On the Gospel of John, Part 20: For Fear of the Jews

How timely it was, that as I wrote this presentation, I learned that Christogenea was mentioned in an ADL report on hate, their favorite word. The anti-Christs are indeed the personification of hate, but Yahweh the God of Israel hates them, and they will have their day soon enough.

In Part 19 of this commentary on the Gospel of John, which we had subtitled No Friend of the Devil, we made a lengthy presentation from Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians hoping to explain where Paul had described not only the true essence of Christian communion, but also the danger of accepting those who are not worthy of communion into Christian fellowships. The ministry of Yahshua Christ is an example for us of that very danger, although within the Provenance of God, it worked to His advantage. Yahshua had given His Bread of Life discourse in an assembly hall in Capernaum, and even His students had a hard time understanding its meaning. So He responded and said “The words which I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life. 64 But some from among you are they who do not believe.” John then inserted a parenthetical remark into his account where he wrote: “For Yahshua knew from the beginning who they who do not believe are, and who it is who shall betray Him.” Next he recorded the conclusion given by Christ Himself where He said: “For this reason I said to you that no one is able to come to Me unless it should be given to him from the Father.”

As we had also discussed in John chapter 2, Yahshua Christ, being God incarnate, knew the inherent nature of men when – or even before – He encountered them, so the apostle wrote at the conclusion of an encounter between Christ and the officials at the temple in Jerusalem that “24… Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, 25 And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” Christ would not subject Himself to the authorities in the temple because He knew that they were inherently evil. Now here, at the end of John’s description of the events which followed the Bread of Life discourse, we see that many of the people who had followed Christ had at this point departed, ostensibly because they could not understand or believe Him, while Peter explained why he and others would not depart. By saying “they who do not believe” John was also referring to people who did not possess an inherent capacity for belief, as we shall see Christ Himself describe in John chapter 10. So Christ had asked His disciples: “Have I not chosen you twelve? Yet one from among you is a false accuser [or a devil]!” There John informed us that He was speaking in reference to Judas Iscariot, and it is evident that the devil remained for other and nefarious reasons, but not because he believed.

On the Gospel of John, Part 18: The Parable of the Bread of Life

So far in our commentary on the Gospel of John, I have asserted that the encounter of Yahshua with the Samaritan woman was a parable, and that the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness was a parable. There are other things which we can claim to be parables, saying that they must stand for something or other, but we may only be offering conjecture. I do not like to conjecture, and hope to always admit if any of my interpretations are mere conjecture. So I must answer the question: why do I interpret certain events in the Gospel as parables? Before answering, it must be said that merely because I would claim that an event is a parable does not mean that the event did not actually occur. According to the writers of the Gospels, Yahshua Christ truly did feed multitudes in the wilderness, which we must believe if we are Christians who in turn must accept the Gospel accounts as being truthful. Yahshua Christ also met with a Samaritan woman, and we must trust that John accurately described the conversation which He had with her.

But if a real-life event in the deeds of Yahshua Christ is also a microcosm of the fulfillment of prophecy; if the event represents an aspect of prophecy being fulfilled, and if at the same time it also foreshadows the overall fulfillment of prophecy as it appears in the Word of Yahweh in the Old Testament, then the event itself is also an allegory representing the assurance that the word of Yahweh will be fulfilled, and therefore it is a sort of parable. So I would assert that the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the time in which it occurred was representative of the future reconciliation of the so-called “lost sheep” of the tribes of ancient Israel to Christ, and the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness was representative of the spiritual feeding of those same “lost sheep” as the apostles of Christ brought His Gospel to the nations of Europe and the Near East, which is where the so-called “lost tribes” were found at that time.

The apostle James did not write his epistle to the “twelve tribes scattered abroad” with any profession or admission that it was really intended for some other people. Paul of Tarsus did not plainly state that the gospel was “the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers… which our twelve tribes… hope to come” with any profession or admission that some other people could possibly attain such a promise. Rather, both James and Paul intended their message for the same “lost sheep” that we read of in the Psalms, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea. Like the Samaritan woman, they are the children of Jacob for whom the message of the Gospel was intended, and according to the Revelation of Christ, it is they who would be fed in the wilderness for “a thousand two hundred and threescore days .” From the time that the Revelation was written, that is very close to the amount of time which it took to convert the entirety of Europe to Christianity.

On the Gospel of John, Part 16: The Son of Man

Here we shall once again continue our commentary on the Gospel of John, resuming with our presentation of John chapter 5. The theme where we had left off with our last presentation was The Sabbaths of God, but it may have been called The Sabbath of God. That is because Yahweh God is still in His Own day of rest, as Paul of Tarsus had explained in Hebrews chapters 3 and 4, where he informs us that the children of God still have an opportunity to enter into His rest. However where Yahshua Christ had attested that “My Father labors until now, and I labor”, it becomes apparent that Yahweh has been compelled to occupy Himself during His Sabbath Day’s rest by helping His people Israel, and the greater Adamic race as a whole. For that reason, Yahshua Christ had asserted that He had a moral compulsion to heal His people on the Sabbath, for example where He said as it recorded in Mark chapter 3 “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?” Therefore all Christians should follow His example.

Furthermore, we had discussed the fact that under the Old Covenant, it was necessary for the Levites to work on the Sabbaths in their service to the people of God, making sacrifices and performing other rituals on their behalf, or acting as porters, singers or musicians in the temple, or conducting the readings of the Scriptures throughout the assemblies. So the priest is one who serves Yahweh God by serving the people of God. We also hope to have demonstrated from the Scriptures that there can be no true Sabbath without obedience to God throughout the rest of the week. The children of Israel who have returned to Yahweh in Christ are a nation of priests, as Peter explained in his first epistle that “you are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, so that you should proclaim the virtues for which from out of darkness you have been called into the wonder of His light...” Christians should also seek to keep His commandments, as He had commanded, so if they truly seek to be obedient, only then may they enjoy proper Sabbaths. Enjoying proper Sabbaths, being a nation of priests, they should spend their Sabbaths in service to their people.

On the Gospel of John, Part 14: True Signs and Wonders

In the first two presentations on our commentary on John chapter 4, we had spoken at length about the Samaritan woman, who was certainly a daughter of a remnant of the children of Israel which had escaped destruction or captivity at the hands of the Assyrians, and which had remained in Samaria throughout the seven centuries up to the time of Christ. It is quite possible that her and her kinfolk ultimately became Christians and could have remained in and around Samaria even until after the time that the Muslim hordes invaded and destroyed the Byzantine Christian culture of Palestine in the 7th century AD. However Shechem, and ostensibly, Sychar along with it, was destroyed by the Romans during the Judaean rebellion of 65-70 AD, and in 72 AD Vespasian founded a new city at the site, called after himself, Flavia Neapolis.

We hope to have illustrated how the encounter of Christ with this woman was a sort of parable representative of the ultimate reconciliation of the so-called “lost sheep” of the Northern Kingdom with Yahweh their God, which is indeed the very purpose and need for a Messiah in the first place. We then made several comparisons of aspects of this encounter with that of the later encounter which Christ had with the Canaanite woman, and by that we hope to have illustrated an example of the racial covenant aspect of the New Testament, where one woman had sought and received an earthly blessing but she was nevertheless excluded from communion, while the other woman being an Israelite had sought no blessing yet it was shown that she was fit for eternal life – in spite of the fact that she was apparently even a sinner.

On the Gospel of John, Part 12: The Parable of the Samaritan Woman

In the later portion of John chapter 3, after the discourse which Christ had with Nicodemus, John, the author of our Gospel, described the baptizing of the people by the disciples of Christ, the contention which John the Baptist was having with certain pharisees about baptism, and then the inquiry which the disciples of John had made concerning the baptizing conducted by the disciples of Christ. He then recorded John the Baptist’s testimony in response to that inquiry, that “a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven”, which seems to have answered both the query of his disciples and the contention of the pharisees at the same time, and then in a clear reference to Christ he said “28 Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. 29 He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.”

At this point in time, John did not necessarily know that Yahshua was the Messiah, as we see that later, after John was imprisoned, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 11 and in Luke chapter 7, John had sent disciples to Christ specifically to ask Him that very thing. Rather, at this time John was simply proclaiming that one greater than he was going to come, and that his own purpose was only to make that announcement. Then John made the illustration of the bridegroom to inform his disciples that the one coming after him would have the people flock to him, and that he would be magnified, while John himself was diminished, and therefore that one was the expected Messiah, a role which John himself denied. In that manner, when John’s disciples saw one coming after him who fulfilled that description, they would know that he was the Messiah. But John, once he was in prison, could not see that for himself, so he sent his disciples to ask. So in that last part of John chapter 3, John the Baptist was not necessarily describing what was happening, but rather he was only explaining what was supposed to happen, which is according to the prophecies concerning him in Isaiah chapter 40 and Malachi chapter 3. Of the prophecy, men cannot tell what is going to happen, but can only know what Yahweh God has promised to make happen.

On the Gospel of John, Part 10: The Only-Begotten is Not the Only

In our last presentation in this series on the Gospel of John, which was subtitled The World of Salvation, among other things we had discussed were several aspects of the statement of Christ which is recorded in John 3:16. This is a favorite verse of the universalist denominational Christians, but it certainly does not mean what they imagine it to mean. They read this verse as if it says that Yahshua, or Jesus Christ, is the only Son of God, and had come to die in order to save the entire planet and everything, or, at least, everyone, dwelling thereupon. Of course, that is absolutely contrary to the entire body and context of the Scriptures. But with their interpretation of one verse, and only sometimes with imagined support from a couple of other verses, they would negate the entire meaning and value of all of the books of the prophets, as well as the complete substance of the epistles of the apostles and many of the other statements of Christ Himself.

So we began to address this particular passage by explaining that the Greek words translated as world were never intended to describe what we now know as the planet, and that even in the Medieval English of the King James translators, or in the German of Martin Luther, the concept of world did not imply the inclusion of the entire planet and everything on it, as the word is usually understood in modern times.

Now we are going to address another aspect of this passage, which is the use and translation of the Greek term μονογενής (Strong’s # 3439). In its most literal sense it means “only-born”, and it is the word which the King James translators rendered as “only-begotten” in John 3:16. But is that what the Gospel writers really meant to convey when they used the term? This is debatable, but we would rather understand it according to the idiom of the times, and especially its use in the idioms of the Greek Old Testament, where we will find that it was not necessarily used in that literal sense in our Scriptures.

On the Gospel of John, Part 8: Origin and Destiny

When on September 21st, I had presented Part 7 of this series and my commentary on the second half of John Chapter 2, I had promised to continue with Part 8 in mid-October, after a short trip to Tennessee. But Yahweh had other plans, and the October 10th hurricane here in Florida disrupted our lives, along with my writing schedule, days after our return. Now that we are finally getting settled into our new home, I pray that I may resume this commentary without any further unplanned interruptions.

Presenting that last portion of John chapter 2, I chose to focus on the theme of Challenging Orthodoxy as we encountered Yahshua Christ confronting the errors of the generally accepted orthodoxy of Judaea in His Own time. I chose to focus on this theme because we ourselves should perceive that the presumably Christian and generally accepted orthodoxy of today is also in error. Here in John chapter 3, as Christ encounters the inquisitive Nicodemus, some of those errors will be brought to light. The so-called Orthodox and Catholic churches have followed the errors of Nicodemus for perhaps 1,800 years, and they refuse the correction which Christ offered to Nicodemus here in the discussion which is recorded in this chapter.

After our last presentation, I was challenged by certain of my acquaintances with the assertion that the major denominations of Christianity could not possibly have been wrong for these last 1,800 years, or perhaps, as they count, 2,000 years. In actuality, as I elucidated in a presentation of the Identifying the “Beast of the Field” series which I recently concluded, at least some scholars from the Orthodox Church itself admit that their doctrines are drawn from the writings of the so-called “Church Fathers” who lived from the 4th century onward, so giving them 1,800 years is actually giving them too much credit. Orthodox so-called Christianity as we know it is really only about 1,600 years old, it was still developing for a few hundred years after the Council of Nicaea, and it is not an orthodoxy of the Christianity which was taught by apostles of Christ.

On the Gospel of John, Part 6: The Wedding Feast at Cana

In John chapter 1 the apostle had made many bold statements proclaiming the deity of Jesus, or Yahshua Christ. The assertions that He is the Word made Flesh, the Light of the World, the Lamb of God, and the declaration of the purpose of the ministry of John the Baptist all assert that Yahshua Christ is indeed Yahweh God incarnate. He is THE Son of God because He is the manifestation of God Himself, as it was promised in the Psalms and the prophets. This is better understood once the many passages from the Old Testament which also refer to these things are examined and considered, even if they were not all explicitly cited by John himself. The New Testament cannot be properly understood outside of the context provided by the Old Testament, and we sought to elucidate many of those passages as we presented John chapter 1 over the first five parts of this series.

The gospels of Luke and Matthew open with accounts of certain events from the birth and early life of Christ. But in the third chapter of each of those gospels there is the testimony of John the Baptist. The gospel of Mark, similar to that of John, says nothing of the birth or early years in the life of Christ, and opens with the testimony of John the Baptist. So the testimony of John is the event by which all four gospels open their descriptions of the beginning of the ministry of Christ. Doing so, all four gospels cite Isaiah 40:3, attributing the words to John as they are spoken in reference to Christ, where it describes “3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” and explains that John the Baptist was that voice. If John was that voice, then Yahshua Christ must be Yahweh incarnate, the God for whom he prepared the way.

Mark, in that first chapter, also cited Malachi 3:1 in reference to John the Baptist, where it says “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.” Yahshua Christ Himself had later cited this also, in reference to John, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 11 and Luke chapter 7. Both of these passages, from Malachi and from Isaiah, are prophecies of John the Baptist and of Yahshua Christ, and if John was the messenger to prepare the way before the Lord (Hebrew, adon) who would come to His temple, then Yahshua Christ is Yahweh Himself, who came to His temple in fulfillment of that prophecy. Once again, if we believe the testimony of Isaiah and Malachi, then Yahshua must be God incarnate.

On the Gospel of John, Part 4: The Lamb of God

Presenting Part 3 of this commentary on the Gospel of John, which was titled The Sons of God, we gave a full explanation of our translation of John 1:11-13, and we cannot sufficiently stress how important it is to understand the impact which one’s worldview can have upon one’s interpretation of Scripture. I also understand that these presentations may at times be very technical and hard to digest. However we must develop a scholarly basis for a proper understanding of the text before we can even begin to claim to understand the Bible. If one is persuaded by the commonly-accepted interpretations of the Jews concerning the ministry of Christ, then it is easy to accept the King James Version and other popular translations of these verses. So like a lamb being led to the slaughter, one may helplessly be led to believe that the universalist perspective of Scripture is true, and that all those who merely profess a belief in Jesus must therefore be accepted as having somehow become “sons of god” by a mere profession of their lips, and as if they could possibly even make that choice on their own.

However that position is actually in direct conflict with Scripture. Christ Himself had said, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 7, that “21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Likewise, the apostle James said that “19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” So we see that mere belief is not enough to somehow make one a child of God, even if it is a belief which is accompanied by “many wonderful works”. But if we believe that every word of God is true, and that the Scriptures do not conflict with themselves, then it is evident that these passages, along with many others found in the gospels, such as the parable of the tares of the field or the statement by Christ concerning plants which Yahweh did not plant, sufficiently indicate that the common interpretations of John 1:11-13 must be wrong.

On the Gospel of John, Part 2: The Light of the World

Introducing our presentation of the Gospel of John in the opening segment of this series, we gave evidence from the earliest post-apostolic Christian writers, the so-called Church Fathers, and from the texts of those books of our Bibles which are attributed to John, which is sufficient to demonstrate that one and the same John the apostle – the young man who of all the apostles had been closest to Christ – was indeed the author of the Revelation, the first epistle of John, and this Gospel. There was also circumstantial evidence given to help establish that John was indeed the author of the two shorter epistles which have been attributed to him from the earliest times.

Here we shall offer a brief summary of our discussion. Little is known of the life of John after the early chapters of Acts, and he last appears in Scripture in Jerusalem in 47 AD, in the events which are recorded in Acts chapter 15 and the early verses of Galatians chapter 2. Later in his life, ostensibly after the deaths of the elder James around 62 AD in Jerusalem and Paul of Tarsus about that same time in Rome, John is in Ephesus where he committed this Gospel to writing. Then during the reign of Domitian, some time after 81 AD John was exiled to Patmos on account of his Christian profession, which is where he received the Revelation. After the death of Domitian in 96 AD, John was able to return to Ephesus. If the Revelation was not already committed to writing, it certainly was after John’s return, which is indicated in the accounts of the early Christian writers. All of John’s three epistles were also written in Ephesus, and very likely around this late time, as John fulfilled the role of an elder and apostle to the Christian assemblies at Ephesus and the neighboring districts. This John had reportedly done until his death some time during the reign of Trajan, which began in 98 and ended in 117 AD. If John were 16 when the ministry of Christ began in 28 AD, he would have been no younger than 86 when he died.