus as the promissed Saviour. For them however he is the "man Messiah," the one Mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5). As for the apostle Paul those believers in only One God take it that "To us Christians there is one God, the Father, and one Lord Messiah" (1 Cor. 8:4-6). (Note carefully Paul’s definition of the One God.)

Human beings in Hebrew thought do not exist consciously before they are born.  In the Holy Scriptures we do also find no preexistence of souls. The notion that Jesus was really alive and conscious before his birth in Bethlehem is also a very unJewish idea.

As you could already find in our other writings on the understanding of Hebrew writings, we do have to take that language as our guide and not our modern thinking or the Greek philosophy. E.C. Dewick rightly notes in his Primitive Christian Eschatology, The Hulsean Prize Essay for 1908, Cambridge University Press, 1912: "When the Jew said something was ‘predestined,’ he thought of it as already ‘existing’ in a higher sphere of life. The world’s history is thus predestined because it is already, in a sense, preexisting and consequently fixed. This typically Jewish conception of predestination may be distinguished from the Greek idea of preexistence by the predominance of the thought of ‘preexistence’ in the Divine purpose."

All is foreordained in God’s great Plan and so did God created the opportunity to get a Saviour out of the tribe of David. It is not becaus God knows everything already before hand that because  Jesus who came up in the thought of God before the world was created, that Jesus actually really came into existence before everything was created. The Messiah himself was foreknown, not just his death for our sins but the person Messiah himself (1 Pet. 1:20). Peter uses the same word to describe the "existence" of the Son of God in God’s plan as he did to describe the "existence" of the Christian church (v. 2).

All Jews who looked forward to the Messiah expected a human person, not an angel, much less God Himself! Though the Jews had not understood that the Messiah was to be born supernaturally, even this miraculous begetting was in fact predicted (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23). A "pre-human" Messiah, however, is nowhere suggested. The Son of God "came into existence" from a woman and from the seed of David (Rom. 1:4; Gal. 4:4).(Note that for Arians and Trinitarians, who think that Jesus was begotten in eternity long before his conception/begetting in Mary, that would have been a second begetting.)

Read more about Foreordination Rather than Literal Preexistence : The Nature of Preexistence in the New Testament by Anthony Buzzard

Colossians 1:15-20: Preexistence or Preeminence? by William WachtelThe Nature of Preexistence in the New Testament  or Preexistensens natur i Nya testamentet (Swedish)Who Is Jesus? God, or Unique Man? or Wie is Jesus? God, of Unieke Mens? (Afrikaans)

Around pre-existence of Christ

If Jesus had existed before his birth, he would have been a
different Jesus to the one who lived on the earth.

The Old Testament word ‘davar’ its equivalent in Greek ‘logos’ used by John as embroidery on the Tenach (OT). We may not become entangled in the ideas of Plato, the stoics, Philo, apologists and others. John uses the word ‘logos’ to indicate the Word of God, thinking about all those things God had said previously. He had it about the Plan of God that became reality. For the apostle John the promise of the Saviour came into existence by the birth of the Nazarene Jesus. Gods Plan became flesh (John 1:1,14)

In Kenneth S. Wuest's "The New Testament -an expanded translation" John 1:1 is being translated as: "And the Word was to His essence absolute deity."  Wuest was Teacher Emeritus of New Testament Greek by The Moody Bible Institute.

Irenaeus, Origenes and Tertullianus played their part because they believe in the pre-existence of Jesus and thought he also was God who did exist forever and could not die.

Some Christians today teach that he was an angel before his birth but Hebrews 2:7 shows that he was made lower than the angels, he was a man with human nature which means that he could die. Luke 20:36 tells us that angels are immortal, it is impossible for them to die and yet we know that Jesus did die a horrible death and wasn’t immortal until after his resurrection. Again we see that Jesus couldn’t have been an angel.

If Jesus existed before his birth, (we read about his birth at the beginning of the New Testament in the gospels) we would expect to read about him in Old Testament times. However, even though we find that much of the Old Testament does speak about Jesus it is all prophecy. Prophecy is looking something that is going to happen in the future. So everything we read about Jesus is saying that he will come in the future. We are told that he will be born of the virgin Mary (Isaiah 7:14); that he will die (Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53); that he will be King of the whole world (Zechariah 14:9); and that he will sit on the throne of David in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 7:11-16). God promised David that one of his descendants would sit on his throne for ever and rule over Israel, and we know that this is speaking of Jesus because in Luke 1:32-35 it says so. Now, if Jesus already existed, why is God promising to Abraham and to David that Jesus will come in the future, that he will be a descendant of them. It doesn’t really make sense. The prophets say what the Messiah would be like and what he would do, so that when he came the Jews would recognise him. These promises all speak in a future tense showing that Jesus had not come yet but that one day he would.

In Isaiah 7:14, the prophecy that shows Jesus would be born to the virgin Mary, it says “a virgin shall conceive”, (shall has the same meaning as will) so again it is using the future tense, showing that this still has to happen.

In Luke 1:32, “he shall be great”. This would be strange if Jesus did already exist, because it is saying that he wasn’t great before his birth, but if we understand that Jesus didn’t start to exist until his birth it makes sense.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16 AV)

Gave His ‘only-begotten Son’: It is possible Jesus draws his words from Psalm 22:20 LXX and Psalm 2:7. The Isaac-type also suggests, “only begotten.” The Greek is monogenes. (John 1:18) a junction of two words. Genes coming from the verb ginomai, which means coming into existence, becoming born, being created, being produced. When the force of God, the Holy Spirit, placed Jesus in the womb of Mary, a new Adam was been created by God. After Adam and Eve this was again the first human who was directly created by the Elohim Jehovah. For Jesus there was no other man involved to pro-create him. Mary was a virgin and became pregnant without intercourse. Muslims often say that our God did have intercourse with a human because we say that Christ Jesus is the Son of God, but God does not need sexual contact to create a human being. When God thinks about something He can take care that it is there. His wishes, His Plans can come into existence without any human interference. But God used a human, Mary to give the world a man who would be like all men, able to be tempted end being part of this world. It should not have been a god to whom the world could do nothing or who could not die. No Jesus really suffered and found an end to his life on a terrible way. While God cannot die Jesus really died on the wooden stake, to be lifted out of dead as an example to what can happen to us as well.

For John the risen Christ is the same as the Jesus he followed and who died. In his writings he therefore reacts to the Gnostic writers of his time and uses words in his gospel to make it clear for the bystanders.

The Word of God and the Plan of the Creator became more then 2000 years ago flesh (John 1:14). The fulfilment of the promise made in the Garden of Eden (Genesis) was procreate in Mary (Luke 1:35, Matthew 1:20) Jesus is the completion of that promise which was spread for centuries that came at the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, direct descendent of David, and leader of a new kingdom.

Read more in:
Pre-existence of Christ #1 Look #2 Jesus in the Old Testament
(http://bijbelonderzoekers.multiply.com/journal/item/1119/Pre-existence_of_Christ_1_Look_2_Jesus_in_the_Old_Testament)
Pre-existence of Christ #1 Intro #4 Jesus - His Parents #2 Difference (http://bijbelonderzoekers.multiply.com/journal/item/1040/Pre-existence_of_Christ_1_Intro_4_Jesus_-_His_Parents_2_Difference)

For the texts in Dutch:
Lees ook over het ontsaan van Christus Jezus in: Christus Jezus: de zoon van God #3 'de eniggeboren zoon'
 (http://bijbelonderzoekers.multiply.com/journal/item/1016/Christus_Jezus_de_zoon_van_God_3_39de_eniggeboren_zoon39)
 waar wordt ingegaan op de betekenis van de 'eniggeboren zoon).

En op onze hoofdwebsite staat de Nederlandse versie van bovenstaande tekst: Pre-existentie van Christus Jezus

The Real Christ

"The Real Christ"

Hard copies of this book are now available from Carelinks representatives in the UK, USA and Australia. You can view the text online and see ordering details at www.realchrist.info . The book seeks to not only deconstruct Trinitarian and 'pre-existence' thinking but to positively present a picture of who the Lord Jesus really was and is as a personality.

The Word being a quality or aspect of God Himself

Teddy Trublood wrote:

"Word" and 1 John 5:7, KJV


(KJV) 1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

Some of us have met persons who believe that God is only one person, but that he has been in different forms at times (the Father or the Son). They are often called "Oneness" believers.
Because most of them believe that these two persons did not both exist at the same time (therefore keeping God as one person alone), they deny the pre-existence of the Son. Especially do they deny that 'the Word' at John 1 was the Son. To do this they insist that the Word at this point was simply a quality or aspect of God Himself and not another person who was with God (the Father). Most of them will say that Jesus only came into existence as a person when he was born on earth.

(KJV) John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
It is difficult to prove to them that the Word in John 1 was actually a person in heaven who became Jesus. (I try to reason on Phil. 2:5-8, 1Jn 4:9; etc.)

It may be helpful to use 1 John 5:7 for any of those "Oneness" folks who also believe the KJV is the best (or only) English translation to be used by Christians.

Notice that this spurious addition to scripture in the KJV uses "Word."

So, for those who insist on using the KJV, here is evidence for "the Word" being a person who was with God in the beginning being back as the same person with God again.
To which I reply:
Christ was the word "made flesh" (John 1:14) The Word expresses the divine intention, mind or purpose.

"Logos" does not in itself denote personality.(masculine gender in AV; Diaglott in the neuter) You can compare it with wisdom which is personified as a woman. (Proverbs 8:1,2,22, 23)
The creation was accompanied by the word, i.e. Gods speaking. (Gen.1:3; John 1:7,8) (Ps. 33:6,9; 107:20; 147:15,18,19; Isa 55:11) "By the word of Jehovah the heavens were made"
“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: {standing: Gr. consisting}” (2Pe 3:5 AV)  “But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men.” (2Pe 3:7 AV) Kept in store by the same word.
“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” (Heb 11:3 AV)
 “He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion. When he uttereth his voice, [there is] a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures. {multitude: or, noise} {with: or, for}” (Jer 10:12-13 AV)

God's Word was with God (and in God), but angels, prophets and Christ have been vehicles by which God has expressed his Logos. Though Christ is the complete manifestation of the Logos. When the "word was made flesh" (Jo 1:14) Christ became the manifestation of the Word (Re 19:13; Lu 1:2) since his doctrine and words came from Jehovah his Father (Jo 7:16;17:14)
Php 2:6-7 does not mean being originally before he was born the image and glory of God, but rather being the image of God and continuing to be (1Co 11:7)

Born out of the Father he could be the most high of all men, because the others had a human father and mother, while Christ only a human mother but the heavenly Father.

Although Christ was in the form of God in his semblance and demeanour, he took on him the semblance and demeanour of a slave. (learning obedience Heb 5:8,9)(washing feet: Jo 13:14) Submitting his will to that of his Father.