2005-8-12 05:18:00
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Part 32
JJ: I was just telling Phillip that when I was a kid the Bishop called me and asked why he never saw me in church. I told him, "I can't stand the hymns. They're too boring." He replied, "Hymns are wonderful!" I said, "Not to me they aren't." So for us I wrote a new batch of hymns.
In response to the Jews, Jesus said, "Verily, verily I say unto you he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. This bread which cometh down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die."
Notice He differentiates. He talks about when the children of Israel were in the desert following Moses around. All they had to eat was manna. They ate it and they're all dead. He said there is another manna that you can eat that leads to eternal life and you will not die. So He's differentiating. A lot of people think He's speaking figuratively here but He's emphasizing that He's speaking fairly literally also because He gives the example of the Israelites who ate the manna and who are physically dead. Contrary to that he said there is a manna that you can eat thereof and not die.
"I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat this bread he shall live forever and the bread that I give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves saying, 'How can this man give us flesh to eat?' Then Jesus said unto them, 'Verily verily I say unto you except ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink of His blood ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood shall have eternal life and I shall raise them up at the last day for my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed and he that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
"As a living Father has sent me I live by the Father so that he eateth me even he shall live by me. This is the bread which came down from heaven not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead. He that eateth of this bread shall live forever." John 6:51-58
He continues a couple chapters later, John 8, 50. "And I seek not mine own glory. There is one that seeketh and judgeth. I say to you, if a man keep my saying he shall never see death. Then said the Jews unto Him, 'Now we know that thou has the devil. Abraham is dead and the prophets are dead and now sayeth that if a man keep my saying he shall never taste of death."
They were saying to Jesus, "Obviously Abraham was a greater man than you and the prophets were greater than you and they're dead yet you're saying you have some keys that a man may eat and never taste death.
Jesus made an interesting statement when He said, "He that keepeth my saying shall never taste death." Well, didn't Jesus die when He was crucified? So shouldn't He be able to give us an example of His own teachings? Is this a contradiction? He says a man will never taste death yet they apparently put Him to death so He tasted death.
Audience: comment inaudible
JJ: What do you think it is? The truth of the matter is that Jesus never really died. All of us has a silver cord connecting our spiritual bodies to our physical bodies. It even talks about it in Ecclesiastes where it says, 'the silver cord be loosed' and the spirit of God returns home to the God that gave it. So the silver cord has to be loosed for there to be physical death. Even though Jesus was hung on the cross and suffered, the silver cord was not broken. Jesus suffered enormously, of course, and when He was on the cross and put into the tomb this connection with His body was not completely severed. The silver cord still had a link to His body so He never really completely died so He never tasted death. This makes a lot of sense because he says, "If a man will keep my saying, he shall never taste death." Wouldn't He set an example of His own teachings? So, He maintained a link with His physical body for the three days that He was in the tomb and this link provided one of the keys of bringing the body back to life.
Now, the big question is, 'how in the world do we duplicate what Jesus did?' Let's go back and study this verse a little more carefully. 'He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.' The usually interpretation of this is what? What do the born-againers think that means?
Audience: That you're going to die but you're going to go to heaven.
JJ: In other words, you just acknowledge Jesus is Lord and Savior and that's it, right? That's all you need to do. That's pretty simple, isn't it? They differentiate and say, "Well, the Mormons believe in s a little bit different Jesus than us so they're not going to make it" even though the Mormons say, "We believe in Christ." The Seventh Day Adventists say, "We believe in Christ." The Jehovah Witnesses say, "We believe in Christ." All differentiations of Christianity do that but the staunch born-againers will say, "No, that's not the right Christ." The Mormons think, "The born-againers don't have the right Christ either. We have the right Christ." But is that what it means? To believe on the man Jesus and you will be saved?
A key to this was revealed when a man came to Jesus and said, "Good master I have a question for you." Jesus said, "Why do you call me good? There is only one good and that is God." Now if He is the one and only God as the religions teach why would He say, "Why do you call me good? There is only one good and that is God"? The reason was that the man was looking at Jesus' physical form, the physical personality and calling Him good. In the way Jesus defines good, none of us would really match up to what is good. Matter of fact, Jesus' critics called Him a drunkard and a wine bibber and an associator with prostitutes and they didn't think He was very good at all. By their definition He was somewhat of a rabble rouser.
What He was trying to discourage them from doing was looking on the man instead of what is in the man or in all of us, which is the Spirit of God. He says, 'don't call me good. There is only one that is good.' Do you think He would say the same thing when we say, "We believe in you Jesus. Do we have everlasting life?" How would He answer that if He were here? Would He perhaps say, 'don't believe in Jesus the man. Believe in the Christ, the son of God which is available to all of us. I am the son of God but so are you. Believe in the principle of the son of God for you are Gods and God's spirit is within us.
That the whole body of God is composed of it various parts, including us. It says this in I Corinthians 12. It says that God is the body and all of us are parts, that some of us are hands, feet eyes etc. It calls Christ the head and the rest of us arms, legs, and eyes and that they all cooperate together and all of these are Christ. All of these together, not just the man Jesus, is the Christ but all the different parts of the body are Christ and of course Christ is God. So that's the God principle that the body is the whole.
So He says, "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." They probably wrote it a little differently than how He actually said it. He probably said, 'he that believeth on Christ, meaning the Christ principle, has everlasting life.' He often did speak that way. Whenever He mentioned the word Christ, He spoke of it in the third person, not referring to Himself but speaking of Christ as if it was not just Him. If you read the scriptures carefully you'll find that this is the way that He spoke.
"He that believeth in the principle of Christ hath everlasting life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness are dead. That bread which cometh down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which cameth down from heaven. If any man may eat this bread he shall live forever." What is the bread? What is the bread that came down from heaven?
That's a good place to end today and throw it out to the group.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Copyright © 2005 by J J Dewey, All Rights Reserved