August 21, 2009, 7:30 am by dc-agape.

John Chapter 4:43 – 5:1 – 15  

The Gospel of John is the only one that records Jesus’ trips to Jerusalem.  All the Synoptic Gospels only describe Jesus’ final “Triumphal” Entry.  In fact, John indicates that Jesus took many trips to Jerusalem.  Why would the other Gospel “forget” these events?  Did the other Gospel writers think that the events that occurred in Jerusalem were not important?  Or, on the other hand, is this a sign that they were not eyewitnesses?  They did not know what happened in Jerusalem because they were not there?

Attempting to find a chronological map of Jesus’ ministry turns up nothing.  Interestingly, most of the links require purchasing the “maps”.  How Christian of these websites!  But the only one that I have found that gives the flow of his travels does not indicate that Jesus went into Jerusalem!  Oddly, finding Paul’s missionary trip is as easy as this!  Why do we not have an exact map of Jesus’ trip…it was only between three and four years long?  We have four Gospels that are supposed to be eyewitness accounts of his life and ministry.  Why are his travels so mysterious that a simple map is unavailable?  Ah, yes, this would explain it; there is little harmony between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John!  This would certainly explain why making a map of Jesus’ ministry so difficult that people want you to purchase their hard work.  But isn’t odd that the ministry of Paul is so easy to trace?  Is it truly because the Apostles (except Paul) were so unlearned that they never bothered to make significant recording of Jesus’ ministry?  This of course makes no sense, these men knew the territory that Jesus ministry covered, it was their homeland, and all of them were required to travel most of the distance around Galilee and Jerusalem.  Doesn’t this just make the whole issue just a little bit odd?  The Word of God, and especially the ministry of Jesus, was the most important documents of the time!  Yet YHWH didn’t bother to ensure their accuracy?  And I do mean that Jesus’ ministry lacks accuracy because we cannot recreate his footsteps.  Should his footprints not be the easiest thing to recreate from the Bible?  Unless there is no unity between the four Gospels…

Anyways, this section of the Gospel tells of two miracles that Jesus performed that are not recorded in any other Gospel, even though John, Simon, Andrew, Philip and Nathanael were already disciples of Jesus (John 1:31-51).  In fact, a very strange thing occurs when you search for the word Apostle(s) in the NT…the Gospel of John never uses that word!  The author never distinguishes between disciples and Apostles, not one single time.  John does not seem to be concerned with such power struggles.  Yet the Synoptic Gospel and Paul push this topic relentlessly!  Yet again the Gospel of John sets itself apart from the rest of the NT.

Back to the miracles (not recorded in another Gospel).  Now the healing of the official’s son sounds very similar to this one in Matt 8:5-13.  Both men leave Jesus trusting that their son (servant) has been healed.  Both find out that this is the case after the return trip has begun but before reaching their destination.  But these are the only two examples of this type of faith in all the Gospels.  It is interesting here that the Study notes claim that the welcome that Jesus received was hollow.  And even Jesus points to this concept, yet immediately after this:

John 4:48 “Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

Yet the man took Jesus at his word and left.  Jesus disparages the man, yet the man trusts Jesus.  Odd isn’t it that Jesus has such a negative attitude towards someone that trusts him?

This miracle brings up another interesting point.  Jesus knows that humans require miracles to believe, yet today none (of this order) can be found to occur!  Sure prayer for finding lost keys works, and prayer for some medicine to be effective works, but nothing such as these miracles are displayed today.  Yet YHWH, this supreme being with omnipotence and omnipresence and omniscience, will not perform what he knows we need to believe!  So it was okey dokey to perform freewill destroying miracles two thousand years ago, but today it is not allowed?  Today we must go on faith, even though those who started the religion did not need to have faith for they saw the miracles themselves. 

The second miracle (that is not recorded in the other Gospels) is that of a blind, lame, and paralyzed man.  Yet even with all three of these maladies he knows when the cleansing pool is being stirred and attempts to enter!  How exactly is one lame and paralyzed?  Does not the paralysis make one lame?  And why would a blind paralyzed man even attempt to enter the pool when by the time he hears that this is occurring someone much more fit would have already entered!  Jesus, without the man knowing who he is, heals him.  So faith is not required for Jesus to work miracles.  Yet today we are told that if we do not have faith, we can never be saved!  I can only tell you that these things are very incongruous to the non-Christian of any faith or no faith. 

But the end of this episode is even more telling:

John 5:14 Later Jesus finds him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again.  Stop sinning or something worse will happen to you.”

How exactly can a man sin when he is blind, lame, and paralyzed for 38 years!  There is only one sin that the man can commit: not loving YHWH.  But can you blame him for not loving YHWH?  And he was at the temple when Jesus found him, looks like the man was attempting to make up for even that sin!  This passage seems very judgmental.  In fact, the entire section I just covered seems just a little to judgmental for one you people claim loves humanity.

Editorial Note (Aug 22, 2009):

Remember this is from the NIV translation of the Word of God.  If another translation disagrees with the NIV one has been translated improperly.  Which one do you end up trusting to teach you the “True” Word of God?
 

Posted in Gospel of John, Disciples, Freewill, Readings | Print | 13 Comments »

August 21, 2009, 7:26 am by dc-agape.

My apologies for not hitting publish yesterday!!!

John Chapter 4:1 – 42

Having read the entire section about the Samaritans, I cannot find a good place to break the posts.  I will attempt to keep this section short but this is a long section with a number of topics of interest.  The first interesting thing is this verse:

John 4:1-2 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.

This simple verse has extreme consequences to modern Christians, which I will attempt to touch upon shortly.  One of the greatest questions is whether the Samaritans are Jews or are they not?  It is quite a complete topic and I will most likely address it in a full post, but for this story, and for Jesus’ ministry in general, was Jesus biased (racist)?  The final topic that I want to bring up is the “harvest”.  For Jesus uses the concept of sowing and reaping to describe what his disciples are to do.

From John 4:1-2 notice that Jesus has followers and all of them are called disciples.  All the disciples were baptized.  And all the disciples were baptizing!  It was not just the Apostles (leaders) that were doing the baptizing.  This leads to a very important question: why, in modern Christianity, do only the religious leaders baptize? And yes, I know that a very small percent of churches allow others to baptize.  How did this Tradition of Man seep into the Church?  And is this Tradition proof that Christianity is now riddled with teachings that are not from Jesus?  How many more Traditions of Men are allowed to remain in the Church, just because “this is how it has always been”?  More importantly, how does this weaken the connection between YHWH and humans, when Traditions of Men interfere with YHWH’s desire and Jesus’ teachings?  To say the least the responsibility of the disciples (not just the Apostles) is worthy of a Biblical Topics post section, and I still plan on getting to it.

The situation with the Samaritans is very intriguing.  In almost every case Jesus is open to the Samaritans (John 4 Luke 9:52, Luke 10:25-37) he treats them just like the Jews of his time!  But for one odd verse:

Matt 10:5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans.

Yet we know that the Samaritans were Jews. In fact, they were more Israelite than the Jews.  You see, they were the ones that stayed in Israel (Northern Kingdom – 10 tribes) during the Assyrian Exile.  If intermarrying gentiles disqualifies you from being a Jew, then how can those that were exiled be considered Jews (during their depth of “sin” you know damn well they were intermarrying the Assyrians or later the Babylonians).  The Samaritans separated from the Jews in 880BCE.  Right about the time that all the newer OT books were being written.  So of course the Samaritans did not use the same Books of the OT that the “proper” Israelites used – they didn’t need to!  It would seem that Jesus was not the racist, no it was Matthew (or at least the author of the Gospel of Matthew) that was the racist!  Why else would the author of the Gospel of Matthew include a passage that is in direct opposition to Jesus’ own teachings?  For it certainly seems that Jesus attempted to teach that the Samaritans were equal to the Jews.

I do want to cover the “harvest”.  Jesus has clearly saved an entire Samaritan town (of Sychar) or at least a large number of the inhabitants.  During this episode, Jesus uses it to teach his disciples about what he calls the “harvest”.   He explains to his disciples that they are not just sowing the seeds but at the same time harvesting what others have worked so hard to bring to fruit.  Who exactly did the work that the first disciples will be harvesting?  It certainly cannot be them, for Jesus tells them that the harvest is already ready!  Some say that it was John the Baptist and his disciples, but this is a rather difficult argument.  For John’s ministry did not completely cover all of Israel.  Others claim that it was the work of the earlier prophets, but this is also difficult to interpret as the truth.  If this was the case then the Samaritans would not be ready for “harvest”.  That then leaves only one source: YHWH’s spirit.  If it is the Holy Spirit (I reaaallly need to get to this Biblical Topic) is the source of the sowing for the “harvest”…only one result is possible.  Freewill does not exist, for it takes the Holy Ghost (a supernatural agent) to prepare humans for the “harvest”.

Editorial Note (Aug 22, 2009):

Racism does not have to be directed at all other cultures.  It can be directed at one specific culture.  This is exactly how the Jews directed their racism to the Samaritans.

Posted in Holy Spirit, Gospel of John, Traditions of Men, Disciples, Freewill, Readings | Print | 10 Comments »