Thunder in the Holy Land

Seeing The Invisible

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Charles Byrd (Host), Andrea Endries, Levi Longoria, Stephen Fowler

Home

Series Code: THL

Program Code: THL000004


00:01 There are some things.
00:02 Okay, there are many things that I don't understand,
00:06 but they put me in all.
00:08 Take this phone for example.
00:09 I've been told there is more computing power in this phone
00:13 than there was in the Apollo Lunar Modules
00:16 or take sound for example.
00:19 The trumpet has a certain sound produced by the metal
00:22 and its unique shape.
00:26 A dog on the other hand is made of different material,
00:28 flesh and his voice box is shaped
00:31 different than the trumpet, so it sounds different.
00:37 And then there is the violin with four strings,
00:40 a wooden shoe and a horse hair bow.
00:43 It has a unique sound unlike the trumpet or the dog.
00:50 But here's what I don't understand.
00:52 Take the speaker with a cone of paper,
00:54 put sound through it and this one shape can reproduce
00:58 the sound of a trumpet,
01:01 a dog or a violin.
01:06 And then it can sound like all of them at the same time.
01:13 But this is made of just one material
01:16 and only has one shape.
01:18 How does it do that?
01:21 In the same way there are things
01:23 that are hard to understand in the spiritual round,
01:26 especially if you're human.
01:29 One of those things was a teaching of Jesus
01:31 found in John 10:30.
01:34 "I and my Father are one."
01:38 That caused some serious thunder in the holy land
01:42 because this teaching of Jesus up ended a core understanding
01:46 that made the Jews
01:47 unique throughout the entire world or did it.
02:44 Yep, there are things I just don't understand.
02:47 I don't understand how the human eye can see.
02:50 I don't understand how the human ear can hear.
02:53 And I don't understand how the phone, radio or T.V.
02:56 can receive signals through the air.
02:58 But that doesn't stop me from experiencing these things.
03:03 The same is true in regard to deity.
03:05 I don't understand God either,
03:08 but that doesn't stop me from experiencing Him.
03:11 And when I say Him is that one Him, or two Him, or three Him.
03:17 While the world all around them was worshiping
03:20 a whole pantheon of Gods.
03:22 The Jews as a nation taught that there was only one.
03:27 So you can imagine how Jesus stirred things up by saying
03:31 "I and my Father are one."
03:35 He sure did, Charles.
03:36 Today I'm standing at top of the very steps
03:39 that Jesus and the Jews have climbed
03:41 to enter the Eastern Huldah Gate
03:43 to go the temple mount and worship God.
03:45 This study concerns that God had
03:47 and Jesus is teaching on the subject.
03:49 So today let's start with the known fact.
03:52 Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God
03:55 was rejected by the Jews, but why?
03:58 After healing the sick, raising the dead, being morally good,
04:02 why would they want to kill Jesus?
04:04 They had stated a reason and I'll share that in a moment,
04:07 but first I want to share the real reason.
04:09 When the Jewish leaders brought Jesus to Pilot,
04:12 he knew that for envy
04:13 they had delivered Jesus to him to be crucified.
04:17 Not for morally wrong, not for some great evil,
04:20 they were simply jealous.
04:22 Keep that in mind as we consider the reason
04:24 they gave to Pilot.
04:26 "The Jews answered, we have a law, and by our law
04:30 He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God."
04:34 And what law were the Jews talking about?
04:37 Most likely the one in Deuteronomy 6.
04:39 There we have the most famous Jewish prayer, The Shema.
04:44 Observant Jews consider the Shema to be
04:46 the most important part of the prayer service in Judaism.
04:49 By religious commandment that is by tradition,
04:52 the Shema should be recited twice a day.
04:54 It is traditional for the Jews to say the Shema
04:56 as their last verse before death
04:58 and for parents to teach their children to say it
05:01 before they go to sleep at night.
05:03 The Shema starts with these words.
05:05 "Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, The Lord is one."
05:10 This teaching made the Jews people
05:12 distinct from every other polytheistic religion.
05:15 For the God of Israel was one.
05:18 Unfortunately they took these words absolutely literal.
05:21 This was repeated fall of theirs.
05:23 Jesus told him, "you must be born again."
05:26 Nicodemus asked, how could a man
05:29 going to his mother and be born again?
05:31 Nicodemus tried to take these teachings completely literal,
05:34 but this teaching was not physical, it was spiritual.
05:38 And spiritual things must be spiritually discerned.
05:42 The same is true of this passage in John 10:30.
05:46 Let's take a moment to really look at this teaching,
05:48 this doctrine of Jesus that so disturbed the Jews leaders.
05:53 "I and my Father are one."
05:57 This angered the Jews, but this anger was born
06:00 of an over literal reading of the Shema.
06:04 What Jesus is doing here is putting
06:06 a new and clear meaning on the word one.
06:10 And for years they had been saying
06:12 the Shema thinking one God meant one being,
06:16 but what if the word God is a family name.
06:19 You could have one family
06:20 and that would mean more than one person.
06:24 In John 1:18 Jesus used this earthly terms
06:28 to try to explain something beyond our understanding,
06:32 but not beyond our ability to experience.
06:36 He talks about God as a father in intimate terms.
06:39 "No man hath seen God at any time,
06:43 the only begotten Son,
06:44 which is in the bosom of the Father,
06:46 he hath declared him."
06:49 And Jesus claimed to have seen the Father,
06:52 to have been embraced in the bosom of the Father.
06:54 And Jesus being here with us
06:57 was a declaration of the Father Himself.
07:00 This oneness was very singular and Jesus taught His followers
07:04 that He and the Father were virtually the same thing.
07:08 Look at this in John 14:9.
07:10 "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
07:13 I know the Jewish people don't accept the teachings of Jesus,
07:17 but what He was teaching
07:18 wasn't merely a New Testament doctrine.
07:21 In fact if you study the Old Testament
07:23 with your Strong's Exhaustive Concordance,
07:26 you'll discover this teaching of Jesus is clearly taught
07:29 in the original language of the Old Testament.
07:32 And there is no excuse for the Jewish leaders
07:34 not to have known this,
07:36 neither is there an excuse for Christians not to know this.
07:40 You can have more than one being and still have one God.
07:45 Following is some Biblical evidence
07:48 that affirms this radical teaching of one.
07:52 And there are three primary names for God in Old Testament.
07:55 One, El, two, Elohiym and three, Yehovah.
08:01 Some who claimed the name of Christian suggested
08:04 these three names are three separate beings,
08:08 but only one represents the creator God of the universe
08:12 and that is Yehovah or Jehovah or some pronounce it Yehowah.
08:17 But this is not at all the case,
08:19 they are just different names for the same God.
08:22 In fact there are 19 verses where all three come together
08:27 and here are just two of them.
08:29 Second Samuel 22:32 says, "For who is El save the Yehovah
08:35 and who is a rock, save our Elohiym.
08:39 And Nehemiah 1:5 says, "I beseech thee,
08:42 O Yehovah Elohiym of heaven, the great and terrible El,
08:47 that keepeth covenant and mercy
08:49 for them that love him and observe his commandments."
08:54 We're not talking about greater Gods and lesser Gods here.
08:58 No, here El, Elohiym and Yehovah are all interchangeable
09:03 as were referring to the same one and only God.
09:07 In other words the names are all equal,
09:10 the same and referring to the same God.
09:14 You're right, Levi.
09:16 El, Elohiym and Yehovah are names
09:19 for the almighty God of the Old Testament.
09:22 Now Jesus said that He and His Father were one.
09:26 When we allow scripture to interpret itself,
09:29 an amazing discovery unfolds, backed up by fulfilled prophecy.
09:34 These three Hebrew names referred to Jesus as well.
09:38 Check it out.
09:39 In Exodus 3:14 we find the story of the Elohiym God
09:43 talking to Moses at the burning bush.
09:45 On my recent trip through the deserts of Egypt and Israel
09:48 and I saw some of those bushes.
09:52 Moses told God or Elohiym that if he went back to Egypt
09:55 and told the people that he had been sent
09:57 by the God of their fathers to free them.
10:00 They would ask what is His name.
10:03 So he asked God, what should I tell them.
10:06 And God said unto Moses, "I am that I am.
10:11 And He said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel.
10:15 I am hath sent me unto you."
10:19 Let me pause for just one moment
10:21 and take you back to Genesis 1:1 to point out
10:25 that the God who is from the beginning,
10:27 the God who created the heaven and the earth is also Elohiym.
10:32 The God of creation
10:34 and the God of the burning bush are the same God.
10:37 And this is the God of the Exodus.
10:40 So you can imagine what thunder was causing in the holy land
10:44 by Jesus words in John 8:58.
10:46 "Jesus said unto them, verily, verily, I say unto you,
10:50 Before Abraham was, I am."
10:55 What Jesus was claiming here is that He is Elohiym
10:59 and that claim was not lost on the people that hurt Him.
11:01 To them those words were blasphemous
11:04 and they took up stones to stone Jesus.
11:08 But I believe they were too hasty.
11:10 You see, Jesus claimed to be Elohiym,
11:13 the God of creation and the Exodus was backed up
11:17 and proven for all time by the fulfillment
11:20 of an amazing prophecy.
11:23 That's why I'm a Christian, Andrea,
11:25 because Jesus wasn't just an egotist with grandiose claims.
11:30 His assertions were confirmed by fulfilled prophecy.
11:34 Another term for God in the Old Testament was Holy One.
11:39 When we compare scripture with scripture,
11:41 we discover the term holy one is equal
11:44 to the other three names of God,
11:46 El in Psalms 78:41, Elohiym in Psalm 71:22,
11:51 and Yehovah in Isaiah 47:4.
11:54 Prophecy declares Jesus to be that Holy One
11:58 through the most compelling evidence.
12:01 In Psalms 16:10 we find a messianic psalm
12:05 that is a psalm referring to the Messiah who was to come.
12:09 Let's read it together.
12:11 "For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,
12:14 neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption."
12:17 I first studied this out in 1976 as a senior in academy,
12:22 but I didn't realize until later
12:24 how significant this passage was.
12:27 When I studied this out what I wanted to know was,
12:30 who is thou, who is my,
12:33 what is hell, and who is this Holy One.
12:37 Fortunately for us Peter uses this passage
12:40 from Psalm 2 as his key note address
12:43 on the day of Pentecost in Acts Chapter 2.
12:46 And thanks to his prophetic insight
12:48 we can fill in the blanks
12:51 with scripture interpreting scripture.
12:53 We now know that thou is God the Father,
12:57 My is Jesus, and hell is simply the grave.
13:03 We know this because Peter laid this prophetic text
13:06 over the recent history of Jesus in verse 31,
13:10 "He, David seeing this
13:13 before spake of the resurrection of Christ,
13:16 that his soul was not left in the grave,
13:18 neither did his flesh see corruption."
13:22 Jesus didn't stay in the grave like everyone else does.
13:25 He didn't rot away eaten by worms, oh, no.
13:29 He rose from the dead.
13:31 "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses."
13:37 This is not just an exciting prophecy, there is more here.
13:41 You see, this Holy One was none other than Jesus Christ
13:46 and we've already learned that the term Holy One
13:48 is just another name for Elohiym,
13:51 the creator God, the God of the Exodus.
13:54 But the Holy One, the one who rose from the dead
13:57 is also the El God and this name is also embraced by Jesus.
14:03 Steven is standing by in Bethlehem to explain.
14:07 Thanks, Charles.
14:09 This will only take a moment,
14:10 because scripture is absolutely clear on this.
14:13 Let's look at another messianic prophecy from Isaiah 7:14.
14:16 "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign,
14:21 Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
14:25 and shall call his name Immanuel."
14:28 For anyone who has taken the name of Christ,
14:30 Christian, this passage
14:32 is understood to be fulfilled in Jesus.
14:35 Let's compare Isaiah 7 with Matthew 1.
14:38 Listen to these words of an angel from heaven.
14:41 "The angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph in a dream,
14:45 saying, "Joseph, this pregnancy was done,"
14:49 that it might be fulfilled
14:50 which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet,
14:52 saying, "Behold, a virgin shall be with child,"
14:57 and shall bring forth a son,
14:58 and they shall call his name Emmanu'el,
15:02 which being interpreted is, with us is El or God with us."
15:08 That little boy born in a grotto stable
15:10 right here in Bethlehem was not just an ordinary child,
15:14 He was El, He was God with us.
15:17 Jesus is Elohiym and Jesus is El and while we read it,
15:22 Jesus is also Yehovah. Isaiah 54:5 tells us.
15:26 "For thy Maker is thine husband,
15:29 the Yehovah of hosts is his name,
15:31 and thy redeemer the Holy One of Israel,
15:33 The Elohiym of the whole earth shall he be called."
15:37 Notice that the maker is the God of Genesis 1:1,
15:40 He is also Yehovah.
15:42 This was also the conclusion of the New Testament
15:44 Pharisee Paul in Colossians 1:16.
15:48 "For by him that is Jesus were all the things created,
15:52 that are in heaven, and that are on earth,
15:54 visible and invisible, whether they be thrones,
15:57 or dominions, or principalities, or powers,
16:00 all things were created by him."
16:03 Contemporaries of Jesus who compared His life
16:06 with the prophecies of the Old Testament
16:08 also came to the conclusion that this man
16:11 was the creator as was testified in John 1:3."
16:14 All things were made by him,
16:17 and without him was not any thing made that was made."
16:21 There are other texts that say the Father created all things,
16:25 but then we find this amazing messianic prophecy
16:29 in Isaiah 9:6 that says, "Jesus is the father."
16:33 "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,
16:38 and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
16:40 and his name shall be called Wonderful,
16:43 Counselor, The mighty Elohiym,
16:45 The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."
16:50 The Bible is clearly bearing out the truth of Jesus' words.
16:54 "I and my father are one."
16:58 That's exciting, Steven.
17:00 And this plurality of the Godhead
17:03 is not just something we find comparing
17:05 scripture with scripture as you've just so aptly done.
17:08 Did you know, the Bible uses
17:10 plural nouns in talking about God.
17:13 "Let us make man in our image.
17:17 Behold the man has become like one of us.
17:20 Come let us go down."
17:24 But if God is one, how can He be plural.
17:27 And Paul explains in Romans 1:20.
17:30 "For the invisible things of him
17:32 from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
17:35 being understood by the things that are made,
17:38 even his eternal power and Godhead,
17:41 so that they are without excuse."
17:44 Paul tells us, that we can clearly see
17:47 and even understand deity or the divine nature of God
17:51 or as the King James says,
17:52 The Godhead by the things that He's created.
17:56 Everything in nature tells us something about God
17:59 and as such it also tells us something about Jesus,
18:03 for He is Emmanu'el, God with us.
18:07 And Jesus is not a lesser God,
18:09 He is fully God.
18:11 And Paul told the believers in Colossians,
18:13 "For in him that is Christ dwelleth
18:17 all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."
18:20 In other words, if you've seen one you've seen the other.
18:24 Some folk said, I don't understand
18:27 how you can have one God and three beings
18:30 as part of the Godhead.
18:31 I don't understand it well either,
18:33 but remember the invisible can be clearly seen
18:38 by what he's created,
18:39 so let me take a run at this
18:41 with something from nature that God created.
18:45 This is ice, we make it to keep things cool.
18:51 Nature also makes a lot of ice.
18:54 Ice is a solid. This is water.
19:02 We use it to drink, to bath, to work, to clean and to play.
19:06 There is approximately
19:08 326 million trillion gallons of water on this planet
19:12 and 98% of the water on the planet is in the oceans.
19:16 Water is a liquid. Then there is steam.
19:24 When water gets hot enough, it turns into steam.
19:27 Steam is a gas. Now follow this.
19:32 A gas is neither a solid nor liquid.
19:35 A liquid is neither a gas nor a solid.
19:38 So all three items are completely different
19:42 and yet each of these items is fully and completely H2O.
19:46 H2O is one thing.
19:50 God is one thing, but a solid is not a liquid.
19:54 God the Father is not Jesus.
19:57 The Shema is true. Our God is one.
20:02 And Jesus also told the truth. "I and my Father are one."
20:07 In your illustration, Levi,
20:09 you used H2O to illustrate the oneness of God.
20:13 The different forms H2O can take are solid
20:16 which you used to represent the Father
20:18 and liquid to represent Jesus.
20:21 Well, what about H2O as gas.
20:25 Could that represent the Holy Spirit
20:27 and is the Holy Spirit a living part
20:30 of the Godhead or just a force.
20:33 Investigation reveals that from the beginning of creation,
20:37 the Spirit was already there.
20:40 You can read about it in the second verse of the Bible.
20:43 "And the earth was without form, and void,
20:47 and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
20:50 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
20:55 However a careful read of 273 verses in the Bible
20:59 reveal some straddling insights.
21:01 Not once in the whole Old Testament
21:04 is the personal pronoun He associated with the Holy Spirit.
21:08 This is perhaps part of the reason the Jews
21:11 even today reject this plurality of the Godhead,
21:15 even some who claimed the name of Christian
21:18 have come to believe that the Spirit of God is simply
21:20 some divine power or a force that emanates from deity.
21:25 But once again that conclusion does not fit
21:28 the entire reading of the Bible.
21:31 If you consider all the verses of the Old Testament
21:33 regarding the Spirit of the Lord,
21:35 I can see how one might be tempted
21:38 to believe the force theory,
21:39 though it's not stated as such.
21:42 Well, when Jesus came to His earth as the Messiah
21:45 in direct fulfillment to so many prophecies of the Old Testament.
21:49 He also brought added light and truth
21:51 on the subject of the Holy Spirit.
21:53 And if we are going to be Christians
21:55 that is followers of Christ,
21:58 then we must embrace His teaching
22:00 and doctrines on this subject.
22:02 So what did Jesus said about the Spirit of God?
22:06 Well, for starters, at least 18 times in the book of John,
22:11 Jesus used the personal pronouns He, Him and Himself,
22:16 in referring to the Spirit of God.
22:18 Jesus wasn't thinking of the Holy Spirit
22:20 as some spiritually electrical force,
22:23 but rather a personal being.
22:26 It was represented to Him
22:28 at His baptism as a living creature.
22:30 Matthew 3:16 says, "And Jesus, when he was baptized,
22:35 saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove,
22:38 and lighting upon him."
22:41 And Jesus announced that His powerful life of service
22:44 was a direct fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 61:1.
22:49 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
22:52 because he hath anointed me
22:53 to preach the gospel to the poor,
22:56 he hath send me to heal the brokenhearted,
22:58 to preach deliverance to the captives,
23:00 and recovering of sight to the blind,
23:03 to set at liberty them that are bruised,
23:06 to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
23:09 Over and over the Bible attributes personality traits
23:13 to the Holy Spirit casting Him in the light of a living,
23:17 thinking, feeling and being.
23:20 In the both the Old and New Testaments,
23:22 the Holy Spirit is portrayed as one
23:24 who can be vexed and grieved.
23:27 Paul taught in Romans 8:27,
23:29 that the Holy Spirit has a mind
23:32 and one would need a mind to do
23:34 what Jesus said the Holy Spirit does in John 16:13.
23:38 "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come,
23:43 he will guide you into all truth,
23:45 for he shall not speak of himself,
23:47 but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak,
23:52 and he will show you things to come."
23:55 Not only does Jesus used
23:57 seven personal pronouns in this one verse,
24:00 He also attributes traits of character
24:02 and personality to the Spirit.
24:05 This being will guide you, speak to you, and hear you.
24:11 Four times in the book of John,
24:13 Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Comforter.
24:17 "But when the Comforter is come,
24:20 whom I will send unto you from the Father,
24:22 even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father,
24:26 he shall testify of me."
24:29 There is so much more I'd like to share about the Holy Spirit,
24:33 but time will not permit just now.
24:35 So let me encourage you to find our study aid
24:37 from the qlp.tv website.
24:40 I believe that study aid will help you
24:42 in your further investigation of the Holy Spirit.
24:45 The Bible is clear.
24:47 The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead.
24:51 The Bible clearly presents all three as God.
24:54 The true reason Christ was spurned is love of self.
24:59 love of sin and envy.
25:01 For the same reason, Christ is still rejected today,
25:04 but at what cost.
25:07 The kingdom was taken from the Jews
25:09 and their spiritual house was left desolate
25:12 and it is still desolate, but Jesus is still offering
25:16 a real and vibrant relationship with God today.
25:19 That conviction is born impart from the doctrine
25:23 or words of Jesus Himself in Matthew 28.
25:27 "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
25:30 baptizing them in the name of the Father,
25:33 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
25:37 Biblical baptism is not just being baptized into Jesus.
25:41 Oh, no, we are baptized into the entire Godhead,
25:45 Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
25:48 After all, all three were present at Jesus baptism
25:53 and this does not contradict the Shema.
25:56 In Deuteronomy 6:4 the word one comes from
26:00 the Hebrew word echadh and it means united or one.
26:06 This is the same word used in Genesis 2:24 that said,
26:10 Adam and Eve were one flesh.
26:12 If our first parents could be two separate people
26:16 and yet one or echadh,
26:18 then Jesus and the Father could also be One God.
26:23 Even in ways He cannot yet fully comprehend.
26:27 Now listen and listen carefully to this doctrine,
26:30 this powerful teaching of Jesus.
26:33 Before Jesus went back to heaven,
26:35 He prayed for you and me, His followers.
26:38 He prayed for every person who would hear His truths
26:42 taught by His disciples.
26:44 He prayed for everyone who would believe,
26:46 listen with your heart to His prayer in John 17:21.
26:51 "That they all may be one, as thou, Father,
26:56 art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us,
27:02 that the world may believe that thou hast sent me."
27:06 He is asking the Father to make us one with each other
27:10 and one with the Father and Himself
27:12 just like He and the Father are one.
27:15 What Jesus is inviting us to is a profoundly spiritual
27:20 and other worldly experience.
27:23 Imagine echadh, one in the same way
27:27 Jesus and the Father are one, that's intimate.
27:32 It doesn't matter if you're Jewish, Christian,
27:34 or Muslim, or anything else.
27:36 We're all invited to be one,
27:39 one with each other and one with God.
27:42 What choice will you make?


Home

Revised 2014-12-17