life of christ

i think back to January. Before the beginning of the class. I knew a lot about Jesus. I knew what I had learned in Sunday School, devotions and a couple classes here had taught me. Never before was I taught about the large controversry over finding the historical facts about who Jesus was, how he was and so on. The fact some people believe Jesus only said a minority of what is in our Gospels seems outrageous. Though I am not completely educated in the terms of form criticism, source criticism, and redaction criticism, I do have faith that Jesus did speak these things...except maybe then longer ending of Mark which I would be able to figure out if I had a knowledge of Greek New Testament writings. My own personal opinion of this matter of the Jesus Seminar is that Jesus did say these things, probably not word for word as the evangelicals have them, but then again with the power of the Holy Spirit it would be possible right? Well that's going back to defaulting to power of the Holy Spirit. Anyway, my opinion is that Jesus said these things and much more. Probably so much more was taught by him. I do believe what we have of Jesus sayings is sufficient for me to live a life that honors God...once Jesus took away my sin that is.

Which way to go, left or right?

God is so amazing. Peter denied knowing Jesus THREE times before the rooster crowed. The very thing Jesus called him to do, follow me. Highschool students in Columbine, CO had more guts than Peter did. Those students really did die with Christ. Peter, after seeing what he had done, breaks down into tears. He repented of his sinful act to become the eventual leader of the early church. We blame Peter so much, but think about how much he learned from this experience and was able to use later. There are two lessons i grab from the surface of this text. First, God is merciful and forgives us of our sin. If we are faithful he will use us to great things for his glory. Second, we should not bring ourselves down to depression like Judas did. Peter shows us how to learn from our mistakes and give God all the glory in the future. I will not make a statement that I would never deny Jesus like Peter was because I have never been faced with an environment like he was. I love God. I love Jesus. I want to be like Peter because he was a great preacher, learned from his mistakes, and gave the glory to God. Not to mention he was homeboys with Jesus.

Christmas shopping or Worshipping God?

I thought about the Triumphal Entry a lot since Dr. Foster told us about how it wasn't anything special for the people to be celebrating while Jesus came in. It was a triumphal entry, but it was for all people coming into the city of Jerusalem. Jesus was special and deserved a New York City caliber parade but most of the people didn't know who He really was and is. I always heard that "it was a big rush" and it always seemed to be compared to the mall on Saturday before Christmas but Dr. Foster was right in saying we didn't understand the size of the people there. I now have a "better" grasp on how it was instead of my church play version of 12 people walking down the aisle as a crowd. This is a wall to wall on the streets affair, and it wasn't just for a day during rush hour, this had to be for days. People were camping everywhere, most there to truly worship the Lord God that provides. I love the crowds here. They are all happy, but the crowds for Christmas are bitter because they do not understand the meaning of why they are even shopping other than because someone else is buying me a present i must repay.

Oh that's why they believe that.

I like all others often wondered where the Jews got their idea of Christ being this great king. I knew they all knew the scriptures and what I read never said he was going to overthrow the Roman government. I would think, "do they just not trust the old testament scriptures?" I was completely at a loss to figure out why on earth they believed these things about the Messiah, and treated Jesus so unfairly. It is almost as Dr. Foster answered every question that I had about this when he told us about the books in the Pseudapigripha. All the books said that he will come to judge the unrighteous and though John 3:17 says he did not come to condemn the world i can see in some instances it seems as though he did judge, not final judgement but did judge. He judged the Pharisees as hypocrites. They also spoke about preserving the ones that do believe basically and I think this is done through his death on the cross. Some of the Pseudipigripha books may have just been misinterpretted by the Jews. At any rate, Jesus did not come and set up a physical throne or over throw the roman government, though he has a thrown in every believer on this earth's heart and in 381 B.C. the roman empire is a christian nation. I believe he rules over that. My last question is what is the inspiration and authority of the pseudapigripha.

7 hours of fun

You can ask almost anyone around me friday morning and noon that i was scared out of my mind of what we were going to have to do for this seminar. I knew i was going to get into this room of genius ministry students and not be able to participate due to my lack of knowledge. This is my greatest fear: to not know enough of the Bible. When we began our session and got organized i was beginning to feel better. When Andy Miller, Michael Carpenter, Bobby Dixon, Steven Price and I got together to remember all the Beatitudes and the sermon on the mount I was feeling better and better. Through out each stage of the night I became more and more comfortable. I believe that through this I realized I have more knowledge of the gospels than I thought that I did. However, I still feel like I need to memorize more instead of just having a general idea of what went on.

I really enjoyed being with my fellow classmates. Seeing different sides of each. Learning how much others know. I was blown away by the knowledge of a few of my classmates. This was one of the most blessing times of my life and I shall not forget it. I wish I could get my church to see if they could do something like this to learn how much we do and do not know about the Bible and through that be able to address those things that we do not know. This project helped me gain more knowledge of the Bible and my lack of knowledge of the Bible, develop leadership and team work skills, and have fun. Thank you Dr. Foster for having projects to assist me in knowing the scriptures better.

Jesus have defiled hands?

I've been researching my topic for my paper and am excited that we are about to talk about my passage in class soon and i've read over and over about Mark 7 in which Christ is confronted about the actions or lack thereof the disciples take before eating. The Pharisees, doing their best to help all people remain pure, asked Jesus why his followers did not wash their hands ritually before they ate. At first reading this I always seem to want to make the pharisees the bad guy of the stories and fail to see their side. However as Dr. Foster said in class monday, the Pharisees were just doing their best to keep people from breaking the torah and the oral law of men. So as I study and research i still see the Pharisees as wrong, but trying to do their best to honor God. Maybe they weren't the hypocritical Jesse Jacksons of the day. They were more faithful toward God than most. All they did wrong was place too much authority on their oral law and traditions. Sometimes this may have led them to be away from truely worshipping God, but they were doing their best to remain pure.

Ritual Purity of foods

Once again I am amazed at the Qumran and Essenes. I read "Clean and Unclean" and the part the kept my attention the most is the extremity of their ritual practices. It says that the Essenes and Qumran peoples would not eat or drink anything belonging to non-members. Also the new members of the people groups were not allowed to eat the purified food immediatly. The article did not specify how long they had to be a member to take part, only not immediatly. So this changed my perspective of how odd it was that Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners. In the past I thought of it in todays worldview not that land and those people's worldview. They saw it as unclean to eat with the sinners, not just odd. If i was out at Cafe Bueno sipping some hot chocolate, i don't like coffee, with the town druggie, some people now might think i'm either falling away from Christ, or witnessing, but we do not think in the clean vs. unclean standards.

Qumran....not post of the weAk

i felt the need to read in the Holman Bible Atlas about the Dead Sea Scrolls. it told about the qumran people that lived in the area and how much they were like the essenes. i found it interesting in their views of the coming messiah that they believed there would be 1 prophet and two messiahs. so i wonder what their reaction to Jesus the Messiah was during his ministry. the most intriguing part of the article that i found was to be admitted to the Qumran people group one had to "face a two-or possibly three-year period of examinations, instruction, and discipline." they had to be trained to be a Qumran because i believe it was demanding, they shared everything so that no one was more wealthy than another. I do appreciate the opportunity to come to Williams and be a part of a 4 or possibly 5 year period of examinations (papers!!), instuction and discipline so that i can be more prepared to disciple people i come in contact with. the article didn't say a whole lot about the actual scrolls except they were found after 1947 and onward, "some manuscripts are virtually intact, such as Isaiah; many more are fragmentary. Only Esther remains unrepresented amoung the Old Testament materials."

BOOM!!!

THIS E-MAIL HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED AS A Post of the weAk! 1/17/07

Repent and sin no more! -rlf

first you hear the tribal drums pounding softly, then a shadow appears on the stage, he has water dripping from his head to make his hair look shiny. he begins to reach to the sky with both arms as if reaching for God's own strength in his upcoming battle. then he thrusts his arms towards the ground, the drums BOOM with excitement and fire begins surround him. and the announcer says "weighing in 240 pounds, 6'3'' Judas THE HAMMER!!! the crowd screams with excitement and little kids hold those blow up hammers that squeak when you hit things, just to show that judas does have a soft side to him. and then judas faught against the world champion Antiochus!! this rivalry has heatened quickly, as antiochus has already put our judas' dad and brothers for their careers of wrestling. .................3 years later Antiochus was defeated!!