I am very excited about our next set of classes beginning Nov 29 (lasts 10 weeks not including the 2 weeks off before Christmas and New Years) on the Gospel of John and Christ and Culture. we will really look at the Gospel of John in a way you have never seen before--I promise or your money back!! The Christ and Culture course will really equip you to understand the nature and importance of worldviews and how to engage with those of various worldviews (postmodernism, Atheism, pluralism, and many other isms!). The Gospel of John will really get us into Who was this Jesus and what was He doing! Why would they crucify a guy who told neat stories and healed everyone? (hmm Maybe because He was a radical and a quiet rebel?!). Here is the registration link: http://cornerstoneweb.org/ministries/the-bible-academy/classes/ Here are the descriptions: Christ and Culture: This course will address the foundational issues of worldviews and apologetics designed to equip us to effectively engage the culture with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to be prepared to ‘give an answer to everyone’ (1 Pet 3:15) in love. How does the Gospel of Jesus Christ relate to the constantly changing culture? How do we know that the Bible is true and trustworthy? In all, this course will assist the students to be prepared to engage with the common worldviews present in American culture, so that they can more effectively engage the culture as witnesses for Jesus Christ. Gospel of John: Why did John write a fourth Gospel when we already had three others? This amazing Gospel fills in so much of our understanding of Jesus; who He is; what He did; and why it matters to us. An understanding of this Gospel is essential for understanding the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament; Who Jesus is; and what it means for us as Christians today! The Gospel of John presents us with one of the clearest accounts of how Jesus is the truly the fulfillment of the promises of God to His people. Jesus is the true Bread from heaven, the true Light of the World, and the great I Am. The Gospel of John also highlights how Jesus was God in the flesh and how He has brought about the goal of the God to dwell among His people; first in Jesus, then in the giving of the Spirit to the Church, and ultimately to the whole creation in the New Jerusalem. This class will explore these pictures of Jesus as well as the call to discipleship in the Gospel of John.

Pray for those in Ministry or preparing to be!

I just read the following excerpt from the great Eugene Peterson. It is sombering and sobering. Many future leaders are being trained in our seminaries; pray that they will not succumb to the dangers of doing ministry. Pray that those currently serving will fulfill their tasks and will not only lead the Church towards Christ, but serve as role models for those who are hearing the call of God and aspiring towards ministry. “American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries. A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted…. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills. The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns– how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money. Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists. The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.” -Eugene Peterson Father forgive them for they know not what they do--even though they should

Our next class will be a Discussion Group Tuesday, November 1 at 6:00 till we have no more questions. All students who are taking the class for Credit are required to attend.Everyone is welcome to come and discuss what you have learned from your readings. Be prepared to discuss The Old Testament and Genesis 1-11. We will be serving Pizza the first hour and dessert after.
Please rsvp if you are attending so I can order enough food.Email me if you have any questions barbarac@cornerstoneweb.org

The Middle East and the End-Times

Are the current events in the Middle East signs of the end-times? This question is posed way too often and receives too much attention in evangelical churches. In my opinion, and I will write about this in the future, the question is the result of a very faulty hermeneutic (how one reads the Bible). A far more important question is, 'what does all this mean for the Church?'--both the Church in the Middle East and the Church around the world. We will directly address this question at our conference on Christianity and the Middle East (Nov 18-19, 2011 in Livermore, Ca. at Cornerstone Fellowship--see our website . During my opening presentation at this conference I will contend that the Bible does not give us a roadmap of events that will transpire immediately prior to Jesus' return. Instead, we are told that 'no one knows' the time of Jesus' return (note Matt 24:42-44 says we do not know the 'hour', 'time', or 'day'). After all, if Jesus didn't know the time of His return, then I doubt seriously that He was giving us indications as to when it was going to occur! Instead, Jesus tells us to 'be ready!' (Matt 24:44). But what does 'be ready' mean? I will suggest that 'being ready' means 'caring for the least of these brothers of mine' (Matt 25:40). Interestingly, most people don't notice the connection with the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt 25:31-46) to Jesus' sermon of Matt 24 (actually the sermon likely begins in Matt 23:2). That Matt 25 is included in the same sermon of Jesus is evidenced by two features of Matthew's Gospel: First, Matthew has five distinct sermons of Jesus each of which end with 'And it happened, when Jesus finished all these words' (my translation). This expression occurs in Matt 26:1 (see also: 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1). Therefore, we conclude that this speech of Jesus, which began in 23:2 or 24:4, continues through all of chapter 25. Secondly, there is no other break in the message of Matt 24-25 in which one could say that the speech ends here. The only break is found in 26:1. Therefore, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats is the conclusion to Jesus' famed 'end-times' sermon of Matt 24-25 (or 23-25). This parable informs us that when He returns He will judge between the sheep and the goats and the basis for this judgment is how have we treated the people of God? (note: the phrase ‘Least of these' refers without exception to disciples of Jesus in Matt: cf 10:42; 18:6, 10, 14; 5:19; 11:11; and the phrase ‘brothers of mine’: throughout Matt this indicates followers of Christ: cf 5:22-24, 47; 7:3-5; 12:48-50; 18:15, 21, 35; 23:8; 28:10; cp Matt 12:50: ‘Whoever does the will of my Father . . . He is my brother, and sister, and mother’). So, instead of watching the news with excitement over the events of the Middle East as though they are portents of Jesus' return, we should heed the words of Christ to 'be ready'. Since being ready means caring for those in the body of Christ as our first duty, we must become informed of the well-being of the body of Christ, both locally and globally! Pray for the Church. Pray for our conference! See you there!

Peter the Son of Jonah or John

Matt 16:17 says that Peter is the son of Jonah; while John 1:42 and 21:15-17 says that he is the son of John--though the KJV says son of Jonah. so we have two questions here: what does the most reliable Greek texts say (Jonah or John)?; and if John reads 'the son of John' then how do we address the discrepancy between Matt and John the reading in John 1:42; 21:15-17 is simply a manuscript issue. The issue is raised because John says that Peter is the son of John (1:42; 21:15-17); while the Gospel of Matt says that he is Peter the son of Jonah (Matt 16:17). This discrepancy likely led some copiests to change the mss of John so that it agrees with Matthew. The result is a question among the mansucripts. The KJV of John simply sides with the mss tradition that favors Jonah (the mss tradition of the KJV, in my opinion, is not usually the most reliable tradition; the best mss of John 1:42; 21:15-17; say ‘son of John’). So was Peter the son of Jonah (Matt) or the son of John (John)? There are several answers available. 1) ‘son of’ means ‘having the characteristics of.’ Thus, the Jews say they are ‘sons of’ Abraham and Jesus says, ‘then do the deeds of Abraham’ (John 8). Matthew may then have referred to Peter as someone like Jonah (with his father’s name being John as the Gospel of John says); note that Jonah is not a common 1st century name; 2) Peter’s father could have had multiple names--Jonah and John; 3) We don’t know I would opt for option 1 or 3: We would then ask, why was Matthew referring to Peter as someone like Jonah?

Daniel and the "7 year Tribulation"

I was recently perusing through some of my old folders when I came across some notes that I had written years earlier (probably 20 years ago; they were after all handwritten). There on the page I had 'calculated' the 483 years of Dan 9 so that it 'fits' with the life of Christ--actually the thought is that Dan 9 leads us exactly to the time of Christ's Triumphal entry, or the cross, depending on whom you ask. (As I have noted before, this was my upbringing. I was rasied to read the Scriptures in such a literalistic fashion--meaning that we are to take everything literally instead of letting the genre determine how we read the text). So, how might I respond to such a reading (that is, how do I respond to myself!): 1) Taking numbers in an apocalyptic text like Daniel literally are problematic; the first ‘time frame’ given in Dan is found in 7:25 which reads ‘a time, times, and half a time’—this is clearly an undefinable time frame (the plural use of 'times' cannot be defined); which is an apocalyptic way of saying that the time frame is symbolic and not to be taken literally. Numbers is apocalypses do not have as their primary referent a literally meaning (secondary or tertiary perhaps). To say that Daniel goes on to affirm that the time frame is 3 1/2 years (half of the 7 years) does not work either since Daniel gives us two numbers in ch 12 that don't work together (1290; 1335). 2) The 69 X 7 (or 483) years of Dan 9 must be manipulated to ‘fit’ with the Christ events (my notes have all the details as to how the numbers 'work out'; but my efforts are clearly an effort to make things work); hardly any scholar will date the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in AD 32 (it was either in 30 or 33); also to make this date work one must assume it was the decree of 445 BC, when the context of Daniel favors the decree of Cyrus in 539 BC; even so, there were several other decrees; so one must arbitrarily take the decree of 445; furthermore, 445 BC to AD 32 does not equal 483 years (of course, such proposals come with many adjustments to make it fit, but such manipulations themselves should tell you that the proposal is highly suspect) The beauty of the Bible is found in its intricacies. The beauty of the text often transcends some literalistic surface reading. We must learn to be content with allowing the mystery and complexity of the Scriptures be what they are: namely, they point to realities of God's sovereignty; they are not riddles to be solved by our clever calculations Now let me be clear on what I am saying: Certainly, I absolutely affirm that Dan 9 leads us to Jesus. But I don't think that we have to decipher the 'exact time frame' that is supposedly hidden in the text. Instead, the text informs us of God's sovereign control of events and that He will bring them to fruition in accordance with His faithfulness (and not a time clock)!

Jesus the Messiah

This is a response to an email conversation in which I was invited to comment: (I omitted the names of individuals) Thanks for allowing me to peer into this conversation. I have been watching T and K’s replies. They have both been very articulate and it is a joy to watch people discuss and disagree with respect and dignity. Without attempting to get into the midst of the dialogue on the details, I would like to add, what I hope is clarity, with regards to the philosophical issues. Basically, the problem is that we often confuse what science can do and what science cannot do. K is correct when she says, “I'm not sure the idea of a Creator even belongs in a discussion about evolutionary theory as evolutionary theory does not suggest there IS a creator, or if there ISN'T one.” This is true because science cannot address “purpose” or “design”. This is in the realm of philosophy/theology, or metaphysics. Purpose cannot be tested in a laboratory. It is not subject to experimentation or falsification. Therefore, science cannot address the question of God’s existence or even God’s involvement in an event. Now, I do agree with K’s assertion that “And there are so many unexplained (by science) phenomena in this great big amazing universe ... there must something else to it other than science,” but we must understand that such a conclusion is beyond what science is allowed to do and is a metaphysical (theological) conclusion. Thus, K, is not correct when she makes the claim “there is no "intelligence" or "grand master plan" in evolutionary theory.” This is a metaphysical claim that science cannot weigh in on. That is, science cannot affirm nor deny that statement. It is beyond science. In the same way I would note that T’s claim that most evolutionists are Atheists is ultimately irrelevant when it comes to establishing the veracity of the scientific claims. (Furthermore, I don’t think it is true. Certainly, Atheists uses evolution to support their position; but it is not true that “atheism is the natural conclusion of belief in the evolutionary theory of the origins of life”, because that is a metaphysical claim that is beyond the ability of science). The key point, which most people on both sides of this debate fail to recognize, is that the debate about God’s existence cannot be part of the scientific arena. Scientists cannot assert whether or not God exists. This debate is for the philosophers and theologians. Now I fully agree with T that the deductions of intelligent design are strong evidences for the presence of a creator. I would add that the problem of the ‘Origin of life’ appears insurmountable at this time for one who postulates that God does not exist based on the evidences of evolutionary science. In fact, to say that God does not exist based on evolutionary science is downright silly. One more tangential point: faith is never blind and irrational—at least it is not supposed to be for Christians. The Bible tells us to ‘test and approve’ God’s will. To Love God with ‘our minds’. Jesus claimed to be ‘the Truth’. PS for those of you who are interested, I will be teaching a study on Genesis 1-12 beginning Tues Sept 6 at Cornerstone Fellowship Thanks