Jesus vs. Religion!????
This video has become “viral” and speaks to the heart of many. While I am somewhat sympathetic to the message, I find it to be uninformed and naive. Before I offer some correction to the message, let me state that this is not an attack upon this young man (Jefferson Bethke), or even a rebuke. Instead, I simply seek to offer some “fatherly counsel.”
The Spirit and the Fire
The people of Israel were a people expecting deliverance from Roman domination. They desperately wanted to be free from Roman soldiers, Roman taxes, and Roman culture. As God had redeemed their ancestors from Egypt and Babylon, they now placed their hope in a new deliverer, a messiah that would embody Moses, Joshua, and David.
JESUS AND THE EYEWITNESSES: A Review
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006). 538 pp.
As a young believer in Sunday school I was taught rather straightforwardly that the gospels were written by real, historical persons with a direct relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John told their story just as it was lived. The Gospels (and all of Scripture) were divinely inspired and as such were inerrant and authoritative.