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* True, but an elephant can still hide in here for a long time. *

A word to newbies who might be reading this. Listen to Jesus and the apostles. Without exception, they all preached the gospel of God. In the spirit of James I say in this thread to newbies: Remember that and you will be doing well.

I often ask trinitarians (and binitarians and unitarians) this question: Is it reasonable for a Jewish monotheist to read the writings of Jewish monotheists through the prism of Jewish monotheism? I very seldom receive a direct answer to the question. A followup question along the same line of...

“When the Jew said something was ‘predestined,’ he thought of it as already ‘existing’ in a higher sphere of life. The world’s history is thus predestined because it is already, in a sense, preexisting and consequently fixed. This typically Jewish conception of predestination may be...

”Within the Christian tradition the New Testament has long been read through the prism of the later conciliar creeds ... Speaking of Jesus as the Son of God had a very different connotation in the first century from that which it has had ever since Nicea. Talk of Jesus’ preexistence [in the...

Jesus had spoken of resurrection as conferring endless life, the life of the coming age, on those who follow him (John 8:51). It is possible that Jesus counters their question about him seeing Abraham - as if the Messiah were a contemporary of Abraham, which both he and they knew the Messiah...

“Jesus has been emphasizing his Messianic claim. He does not say that before Abraham was born the logos existed; he says ‘I am.’ It is Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the man whom the Father had consecrated to the Messianic work who speaks. Just before this he had spoken of ‘my day,’ which Abraham saw...

In John 8:58 Jesus doesn’t say that he saw Abraham; he claims to be superior to Abraham. I skipped over the bulk of the conversation to get to the last three verses but we should keep in mind that the unbelieving Jews had placed a great deal of emphasis on how they were descendants of Abraham...

“There is enough dust on some of your Bibles to write ‘damnation with your fingers.” - Charles Spurgeon I don’t want to be counted with those who are in that situation and I don’t want my readers to be either. It’s now the 9th day of January. If you thought about using a Bible reading plan but...

“God is more full of mercy than the sun is full of light.” - Thomas Watson

I have one more item that I need to address, and that is how I believe, as a Jewish monotheist, that Jesus of Nazareth, a fellow Jewish monotheist, is before Abraham. I’ll do that sometime tomorrow. Of course I will also reply to any questions that members of the forum may want to ask me.

“There never was a time that he came into being.” Trinitarians, binitarians and the majority of unitarians hold this to be true. The position of believing Jewish monotheists is that he was brought into being when he was miraculously begotten by his God and Father and conceived in the womb of...

Let’s look again at what Jesus said in 8:56 -> “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad.” Jesus didn’t say that he had seen Abraham. He said only that Abraham had seen his day. But what did the angry unbelieving Jewish monotheists say in 8:57? -> “… and have you...

“The identification of Jesus’ I am statements with the I am of Exodus I believe to be a misreading of the text. Of the I am sayings in this Gospel, those with the predicate ‘I am the bread of life,’ ‘the door,’ ‘the way,’ ‘the good shepherd, etc. certainly do not imply that the subject is God...

“That the absolute use of ‘I am’ need not have connotations of divinity is clear from its usage by the man born blind at John 9:9, Jesus’ words, then, were not an unambiguous asseveration of divinity.” (H.H. Rowden, Christ the Lord, p. 172)

“‘I am he’ is a claim to be the Messiah and implies neither divinity nor preexistence: ‘Before Abraham’s coming, I am he,’ that is, the promised Messiah. The simple phrase ‘I am’ is used by Jesus 15 times, and in every case (but the present, John 8:58) it is rendered in the Common Version ‘I am...

* Any Day Now. That could be good or bad. I’m going to increase my life insurance and stay positive. *

* I won’t do what it would take for me to accept an invitation to that. *