{"id":4887,"date":"2014-10-02T14:21:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T14:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=4887"},"modified":"2014-10-02T14:21:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T14:21:23","slug":"wonderful-feelings-and-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/4887\/wonderful-feelings-and-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Wonderful feelings and thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.goingtojesus.com\/text\/books\/fatherandson.pdf<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Pastor John<\/span><\/p>\n

The feelings last night were so sweet you could taste it and smell it! And of course it stirs up many good thoughts. I loved understanding that it was the goodness of God that tolerated Peter and the others keeping those old things of the law.\u00a0 I think to this point I had been trying to work it all out in some kind of mechanical way, but what you said put it all in the light of the love of God for His people.\u00a0 It adds something to Paul’s statement, “God formerly overlooked the time of ignorance.”\u00a0 Paul was saying that God was doing that for Gentiles, but we learned last night that He was doing it for the earliest believers as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t think this was mentioned in particular last night but it came to mind and I looked it up from “The Father and Son” book: The gospel is another thing that the Son is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nobody comes to the living God by means of a dead thing, a what<\/strong>. In the kingdom of God, His word is a who<\/strong> (Jn. 1:1), His wisdom is a who<\/strong> (1Cor. 1:24; Prov. 8), as well as His righteousness and His light (2Cor. 5:21; Mt. 5:14; Jn. 8:12).\u00a0 Even the gospel is a who<\/strong>. In Galatians 1:15\u201316, Paul magnified \u201cGod, who called me by His grace, to reveal His Son to me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles.\u201d Several times, Paul uses the phrase \u201cpreach Christ\u201d (1Cor. 1:23; 2Cor. 4:5; Phip. 1:15\u201316), which tells us that in Paul\u2019s mind, the gospel was<\/strong>\u200b\u200b Christ and that to preach Christ was to preach the gospel.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

But the following, last line of that paragraph is really, really good in the light of last night:<\/span><\/p>\n

Before the Son was revealed, it was impossible for anyone to preach the gospel because no one knew who<\/strong> the gospel was.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As you said, Peter and the other “first” apostles did not know how great the Son was, and so they could not preach this gospel. I feel a need to re-read the F&S book.<\/span><\/p>\n

I love the very first sentence of the book. If Paul’s gospel was Christ then it was Paul that God used to reveal the Son.\u00a0 Right now I’m not sure, or can’t recall, whether the book makes a plain statement as to when, and how, the Son was revealed.\u00a0 There is this:<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth that John was attempting to convey in the opening lines of his Gospel is also the essential point of this book, and of the gospel itself; namely, that God had a Son with Him in glory from before the beginning of the world.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

That fact really is the good news, the sweet message, and sweet is how it was last night!<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, things like this (the underlined sentence) need thinking through in the light we now have:\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n

With that revelation, we are offered two bedrock truths of the New Testament. The first is that the Son of God was the first thing created. The second is that the Father is greater than the Son because He existed before the Son did. Both the Oneness and the Holy Trinity doctrines contradict these simple truths. The former claims that the Father and the Son are one and the same being, and the latter claims that the Father and His Son are co-equal and co-eternal. But Jesus knew nothing of such doctrines. He said that his life had been given to him by the Father (Jn. 5:26), and he also said that the Father was greater than he (Jn. 14:28).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The gospel preached by the apostles took both those facts for granted.<\/span> Paul saw no problem at all in the Son falling down before the Father \u2013 something impossible for the Son to do if he were the same person as the Father, and something illogical for the Son to do if he were his Father\u2019s equal<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

And this:<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter walked and talked with the Son for several years, but only after being born of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost did Peter refer to Jesus as \u201cthe Prince of life\u201d (Acts 3:15). Before God\u2019s kind of life entered into Peter and created within him the knowledge of the Son, Peter would not have dared to refer to anyone but God as the \u201cPrince of life\u201d. The revelation of the Son that God\u2019s life brought into Peter taught him that there was someone with God who was to be praised as God, someone sitting beside God before whom he must also bow, and beginning at Pentecost, Peter preached that message without fear of displeasing God! With the revelation of that other divine being, Peter and all the righteous in Israel began to honor as God both the Father and the Son, knowing that the revealed Son was the \u201cPrince of life\u201d but never forgetting that the Father remained the King of it.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Peter regularly said things that were beyond what he understood, so it is a little tricky to separate it all, but the revelation Peter operated under is dwarfed by what later came through Paul.<\/span><\/p>\n

Damien<\/span><\/p>\n

===========<\/span><\/p>\n

I agree\u200b. Some sentences in the “Father and Son” book \u200bwill \u200bneed to be reviewed and tweaked so as to reflect \u200bthe \u200bearliest apostles\u200b’\u200b \u200bincomplete understanding of the Son\u200b,\u200b even after they were born again on the day of Pentecost\u200b.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Sister Wille m\u200bight be right after all\u200b, Damien\u200b. \u200b \u200bThe Father and Son book may really be an endless project\u200b \u2013 but the journey surely has been exciting!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.goingtojesus.com\/text\/books\/fatherandson.pdf Pastor John The feelings last night were so sweet you could taste it and smell it! And of course it stirs up many good thoughts. I loved understanding that it was the goodness of God that tolerated Peter and the others keeping those old things of the law.\u00a0 I think to this point I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netmail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}