and we know that those who testify of themselves have an invalid testimony, right
You may be referring to Jesus saying that if He testified concerning Himself His testimony was not valid? (John 5:31)
And if Jesus's testimony concerning Himself is not reliable where does that leave the rest of us?
Yet, He also said latter He testimony was 100% reliable because He knew where He came from. Jesus answered and said to them, Even if I testify concerning Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. (John 8:14)
So we have both Jesus saying ANOTHER must testify with Him.
And we have Him saying His testimony alone is reliable because He knows what He knows.
I receive BOTH passages. God uttered both. So I trust both.
I also have to consider the nature of the New Covenant promised by God in Jeremiah 31:33,34.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Jehovah: I will put My law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And they will no longer teach, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah; for all of them will know Me, from the little one among them even to the great one among them, declares Jehovah, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.
There is here a promise of a knowing which is very deep. In some sense what others say is inconsequential.
Check your experience. Have you ever had, let's say, a Jehovah's Witness try to convince you that you did not know Jehovah God?
They just didn't realize the inward confirmation of the new covenant - "for all of them [in the new covenant] will know Me, from the little one among them even to the great one among them, declares Jehovah,
Now THIS very say assured Jesus is now "one spirit" with the one who is joined to Him.
And in resurrection He teaches that we WILL KNOW that He is in us.
In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. (John 14;20)
and etc, Christians mostly believe that their real life will start after they have literally died,
This is of course a mistake.
For Christ Himself is the real life as so much of the Gospel of John says.
they mostly attend incorporated “churches” where the ”tithes” go not toward the storehouse, but rather toward the ”pastors” lifestyle, on and on.
so i wouldnt deny the vv themselves, so much as the interpretations
At a certain point I had a prayer which God was faithful to answer. I prayed something like thi
s - "Lord put me with some Christian who will encourage my faith rather than discourage it."
God really answered that prayer. Even when I was not faithful He was. He put me with brothers in Christ who could encourage me rather than give me reasons for countless cynical obstacles.
I do not mean that I found a Christian UTOPIA. I mean He led me to churches where the Holy Spirit always seems to have the final word. Such gatherings do exist.
all this is amounting to a defense of “He is certainly an unusual Person since He is not yet manifested physically before me,”
Christ is truly REAL and one of a kind (unusual). He occupies a class of people with whom there is no other.
We may say there are many prophets, many teachers, many guides, etc.
There is only One God-man who transfigured Himself to be a divine life giving Spirit.
He is the last Adam and the second man - the head of a whole new race of humanity.
So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul”; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. (1 Cor. 15:45)
The first Adam is indeed distant from memory. But this "last Adam" is a Person whose impact on history has been cataclysmic.
BC and AD virtually mean - "Since this Person Jesus Christ has come to the world, nothing will be the same."
Do you agree?
I believe that
"a life giving Spirit" means a Spirit that GIVES Christ as divine and eternal life into man.
He who has the Son has the life. It is up to us to learn to enjoy this life.
It is up to us to cease to live in the old way and practice the new way of living in union with Christ.
Many great teachers lived and died.
Only this unusual Person, lived, died, rose again AND can impart Himself INTO man's being.
a gnostic statement, that it could at least be argued is not spiritually correct, since we have If someone tells you “Here He is, over here” dont bother to go see, You search the writings for word of Me when here I am right in front of you, We are the body of Christ, etc
There will come the day when outwardly and objectively we will SEE this One.
You know God appeared on the top of Mt. Sinai in a dramatic way for some 40 days.
However, the people eventually got bored. They even sought to make a golden calf and get a new leader to return them to Egypt.
I think the lesson in this is that God must do an INWARD work. A purely OUTWARD manifestation will not change man that much.
Forty days of dramatid manifestation to a great multitude of Israelites demonstrated that.
So in the new covenant the apostles emphazises that we must realize that Jesus Christ is living within us.
Test yourselves whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves. Or do you not realize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you are disapproved? (2 Cor. 13:5)
For the Christian Jesus the miraculous and atypical unusual God-man is not only in them.
He must take shape, be formed, expand, spread, and fill up them in personality.
My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you, (Gal. 4:19)
What a salvation!
From within divine life is growing and from without divine life will "swallow" us up too -
swallowed up by life.
" in that we do not desire to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has wrought us for this very thing is God, who has given to us the Spirit as a pledge. "
now i wouldnt argue that there are some things that i know, dont get me wrong, only what i know from Scripture you would not like, and surely would not accept, all mostly running along the lines of ”Believers go to the same place after death as everyone else, Jesus is a representation and not meant to be literalized, Jesus is never literally returning to earth a second time,” etc, all stuff the Bible says quite plainly
I recommend that one learn to say a faith filled "Amen" to every line of Scripture.
The greatest blessing for me is to learn to "Amen" what is said everywhere.
But I came to the Old Testament through the New Testament.
I came to Christ with a typical filter of modern skepticism.
What happend to me was that gradually I noticed that Jesus referred to accounts in the Old Testament.
Not immediately, but with time I reasoned -
"Well, if it was good for Jesus, it must be good."
This was a gradual process with me. But eventually I embraced the whole Bible as completely reliable.
Now what it actually
SAYS . . . may require caution.
But every word of God is true and also nourishing, feeding the spirit.
Jeremiah 15:16 shows the man of God should "EAT" the words of God. They are truth and they are sustenance.
Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts.