Tag / Jesus

by James Ross Kelly

We need not wait for Him. He is waiting for us.


William Graham Scroggie

William Graham Scroggie

We need not wait for Him. He is waiting for us. In this place and moment He is offering Himself to us as the source of strength and satisfaction, as well as the place for safety, and if we would but receive Him, fear will be exchanged for trust, doubt for certainty, ineffectiveness for success, defeat for victory, and sadness for joy. We have tried trying and have failed; why not now try trusting? We have wrought in our own strength and have found it to be weakness; why not now take hold of His strength? The faith we once exercised from passion of divine life, let us now exercise for the experience of abounding life; and as Christ met us then, so He meets us now.

W. Graham Scroggie, Land of Life of Rest, London 1950 pp 82-84 [study of the Book of Joshua]

by James Ross Kelly

excerpt from “In God’s Underground,” by Richard Wurmbrand


richard

excerpt from In God’s Underground  by Richard Wurmbrand
By Richard Wurmbrand
Copyright 1968 The voice of the Martyrs

[Wurmbrand relates this story from his life during World War Two to comfort a fellow prisoner in the Communist gulag they shared; who has betrayed another prisoner out of fear and at the time could not forgive himself]

When Rumania entered the war on Germany’s side, a pogrom began in which many thousands of Jews were killed or deported. At Iasi alone 11,000 were massacred in a day. My wife, who shares my Protestant faith, is also of Jewish origin. We lived in Bucharest, from which the Jews were not deported, but her parents, one of her brothers, three sisters and other relatives who lived in Bocovine were taken to Transmistria, a wild border Province which the Rumanians had captured from Russia. Jews who were not murdered at the end of this journey were left to starve, and there Sabina’s family died.
I had to break this news. She recovered herself and said, “I will not weep. You are entitled to a happy wife, and Mihai to a happy mother, and our Church to a servant with courage.” If she shed tears in private I do not know, but from that day I never saw Sabina weep again.

Some time later our landlord, a good Christian, told me sadly of a man who was staying in the house while on leave from the front. “I knew him before the war,” he said, “but he’s changed completely. He has become a brute who likes to boast of how he volunteered to exterminate Jews in Transmistria and killed hundreds with his own hands.”
I was deeply distressed and I decided to pass the night in prayer. To avoid disturbing Sabina, who was unwell and who would have wished to join in my vigil in spite of that, I went upstairs after supper to the landlords flat to pray with him. Lounging in an armchair was a giant of a man whom the landlord introduced as Borila, the killer of Jews from Transmistria. When he rose he was even taller than I, and there seemed to be about him an aura of horror that was like a smell of blood. Soon he was telling us of his adventures in war and of the Jews he had slaughtered.

“It is a frightening story,” I said, “but I do not fear for the Jews-God will compensate them for what they have suffered. I ask myself with anguish what will happen to their murderers when they stand before God’s judgement.”

An ugly scene was prevented by the landlord who said we were both guests in his house, and turned the talk into more neutral channels. The murderer proved to be not only a murderer. Nobody is only one thing. He was a pleasant talker, and eventually it came out that he had a great love of music.

He mentioned that while serving in the Ukraine he had been captivated by the songs there. “I wish I could hear them again,” he said.

I knew some of these old songs. I thought to myself, looking at Borila, “the fish has entered my net!”

“If you’d like to hear some of them,” I told him, “come to my flat-I’m no pianist, but I can play a few Ukrainian melodies.”

The landlord, his wife and daughter accompanied us. My wife was in bed. She was used to my playing softly at night and did not wake up. I played the folk-songs, which are live with feeling, and I could see that Borila was deeply moved. I remembered how when King Saul was afflicted by an evil spirit, the boy David had played the harp before him.
I stopped and turned to Borila. “I’ve something very important to say to you,” I told him.
“Please speak,” he said.

“If you look through that curtain you can see someone is asleep in the next room. It’s my wife, Sabina. Her parents, her sisters, and her twelve-year old brother have been killed with the rest of the family. You told me that you had killed hundreds of Jews near Golta, and that is where they were taken.” Looking into his eyes, I added, “You yourself don’t know who you have shot, so we can assume that you are the murderer of her family.”

He jumped up, his eyes blazing, looking as if he were about to strangle me.

I held up my hand and said, “Now -let’s try an experiment. I shall wake my wife and tell her who you are, and what you have done. I can tell you what will happen. My wife will not speak one word of reproach! She’ll embrace you as if you were her brother. She’ll bring you supper, the best things she has in the house.”

“Now if Sabina who is a sinner like all, can forgive and love like this, imagine how Jesus, who is perfect Love, can forgive and love you! Only return to Him-and everything you have done will be forgiven!”

Borila was not heartless: within, he was consumed by guilt and misery at what he had done, and he had shaken his brutal talk at us as a crab its claws. One tap at his weak spot, and his defenses crumbled. The music had already moved his heart, and now came-instead of the attack he expected-words of forgiveness. His reaction was amazing. He jumped up and tore at his collar with both hands, so that his shirt was rent apart. “Oh God, what shall I do, what shall I do?” He cried. He put his head in his hands, and sobbed noisily as he rocked himself back and forth. “I’m a murderer, I’m cloaked in blood, what shall I do?” Tears ran down his cheeks.

I cried “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command the devil of hatred to go out of your soul!”

Borila fell on his knees trembling, and we began to pray aloud. He knew no prayers; he simply asked again and again for forgiveness and said that he hoped and knew it would be granted. We were on our knees together for some time; then we stood up and embraced each other, and I said, “I promised to make an experiment. I shall keep my word.”

I went into the other room and found my wife still sleeping calmly. She was very weak and exhausted at that time. I woke her gently and said, “There is a man here whom you must meet. We believe he has murdered your family, but he has repented, and now he is our brother.”

She came out in her dressing gown and put out her arms to embrace him: then both began to weep and to kiss each other again and again. I have never seen a bride and bridegroom kiss with such love and passion and purity as this murderer and the survivor among his victims. Then, as I foretold, Sabina went to the kitchen to bring him food.
While she was away the thought came to me that Borila’s crime had been so terrible that some further lesson was needed. I went to the next room and returned with my son, Mihai, who was then two, asleep in my arms. It was only a few hours since Borila had boasted to us how he had killed Jewish children in their parents arms, and now he was horrified; the sight was an unbearable reproach. He expected me to accuse him.

But I said, “Do you see how quietly he sleeps? You are also like a newborn child who can rest in the Father’s arms. The blood that Jesus shed can cleanse you.”

Borila’s happiness was very moving: he stayed with us that night and when he awoke the next day, he said, “It’s a long time since I slept like that.”

St. Augustine says, “Anima humana naturaliter Christiana est“–the human soul is naturally Christian. Crime is against one’s own nature, the result of social pressure or many other causes, and what a relief it is to cast it off as he had done!

In the morning Borila wanted to meet our Jewish friends and I took him to many Hebrew Christian homes. Everywhere he told his story, and he was received as the returning prodigal son. Then, with a New Testament which I gave him, he went to join his Regiment in another town.
Borila later came to say that his unit has been ordered to the front. “What shall I do? He asked. “I’ll have to start killing again.”

I said, “No, you’ve killed more than a soldier needs to already. I don’t mean that a Christian shouldn’t defend his country if it is attacked. But you, personally, shouldn’t kill anymore-better allow others to kill you. The bible doesn’t forbid that!”…

[later] Greigore explained how he had served with Borila in Transmistria, where they had massacred the Jews. “When we went to Russia again, he was a changed man,” he said. “We couldn’t understand it. He put aside his weapons and instead of taking lives, he saved them. He volunteered to rescue the wounded under fire, and in the end he saved his officer.”


excerpt from In God’s Underground  by Richard Wurmbrand
By Richard Wurmbrand
Copyright 1968 The voice of the Martyrs
by James Ross Kelly

Believing in the 21st Century:Chapter Six


an exhortation..as 
a lay Christian examines his faith..

By James Ross Kelly
True to the fact that in reality Jesus Christ is always about His Fathers business down through the centuries out of this constant harangue of our culture comes a generation of Christians not content with the standard fare of Christian worship and the 19th Century hymnology and you find “Christian Rock” streaming across the airwaves that, if you flip through the dials and hear this music and stop to listen for the rhythm and blues riff of Rock and Roll you begin to hear lyrics balming the radio waves as pure Christian praise and worship. Listen:

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips [in Church] and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle— that is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” This comes not from Billy Graham’s crusade pulpit, but from a spoken intro to one of the songs on the dread locked hard rocking 1995, DC Talk, Album, Jesus Freak. This intro follows with the lyrics:

Is this one for the people ? Is this one for the Lord? Or do I simply serenade for things I must afford? You can jumble them together, my conflict still remains For holiness is calling, in the midst of courting fame… Copyright 1995 In The Mix Music (A Division of The Forefront Communications Group, Inc.) (BMI) All Rights Reserved

This is deep abiding faith. Same deep abiding faith written from the quill pen of the 3rd Century Saint, but blasted over the airwaves at the end of this one. Same God, same travail of reaching out and knowing how unholy each of us are in His presence and the same existential angst of a world gone wrong and having to live in the middle of its humanity. Looking heavenward is not as an upward outer leap into flat earth theology as some would suggest of present day Christendom, but a direction toward an inter-dimensional leap to the arms of Father God of the universe—Who inhabits congress with our own life because He created it!

Is it patriarchal? I think not. And I think not in the least, for inside this truth women ( to whom he first appeared after the resurrection) have roles of supreme significance. But at the same time Christ wasn’t going to a divine ‘mother.’ For Christians fitting Lord Jesus into a politically correct new age scheme courts blasphemy. But in His going and again in His expected coming, we all now have a new role in that there is a feminine quality of all of us as believers in the waiting for the groom. The waiting for God in our lives is a sanctification that has no patriarchal male gender related stigma to it at all, in fact—quite the opposite. The most macho of men have become believers of the almighty God come to earth and become the feminine receptors of the body of Christ as a bride waits for the bride groom in loving waiting desire. This is not patriarchal. Trying to fit into a feminist de-constructionist scheme will be always the square man made plug fitting into an ever elusive divine receptacle that will retreat at light speed leaving something only human.

“There is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28 KJV

by James Ross Kelly

Believing in the 21st Century:Chapter Five


an exhortation..as 
a lay Christian examines his faith..

By James Ross Kelly
Of my mind and my experience this Way, my walk with Christ Jesus, for myself is the most excellent Way—as it has been for countless others. This is because it is experiential truth and at the same time the truth behind all things that are true. Men and women who know God have always felt the pain of the worlds rejection and mocking disbelief, as if the foot steps of our blessed savior to bloody Calvary have never ended in an unending historical example of the mythic Sisyphus, torture and disgrace one after another, rolling up the hill, time after time and time again. And though endlessly exposited upon, this most excellent Way, is really attained only by waiting upon Him and in the practice of humility. God comes to us waiting on Him some in an instant and other after decade according to His own divine will. Is this easy? In a word, ‘no’ Is it attainable, in another word ‘yes,’ gloriously ‘yes,’ a thousand times yes attested by millions that have known this Truth to be so.

People who have trouble with the concept of‘ ‘Father’ to be current politically incorrect thinking and offer up an apostasy which calls the thinking of “Our Father,” as a patriarchal oppression may have issues which sadly are borne out in the universal necessity for an archetype of a kind and loving, but austere father in our humanity. The lack of which at this moment is a dynamic; so our cultural and sociological pundits tell us—we are sadly lacking and suffering for want of—in finding out who we are as men and women. It has been said that a person approaches God the same way that they have had to approach their own earthly father. And to our own cultures demise, we have to contend with a train wreck of absent, over working, or uncaring and unloving fathers many of whom have spawned and coldly left a throng of unbelieving children in an era of an unbelieving cultural malaise. Unbelieving, or incapable in believing, in the sense of an all encompassing love of a heavenly Father—because the reality of the absence of an earthly humane father makes a heavenly Father unimaginable!

Or a “can’t believe” media manufactured X-generation sliding on the sex saturated video culture— which rejects whole-sale, the notion handed down to us by our own “fore-fathers,” and because of this inattention and the selfish self-centered denial of children, born often out of passion instead of out of love— to this progeny. There is only one antidote for this poison— the Father Himself. Not the idea and concept of the Father but the real thing.

“..O Lord, to You most excellent and most good, You are Architect and Governor of the universe, thanks would be due You, O our God, even if you had not willed that I should survive my childhood. For I existed even then; I lived and felt and was careful about my own well-being–a trace of that most mysterious unity from where I had my being. I kept watch, by my inner sense, over the integrity of my outer senses, and even in these trifles and also in my thoughts about trifles, I learned to take pleasure in truth. I was averse to being deceived; I had a vigorous memory; I was gifted with the power of speech, was softened by friendship, shunned sorrow, meanness, and ignorance. Is not such an animated creature as this wonderful and praiseworthy? But all these are gifts of my God. I did not give them to myself. Moreover, they are good, and all together these gifts constitute myself. Good, then, is He that made me, and He is my God; and before Him will I rejoice exceedingly for every good gift which, even as a child, I had. But this was my sin! That it was not in God the Creator, but in His creatures–myself and the rest–that I sought for pleasures, honors, and truths. And I fell consequently into sorrows, troubles, and errors. Thanks be to You, my joy, my pride, my confidence, my God–thanks be to You for Your gifts. Please preserve them in me. For by this You will preserve me; and those things which You have given me will be developed and perfected, and I myself will be with You, for from You, comes my being.” Augustine ca 285AD.2

Augustine brought up in Afro-European pagan society tells us like it is from seventeen hundred years ago. What is our culture but obsessed with, “my own well being..” and the post modern new age neo-pagan fashion is precisely, “not in God the Creator, but in His creatures—[ourselves] and the rest–that I [we] sought for pleasures, honors, and truths.”

2 adapted to modern English from public domain translation by Albert C. Outler, Ph.D., Confessions of St. Augustine, Chapter 14

by James Ross Kelly

Believing in the 21st Century:Chapter Four


an exhortation..as 
a lay Christian examines his faith..

By James Ross Kelly

Christian orthodoxy has not left this culture, it thrives–in spite of the media’s demeanor of ignorance it thrives in a vibrant way and is in no danger of death as some would assert. This is because this truth is Living Truth. The future may bring a final onslaught, or attack, or pogrom from the current coexistence with the secular portion of our culture. Currently to many there is waning hope that that future is distant. Such violent affronts are presently on-fire in other cultures such as China, Laos, Vietnam, Pakistan and the Sudan where Christianity for one reason or another is viewed as a threat to the ruling order and demands inner allegiance to something other than the Living God of Christianity. Preceded by this has been seven decades of Soviet Russia, and a before that two decades of fascist Europe. Many in the Church believe this will again becoming an end time scenario in our Western world. History of this century has shown that counter doctrine to orthodoxy demands a lock-step subservience to this end—with the true church going underground—nominal Christianity apostatizing to state religion with Christ relegated to academic mythos. The killing fields of Babi Yar, and Cambodia are just two of long list of the results of this 100 year trend.

The God I worship is Father God, Creator of the universe who is outside of space and time as object of our reality. My God exists both in and outside of space and time in fluid conjunctive extra-dimensional spatial reality. My God loves us, my God cares for us, and though He seems dimensionless to our own gaze. He was never invisible in the interior dimension which exists, and is comprehended in one simple way—by His leave and by our own humility through acceptance of His son Christ Jesus, His brief sojourn on the planet earth and the redemptive act done for all time for us all by His death on the cross.

This act is now history, but it is one of an eternal redemptive glorification that was the end and defeat by proxy of all pagan death cults—one which was replaced by the self-sacrifice of the living God who by this loving act through His Holy spirit instituted the Christian Church in an eternal love feast meant for all people of this planet. That the church has fallen short of exemplary stewardship in its temporal charge of eternal matters cannot be argued. However, it can be argued that the Spirit of the Living God was not apart of any of these short comings. And took His leave as we all might at the sight of inquisition and obtuse legalism whether it was in the Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox camp. The history of the church as a human organization has always been far short of the glory of God—yet God’s glory has throughout history shone through his martyrs and the lovers of His truth. St Stephen, St Ignatious, St Polycarp, William Tyndale, Martin Luther King, Joan of Arc and St Francis are but a few examples. The Way of God exemplified by people of God have long out shown the dimness of Church tradition.

by James Ross Kelly

Believing in the 21st Century:Chapter Three


an exhortation..as 
a lay Christian examines his faith..

By James Ross Kelly
The assertion of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth as truth is accepted by most all accounts historically, but it is the next Chapter of John’s Gospel that Christ becomes the risen Savior of mankind—and when Christianity is presented to mankind as a Supernatural visitation by the Creator of the Universe. What may go against the humanist grain is that it must be asked given Christianity’s assertion of this truth— it must be seriously asked, ‘What do you say of a group of beings that would torture and kill their own Creator? Who kindly and humbly appeared to them preaching love and forgiveness and supreme fellowship with the whole of Creation of the universe? Given that this is true, if you accept that Jesus of Nazareth was exactly Who he said he was according to scripture previous to Chapter 19 of John’s Gospel—there is now a change that must take place in our essential view of humanity. And it must be said to all, that if Christendom’s message is true as the faithful proclaim it, that this event is the greatest definition of mankind! That humanity killed its Creator and proved itself inhuman for all time—juxtaposed with the Creator offering Himself as a sacrifice that all people might come into a relationship with Him and make themselves, with His divine help, at last truly humane! The greatest anguish turning into greatest joy! This the most important event in all of history—all previous scripture leads toward this event as prophesy and type. All subsequent scripture is then driven by this event, as is all commentary, preaching, doctrines and creeds. The saddest day brings forth the most happy day both then rapt into an inter-dimensional cleft that will guide the coiling of history toward its ultimate destiny. It is the death knell for the god of this world when the sentence, ‘It is finished.’ was uttered. But—it would be most likely not even a foot note in history, lost long ago in human memory if it were not for the following supernatural event that the caused all of paganism to begin a world-wide decent. But then again we must suspend and consider the rest of the story because the former is accepted fact even in an unbelieving world, now again, ‘what if just—as it is written’—this also is true?
John–Chapter 20 (NIV)

1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.
2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.
4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.
5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.
6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there,
7 as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.
8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.
9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
10Then the disciples went back to their homes,
11but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb
12and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”
14At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
15″Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
16Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
17Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, `I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
18Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
19On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
20After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
22And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
23If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.
25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”
26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.
31But these are written that you may [1] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

1.31 Some manuscripts “may continue to”

So the greatest of antinomies is resolved. The entirety of human kind has now been redeemed. And just like anyone unfamiliar or knowledgeable today they did not know they were redeemed. Some did not know they needed to be redeemed then, as they do not know it today. There are those who see who have not seen with the same eyes of Thomas, but with the inner light of truth, as it presents itself simply because it is the Truth and believe in that moment of revelation.

So we who have believed and yet have not seen have inherited this story as the foundation of Western culture—a foundation that may be fast crumbling, and a foundation that is having its ramparts stricken from most every side. Yet it is we who do believe who are left responsible for this message being passed on. The greatest of fallacies is that one has to be part of a graduated class in a seminary to pass this message on. People are often put to death spiritually in Seminaries and others become atheists or pantheists there. Others because of their seminary experience have had to abandon the organized Church rather than look themselves in the mirror because of the hypocrisy of one form or another they found abiding there. And many modern day religionists would charge upon pain of ecclesiastical crucifixion that one is forced to accept this system and live it and put this tradition on over Christ Jesus Himself. And yet it may be that despite all this our Seminaries are a separation process that does produce notable been and women of God.

High Pagan Rome began a precipitous but lengthy fall the day of the crucifixion. From its beginning they wanted no part in it. The religionists of the day wanted it done and done before dark and done their way and would not, could not, take in any form of mercy as an answer—they still can’t—leaving the Messiah on the Cross in the form of condemning legalism rather than loving redemption and the resurrected loving glory of a living God. The Pilate’s of this world are still here in comfortable bureaucracies agreeing to death sentences for some and long terms for others—as portions of Christ are chipped out of our culture on a daily basis in making environmental decisions based upon short term profit, at the expense long term health and human justice. Or, allowing the destiny designed by a loving God to play out in a myriad of aborted lives whose end has come for convenience and pleasures sake at the modern alter of the pagan god that requires human sacrifice for a middle-to-upper-class lifestyle. Just as the ritual and rites of pre-Christian pagan Celtic homes required the ritual sacrifice of the first born on its foundations before a structure was thought to be sound.1 The Pharisees and ruling Sanhedrin-like councils exist as parts of legislatures, courts and political parties and good ol’ boy networks and now it seems good ol’ girl networks.

So? —again, to those that aren’t convinced. Is it true? I believe with every fiber of my being that it-is-true. And not only true but the truth—the ultima veritas. And I believe this after having questioned it thoroughly and found the truth to be vital and living. God the Creator took the form of man and visited earth as humble carpenter. Here he preached the truth of love and redemption to all mankind to the holders of a covenant with Him and was then arrested, tried and killed both by the holders of that covenant and mankind in general in the form of authoritarian civilized Pagan Rome. By this act there is a final redemption for all people in all times and in all walks of life. And through this emerges all other truths and upon which all other truths depend. One adopts the creeds of Christianity not because they are mere words and the party line but because they are in essence the living truth that has been passed on for a length of time in space that surpasses the oldest living things on the planet.

by James Ross Kelly

Believing in the 21st Century:Chapter One


Harrowingan exhortation..as
a lay Christian examines his faith..

By James Ross Kelly

For post modern westerners among a diversity of worldviews,  there is only one moral discourse that remains resolute through time—this is the Christian worldview in its orthodox sense. You may disagree with this statement and this worldview as you perceive it, but you may not adopt another that has held sway for as long without leaping out of your own culture and shakily into another.

There is however a nominal view of Christianity that academically operates outside this orthodoxy and considers itself scholastic, vital—and at the same time considers itself valid in its own formality. It must be said that now, this scholastic endeavor and its formality has little, or no basis of really calling itself Christianity—for it has little or nothing to do with Christ Jesus. Where once the university system held the Christian paradigm sacrosanct it is now relegated to only part of comparative religion.

In what has been termed the “Post-Modern era,” a number of scholars such as those involved with the “Jesus Seminar,” have published a number of titles whose popularity has made books sell briskly in the secular press. However, today, even the term “orthodoxy,” rolls off the tongue with a slight to fervent distaste by the media and manufacturers of our popular culture. What pundits in orthodoxy’s stead, have embraced—is a counter-doctrine: that Jesus of Nazareth the founder of Christianity, while still a premier moral and ethical fulcrum philosophically, in Western thought—was not divine—but an historical person who has developed mythical proportions due to the exaggeration of scripture. This dogmatic counter-doctrine juxtaposed against two thousand years of orthodox thought and teaching is one that is fervently embraced by most elements of secular academic paradigms and the secular academic culture. Can Christianity share a canopy with this thinking—and remain vital?

by James Ross Kelly

Why did the Apostle John refer to himself as, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,”?


William Barclay 1907-1978

William Barclay 1907-1978

From INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN Vol.I
By William Barclay

The Beloved Disciple

… All our information about John comes from the first three gospels. It is the astonishing fact that the Fourth Gospel never mentions the apostle John from beginning to end. But it does mention two other people.

First, it speaks of the disciple whom Jesus loved. There are four mentions of him. He was leaning on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper (John 13:23-25); it is into his care that Jesus committed Mary as he died upon his Cross (John 19:25-27); it was Peter and he whom Mary Magdalene met on her return from the empty tomb on the first Easter morning (John 20:2); he was present at the last resurrection appearance of Jesus by the lake-side (John 21:20).

Second, the Fourth Gospel has a kind of character whom we might call the witness. As the Fourth Gospel tells of the spear thrust into the side of Jesus and the issue of the water and the blood, there comes the comment: “He who saw it has borne witness–his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth–that you also may believe” (John 19:35). At the end of the gospel comes the statement that it was the beloved disciple who testified of these things “and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24).

Here we are faced with rather a strange thing. In the Fourth Gospel John is never mentioned, but the beloved disciple is and in addition there is a witness of some kind to the whole story. It has never really been doubted in tradition that the beloved disciple is John. A few have tried to identify him with Lazarus, for Jesus is said to have loved Lazarus (John 11:3-5), or with the Rich Young Ruler, of whom it is said that Jesus, looking on him, loved him (Mark 10:21). But although the gospel never says so in so many words, tradition has always identified the beloved disciple with John, and there is no real need to doubt the identification.

But a very real point arises–suppose John himself actually did the writing of the gospel, would he really be likely to speak of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved? Would he really be likely to pick himself out like this, and, as it were, to say: “I was his favourite; he loved me best of all”? It is surely very unlikely that John would confer such a title on himself. If it was conferred by others, it is a lovely title; if it was conferred by himself, it comes perilously near to an almost incredible self-conceit.

Is there any way then that the gospel can be John’s own eye-witness story, and yet at the same time have been actually written down by someone else?

The Production of the Church

In our search for the truth we begin by noting one of the outstanding and unique features of the Fourth Gospel. The most remarkable thing about it is the long speeches of Jesus. Often they are whole chapters long, and are entirely unlike the way in which Jesus is portrayed as speaking in the other three gospels. The Fourth Gospel, as we have seen, was written about the year A.D. 100, that is, about seventy years after the crucifixion. Is it possible after these seventy years to look on these speeches as word for word reports of what Jesus said? Or can we explain them in some way that is perhaps even greater than that? We must begin by holding in our minds the fact of the speeches and the question which they inevitably raise.

And we have something to add to that. It so happens that in the writings of the early church we have a whole series of accounts of the way in which the Fourth Gospel came to be written. The earliest is that of Irenaeus who was bishop of Lyons about A.D. 177; and Irenaeus was himself a pupil of Polycarp, who in turn had actually been a pupil of John. There is therefore a direct link between Irenaeus and John. Irenaeus writes:

“John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leant upon his breast,
himself also published the gospel in Ephesus, when he was living
in Asia.”

The suggestive thing there is that Irenaeus does not merely say that John wrote the gospel; he says that John published (exedoke) it in Ephesus. The word that Irenaeus uses makes it sound, not like the private publication of some personal memoir, but like the public issue of some almost official document.

The next account is that of Clement who was head of the great school of Alexandria about A.D. 230. He writes:

“Last of all, John perceiving that the bodily facts had been made
plain in the gospel, being urged by his friends, composed a
spiritual gospel.”

The important thing here is the phrase being urged by his friends. It begins to become clear that the Fourth Gospel is far more than one man’s personal production and that there is a group, a community, a church behind it. On the same lines, a tenth-century manuscript called the Codex Toletanus, which prefaces the New Testament books with short descriptions, prefaces the Fourth Gospel thus:

“The apostle John, whom the Lord Jesus loved most, last of all
wrote this gospel, at the request of the bishops of Asia, against
Cerinthus and other heretics.”

Again we have the idea that behind the Fourth Gospel there is the authority of a group and of a church.

We now turn to a very important document, known as the Muratorian Canon. It is so called after a scholar Muratori who discovered it. It is the first list of New Testament books which the church ever issued and was compiled in Rome about A.D. 170. Not only does it list the New Testament books, it also gives short accounts of the origin and nature and contents of each of them. Its account of the way in which the Fourth Gospel came to be written is extremely important and illuminating.

“At the request of his fellow-disciples and of his bishops, John,
one of the disciples, said: ‘Fast with me for three days from
this time and whatsoever shall be revealed to each of us, whether it be favourable to my writing or not, let us relate it to one another.’ On the same night it was revealed to Andrew that John should relate all things, aided by the revision of all.”

We cannot accept all that statement, because it is not possible that Andrew, the apostle, was in Ephesus in A.D. 100; but the point is that it is stated as clearly as possible that, while the authority and the mind and the memory behind the Fourth Gospel are that of John, it is clearly and definitely the product, not of one man, but of a group and a community.

Now we can see something of what happened. About the year A.D. 100 there was a group of men in Ephesus whose leader was John. They revered him as a saint and they loved him as a father. He must have been almost a hundred years old. Before he died, they thought most wisely that it would be a great thing if the aged apostle set down his memories of the years when he had been with Jesus. But in the end they did far more than that. We can think of them sitting down and reliving the old days. One would say: “Do you remember how Jesus said … ?” And John would say: “Yes, and now we know that he meant…”

In other words this group was not only writing down what Jesus said; that would have been a mere feat of memory. They were writing down what Jesus meant; that was the guidance of the Holy Spirit. John had thought about every word that Jesus had said; and he had thought under the guidance of the Holy Spirit who was so real to him. W. M. Macgregor has a sermon entitled: “What Jesus becomes to a man who has known him long.” That is a perfect description of the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel. A. H. N. Green Armytage puts the thing perfectly in his book John who saw. Mark, he says, suits the missionary with his clear-cut account of the facts of Jesus’ life; Matthew suits the teacher with his systematic account of the teaching of Jesus; Luke suits the parish minister or priest with his wide sympathy and his picture of Jesus as the friend of all; but John is the gospel of the contemplative.

He goes on to speak of the apparent contrast between Mark and John. “The two gospels are in a sense the same gospel. Only, where Mark saw things plainly, bluntly, literally, John saw them subtly, profoundly, spiritually. We might say that John lit Mark’s pages by the lantern of a lifetime’s meditation.” Wordsworth defined poetry as “Emotion recollected in tranquility.” That is a perfect description of the Fourth Gospel. That is why John is unquestionably the greatest of all the gospels. Its aim is, not to give us what Jesus said like a newspaper report, but to give us what Jesus meant. In it the Risen Christ still speaks. John is not so much The Gospel according to St. John; it is rather The Gospel according to the Holy Spirit. It was not John of Ephesus who wrote the Fourth Gospel; it was the Holy Spirit who wrote it through John.

The Penman of the Gospel

We have one question still to ask. We can be quite sure that the mind and the memory behind the Fourth Gospel is that of John the apostle; but we have also seen that behind it is a witness who was the writer, in the sense that he was the actual penman. Can we find out who he was? We know from what the early church writers tell us that there were actually two Johns in Ephesus at the same time. There was John the apostle, but there was another John, who was known as John the elder.

Papias, who loved to collect all that he could find about the history of the New Testament and the story of Jesus, gives us some very interesting information. He was Bishop of Hierapolis, which is quite near Ephesus, and his dates are from about A.D. 70 to about A.D. 145. That is to say, he was actually a contemporary of John. He writes how he tried to find out “what Andrew said or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord; and what things Aristion and the elder John, the disciples of the Lord, say.” In Ephesus there was the apostle John, and the elder John; and the elder John was so well-loved a figure that he was actually known as The Elder. He clearly had a unique place in the church. Both Eusebius and Dionysius the Great tell us that even to their own days in Ephesus there were two famous tombs, the one of John the apostle, and the other of John the elder.

Now let us turn to the two little letters, Second John and Third John. The letters come from the same hand as the gospel, and how do they begin? The second letter begins: “The elder unto the elect lady and her children” (2 John 1:1 ). The third letter begins: “The elder unto the beloved Gaius” (3 John 1:1 ). Here we have our solution. The actual penman of the letters was John the elder; the mind and memory behind them was the aged John the apostle, the master whom John the elder always described as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

The Precious Gospel

The more we know about the Fourth Gospel the more precious it becomes. For seventy years John had thought of Jesus. Day by day the Holy Spirit had opened out to him the meaning of what Jesus said. So when John was near the century of life and his days were numbered, he and his friends sat down to remember. John the elder held the pen to write for his master, John the apostle; and the last of the apostles set down, not only what he had heard Jesus say, but also what he now knew Jesus had meant. He remembered how Jesus had said: “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12-13). There were many things which seventy years ago he had not understood; there were many things which in these seventy years the Spirit of Truth had revealed to him. These things John set down even as the eternal glory was dawning upon him. When we read this gospel let us remember that we are reading the gospel which of all the gospels is most the work of the Holy Spirit, speaking to us of the things which Jesus meant, speaking through the mind and memory of John the apostle and by the pen of John the elder. Behind this gospel is the whole church at Ephesus, the whole company of the saints, the last of the apostles, the Holy Spirit, the Risen Christ himself.

 

nb [Indirect Evidence]