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If you subscribe to Anthony Buzzard’s excellent monthly newsletter “Focus on the Kingdom“, you probably are aware this year’s version of his annual Theological Conference (the 19th) is coming up at the end of next month.  KingdomReady’s very own Sean Finnegan has attended in year’s past, though his busy Masters school schedule will keep him away this time around.  However I’m planning on attending for the first time, and I wanted to invite all of you to attend if you have the opportunity.  There are so few chances for fellow truth-seekers like ourselves to get together in person and learn from one-another, fellowship, and hopefully build lasting friendships in our all-too-small (but hopefully growing) faith. Below is a nice overview from Anthony’s last newsletter.  Hope to see you there!

This post below is from one of our frequent visitors Jaco.  It is an article by Nehemia Gordon.

Thirty yeas ago this June while attending summer church camp as young teen, I sat in the open-air tabernacle listening to the evening evangelist give a dynamic and passionate sermon about Jesus’ 2nd coming.  The words he spoke, the Scripture verses he read aloud, the entire tone of his message struck a chord in my inner being.  In fact his sermons each previous night of the week-long camp were just as good and weighed heavily in my mind progressively.  But this final sermon of the week - on the final night of camp, seemed like God Himself was speaking through this man to give that particular sermon to ME.  At the alter call at the end of that service this minister asked if anyone else there in attendance wanted to accept Christ as their Lord & Savior (many had the previous nights & were also baptized).  A warmness overtook me and though at first my feet felt like they were nailed to the ground, the moment I decided I had to walk towards the front of the tabernacle, I could have sworn I floated like a feather down the aisle and up the front.  With tears in my eyes I knelt and confessed with my words and every emotional fiber within me, that I believed in and accepted Jesus of Nazareth as my Savior.  The next day before camp broke up, I was baptized in the same stream that my own grandmother had been baptized in some 50 years before.

FYI . . . over at Parchment and Pen, Rob Bowman just announced that he will be having a “debate” with Christadelphian Dave Burke concerning the doctrine of the trinity.  The date is a ways off (April). Notice that Kingdom Ready is represented in the resource section of the post. They are limiting themselves to 5,000 words per post–that’s probably less than some of the recent posts on this site. I’m not familiar with Dave Burke.  Any one know about him?

Many of us here at Kingdomready have talked about “Agency” in Scripture before and how much it is a part of the Hebrew thought world & the culture of the biblical writers. A “shaliach” or agent/emissary represented someone and was treated as that individual because legally they were.  In our modern society, the closest we get to that is to appoint “Power of Attorney” to someone.  They can make legally binding decisions for us because we have designated them to serve in that capacity for us.  But in ancient Hebrew culture, the shaliach (or sheliah) wasn’t just that person in a legal sense only.  They were also respected, treated, and thought of AS THE ONE THEY REPRESENTED.  Back in 2005 a man by the name of David Burge of New Zealand wrote a terrific article about how much this Hebrew ”law of agency” plays out in God’s dealing with man throughout Scripture and how vital it is to understand the concept in order to prevent a host of biblical errors.  Here’s the article in its entirety.  It is long, but extremely well done!

Over the holidays I was at my father-in-law’s house and we were talking about the new “one God” books that had just been released. As we spoke it became clear that it was hard to keep them all straight (since there are now so many). As a result of this conversation I decided to put together a list of books that specifically address the idea of Christian monotheism. Perhaps this post will be of help to those looking to research this topic in the future. Let me know if I missed any. (These books are ordered alphabetically by the author’s last name)

Who Is Jesus? A Plea for a Return to Belief in Jesus the Messiah
by Sir Anthony Buzzard
paperback booklet, 40 pages
1986: Restoration Fellowship

Dr. Michael Brown

Kermit Zarley

Next Tuesday, January 12th, from 3-4pm EST, Kermit Zarley (Servetus the Evangelical) will be debating Dr. Michael Brown on the Line of Fire radio show. Dr. Brown is an evangelical author and activist who specializes in discussing Jewish-Christian relations (he grew up Jewish and converted to Christianity). This will be Mr. Zarley’s first official debate (to my knowledge) since the publication of his book The Restitution of Jesus Christ which is available at his website. To listen to the debate live go to The Truth Radio Network website on Tuesday at 3:00 pm and click on the “on air” icon at the top. The show will likely be archived on Dr. Brown’s website: lineoffireradio.askdrbrown.org.

Interpretation #1:
From eternity past the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit existed as a community of one, perfect in love, harmony, and joy. In the enternal counsels of this triune God the plan of salvation for the yet-to-be-created human race was decreed. The only question was who would go. Overwhelmed with self-sacrificial love, the Son volunteered to humble himself by uniting humanity to his divinity, veiling his deity by taking on human flesh. Two thousand years ago, this salvation plan was carried out by the second person of the Trinity. He entered the virgin womb of Mary and suddenly she became pregnant with God the Son. He was perfect God and perfect man, not half divine and half human like Hercules, but fully God and fully man in a totally unique way. This incredible event is called the incarnation—the moment when God became man for our salvation. In fact, the cross is not really the most important event for redemption, the incarnation is. For without the humbling act of God giving up his divine prerogatives to condescend to the lowly state of a first century Palestinian Jew, the cross would mean nothing. Thus, in the grand scheme of things, the incarnation is the premier event that brought God to man so that man could be reconciled with God.

On a recent Dividing Line program Dr. James White the foremost Reformed debater of our day criticized Anthony Buzzard and Servetus the Evangelical for their non-trinitarian beliefs. The clip is about 15 minutes long. It gives a window into how we are perceived by the wider evangelical world.

click here to listen

To read Servetus’ response, click here and then find the link titled, “James White Continues to Speak Foolishly.” I wonder if these two will have an opportunity to publicly debate. I don’t think Dr. White has debated a biblical unitarian before.

I ran across this paper on Adam Pastor’s web site “Adoni Messiah“.  And it has a connection back to kingdomready in that the author of the paper was a presenter at the 2005 & 2006 One God Conferences that our own Sean Finnegan also attended.  Small world indeed. Speaking of which, Sean has the audio of the author presenting this very paper on the Christian Monotheism site at this link.

Jesus Christ was the God of the Old Testament. He was the Creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He became a man and died for His creation to redeem it. To be the savior, he HAD to be God. If he had not been God, then His sacrifice would not have been sufficient to redeem mankind. If he was merely a man, then the fact that he led a perfect life would only be sufficient for him to save himself. In order to save mankind, he had to pre-exist his human existence as the Creator God.