Fellow Inheritors of the Kingdom by Wayne Stallsmith

Fellow Inheritors of the Kingdom by Wayne Stallsmith

I picked up Edwin Lutzer’s book, One Minute After You Die, again and started reading in Chapter 3: “The Ascent into Glory.”

His words are so melodious, but they have the taste and odor of pickle juice. What do I mean?

Lutzer is, alas, a fabricator of errant interpretations. Scripture immediately exposes his book title, One Minute After You Die, as fraudulent. Chapters one and two are a disaster of misinterpretation, but now we go to chapter three, and we find Mr. Lutzer continues his fabrications as if he were reading directly from a Plato trilogy!

Let me touch on a few statements in Chapter 3. On page 55, he quotes 1 Corinthians 3:21-23: “all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ to God,” citing death as God’s gift to us. What he does not see is a connection that has been a stumbling block for Trinitarians (among others). The passage reveals a clear subordination of Jesus, the Christ, to God. As the Trinitarian doctrine espouses Jesus to be God, the Trinitarians in this case are not able to explain how God can be subordinate to God. The passage concludes, “you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.”

On page 56 Lutzer again trips up, stating that the pagans could not rid Christians of the gift of death that would escort them into the presence of God. You might want to mail Mr. E.R. Lutzer the extensive list of “death” scriptures that explicitly reveal such is not the case. No one is escorted into the presence of God at death. ... I would remind Lutzer of Paul’s own words: “In this way [by resurrection or catching up to meet Jesus at his coming] we will come to be with Jesus” (1 Thess. 4:13-17).

At the bottom of page 56, our author offers this thought: “Similarly, death is the means by which our bodies are put to rest while our spirits are escorted through the gates of heaven.” Escorted by whom? Give me the Bible reference. “Our spirits are escorted” to heaven at death? [Rather] When a human being dies, the unity of body and soul die together; the body/soul combination is mortal. The Greeks (Plato) taught that the body is useless and death allows the soul to shed the body and take flight to live forever a life of its own. The Greek-trained Gnostic Christians, post-Bible times, recommended that they give the separated soul a destination: the good ones go to heaven (up there), and the bad ones go to the wretched chambers of Hades or to instant Hell-fire. In reality, however, Scripture states that the mortal body/soul, the whole person, rests or sleeps in death (Dan. 12:2) until the resurrection occurs at the return of Jesus at the sound of the 7th trumpet, and not a moment before
(Rev. 11:15-18). This Greek false teaching, espoused now by the majority of Christians, particularly Catholics and Calvinists, is a cleverly designed error that has become over the past thousand years “orthodox theology.”

In this same paragraph of his book, Lutzer refers to our “spirits” being escorted to heaven. But this is easily misunderstood as a conscious immediate life in heaven. Certainly at birth God sends an emission of His spirit to generate life in the child. That spirit of God [i.e. our breath] resides within the individual until he/she dies. The spirit has no form or identity, but God takes it back when life, our life cycle ends. Here’s the proof: “Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth” (Ecc. 3:21). “The dust shall return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who gave it” (Ecc. 12:7). Meanwhile “the dead know nothing at all…There is no activity in the world of the dead [gravedom, sheol, Hades]” (Ecc. 9:5, 10). The resurrection is the only way out of death (John 11:11, 14)!

The above was taken from
Focus On The Kingdom Vol. 18. No. 12

Some editing has been done.

Does Jesus Use of “I Am” Mean He Is God? by Alane Rozelle

Does Jesus Use of “I Am” Mean He Is God? by Alane Rozelle

In John 9:9, the miraculously healed but formerly blind man said, “I am,” exactly the same two Greek words that Jesus uses when he makes his “I am” statements (as recorded throughout the book of John). First, it’s interesting to note that when the blind man says in Greek “ego eimi,” it is usually and correctly translated as “I am he,” referring, of course, to his attempt to clarify to everyone that, “Yes! I am he; I am the one — the formerly blind man, but now I’m healed.” Yet when Jesus says the same thing precisely in order to identify himself as the Messiah (John 4:26), it’s usually rendered as “I am” or even “I AM” (CEB, ISV, JUB, TLV). This in turn is popularly, but quite erroneously, used to support the falsehood that Jesus was somehow claiming to be God, since in the OT God/Yahweh said to Moses “I am that I am”
(Ex 3.14, literally, “I will be what I will be”).

When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman he was making the stupendous claim to be the Messiah, the Christ of the woman’s declaration in the verse immediately preceding (4:25). Elsewhere in John, Jesus is recorded as stating that he is the “bread of life” (6:35) and “the resurrection and the life” (11:25). But saying “ego eimi the bread of life” is nothing at all like declaring
“I am what I am/I will be what I will be” as said by God to Moses (Ex. 3:14).

Note that it’s not the “ego eimi” of God’s self-revelation that is the focus for those who say Jesus is God. The real declaratory focus are the subsequent two words — “o ohn” — the Divine identifiers, we might say. In the NIV God says to Moses: “I am [ego eimi] who I am [o ohn].”
“I am the Self-Existing One.” “This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am [o ohn] has sent me to you.’” But the English translations highlight the wrong two words, i.e., instead of ego eimi it should be o ohn: “o ohn [the self-existing one] has sent you.”
(cp. Philo, Life of Moses, vol. 1.75: “He who is”).

The NT writers never record Jesus using “o ohn” in reference to himself, let alone “ego eimi o ohn.” Furthermore, what other words would you have Jesus use in order to identify himself? For example, when you say “I am a teacher” or “I am Bob” or “I am the only one who has the key to that door,” if you were to write them in Greek the same words would be used as self-identifiers: “ego eimi.” There is no simpler and clearer way to identify you! Jesus never said “I AM” or “I am that I am” or “I will be what I will be.” He simply said, “I am the good shepherd; I am the way, the truth and the life; I am the vine”; “I am the Messiah” (John 4:25-26), etc. Like the healed blind man, Jesus was merely identifying himself for those asking or looking for him (cp. John 18:4-8).

Jesus from the beginning claimed to be the promised Messiah. He never claimed to be YHWH, the God of Israel (who is also the God of Jesus!). He never claimed to be “The Great I AM” of the OT. He did, however, repeatedly claim to be the unique Son of God, the Messiah lord (Luke 2.11,
kristos kurios) and this is not the Lord God. Jesus is related to the One Lord God in Luke 2:26 where he is the Lord’s Anointed (Messiah). Luke has brilliantly and precisely introduced the hero and principal “player” of his narrative in the two-volume (Luke and Acts) work he gives us. Luke wrote nearly a third of the NT.

What a blessed achievement! Luke and Jesus never for a moment believed that there are two who are both GOD. That would shatter the great commandment, which forbids any multiplying of God (Mark 12:29; John 17:3; 5:44; Mal. 2:10). Jesus rejected the blasphemy of claiming to be GOD! (John 10:33-36).


The above was taken from
Focus On The Kingdom Vol. 18. No. 12