Tag: New Testament

Why The Sermon on The Mount?

What is the point of the sermon? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When looking at eschatology in the Gospels, one of the main points to establish is really the kingship of Jesus. For that now, we start a look at the Sermon on the Mount. Many of us look at the sermon and see a great list of ethical principles. It is that, but it is so much more.

We are in an election year and so this year, our candidates for whatever office will be going around stating what things are going to be like if they win their election. Jesus is doing the same kind of thing in this sermon. He is not just telling people how to live. He is telling them what matters most in the Kingdom of God and how you are to live in the Kingdom.

The sermon ends with the people being amazed because Jesus spoke with authority. How? He is a king and He is speaking as a king and He is laying down the law. This is quite literal. Throughout the sermon, Jesus is doing something radical. He is speaking on the Law and declaring what is really going to happen.

What’s so amazing about that? Didn’t the rabbis speak on the Law? Yes, but they always pointed to another authority. Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus is basically getting up and saying “I’m in charge and I don’t need anyone else to back what I say.” He speaks from His own position and authority.

It’s so startling that a Jewish scholar like Jacob Neusner looked at it once and said, “Who do you think you are? God?” Well, yes. He did. He thought He alone had the authority to speak this way.

Jesus’s Kingdom is a reversal of what most kings would give. This is not about how to build up the best army to go after Rome. If anything, the only time Rome is spoken of, it is of how one can better serve a Roman soldier or how one should retaliate from an insult from a Roman soldier or any demand from such a soldier. This is not what you expect from your Messiah.

Furthermore, if you seek to follow the ethical principles, you are falling short if you do not follow the king who gave them. As Lewis said, Jesus is not just coming claiming to be a good moral teacher. He’s claiming to be the King of all. Besides, as Lewis said, we have had a penchant of not listening to our moral teachers and if Jesus was the best one, all the more reason for us to not listen to Him.

So over the next few days, I plan to look over the sermon and see it from a kingly perspective. I hope you’ll join me.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Jesus’s Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions

What do I think of Rob Bowman’s book published by Deward Publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

If there’s any area in the study of the resurrection we needed a great source on, it was comparing the resurrection to the visions of Joseph Smith. After all, aren’t what happened to Paul and Joseph comparable? Aren’t the witnesses to the golden plates and the witnesses to the resurrection comparable? If we accept one, are we not obligated to accept the other?

Thankfully, that niche has been filled. Rob Bowman has written an excellent book looking at the visions of Joseph Smith and comparing them to the resurrection. The bulk of the book is dedicated to Smith which isn’t a surprise since most Christians are familiar with the resurrection who read these kinds of books. Also, Smith came from a much more literary time so there are more writings to go through around his time.

However, even if you have read material defending the resurrection of Jesus, and I hope you have, you still need to go through what Bowman says about it. It’s really an excellent defense of the doctrine and very easy to understand. If you want a short defense of the resurrection of Jesus, this is an excellent one to go through.

When we get to Smith, Bowman truly shows his mastery of the information. There is hardly a stone left unturned here and Bowman interacts with the very best of Mormon apologetics. His familiarity with the material is simply astounding.

As he goes through Smith’s visions, he goes through piece by piece and points out in detail that could be painstaking if it wasn’t such an enjoyable read all that is questionable and why, always making sure to say it’s not because it’s miraculous. It gets down to the real historical claims such as when was the revival that Joseph Smith talked about and was he truly persecuted for claims of a vision.

He’ll also ask about the appearance of Moroni because even if you grant miraculous events and angelic encounters, there are reasons in the account itself to really question that the event happened. This is not the usual approach of using DNA testing or lacking archaeological evidence to go after Mormonism. This is striking at the heart. After all, Mormonism often is said to stand or fall on the first vision of Joseph Smith.

If you are someone who wants to interact with Mormons, you owe it to yourself to read this book. If you don’t interact with them, but you debate the resurrection of Jesus with skeptics, you need to read this book. This is a thorough and excellent reply to one common objection.

If I could recommend one book on dealing with Mormonism now, it would be this one. This is really one that any Mormon who is wanting to stay a strong Mormon needs to interact with. It will be a great reference for counter-cult apologetics for many years to come.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Coming Kingdom

What does the Kingdom of God refer to? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the big debates in eschatology really centers around the Kingdom of God. This is something that I disagree with the way I see futurism and dispensationalism presented. The question is what does it mean for the Kingdom of God to come and then when does it begin.

I plan to look at various passages about the Kingdom of God, but mainly I want to talk about what it means. Even secular scholars today now agree that one of the main messages of Jesus was the Kingdom of God. One of the great gifts N.T. Wright has done for the church is to open our eyes to what this means.

When Jesus shows up in the Gospels even at an early point, aside from John which hardly mentions this, He is talking about the Kingdom of God. This would be significant because though Israel had returned to the land, the land wasn’t their home again entirely. After all, the Romans were ruling over the land. Israel was supposed to be sovereign over the land.

A number of figures rose up wanting to end Roman rule and claiming to be the Messiah. These figures were often going to bring an end to Roman rule. As you should know, none of them did. Jesus shows up and He claims the Kingdom of God, but He has something different in mind than booting out the Romans.

Jesus is saying that God is going to be king again. The true monarchy that God intended through David is going to be restored. David had been one king in history who had fulfilled three roles of prophet, priest, and king. His son, the Messiah, would fulfill those roles.

The true enemy though was not the Romans. It was sin. God was through Jesus proclaiming that His rule would begin and it wouldn’t be limited to just a piece of land in the Middle East. God was going to rule the whole world.

This then gets to a debate about when the kingdom of God began. For a Preterist like myself, when Jesus says “soon”, He means it. God is going to being His rule. He is going to defeat the devil. He is going to conquer. He will reclaim the world for Himself.

Thus, the question then is when did Jesus become king or when is He going to be king? For someone in my position, the answer is Jesus is king right now. Now I know some of you could be saying “Well if Jesus is king right now, then why is there still evil in the world?” That was answered in part in our look at Psalm 110:1 and we will see more of this in the Gospels. Jesus is reigning now and His enemies are being made a footstool for His feet. We are His ambassadors going around announcing the news that Jesus Christ is king of this Earth.

So as we look at eschatology, expect a lot of verses to look at the Kingdom of God. There’s more in there than you likely realized.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Bedrock of Christianity

What do I think of Justin Bass’s book published by Lexham Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Justin Bass’s book is a book to look at what scholars across the board are saying about the historical Jesus in regard to His resurrection. This is a wonderful book that has great data, humor, and a nice pastoral touch. It is not only short and powerful, but it is also fun to read.

Bass also thankfully starts at the beginning with dealing with mythicism severely. He is familiar with Carrier’s work and does the work to show that this is not a claim that is taken seriously. From there, he goes point by point through the historical Jesus to show what is said.

Each chapter is a good number of pages long and has quotes all throughout to back everything Bass is saying. In the early chapters, Bass makes no argument really about the resurrection of Jesus. He instead saves that for the very end. If you go through the book, you will get a great plethora of quotes that you can use.

The humor in the book is really good. At one point, for example, Bass is making the case about what it means when we say that Paul was zealous for Judaism. He compares it to several zealous figures in the Old Testament, including Jehu who destroyed as much of King Ahab’s family as he could. He ends by saying the life of Jehu is a great bedtime story to read to your children. I found myself wondering what it would be like if he teamed up with Andy Bannister or Michael Bird to write something.

He also gets a pastoral touch. Now in some ways, this isn’t my favorite part because too often if you point to something like this, skeptics of Christianity will just discount everything you say as if the only reason you have for believing in Christianity is emotional. There is nothing wrong with emotional reasons playing a part though in your worldview thinking. We are emotional creatures as well as rational creatures for the most part. The stories are quite powerful thinking about the unique life Jesus lived and how His life has transformed the lives of others.

The appeal at the end is very evangelistic. Bass wants you to at least consider taking the claim seriously. He can accept that if you come to the data and say, “I don’t know what happened” that’s one thing you can say, but he urges you to not stop there. Isn’t it really worth looking into? Isn’t it worth considering?

In the end, he gives an argument for the resurrection based on this and the importance of new creation. Jesus didn’t just come and rise again so we could know Christianity is true. He rose again so that He could bring about the new creation. The new has come. The old has passed away.

In conclusion, Bass’s book is highly accessible and one worth reading by skeptic and Christian alike. I give it a full recommendation.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Moving Into Part 2 of the Olivet Discourse.

Where do we go from here? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Verse 34 wraps up the first part of the Olivet Discourse. From there on, the terminology shifts. We go from “this generation” to “that day.” There is debate among Preterists even about whether this is still first-century or if it refers to later events. Thus, for this brief interlude, I want to speak more about other matters.

I really want to finish other statements in the Gospels. For instance, there is the saying that some here will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God coming in power. This is often taken by skeptics of the New Testament as a failed prophecy of the return of Christ, which is odd since it nowhere says anything about a return, and it is taken by most Christians to refer to the transfiguration, which is not much of a prophecy because saying some people hearing Jesus would still be alive a week later isn’t too awe-inspiring. There are also passages such as not finishing going through all of Israel until the Son of Man comes or Jesus’s words before Caiaphas and others. I really want to finish as much of the Gospels as I can before moving elsewhere.

There are also a few places in Acts to cover. I am thinking of the disciples’ asking if Jesus was going to restore the kingdom to Israel. Not only that, believe it or not, there is some important eschatology to cover in Stephen’s stoning.

Some Old Testament verses will have to be covered. The most important one is Psalm 110:1. If you do not understand this verse, you will not understand eschatology. If you think this verse is not important to the New Testament, then you will have a major problem because this is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament.

A good friend of Deeper Waters has asked about Paul and James, naturally. After all, Paul pretty much had his PhD in the Old Testament so how did he supposedly miss what Jesus was saying? This is important to consider so we will look at passages about the resurrection to say what is being talked about and when and where Paul got His information from.

Finally, we will do some looking at Revelation, though to be extensive with that one would be difficult. We will discuss some matters such as the antichrist (Who is never specifically mentioned in the book. Consider that.) and the Beast and 666. We will also discuss how apocalyptic works should be read.

I hope this will be further informative for me as well. There are many secondary areas of Christianity I don’t care to discuss, but for some reason, I thoroughly enjoy eschatology and orthodox Preterism. I hope even if you disagree with my view, you have come to see how it is that someone can hold to it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Olivet Discourse Matthew 24:30

Is everybody looking for a sign? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So this next verse is again one that many futurists will jump at and say “See! This has to be future!” No. It doesn’t. I will again here be explaining why it is that I think the context better fits a first-century milleu described in typical apocalyptic language of the time. Let’s look at the verse.

“Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”

What we have to ask is what is being seen. Does it mean that the sign will be seen in Heaven or that the sign is of something in Heaven? I have traditionally been using the ESV, but let’s point out other translations renders this differently.

NIV:

“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.”

Berean Literal Bible: And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.

Berean Study Bible: At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.

NASB: “And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory.

NKJV: Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

I could go on, but you get the point. Notice something about these other translations. Heaven comes after Son of Man each time. I personally think the NIV has it most accurately. However, if you think I’m being arbitrary….

καὶ τότε φανήσεται τὸ σημεῖον τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ καὶ τότε κόψονται πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ ὄψονται τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐπὶ τῶν νεφελῶν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ μετὰ δυνάμεως καὶ δόξης πολλῆς·

Go to a site like Blueletterbible.com and look up the verse in Greek and see that Heaven follows AFTER the Son of Man each time. Note also this fits with other passages. In Matthew 26, Jesus tells Caiaphas that he will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Father and coming on the clouds of glory. I plan to look at this verse in greater depth later, but note what it says. Sitting and coming both. It doesn’t mean Caiaphas will look out his window one day and see Jesus riding on a cloud like Goku on his Nimbus. Also, Caiaphas certainly won’t see Jesus at the right hand of the Father literally since no one can see God and live.

Coming refers to judgment and sitting refers to ruling. Jesus sitting means that He is ruling and Jesus coming means that He is judging. What Jesus is saying is that Caiaphas will see that Jesus is ruling from the right hand of God and judging. This is quite the turnaround! The Sanhedrin is trying to judge Jesus, and Jesus is promising that He will judge them instead.

So what is Jesus promising that will be seen? The destruction of the temple as the location of the sign is not specified. Note that only at the beginning do we hear about the temple being destroyed explicitly. This is where Jesus is saying this is happening. The temple being destroyed means something new is being set up or at least an old way of doing things is ended. The system of Judaism at the time is ended. The new temple has been built. It is the temple of the church with the Spirit living in believers.

Why will the tribes mourn? Because the mourning means that judgment has come and Jerusalem will be no more. Also, I think Jerusalem is the Babylon that is pointed to in Revelation. We will spend more time on Revelation later in looking at eschatology and touching other passages like 1 Cor. 15, Psalm 110, and 2 Peter.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 3/21/2020

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Can we trust the Gospels? So many times one of the questions I hear from a skeptic is that if this information was so important, why wasn’t it written down sooner? Of course, there’s a hidden assumption there that in the ancient world, writing something down was the best way to communicate, as if most people could read.

Eventually, the Gospels were written, but they were written according to most scholars at least 30 years later. Isn’t that a long time? How many of us can remember events from 30 years ago that well? Now I’m 39, and I can remember quite a few things. I remember that on Christmas of 1988 I got Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers 2 for the NES and my parents were surprised I played Zelda first. I just thought Zelda would be more shaping of my identity and I was right.

Some of you who are older might remember other things. You might better remember Challenger exploding or the JFK assassination. Still, we all know memory is not always reliable. People do misremember things. There are several minor details that are different in the Gospels. Could this be an indication that the accounts have things wrong because people didn’t remember?

And what about the telephone game? Don’t we know that if you use oral tradition that things will get messed up? Can we really trust it? Kids don’t get the facts right when they play the game. How can we trust important information to a similar situation?

To discuss these, I’m bringing on a scholar who has studied oral tradition very well. He has written on Jesus and memory and the Synoptic Gospels. He will be with us this Saturday to talk about if we can trust oral tradition with the Gospels or not. His name is Robert McIver.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Professor Robert K. McIver, PhD has taught biblical studies Avondale University College, Cooranbong, NSW, Australia, since 1988.  Before coming to Avondale, Robert had taught mathematics at secondary and tertiary levels, before changing his career to work as a church pastor.  He holds a doctorate in biblical studies and archaeology from Andrews University, and has published ten books, including Memory, Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels, and Jesus in Four Dimensions, as well as articles in academic and popular journals.  He is married to Susan, and has two daughters and two grandsons.

We are also working on getting shows up for you. I just uploaded a bunch of them this week as the time with the virus is giving me that time I can do that. I hope to be all caught up before too long. Please be watching for this episode.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Paul and the Language of Faith

What do I think of Nijay Gupta’s book published by Eerdmans? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Just go online to any atheist community or atheist-Christian debate and watch what is said about faith. Faith is believing without evidence. Faith is saying things you know aren’t true. When I meet these people, I ask them about the word pistis in the New Testament, which is commonly translated faith, though not always, and ask if they have any evidence for their claim that that is how pistis was understood.

Oddly enough, they have none.

I guess they believe without evidence.

So when I saw that a New Testament scholar had published a book on pistis like this, I had to get it immediately. Gupta decided to do his research after hearing students in his seminary even speak the same way. I have heard this happen before remembering one Christian responding to an atheist he couldn’t answer by saying “I have faith!”

Gupta mainly wants to focus on how faith is used in the Pauline literature, but he does explore how it is used in literature outside of the New Testament for that. The findings are entirely consistent with my own research over the years. Faith generally refers to loyalty. It is an essential that holds society together. One is expected to have good faith when making contracts and covenants. Faith refers to the reliability of something.

Faith is also an action that one does. If you have faith, you will perform in such and such a way depending on the referent of said faith. An easy-believism would not have made any sense to Paul or anyone in the ancient world. If you believe that Jesus is Lord in the true sense of faith, you should live accordingly. Yes. Even the demons in James do that. They live consistently in trembling knowing judgment is coming.

So it is in Scripture that faith is not just signing a doctrinal statement. It is saying that you are loyal to King Jesus. Now to be sure, sometimes, faith can be used in a different sense. It can be used to describe the content of what one believes, such as one who keeps the faith, but that can just as well mean that such a person has remained loyal to King Jesus.

There is a section on what is meant by the faith of Christ as it were. Does it mean Christ’s faithfulness or does it mean our trust in Christ? I won’t spoil for those who haven’t read the book. If you are interested in that debate, you do need to see this book.

Those who are atheists should consider reading this book as well, at least the section on pistis outside of the New Testament and even in Jewish writings like Josephus. Those who say faith is blind are referring to a more modern Western look at the word. They are not referring to anything that can be found in the New Testament.

If there was one thing I would change about this book, it would be to cover more of Hebrews. You might say that this book is about Paul and what he meant by pistis, but sometimes Gupta does go to Revelation and the Gospels. Should Hebrews 11:1 not have been covered at least one time in all of this? I consider this a major oversight and I hope that in future editions, this important passage will be covered.

Despite that, the book is highly educational on the meaning of faith. If you are a Christian who uses faith in the sense of blind belief even when you don’t have evidence, stop. If you are an atheist who thinks faith is the same thing, stop. Both of you are ignoring the historical context of the word.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Review of Tom Jump vs Jonathan Sheffield

What did I think of this debate? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Someone recommended I look into the work of Tom Jump. I have heard a lot about him. Something interesting is that I saw that he said he has Aspergers which means he and I have a similarity. I saw him debate Gil Sanders on the existence of God with Thomism and think Gil was the one who knew most what he was talking about in that debate.

Some of you might cry bias, but realize I try to be as objective as I can in debates. I can think the atheist is wrong with his conclusion, but I can think he presented the better argument. When my father-in-law does a debate and I watch it, I give an honest feedback and if I don’t think it was a great debate on his part, I tell him.

My main area is the historical Jesus so I decided to see what Tom Jump had to say about the resurrection. I only found one such debate thus far and that was against Jonathan Sheffield. Right off, Sheffield’s argument for the resurrection I found quite unusual and was one I had never heard before. Those interested in the whole debate can go here.

Sheffield argues that many claimants of various religions were investigated by the Roman Empire and dealt with. Nothing was ever found about Christianity and a forged statement arguing that an investigation had been done was made. Sheffield argues that if Christianity was false, it would have been easy to shut it down at the time.

This is not the argument I would use, but it was interesting. I’m more interested in Jump’s response. Jump gave sadly the usual responses we see such as ECREE and of course, there had to be an appeal to Richard Carrier in there. At one point, he did reference the work of Mike Licona, but I wonder if he read it himself or just got it secondhand.

I would have liked to have seen more information on the historical data itself. I would have especially liked to have seen more on the burial. Jump goes with the position that Jesus was likely thrown in a common grave which is a position that was held by Crossan at one point at least and is held by Ehrman today.

I really don’t know after watching the debate where Jump stands on many issues aside from he doesn’t believe Jesus rose from the dead. Does he believe Jesus even existed? (If he likes Carrier, there’s reason to think he doesn’t.) When does he think the Gospels were written and who wrote them? What does he think of Paul?

I naturally don’t find ECREE convincing at all as an argument. Extraordinary is never defined and what is extraordinary for one person isn’t for another and how do you recognize extraordinary evidence. Does it glow in the dark? A young-earth creationist finds evolution and atheism an extraordinary claim. An atheist finds theism and young-earth creationism an extraordinary claim. If you went to a third world country and told them we landed on the moon (Assuming they had never heard of such an event), they would find that claim extraordinary.

At any rate, while I would not use the argument Sheffield used, though it was interesting and if he has success with it, wonderful, I found Jump’s response was less than adequate. I wouldn’t mind seeing what else he might say in debate on the resurrection, but so far I haven’t seen anything that calls it into question.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Jesus, Skepticism, and the Problem of History

What do I think of Darrell Bock and Ed Komoszewski’s book published by Zondervan?

This book is largely a response to Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne’s book Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity. The editors have put together a fine team of scholars to write various chapters illustrating that the criteria do still work. In the end, there are also three responses from those who can be critical looking at what was said.

For those not aware, the debate largely centers around checking various criteria to see if we can know if the historical Jesus did and said certain things or didn’t do and say certain things. These have been debated various times, but for the most part what we have is generally accepted with some qualifications. If anything, it really seems to come down to worldview a lot of the times.

A number of the essays in here provided some interesting viewpoints. I don’t know if I agree with Beth Sheppard on Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount in a theater, but her other insights on the culture and Jesus is excellent. Who would have thought that the Roman guard getting a sponge with wine for Jesus when He was crucified would also be an insult along the lines of toilet humor?

I appreciated also Paul Anderson’s essay on the Gospel of John. This is a Gospel that has sadly been neglected, and yet there is much in there that is supportable by new evidence that has come forth from the Dead Sea Scrolls and archaeology. However, I don’t think the Gospel of John will spark the fourth quest for the historical Jesus. If anything, I think the fourth quest should be involving a look not just at the Jewishness of Jesus, but also at the honor-shame culture that Jesus lived in.

Also, everyone who is familiar with New Testament studies will find something they like in here and also someone that they like in here. You can find Blomberg, Wallace, Licona, Bird, Keener, Evans, and several others contributing to this volume. You will have topics covered like the burial of Jesus, the resurrection, and the book of Acts.

The responses are also interesting. Scot McKnight’s was probably the most engaging and the one that I am thinking about the most. McKnight argues that the problem is not the methods but the results and that the premise of historical Jesus scholarship is to find the real Jesus instead of the one that is presented in Christianity. I wonder if this is really the case.

After all, if two people are doing the same methodology and reach different conclusions, either wrong data was used or someone made a mistake or some combination thereof. If we are doing history right, will we not find the Christ of Christianity if Christianity is true? It’s the same approach I take to science in that if Christianity is true, science can never contradict it.

At any rate, this volume is definitely a great defense of using the criteria in historical methodology to demonstrate several facts about the historical Jesus to be likely true. Even if you are not interested in that debate, the reader will gain much knowledge on other areas reading this. I highly recommend this volume for those interested in historical Jesus studies.

In Christ,
Nick Peters