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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!

We want to welcome anyone who might be logging on to our blog and website after listening to Servetus the Evangelical on “The Line of Fire.” We want to welcome you to engage with us and check out our resources. Please check out Christian Monotheism a site with hundreds of resources - video, audio & articles - on this subject.

Sean Finnegan’s Truth Matters Radio Show interview with Kermit Zarley can be found here.

What is the most well known Bible verse in all of Christianity?

People who grew up through the Seventies and Eighties might reply with John 3:16 – especially if you went to or watched any televised football games during that time period. I fondly recall seeing signs and banners like the photo above being displayed by people in the end zone sections of games for years and years.  Plus it was always a staple verse of instruction/memorization in Sunday School, Vacation Bible School and summer church camp classes everywhere. I imagine if you took a poll of mainstream Christianity and asked about John 3:16, a great many people could quote it back to you verbatim.

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.

“The Christmas message rests on the staggering fact the child in the manger was—God.”—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993).
If you could be a little fly on the wall, in most churches spread across this great nation of ours, during the Advent Season, you might hear the Pastor speak words such as these: “Welcome to our church this morning! We are celebrating that Jesus humbled himself to be born a baby. Although Jesus was God, he took on the form of man, so that he could die for our sins, so that we might be saved.” If you heard this, you might not think anything about it, and just continue on your “merry” Christmas way, celebrating the season and the birth of the Christ-Child. But, I’d like you to take a moment to ponder what we are really celebrating at this time of year.

Today Servetus the Evangelical revealed his true identity. He is Kermit Zarley. Below is taken directly from his website:

Once I posted the last clue, on Monday, November 15, which subtly indicated that golf was my favorite sport, there was a flurry of guesses starting early Tuesday. On Thursday morning, November 18, Steve Noel and then James White posted on their websites that it was me. Due to their posts, in the closing hours that day several dozen websites posted the same.

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.

I recently attended a Women’s Conference and heard the Woman’s Minister say the following line, “Make your messes into your ministry and turn your pain into your passion.” And inside my heart, I knew that no truer statement could have been said about my life thus far. You see, about three years ago, my husband and I were attending a local church when our eldest son expressed his desire to be baptized. We were thrilled of course about his decision, so we phoned the youth pastor to tell him that our son wanted to be baptized the following Sunday. A few days later, we found ourselves sitting on our sofa, in our own living room, being quizzed and confronted with our beliefs.

Many groups do not see a need to peel back the layers of tradition in order to discover what the original apostolic faith of the first century was. Rather, they are content to hold fast to the beliefs and practices that the church has bequeathed to them regardless of whether or not they were held to by the early Christians. That is not the sort of Christian I am. Instead, I am a restorationist—someone who wants to understand and align my practice of Christianity as closely as possible with the earliest Christians. Unfortunately, many times people who belong to restorationist groups, like us, oversimplify what early Christianity looked like. We imagine that everyone got along and agreed on doctrines, that there were no major schisms or controversies until much later. Some of us probably even believe that until the fourth century when the trinitarian controversy occurred, everything was serene and unified. But, this picture, no matter how much we might want for it to be true, is simply not accurate in light of the facts.