Archive for December, 2009

Hey Rod Parsley!

Posted by Christoferl in Commentaries on December 31, 2009

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Blind Ignorance…

Posted by Christoferl in Commentaries on December 28, 2009

Matthew 5:17-20 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Many people read this passage and they take it to mean that we are still under the law… there a few things that trouble me concerning this interpretation… Jesus came to fulfill the Law – and by following Him – we too fulfill the Law through Him… yet time and time again we see Him in trouble with the Pharisees because He did what they deemed to be unlawful. How many ways would a Pharisee have said He broke the law I wonder? Clearly, fulfilling the law was not about being a Jew – but instead – was about being a man of God through obedience to God’s true desires.

Further more – I can’t help but think about what Jesus meant when He said till the heaven and the earth disappear… if you think about it – when He died and went to Sheol – Tartarus – the place of the dead – and ministered to the lost souls who perished before He came to the earth, during those three days – had not the heaven and the earth passed away for Him? From what I understand of the Jewish after life – heaven and earth had no part of it – but instead the dead were in a place called Sheol – while this is the ‘grave’ – many Jews believed was a place for the afterlife of the dead in general, with different chambers within it for the just and the unjust. Many Christians call this place Hell – but what ever it should be called – it certainly was apart from heaven and earth… Was that the amazing moment in time that the old covenant gave way to the new – or am I just reading too much into the words of Christ?

Maybe your asking – What about when Jesus said ‘until everything is accomplished?’ What is it He is referring to? Is He speaking about the prophecies of His life, death, and resurrection? Is He speaking about the end of the world and judgment day? Is there a piece to this puzzle still missing? No no no – I believe he is speaking about the prophecies concerning His life, death and resurrection…

Perhaps the most obvious problem, though it is generally ignored, is that Jesus says “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” First , I find it interesting that even those who break ‘these commandments’ and teach others to break them are found in heaven – even if they are called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven…’ does this not speak to the great forgiveness of Christ? But something even more curious are the terms ‘these commandments’ and ‘these commands’… Many will tell you that Jesus was referring to the Law of Moses when He says these commandments… but if this is so then we have a huge problem in understanding what follows this statement in Matthew 5:21-48… I am referring to the commandments found within the Sermon on the Mount…

Mt 5:21-26 Speaks of murder, and it focuses on how the Law says anyone who murders is subject to judgement… but Jesus changes this command and makes it so that anger against your brother is not only in danger of judgement – but also Hellfire! Jesus calls us to settle our differences lest we become judged by them… While many who want to cling to the Law of Moses will say this is just an amplification of the Law – the fact is – it is a different commandment completely. While one can see how they relate to each other… saying this is merely an amplified commandment is like saying a an old hand crank telephone is the same as latest iphone…

Mt 5:27-30 speaks of adultery – and Jesus says if you look in lust you’ve already committed adultery in your heart! Again – this is not merely an amplification – its a different commandment!

Mt 5:31-32 is one of the most striking differences between ‘these commands’ of the sermon on the mount and the commandments of the Law… in Jewish law – the Jewish husband could divorce his wife for most any reason he wished… here – Jesus tells us to divorce for any reason other than adultery is wrong! Elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 19:18) Jesus actually says Moses wrote this commandment because of the hard hearts of the Jews, but that this is not how it was in the beginning of mankind – nor is it how God wants it to be. Clearly – this is a dramatic change to the Law of Moses. It also makes me wonder if Jesus is saying Moses allowed it and wrote it – but this wasn’t what God desired – and thus – we see the influence of a man in the Torah where we are told by Jews and Christians a like that its all God. Of course – thats a whole other topic that I won’t even pretend to tackle in this article.

In Mt 5:33-37, we see Jesus talking about how the Jews were commanded to keep their oaths… but Jesus actually tells us not to make oaths at all – to simply let our yes be yes and our no be no – and He even goes so far to say that anything beyond yes or no is from the evil one… this too is a dramatic change from the Law of Moses… I have heard many excuses trying to dismiss this very direct commandment, but if you read it at face value – there is no excuse for continuing to make oaths… yes or no – anything else is from the evil one…

Mt 5:38-42 speaks of the famous law – eye for an eye – tooth for a tooth – but Jesus changes this completely by invalidating the old terms of so-called justice and replacing them with a call to forgive – even to the point of humiliating those who would do evil against you.

Mt 5:43-48 specifically challenges the idea that we should love our neighbors and hate our enemies… calling us to love even our enemies… this is more about the interpretation of the Law than a new law I suppose – but its important to see that it is completely different than what the Jews had been doing for the most part…

And so – in my humble opinion, the biggest problem with Matthew 5 is that if you believe that Jesus was demanding we keep the Old Testament Law – the Torah – then He is breaking His own commandment by teaching different things in the sermon on the mount, is He not?

In my opinion, Jesus is saying the Old Covenant had not yet passed – but when it does these commandments He that He gave on the mount in this sermon – these are these things we are to follow… it’s not about religion people… its about relationship…

In Matthew 27:51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom…

Was this not the moment Jesus gave His Spirit up in death… Could this be the very moment the transfer from old to new started… confirmed by His rising from the dead three days later… doesn’t it seem far more likely that this is the moment the New Covenant began? For more one this check out the book of Hebrews… the old has passed away and the new risen in its place…

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God Is Greater Than a Gender.

Posted by Christoferl in Bible Study, Commentaries, YT Related on December 24, 2009

Ok – so I’ve been trying to work through Monica Dennington’s video series where she is trying to convince us that the Holy Spirit is a woman over at TicTocMinistries – When someone teaches something so radical that it could change everything I believe – I want to get to the bottom of it… I did the same thing with my study of Hell – though I have learned a lot about how to approach a topic since then. In the Hellfire series I produced, I tried to explore each and every possibility – but this time, I need only point out the truth and be done with it. There are already dozens of Brothers and Sisters in Christ who have pointed out many of the errors in her teachings these are just a few points I think need illuminating…

Luke 1:35
35The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

Is This the TicToc’s Trinity?

As far as I know – Monica is claiming that in Luke 1 – when The Holy Spirit – or the mother god – came upon Mary, and the power of the Most High – or the father god – overshadowed Mary – the holy one, Jesus Christ – the Son of God was born – conceived through the union of the two mother and father gods. This defies everything that we know in scripture concerning the eternal nature of Christ… this ignores One God… it changes everything… if this were the truth, it would make the Gnostics right and everything we know about God completely tainted… this would be a knockout blow to modern day Christianity.

Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Monica insists that the nature of God is revealed through a father, mother, and child… she believes that is revealed through creation… but I’m here to tell you… that ain’t how it was in the beginning!

There is a greater truth to the creation of life – one that I believe points to the true nature of the triune God – and it has nothing to do with a father and mother having children. While its true – most – but not all – earthly life forms procreate through male to female relations – we need to remember that when God first made life – there was no mother or father, there was no man and no woman who created Adam through relations – there was only God Himself – life didn’t start with two joining to become one – but instead – it began with God speaking life into existence. Check out the way cells multiply… when God created life, it was up and running, not in the form of its infant self. When asked, what came first – the chicken or the egg… one can only conclude the chicken – because an egg alone would have no mother to lay on it till hatching… see what Im saying?

Now – I have been asked to prayerfully look at Genesis 1:26-27 by friends – it reads:

Genesis 1
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Two things – first – the wording of ‘in our image’ doesn’t tell us Father Son and Holy Spirit nor does it say Father Mother Son. This wording only implies two or more. Second – understanding Genesis 1:26-27 I have to understand this is a summary of the events that happened in Genesis 2:4-25, where Adam was first created and sent out to work the Garden of Eden… He was there long enough that God decided Adam should have a helper… none of the animals were suitable thus the woman was created…

When God first made mankind He made mankind masculine… He made Adam. Adam was not like the animals – but instead was to be master over them… God decided Adam needed a helper, and thus God made woman out of man – perhaps part of Adam’s feminism was taken from masculine form of mankind? God took a being with a soul and literally used a portion of the first to create the second… was that division just Adam’s flesh or did part of his soul go with that flesh? Could this have anything to do with the differences between men and women? You know, the whole women are from venus men are from mars thing? Is this why when two come together they become one?

What ever happened at that moment – it seems clear that God made Adam as a man. Without a mother… from dust and dirt and His breath. When a man and woman come together as husband and wife they become one… but that coming together is physical… in the spirit there is no need to come together because the unity already exists without intercourse… In the flesh – we suffer from the fall of man from the garden… discord and disagreement is our very nature – both male and female – we are prone to bickering and dissension– yet in contrast, the Father Son and Holy Spirit agree as one (1 John 5:7-8)!

Taking this study very seriously, I also found another interesting hint as to the role of gender in the spirit…
Mark 12:25When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

When we rise from the dead – marriage – the union of man and woman in the flesh – will be no more – we will be like the angels in heaven… now, let me ask – have you ever seen a female angel in the scriptures? No. What does this teach us about the Spiritual? If there is no gender in the spirit – can God – who is spirit – truly be a man or a woman? There can truly be no such thing as gender in the spirit because there is no flesh in the spirit… there are no reproductive organs… the spirit is not hindered by the trappings of the flesh.

Finally, to suggest that God doesn’t have a feminine nature is naive… there is no greater comforter than Him – no one of greater love, patience, nurturing and forgiveness than God… all of these qualities could be called the greatest qualities of a mother… but He also is masculine – and the greatest of all Fathers – God is love! He is perfect! Complete! Jesus was perfect – yet needed no woman as His wife. He was the only sinless human ever to live – the only one worthy…

Attempting to assign a gender to God is meaningless. The only reason to refer to God as a He is because He has revealed Himself as a He. I would assume this is because the male is considered superior. I’m not saying a woman can’t be better, stronger, smarter, or more mature than a man… but through over the ages, men have had the advantages… man is superior to woman. God is the Lord of Lord, the King of Kings, the Good Shepherd… He is not the Queen of Queens, or the Good Maid… never the less – He is not actually a ‘man’ either – as testified in Numbers 23:19 which explictedly says God is not a man! God is above gender folks – whether He is the Father Son or Holy Spirit…

Here’s another huge problem with Monica’s theory. If the Holy Spirit is a woman – the wife of God and mother of Christ – then I find it impossible to believe that Jesus and the Apostles wouldn’t have made that clear…

Mark 3: 31-35
31Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him.
32A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
33″Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
34Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!
35Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Now, one could read into that passage and suggest the Holy Spirit was among them and thus Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit and His disciples… but Jesus, who readily speaks of His Father on many occasions in the Gospels surely would’ve spoken of His Holy Mother if that was something that God wanted to relate to us. Surely Jesus would’ve have honored His ‘parents’ if that were the case… we have to go by what the scriptures says – not what false teaching might want it to say… and we have to recognize when scripture is silent on a topic, it can scream volumes… if the Holy Spirit was to be thought of as the mother of Christ – He would have spoken so richly of her that it could not be suppressed through translation as Monica suggests.

John 17:5
And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

If that is so than Jesus had to be lying when He recalled the glory He had with His Father before the world began… Jesus wasn’t created in the Spirit when He was put into Mary’s womb… He was BEFORE the world began… He left heaven to step into His human body.

Colossians 1:16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

If Monica is right – then Paul is way wrong when he wrote about Jesus being the creator, how can a creation not yet created create anything? Clearly – Monica is wrong… not Jesus and Paul…

What’s really sad is that all of this is a mute point…

Galatians 3:26-29 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise. ‘

All of us who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in the Spirit – and in the spirit there is no Jew or Gentile – and there is no what? No male or female? Say what? We are struggling so intensely with gender in the flesh that we want to drag it into the spirit as well?
Why Monica would make such a statement – so boldly – when it is so irrelevant? She says we need to understand and agree with her theory that the Trinity is a holy family in order to truly understand and know God – but that is a complete and utter lie – to truly know God is to love above and beyond these petty issues of gender – When she goes so far as to try to assign God different genders within the Godhead – that is to try box God into the restrictions of flesh! She is as guilty as those who demand that God is a man! Again – God is only a He because of the way He has chosen to be a He.

I completely understand a woman’s desire to have her finer qualities recognized within the character of God… and I do recognize these qualities – but to do so in a manner that suggests that God has a wife, and she is part of the trinity – is to trivialize the issue – and I fear the motive behind such an action is self serving and it is an attempt to circumvent the intended order of a family as defined by God through Paul…

Ephesians 5:22-33
22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—
30for we are members of his body.
31″For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Though this often gets abused by men in the church – its clear – husbands are the leader of the family, and wives must submit to them – but men must love their wives as Christ loves the church – and Christ loves us so much He died for us – He exhibits the greatest love, patience and forgiveness of all… the way we treat our wives will expose our weaknesses and strengths in Christ Jesus… Jesus told the Apostles to serve others – how much more should we serve our wives?

In the end it comes down to unity – there is no sexism in Heaven because there is no gender in the spirit… to teach otherwise is to teach a heresy which has been around since the gnostics… if you truly want to know the divine nature of God, ask God – and hear His voice… run from any teaching that tells you the Holy Spirit is the wife of God… despite their many words – despite their clever workings of the original languages – despite the fact that these false teachers seem to have fresh insight and information – they are just rehashing heresies of old… Our God is greater than our genders…

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Exercising With Scripture

Posted by Christoferl in Commentaries, Testimonies on December 15, 2009

Recently, I was challenged by a brother in Christ who was counseling me through a difficult issue. He asked me to write down a verse every day, keep it in my pocket, and reflect on it throughout the day. This seemed like a rather bizarre request to me, as I am one who reads his Bible daily, however, I submitted to his request thinking, what harm could it do?

Let me tell you something my friends, this has been a marvelous experience. Taking one verse (sometimes two) and just focusing on them can really open up deeper meanings found in them. Sometimes a principle will strike through – other times you see something that you somehow missed despite reading the passage several times before in your previous readings.

Anyways, I just wanted to pass this little exercise along to you. Maybe you’ve already tried something like this – maybe you haven’t – but I am giving it my endorsement for anyone seeking to hear the voice of God a little more clearly.

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