Biblical Commentary

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.

On the Gospel of John, Part 17: The Parable of the Feeding in the Wilderness

As it is recorded in John chapter 5, Yahshua Christ had made several bold assertions concerning His Own identity and His mission, and the authority which He had attested was given to Him from God Himself. Believing Christ, His assertions established the fact that He is the prophetic Son of the 2nd Psalm, the appointed Son prophesied by David who would ultimately rule over and judge the nations of the earth, and the very works which He was able to perform proved that His assertions were true. If Yahshua Christ is that Son of the 2nd Psalm, then He must also be the expected Messiah, a Son of Man who would be handed an everlasting kingdom by the Ancient of Days, as it is described in Daniel chapter 7. So it is fitting that God Incarnate referred to Himself as “the Son of Man”. Not believing Christ, His fantastic claims would indeed be seen as blasphemies by the religious authorities of the time. The Judaeans, being more concerned with the keeping of the law as they interpreted it, were blind to the plain truths revealed in the miracles which He was able to perform, and saw Him only as a blasphemer.

Later on in John chapter 5 Christ had asserted that Moses had written about Him, and that if one did not believe Him, then one can not truly believe Moses. Therefore if we are Christians, then what we now know as Judaism is a false religion, having been completely discredited by Christ just as it is discredited by Moses. The words of the prophets prove that Christ is true, and that He is the coming prophet of which Moses had written, as the apostles had also interpreted the words of Moses. In the Book of Daniel it is also written, that Jerusalem would be rebuilt after the destruction of the original city by the Babylonians, and then after a prescribed period of time, the rebuilt city would again be destroyed after the coming of the Messiah.

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.

When I had first written this, and a mistake I had made was pointed out to me by a friend, I thought I had better hold onto it, and give it more careful consideration, so here it is. Not to make excuses, but doing my best to present a serious and comprehensive Bible Commentary sometimes only hours after it is written, I guess I am going to make some mistakes. But it is my earnest intention to get it right, and make it stick when I publish it. What we call Christian Identity is really only Truth, and I pray I can continue to prove that through Scripture to the point where it is absolutely irrefutable.

On the Gospel of John, Part 15: The Sabbaths of God

Thus far in John Chapter 5 we saw Yahshua Christ return once again to Jerusalem, for an unidentified feast, and upon encountering a man who had spent 38 years hoping to be healed of his ailment at the pool called Bethzatha, or perhaps, Bethesda, He healed him and sent him on his way. The Pharisees, seeing the healed man walking away with his cot, chastised him for violating their Sabbath-day regulations. But upon learning why he carried his cot on the Sabbath, the Pharisees sought to know who had healed him, evidently seeing such a healing done on a Sabbath day as an even greater violation of their rules than the carrying of the cot. They were much more concerned for their legalistic views of the law than they were to see such a wonderful miracle where the man was healed after so long a time suffering, so they neglected to even consider the hand of God in his healing. But if Yahweh God was responsible for his healing, then there is a greater purpose for the Sabbaths than what the legalistic Pharisees would want to admit.

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.

I began this evening with a short discussion of Ten Years of Christogenea, which is found at the Christogenea Forum.

On the Gospel of John, Part 13: A Tale of Two Women

In our last presentation in this series, discussing the first 20 verses of John chapter 4, we gave some background into the history of Samaria from the time of the Assyrian deportations, in order to show that there were many Persians, Babylonians, Syrians and others who were resettled there by the ancient Assyrians at the height of their empire, and the Judaean historian Flavius Josephus generally referred to these new inhabitants as Cutheans. But, as we showed from the historical accounts of Scripture, there was also a significant number of remnant Israelites who had remained there, who had escaped the Assyrian captivity. Then in addition to these groups, there was also a large number of Levites and Judahites from Jerusalem who had relocated themselves to the area around Gerizim as early as the late 4th century BC, and who by this time could be called Judaeans. Many of these had mixed with the Cutheans, as Josephus had also explained. We also pointed out the fact that on at least a couple of occasions, Josephus certainly seemed to distinguish the inhabitants of Shechem and Gerizim from the peoples whom the Assyrians had imported. Then, around 330 BC, a second temple was built on Gerizim, and from that time a community of Judaeans and proselytes worshipped at Gerizim before that temple fell into disuse, over a period of about two hundred years. But even though the temple was abandoned, it is apparent that both remnant Israelites and the more recently introduced Judaeans had continued to inhabit the area.

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.”

On the Gospel of John, Part 11: Bride and Bridegroom

This is the fourth and, for now, the final presentation of our commentary on John chapter 3. In the three previous portions of this series we hope to have discussed adequately the conversation between Yahshua Christ and Nicodemus, the faithful but puzzled pharisee. We also hope to have established the Scriptural basis for what is “born from above”, which is the establishment by Yahweh of the ancient children of Israel into a peculiar and separate people living under His law. We saw that this was stated explicitly in the words of Solomon, in Wisdom chapter 19. However we also hope to have established that in the spiritual sense, the term is applicable to the wider Adamic race by the nature of their original creation, while Solomon used language that invokes the Genesis creation account to describe the establishment of Israel under the law at Sinai as a new aspect of God’s creation. So he wrote, as we may translate the Greek, “6 For the whole creation in its proper kind was fashioned again from above, serving the peculiar commandments that were given to them, that thy children might be kept without hurt.”

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.

On the Gospel of John, Part 9: The World of Salvation

Ancient Gnostic influences adversely infected early Christianity with wrongful ideas that basic words such as seed, father, son, brother, and house, among others, had other than plain meanings when they appeared in Scripture in the prophets or in the New Testament writings, and modern adherents to the organized church institutions routinely cite those writings without giving thought to the actual and literal meanings of such words. This allowed them to accept another false doctrine, which we shall call replacement theology, because the words of all the prophets and apostles could then be corrupted and imagined to apply to “whosoever”, to anyone other than those who are expressly intended by the Scriptures, so that in that manner, anyone who would comply with the church institutions could be imagined to be a party to the covenants which Yahweh had made with Israel. So it is also with another word, world, which they now imagine refers to the entire planet and to every thing in it, yet that concept is relatively new, and nothing could be further from the truth.

One cannot be a Gnostic, and be a true Christian. In order to be a Christian, and truly accept the Word of God in the Old Testament, which is also manifest in Christ, one must accept the meanings of the words of Scripture as they were understood by the writers of Scripture or by those who had spoken those words when the Scriptures were written. Abraham would never have believed in any so-called “spiritual seed”, but rather he was told that his seed would come out from his loins, from where we may expect it to come. To Isaiah and Jeremiah and the other prophets, a son was a genetic descendant, a brother was a man of shared parentage, seed was the collective of a man’s offspring, a tribe was an extended family unit, a father a male ancestor near or remote, and the words never represented a mere group of disparate and unrelated believers. For example, a man who was a son was a son first, and then whether he was believing and acted accordingly so that he would be entitled to an inheritance was secondary to his being a son.

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.

Our last segment of this series, titled On the Gospel of John, Part 6: The Wedding Feast at Cana, was presented here on July 6th. Now I shall resume with Part 7 before we travel again to East Tennessee in order to attend a League of the South event at Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park on September 29th. Yahweh willing, we will resume the series once more in mid-October, and stay with it through winter, hopefully completing it in early 2019.

On the Gospel of John, Part 7: Challenging Orthodoxy

Before commencing with our presentation and commentary on the Gospel of John, I have a short digression, and this will necessarily lead me to another and much longer digression. In our previous portions of this commentary I explained that some of the disciples of Yahshua Christ had at first been disciples of John the Baptist, and that they, namely Andrew the brother of Simon Peter and John himself, the author of this gospel, had sought Christ immediately after John the Baptist had declared Him to be the Lamb of God. Upon attaching themselves to Him, they introduced to Him Simon Peter. Immediately after that the small group returned to Galilee where Philip, Nathanael and the others – such as the younger James, the brother of John – were also introduced to Him. These opening chapters of the Gospel of John are the earliest records of the development of the association of Christ with His apostles.

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.

We apologize to the live listeners who did not hear the last 8 minutes of this podcast. Our streaming computer, which has been quite reliable these past few years, suddenly cut off and Windows 10 began updating itself. This behavior is, of course, contrary to the settings which are supposed to preclude it from doing that during a live program.

On the Gospel of John, Part 5: The Focus of the Disciple

All four of our Christian gospels are written in a very simple and forthright manner, and they describe very little outside of the interactions of Yahshua Christ with His disciples and the people who He had encountered directly, along with some of His teachings and the miracles which He had done, and, of course, His final clash with the authorities. While sometimes they mention a few significant historical figures or events which relate to the birth and life of Christ or the beginning of His ministry, little is described of the world outside of the immediate Gospel narrative. So there are no deep explanations or descriptions of history or current events, nor is there much concern for the political, economic or social conditions in Judaea or the greater part of the Roman empire.

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.

On the Gospel of John, Part 3: The Sons of God

In the opening portions of this commentary on the Gospel of John, we hope to have sufficiently illustrated from Old Testament Scriptures, as well as from the Revelation and other sources, the meanings of the assertions that Yahshua Christ is the Word made Flesh and the Light come into the World, assertions by which the apostle had poetically and confidently attested that Yahshua Christ was indeed Yahweh God Himself, the God of the Old Testament incarnate as a man, and that He was the true Messenger to man sweeping aside all of the false claims of antiquity. So we saw that John, attesting that Christ is the light come into the world, had also made an assertion in reference to Christ which had formerly been claimed by the great kings of antiquity, those of the Hittites, Babylonians, Egyptians and others, who had made that same claim for themselves, even imagining for themselves to be the incarnation of the Sun on earth. Later, in John chapter 12, Christ Himself is recorded as having originated the assertions which John has made for Him here, as the event actually preceded the record.

Then coming to verse 10 of this first chapter of John, we contended with the King James translation of the passage, which reads “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” The meaning of this passage clearly may have been different in the original understanding of the English of 1611, the word world now having a different meaning. Examining that word world, we came to the conclusion that the word would better be translated as society, since it does not refer to the entire planet and everything on it in the way that it is often interpreted today. There are passages in the classical Greek writings where the word appears in broad contexts and may be interpreted as universe, however that is not necessarily the manner in which it was used in the New Testament, and it was not always the manner in which the classical Greek writers had used the term...

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.

On the Gospel of John, Part 1: The Word Made Flesh

Christianity is Divine Truth which stands opposed to worldly philosophies. Therefore the LOGOS cannot be described in accordance with worldly philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Anyone who attempts to do so, fails miserably.

Here we shall endeavor a presentation and commentary of the Gospel of John. This Gospel is unlike any of the others, which parallel one another in many ways and which are for that reason called the Synoptic Gospels. None of the writers of these other gospels were witnesses to the entire ministry of Christ, and therefore they also relied on accounts provided by others, in whole or in part. Before discussing John, we shall explain this briefly, but we must warn that the documentation or reasoning which supports these brief explanations is found throughout our other commentaries, and we can not repeat it all here. We will, however, see some of our evidence in the words of the early Christian writers as we cite them in our discussion of John.

Ecclesiastes, Part 8: Even Vanity is Vanity

It seems to be often overlooked, that the first syllable in the word culture is cult. The first definition of culture listed in the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary is “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time.” Our definition would be a little different, but the point should be made.

Historically, in societies which are free of tyranny, the people shared a common origin, myth, tradition, and religious practice, which was actually a part of their daily lives from early childhood. The values of their society were ingrained into them during their educational process, taught to them by their parents from infancy. What to think about God, life, death, morality and sin, the people around them, other nations and races, all of these things are taught them in their upbringing, and are taught consistently in every phase of life. But tyrannies are generally compelled to codify and enforce their own religious beliefs and practices by either force or law, when they have objectives which conflict with the values of the organic nation over which they rule. For this reason, in chapter 16 of the Book of Acts, we see where certain Roman citizens were confronted with the Christian Gospel and they complained to the magistrates and said “These men agitate our city, being Judaeans, and they declare customs which are not lawful for us to receive nor to do, being Romans!”

Ecclesiastes, Part 7: The Rhetoric of the Skeptic

As we have already seen in our earlier presentations of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher frequently employs skepticism as a method of teaching, and he also uses much repetition by which he can introduce new aspects for each of the subjects upon which he lectures. So here once again, in chapter 9 of the work, we have more skepticism and further repetition as he returns to topics which he had already discussed in the earlier chapters of the work.

But now his skepticism is magnified beyond pessimism, where he expresses an attitude of nihilism, and it is apparent that this too is a rhetorical prevarication, since it stands in contradiction to the Preacher’s earlier declarations concerning the works of men and the judgment of God. For example, in chapter 3 the Preacher had said: “17 I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work”, or for every deed.

Now he shall once again urge men to consider God and judgment and the necessity of obedience to God for reason of judgment in Ecclesiastes chapter 12. But he only hints at these things here in this chapter, for instance in verse 8 where he exhorts his readers to “Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.” The reasons for such an exhortation are not given explicitly until we come to his final conclusions in chapter 12. In the meantime, the Preacher is using skepticism and nihilism as rhetorical devices, and his true purpose is to illustrate the vanity of man and the futility of life without God. We must also remember that the Preacher had already proclaimed that it was God Himself who purposely subjected man to vanity, in order to be exercised in travail, in chapters 1 (1:13) and 3 (3:10) of this work, and therefore there must be a greater purpose for the exercise.