//Here’s a question that intrigued early Christians. At what point did Jesus become God’s son?

We all know the birth stories in Matthew and Luke, and their claim that God impregnated Mary and conceived a son. Surely that is the moment Jesus became the Son of God?

Another, probably earlier, tradition comes from the book of John. John mentions nothing at all about a virgin birth, and instead tells how Jesus was anointed as the Son of God at his baptism. (Technically, John doesn’t mention the baptism itself, but we may infer the event.) So could this be the day? Many early Christians accepted this “adoptionist” explanation and saw nothing heretical in it.

An even earlier tradition is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans. In today’s verse, Paul cites a probable creed that Jesus was born of the flesh (of the lineage of King David) and became the Son of God only after the resurrection! Surprisingly, the book of Acts, which was authored by the same person as the Gospel of Luke and its virgin birth story, appears to side with Paul! 

“God has fulfilled this for us their children, in that He has raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second Psalm: ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.’ And that He raised Him from the dead …” – Acts 13:32-33

Scholars generally consider this passage in Acts to be a primitive tradition that long predated the day it was copied by Luke. Most likely, the understanding was that Jesus rose from the dead and immediately ascended to heaven, having been adopted by God. So we have several traditions that show a bit of a progression:

//We’re discussing the identification of Babylon in the book of Revelation, and why it should be recognized not as Rome but as Jerusalem. Yesterday, I pointed out how Babylon is called “the great city.” A few more verses should settle the argument once and for all that Babylon, the “great city,” equates to Jerusalem.

Today’s verse speaks of the death of two witnesses in the city of Jerusalem. They are killed and left in the streets of the “great city,” where also their Lord was crucified. How could any identification be more clear than this? So let’s nail this down tight, by discussing every verse in Revelation that refers to “the great city.”

Revelation depicts a great city gone wrong, who flirts with the Beast (Rome), and who is destroyed for her iniquities. Unquestionably, this city is Jerusalem itself. John of Patmos witnessed that destruction, and wrote about it in his famous apocalypse. This is the single most important insight to understanding Revelation.

You can read more about Revelation’s historical connections in my book: http://www.thewayithappened.com

//We’re still talking about the identification of the Whore of Babylon, and why we should recognize her as Jerusalem, not the city of Rome.

In today’s verse, God “remembers” Babylon, a very covenantal phrase, adding evidence that Revelation meant its Babylon to be Jerusalem, not Rome or some current-day city. In the Old Testament, whenever God “remembers” the sins of a nation, he refers to a covenantal promise. Of course, no such covenant ever existed with any nation except Israel. Moreover, Revelation is nearly a chapter-by-chapter rewrite of the book of Ezekiel, and if you read Revelation chapters 17 and 18 about Babylon carefully, you’ll note many parallels with Ezekiel chapter 16, which concerns Jerusalem. I won’t bore you with details; feel free to study this on your own, if interested. This allusion to Jerusalem could not have gone unnoticed by Revelation’s intended first-century audience.

But can we really label Jerusalem a “great city,” as today’s verse reads? Pliny the Elder describes Jerusalem as “by far the most famous city of the ancient Orient,” but had its dreams shriveled to a fretful reminiscence of Solomon’s day? Josephus, when describing the utter desolation of Jerusalem after the war of 70 CE writes, “Where is that great city, the metropolis of the Jewish nation, which was fortified by so many walls round about, which had so many fortresses and large towers to defend it, which could hardly contain the instruments prepared for war, and which had so many tens of thousands of men to fight for it? Where is this city that was believed to have God himself inhabiting therein? It is now demolished to its very foundation.”

If you read my book about Revelation, you’ll recognize that John of Patmos echoes a lot of the same language as Josephus in his book, The War of the Jews. Here is one more instance, discussing the “great city” and her destruction, as prophesied by Revelation.

God was required by his covenant to destroy the “great city” of Jerusalem, and in 70 CE he does so. More tomorrow, when I’ll  bring up some verses that leave little doubt about this interpretation.

//Paul remains such an enigma to me! Driven beyond the endurance of superheroes, his influence in undeniable. But is it fair to label Paul the founder of Christianity?

Two books I’ve reviewed recently sit side-by-side in my library. I love studying from all angles, and these are five-star books that deal with Paul’s accomplishment from two different directions: Barrie Wilson’s How Jesus Became Christian and Tom Holland’s Contours of Pauline Theology.

You can find lots of books on the topic of Paul’s brand of Christianity. Some are happy to call Paul a founder, arguing that the message he espoused radically differed from the message of other apostles. Paul’s influence among the Gentiles, they insist, overwhelmed that of the more Jewish version of Christianity centered in Jerusalem. 

Certainly Paul stood up for his understanding and adamantly preached his beliefs. In today’s verse, Paul makes clear his authority to preach: Jesus, himself, gave him his revelation! Nobody taught him this stuff. It didn’t come from the Jerusalem church or from any other men.

When those irritants back in Jerusalem accused Paul of lacking credentials to speak for Jesus, he angrily insisted “I am not in the least inferior to the ‘super-apostles'” (2 Corinthians 12:11). Earlier in this chapter Paul tells how he was caught up to the third heaven (whether in or out of body, he wasn’t sure) and how, there in Paradise, he “heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.”

One can hardly blame Paul for standing true to his convictions!

When we grew up, we took down the “No girls allowed” sign. Turns out they’re human, too. We swapped the secret handshakes for embraces, and the rituals lost meaning.

I’m not Jewish, but I wonder … do Jews sometimes look back on their history with the same sort of embarrassed nostalgia? All that playing with animal blood, all the dress-up games, all those rules, meant only to draw lines in the desert sand delineating the Hebrew Club? 

//These are Matthew’s words, and it seemed to be an understanding shared by Paul and others. The Gospel must be preached to the ends of the earth before Jesus comes back. Matthew, in telling us what to expect before the Lord’s return, lists only one “sign of the times” for us to anticipate: the completion of this world mission. We’ve even made up a name for this evangelism … we call it the “Great Commission.” 

Paul seemed to consider himself the primary evangelist in this movement, concerned that he had little time to accomplish the task before Jesus arrived, and was on his way to Spain, the very end of the earth, to complete this purpose before his plans were finally derailed in Rome, where he would presumably spend the rest of his life. 

Whether or not Paul himself felt satisfied with his success, later biblical writers would agree that Paul properly fulfilled his commission. The author of Colossians would write, Every creature under heaven has heard the Word, and all over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing.

The book of Titus would affirm that Paul succeeded in his mission: For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, and as such the time had come, and they sought that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the Great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.

The book of Timothy also affirms that Paul’s world mission has come to a close, and now the end would arrive quickly.

But life goes on. I guess the world turned out to be a little bigger than they thought.

//Ever wonder where the four corners of the earth hide? It’s a little hard to find a corner on a sphere. Even if we grant that Bible writers imagined a flat earth, they never imagined it to be square! Take this verse in Isaiah 40:22, speaking of God:

He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

Thus, God chooses a vantage point above a circular earth, where he can keep an eye on all its inhabitants. He stretches the heavens over the earth like a tent, protecting a flat surface. This matches the description in Genesis of a flat earth, covered by a dome of sorts. The sun and the moon ride tracks daily across the underside of the dome. Yes, the Bible often assumes a flat earth. But where are its corners?

Let me ask you this. When you hear the phrase today, do you imagine corners on the earth? Of course not. It’s a figure of speech, meaning from all over the globe. It was a figure of speech in Bible days as well (see Ezekiel 7:2 and Isaiah 11:12) where it came to mean from all over the flat circle of the earth. Tell any ancient Hebrew that the earth is square, and he’ll laugh you to scorn. You don’t see any corner edges in the sky dome, do you? 

Moreover, the Hebrew word Kaneph is better translated as “edge” or “extremity” than “corner,” for which more precise Hebrew words exist if the writers really meant corner. And “four” in today’s verse surely refers to the four directions, North, South, East, and West, as attested by its reference to the four winds. There is no insinuation that the land has four sides. In fact, anyone can see that the creation continues on beyond the edge of the land, and can feel the winds originating from over the water beyond the land’s edge.

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.

//This is a long-standing debate, and while I don’t pretend to have the answer, I will weigh in with my guess after presenting some of the verses Bible readers point to.

1 Samuel 18:1, After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. (NIV)

1 Samuel 19:1, And Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants, that they should kill David. But Jonathan, Saul’s son, delighted much in David. (RSV)

The ambiguity of these passages is evident. The problem, of course, is that homosexuality is a sin in the Bible. Leviticus 20:13 states this plainly: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death. This new law was recorded hundreds of years after David lived, and as such, the law could not have impacted its past, but it could have impacted the time in which the scriptures were written down! At the time the stories of David were collated into scripture, a definite anti-gay bias existed, and this may have affected how the stories were presented. The language may have been purposefully toned down.

I promised my own guess, and it’s this: David should not be called gay. As best I can tell, there simply was no clear distinction at the time he lived; no designation of gays or straights, simply a sliding scale of preference, and everybody fell somewhere on that scale. How gay sex grew into such an abomination in the eyes of Israel’s later lawmakers, I don’t know.

//Maybe you can help me with today’s topic. We’re instructed to try the spirits to see if they mesh with God. If they don’t, discard ‘em. But what is God’s spirit like? Here are a couple examples from the Bible:

Galatians 5:22-23, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

Judges 15:14-15, and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him … And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.

The latter verse is Samson, of course, a fellow who solved his problems with brawn, and the first verse comes from Paul, whose writings sometimes seem so saturated with brotherly love that it fills me with hope. With these two extremes in mind, what can we conclude about the Spirit of God? Perhaps only this: everybody finds in God whatever spirit they are looking for.

//Oops! That’s not the way it really happened, is it? Isn’t it true that, when the messengers of God brought news that Sarah would conceive and have a child, she laughed in their face? What is Sarah doing here in Hebrews 11, the chapter known as the “honor roll of faith?”

We don’t know who wrote the book of Hebrews, and we don’t know why that writer chose to praise Sarah. So radical was this reinterpretation of scripture that many early manuscripts cut the sentences out of the book! Today’s translations, not knowing quite what to do about it, often ignore Sarah and praise Abraham alone. The NIV reads like this, for the very same verse:

By faith Abraham, even though he was past age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise.

C’mon, guys, give poor Sarah a break. One hasty snicker, and her reputation is ruined forever?

//Shortly after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, they began an effort at ethnic cleansing. You may recall that Ezra demanded all foreign citizens be kicked out of the city, even if they be “wives and children.”

It was during this time that the book of Ruth was written, and it purports to tell a story about the ancestry of David—a rather beautiful story about a young woman named Ruth, from the land of Moab. In this story, Naomi, a Jew, had relocated to Moab because of famine in Judah. There, her son married Ruth, a Moabite. Then he died, as did Naomi’s husband and other son. When the famine ended and Naomi returned to Judah, Ruth accompanied her. 

Back in Judah, the Moabite Ruth won the admiration of a Jewish man named Boaz, and they eventually married. Of this union came a son named Obed, who had a son named Jesse, who had a son named David.

The moral of the story? The book of Ruth turns out to be a bit of protest literature. It identifies the Jews’ great King David as a half-breed, precisely the sort of man that, hundreds of years later, the Jews were purging from Jerusalem.

//This verse always makes me chuckle. It’s the funny way John of Patmos inserted an explanation for Satan’s final battle, as if “Gog and Magog” tells us anything at all. It sounds more like a puppet show than a battle.

One clue that’s helpful when reading Revelation: almost everything there can be found in the book of Ezekiel. In this case, John refers to a strange battle scene from Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39. Here, God lures Gog (a leader) and Magog (a group of people) to attack a peaceful people (presumably Israel). Then, God sends a great earthquake, torrents of rain, hailstones, and burning sulfur on Gog and his troops and on the many nations with him. After God devours this army, the Israelites once again “dwell in their land secure and untroubled.” This does sound an awful lot like Revelation, doesn’t it?

Fact is, Jewish writers had already begun trying to explain the Gog and Magog of Ezekiel. For example, the Jewish historian Josephus believed it to be a historical reference to the Scythians. John simply adds his opinion on the matter, suggesting that Ezekiel was writing about a battle yet to come.

//Most casual Bible readers imagine David to be the first king of Israel. He wasn’t. Saul, Israel’s first king, seems to be quite a manly sort, but he proves to be politically and religiously inept, and is superseded in time by King David. Whatever went wrong with Saul?

Today’s verse may provide the answer. Immediately following a verse in which we’re told the Spirit of the LORD settles upon David (verse 13), we read that it is taken away from Saul. In fact, not only is it taken, but it is replaced by an evil spirit, which begins to harass poor Saul. What we might today label as schizophrenia begins to take hold, and Saul begins to develop symptoms of paranoia. The music that used to soothe him no longer works. He behaves erratically, becomes deeply depressed, and is plagued by strange voices and visions.

David, of course, is waiting in the wings. Saul’s violent outbursts and bizarre behavior causes a switch in Israel’s allegiance to David, which only heightens Saul’s torment. Saul loses control … of his kingdom, his family, his mind. And David supplants him, to become Israel’s second king.

//John’s Gospel contains a beautiful, hope-filled picture of a good shepherd. It also contains a warning about a bad shepherd, referred to as the “hireling.”

This passage is sometimes misunderstood to refer to the shepherding instincts and skills of the clergy. Some religions, disdaining the collection plate, even point to the word “hireling” and criticize those “shepherds” who accept a salary.

The fact is, however, this verse must be read in context, noting the source of John’s theology … not just in the Gospel of John but in the book of Revelation. The books of Ezekiel and Zechariah and Isaiah are fundamental to John’s “shepherd” theology, and the most important thing to realize is that there is only one of eachshepherd. “The” good shepherd, “the” bad shepherd. This displays a dichotomy that grew common in Judaic writings, particularly apocalyptic writings such as passages found in these O.T. books. There would one day come a messiah, who would battle an antichrist. There would one day come a good shepherd, who would oppose an evil shepherd. Nowhere is this more clear than in the book of Zechariah.

John’s stance is simple and exciting: We’ve found one of the two! The good shepherd has been discovered! It’s Jesus! John doesn’t name the bad shepherd. His point in bringing up Jesus’ evil twin seems to be merely to highlight the contrast: “See, Jesus is the one we’re waiting for to be the good shepherd, because he hangs in there to the very end, even dying for his flock.”

So, while I agree with the concern that clergy need to be good shepherds instead of “hirelings,” this was never a scriptural command.