I believe Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets. I believe he was crucified, died, was burried, rose from the dead the third day (by inclusive reckoning) ascended to heaven, serves as high priest for his followers and will personally and visibly return to Earth to resurrect the people who have died in faith and take living believers with them to the mansons (condominiums or apartments if your prefer) he has gone to prepare. If my parents had believed and if they had tried to teach me everything in this sermon, I think it is almost certain that, as soon as I reached adulthood (maybe sooner), I would have rejected the version of “the gospel” being described here, the “God” being described here and Bible (because of being taught this is what “the Bible says”). Almost exactly one hundred years ago, my father rejected the traditions of his mother’s version of “Christianity”. In the providence of God, however, my paternal grandfather had been reading the Bible aloud to the whole family every day for nearly twenty years so my father didn’t “throw the baby (the teachings of Jesus) out with the bathwater (the traditions he rejected as not in harmony with how Jesus lived and what he taught two thousand years ago)”. Our parents read Bible stories to us when my siblings and I were little, encouraged us to read Bible stories when we were able to read them for ourselves and encouraged us to memorize Bible passages. They did more than that, however. They also read books to my siblings and me about several of the belief systems that had developed over time. I confess they didn’t teach us much about Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam but they did teach us about the Hebrew patriarchs, Moses, the Exodus and the origins of the Torah, the Greek and Roman gods, the traditions of Judaism, the life of Jesus, how the religious beliefs and practices of the polytheistic Romans were blended with the the teachings of Jesus to create the traditions that, today, are widely known as “Christianity”, the Inquisition, Martin Luther (the sixteenth century reformer), how early seventeenth century puritans were persecuted in England, how seventeenth century puritans penalized anyone who didn’t agree with the religious doctrines and practices of the majority of the puritans in New England and the great awakening in North America in the eighteenth century. When I was a boy, my dad repeatedly advised me, “Read for yourself, study for yourself and think for yourself.” Before I was born, Dad decided Genesis 2:7 means a soul is the combination of the body and the breath of life (And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul), the soul that sinneth, it shall die. (Ezekiel 18:20), only God has immortality (I Timothy 6:13-16), the blessed hope (Titus 2:13) is the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the redeemed (Job 19:26) and the redeemed will receive immortality when Jesus returns to resurrect the people who have died in faith and take living believers with them to the mansions he has gone to prepare (I Corinthians 15:51-54 & I Thessalonians 4:23-18). The ostensibly Christian tradition my dad had been taught as a boy was derived from the Greek philosophy propounded by Plato that humans are eternal and eternally-conscious souls temporarily imprisoned in mortal bodies. Most or all of the Hebrew Bible had been written before Plato wrote about his philosophy. The meaning of the Hebrew words translated into English as “spirit”, “soul” and “hell” is consistent with what my dad derived from reading in Genesis 2 about the creation of Adam. My advice? Read for yourself, study for yourself and think for yourself.
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I believe Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets. I believe he was crucified, died, was burried, rose from the dead the third day (by inclusive reckoning) ascended to heaven, serves as high priest for his followers and will personally and visibly return to Earth to resurrect the people who have died in faith and take living believers with them to the mansons (condominiums or apartments if your prefer) he has gone to prepare.
If my parents had believed and if they had tried to teach me everything in this sermon, I think it is almost certain that, as soon as I reached adulthood (maybe sooner), I would have rejected the version of “the gospel” being described here, the “God” being described here and Bible (because of being taught this is what “the Bible says”).
Almost exactly one hundred years ago, my father rejected the traditions of his mother’s version of “Christianity”. In the providence of God, however, my paternal grandfather had been reading the Bible aloud to the whole family every day for nearly twenty years so my father didn’t “throw the baby (the teachings of Jesus) out with the bathwater (the traditions he rejected as not in harmony with how Jesus lived and what he taught two thousand years ago)”.
Our parents read Bible stories to us when my siblings and I were little, encouraged us to read Bible stories when we were able to read them for ourselves and encouraged us to memorize Bible passages. They did more than that, however. They also read books to my siblings and me about several of the belief systems that had developed over time. I confess they didn’t teach us much about Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam but they did teach us about
the Hebrew patriarchs,
Moses,
the Exodus and the origins of the Torah,
the Greek and Roman gods,
the traditions of Judaism,
the life of Jesus,
how the religious beliefs and practices of the polytheistic Romans were blended with the the teachings of Jesus to create the traditions that, today, are widely known as “Christianity”,
the Inquisition,
Martin Luther (the sixteenth century reformer),
how early seventeenth century puritans were persecuted in England,
how seventeenth century puritans penalized anyone who didn’t agree with the religious doctrines and practices of the majority of the puritans in New England and
the great awakening in North America in the eighteenth century.
When I was a boy, my dad repeatedly advised me, “Read for yourself, study for yourself and think for yourself.”
Before I was born, Dad decided
Genesis 2:7 means a soul is the combination of the body and the breath of life (And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul),
the soul that sinneth, it shall die. (Ezekiel 18:20),
only God has immortality (I Timothy 6:13-16),
the blessed hope (Titus 2:13) is the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the redeemed (Job 19:26) and
the redeemed will receive immortality when Jesus returns to resurrect the people who have died in faith and take living believers with them to the mansions he has gone to prepare (I Corinthians 15:51-54 & I Thessalonians 4:23-18).
The ostensibly Christian tradition my dad had been taught as a boy was derived from the Greek philosophy propounded by Plato that humans are eternal and eternally-conscious souls temporarily imprisoned in mortal bodies.
Most or all of the Hebrew Bible had been written before Plato wrote about his philosophy. The meaning of the Hebrew words translated into English as “spirit”, “soul” and “hell” is consistent with what my dad derived from reading in Genesis 2 about the creation of Adam.
My advice? Read for yourself, study for yourself and think for yourself.