What Being With Jesus Can Do

Being with the Lord Jesus changes us.




Joel Kontinen

The Bible often discloses profound truths in just a few words. When Luke described a difficult ordeal that the early disciples faced in Jerusalem, he mentions a small detail in connection to their arrest. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection and they did not tolerate those who did and put the apostles behind bars but they were in for a surprise: ”Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13, NKJV).

Even the Sadducees realised that Peter and John had been with Jesus.

Like Peter and many others, the apostle John took a very long spiritual journey. Jesus gave him and his brother James the name Boanerges, ’Sons of Thunder’ (Mark 3:17), which might say something about his temper. John for instance wanted to call down fire from heaven to punish a Samaritan village that refused to welcome Jesus and His disciples (Luke 9:51–56). Furthermore, he was obviously very ambitious as he wanted to be exalted above the other disciples to become a co-ruler in the Messianic Kingdom of Israel (Mark 10:35–37).

Yet, when as an older man he penned his Gospel, there were no traces of the old Boanerges spirit left in his writing. The Son of Thunder saw himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 20:2). The Lord did not single out one disciple as the sole object of his love, however. It is more probable that John used this phrase because he realised that Jesus loved him in spite of his temper and his occasional thunderstorms.

And, as Luke suggests, even Sadducees, the skeptics of his day, realised that John had been with Jesus. Being with Him changed the Beloved Disciple, and it can change me and you, also. The apostle Paul, who was transformed from a persecutor into a saint, said that those who are in Christ are new creations (2 Cor. 5:17). The Creator, Jesus Christ, transforms us. The more we are with Him, the more we become like Him. Thunderstorms can give way for rays of bright sunshine.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:18: ”But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

Jesus: Real Hope for a Hopeless World

Jesus is the only real hope for the world. Image courtesy of Andreas Wahra, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).




Joel Kontinen


During a very tumultuous time in Israel’s history, God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah:

“For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NASB.)

At the time Israel was a divided kingdom, and the Babylonians were about to take the rest of the Jews into captivity. Yet God, who knows everything about everything, promised hope for His people.

It was not an empty promise. Roughly 70 years later, the Jews were able to return to their own land, to rebuild the temple that Christ was to visit during His earthly ministry.

God never changes. He still offers hope for a hopeless world. True peace and real hope can only be found in Jesus Christ, who is the only real Saviour.

“God Was Never on a Cross as the Spirit Cannot Be Killed”, Sceptic Claims

The cross is a source of hope.

Joel Kontinen

Norma Holt is an Australian author who believes that at an early stage, Christianity became corrupted and that Emperor Constantine established the Roman Catholic Church in AD 325.

In a recent article, she claims:

“God was never on a cross and everyone who ever lived is now back in their bodies because of reincarnation. That is why there is massive overpopulation. This was promised in Daniel 12:13 and elsewhere in the Old Testament. The Spirit is separating its people from the idols and false gods and there is a great falling away from traditional religions as it happens.”

Ms. Holt asserts that a spirit (that she always writes with a capital S) disclosed the conspiracy led by Constantine in the early church. She sees her mission as urging people to return to real Christianity.

I’m a bit sceptical about this “spirit”.

Holt believes that Christianity is not as unique as the followers of Christ assume but has actually borrowed many of its elements from pre-Christian religions and ideologies.

How credible is this? Not credible at all. It reminds me of fact-free Darwinian storytelling. Christ’s empty tomb caused sceptics to invent a conspiracy theory, and since then sceptics have come up with a number of stories that attempt to explain why Jesus could not have risen from the dead.

There was no time for legends to be concocted since the Apostle Paul wrote his first letters within 20 years after the resurrection. All the evidence suggests strongly that the gospels were eyewitness accounts of the events in Jesus’ life.

Early historians tend to agree.

What about the claim that a spirit cannot be killed? Jesus was both God and man. As a human being, He could and did die, but as God He was immortal. Ms. Holt has ignored this very pertinent distinction.

Source:

Holt, Norma. 2014. God Was Never on a Cross As The Spirit Cannot Be Killed. Ezine articles.