Een man die de geschiedenis van het mensdom veranderde

Op de nieuwe Broeders in Christus site is er een Nederlandstalige reeks begonnen over de man die de geschiedenis van het mensdom veranderde.

Eerst en vooral werd hij geboren op een bijzondere wijze die al voor veel controversie zorgde jaren na zijn ter wereld koming. Vervolgens werden heel wat baby's omwille van zijn ter wereld koming ter dood gebracht. Maar na de storm kwam weer kalmte en groeide hij in stilte op tot zijn dertigjarige leeftijd.

Na drie decennia begon hij zijn openbaar leven en zorgde spoedig voor enig tumult door de wonderbaarlijke dingen die hij deed en de vreemde zaken die hij kwam te vertellen. Hij sprak regelmatig in raadsels voor sommigen terwijl voor anderen de parabels of vergelijkingen mooie verhalen waren om naar te luisteren. Maar voor Jeshua, die nu beter gekend is onder de naam Jezus (Jesus), waren het niet zo maar verhalen, maar moesten het lessen voor het leven zijn die ons de mogelijkheid gaven om beter inzicht te krijgen in het Woord van God dat onder de vorm van de Torah tot het volk was gekomen.

De meester verteller bleek ook een meester leraar te zijn die meerdere volgelingen kreeg. Sommigen bleven hem lang volgen anderen haakten na een tijdje weer af, weer anderen durfden niet meer in zijn voetsporen te stappen omdat zij geviseerd werden door de maatschappij. Want uiteindelijk werd hij aanzien als een gevaarlijk heerschap.

Het gevolg was dan ook dat zijn naam vele malen misbruikt is geworden voor eigen doelen. Ook zijn leerstellingen werden later in de geschiedenis regelmatig verdraaid om zo door de wendingen in het kraam te passen van de menselijke leerstellingen die in die tijd gangbaar waren.

Maar uiteindelijk komt het er op aan dat er voldoende mensen bewust worden dat het veel belangrijker is om vast te houden aan die leerstellingen van die man, dan aan de theologische gedachten welke door anderen na hem aan zijn leven en werk zijn gegeven.

In de geschiedenis was niet enkel zijn geboorte een onderwerp van discussie, nog meer zou zijn eigen persoonlijkheid onder vuur komen te liggen. In de heidense traditie waren er namelijk steeds godmensen geweest en men moest tegen de gangbare gebruiken toch een 'evenpool' brengen. Om die reden werd de arbeiderszoon verheven tot een god in mensengedaante, terwijl de Bijbel, het Woord van God duidelijk te kennen geeft dat het om de Zoon van God gaat en nergens sprake is van god de zoon (een heel verschil).

Tijdens de jaarovergang werd er even alleen naar zijn geboorte gekeken, vooral omdat vele Christenen het heidense feest van het licht ook als hun feest Kerstmis nemen, dat dan zou dienen om de geboorte van Chrisuts Jezus te vieren, die officieel op 17 november -4 GT is geboren. Ook worden tijdens die feestdagen beeldjes en figuren gebruikt die helemall niet aanwezig waren in die regio en in dat seizoen.

Indien wij uw nieuwsgierigheid nu al kunnen opwekken raden wij al aan om met de Engelse reeks te beginnen, zolang een gelijkaardige Nederlandse reeks nog niet gepubliceerd is.

In het Engels kan u rond het begin van Jezus, zijn geboorte en zijn al of niet voor-bestaan of pr-existentie de volgende artikelen vinden:

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

In het Nederlands zijn er nu ook al:

1. Het begin van Jezus #1 Menselijke aspecten

2. Het begin van Jezus #2 Aller Begin

3. Het begin van Jezus #3 Voorgaande Tijden

4. Het begin van Jezus #4 Aangekondigde te komen Verlosser

5. Het begin van Jezus #5 Aankondigingsteksten uit de Schrift

Tags: begotten, voor-bestaan, messias, pre-existentie, christus, jezus

English About a man who changed history of humankind

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

Voorbestaan van Christus

In onze artikelen reeks onder "general" die wij niet konden indexeren bevinden zich ook enkele over het al of niet voorbestaan van Jezus.

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)

Wij merken op dat de geboorte van Jezus Christus aangekondigt wordt in het Nieuwe Testament. In het Oude Testament vinden wij enkel aankondigingen of profetieën of deze beloofde Verlosser.
Profetie gaat over iets dat nog moet gebeuren. Het zijn toekomst voorspellingen en geen verkondigingen van wat er reeds gebeurd is. Het zijn geen terugblikken op het verleden.

Wij kijken in de artikelenreeks naar de meldingen in het Oude Testament dat Jezus ter wereld zal komen (geboren worden) uit een maagd, dat hij zal sterven en dat hij koning zal zijn en zal zetelen op de troon van David. (Jesaja, Psalmen, Zacharia, Samuel)

Wij wijzen er ook op dat wij in het Nieuwe Testament verwijzingen kunnen vinden naar teksten waar op haar beurt ook een zinspeling wordt gemaakt op diegene die nog moest komen en de wereld zou verlossen. Ook vinden wij in het Oude Testament dat God ons te kennen geeft dat het Zijn zoon zal zijn die Hij zal 'zenden'. Ook wordt er in het OT gezegd dat het een man zal zijn. Nooit is er sprake dat hij dat al is. Steeds wordt er in de toekomende tijd gesproken.

Voorbestaan van Christus

Mits de onderstaande artikelen niet konden getagged worden, kan u hier de linken er naar toe vinden:

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.

Pre-existence of Christ #1 Look #2 Jesus in the Old Testament

Vindt ook:
Pre-existence of Christ #1 Intro #1 Athanasian Creed
The Nature of Preexistence in the New Testament

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).

Op onze hoofdwebsite staat:Pre-existentie van Christus Jezus