This story puz­zles me. Maybe you have some ideas.

John 6:
“1 Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee…
3 Then Jesus went up on a moun­tain­side and sat down with his dis­ci­ples. 4 The Jew­ish Passover Fes­ti­val was near.”

In the pre­vi­ous chap­ter he WAS in Jerusalem at one of the Jew­ish fes­ti­vals! Why did Jesus and the dis­ci­ples walk 100km to the north­ern side of the Sea of Galilee when the Passover was near? They should have stayed in or near Jerusalem. (more…)

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In my expe­ri­ence Chris­tians often ask about the inter­pre­ta­tion of 1Cor. 13:

1 If I speak in the tongues of mor­tals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clang­ing cym­bal. 2 And if I have prophetic pow­ers, and under­stand all mys­ter­ies and all knowl­edge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove moun­tains, but do not have love, I am noth­ing. 3 If I give away all my pos­ses­sions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envi­ous or boast­ful or arro­gant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irri­ta­ble or resent­ful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrong­do­ing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophe­cies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowl­edge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we proph­esy only in part; 10 but when the com­plete comes, the par­tial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I rea­soned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to child­ish ways. 12 For now we see in a mir­ror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the great­est of these is love.

They often focus way too much on the spir­i­tual gifts and miss Paul’s point that speak­ing in tongues is con­sid­ered a child­ish thing that should van­ish with adult­hood. Doesn’t that mean that those who are so fond of speak­ing in tongues got stuck in child­hood and never want to grow up? (more…)

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Many Chris­tians are curi­ous about this mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure called Melchizedek. What was the reli­gion in Jerusalem before Abra­ham was called? How could he be the high Priest of the Most High when the office of the High Priest was only defined in the Law? Some­how this doesn’t fit into the pic­ture, at least, of tra­di­tional theology.

Gen 14:18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; now he was a priest of God Most High. (more…)

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In the pre­vi­ous post we have seen that the gospel (that is “good news”) is iden­ti­fied, for exam­ple, by Mark:

Mark 1:15
and say­ing, “The time is ful­filled, and the king­dom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The mes­sage, that “the King­dom of God is near”, there­fore, is THE GOSPEL or GOOD NEWS — and every­thing else is commentary.

Of course, you will find peo­ple that claim that there is more than one gospel, such as

1. the gospel of the King­dom
2. the gospel of Christ

Their claim, how­ever, can­not stand because you can clearly see from the verses quoted in the ini­tial post that the gospel of the King­dom IS the gospel of God, which was preached by John the Bap­tist, Jesus, the dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles and also Paul, and it is also called the gospel of Christ. There is no other gospel. It is about God bring­ing about the King­dom pre­ceded by His judg­ment upon the world, from which judg­ment sin­ners had to be saved from, hence the urgency of the mes­sage. (more…)

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This will be a con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject, but I think it is vital to deal with it as it has the poten­tial to free up Chris­tians from dan­ger­ous mis­con­cep­tions and practices.

The first pas­sage that may give us impor­tant infor­ma­tion, this time con­cern­ing how the gospels were com­piled is this:

Luke 1:1 Inas­much as many have under­taken to com­pile a nar­ra­tive of the things which have been accom­plished among us, 2 just as they were deliv­ered to us by those who from the begin­ning were eye­wit­nesses and min­is­ters of the word, 3 it seemed good to me also, hav­ing fol­lowed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excel­lent The-oph’ilus, 4 that you may know the truth con­cern­ing the things of which you have been informed. (more…)

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