Finding Rest For Your Souls: No Outlandish Claim

All things are delivered unto Me of My Father: 

and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father;

 neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, 

and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal to him. 

Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 

and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, 

and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in hear: 

and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke 

is easy, and My burden is light.

Mathew 11:27-30 

     In yesterday's blog I wrote about the claims of Jesus and how outlandish they seem to be and even affront our minds. We seek answers to this Man's claims, and when no answer is forthcoming we invent theologies from our excuses to make Jesus be what we want Him to be. Look at the opening verses: Jesus makes this statement that only God knows the Son, and the Son only is the One who knows the Father and that Jesus will to "whomsoever" the Son reveals to know. Some theologies will say that the word "all" means only certain ones, others will say that it is for anyone that the Son reveals about Himself and about the Father. The Greek word πάντες is plural and has many ways to be translated i.e., all, any, every, the whole, whosovever, every thing, every man, any thing, this word is not only plural it is masculine so it is speaking of men, not a thing. Therefore  everyone, who?.. whosoever will come they will find rest. Jesus also said that His yoke was light, that is to say that you will have to bear the weight of the knowledge of Jesus, that burden is not taken away from you, rather that you will find that this burden is light. How can that be? You must learn of Him and from Him. How can this learning happen? You learn by doing, not by apathetically sitting on the side lines. You learn by reading His word that was inspired for us so that we can learn of Him. 
     Is all this just another outlandish claim? Did Jesus come to earth as the Messiah promised in the Old Testament? Is Jesus as asserted by Christians to be the central miracle, the incarnation of God in man? Did God invade earth, man? Is this the Grand Miracle and is it credible? The moral teachings of Jesus seem to be rampant megalomania unless He is indeed God. If we accept this Grand Miracle as recorded for us in Scripture so that we come to a place where everything is easy and coherent we must, that is, if we do believe that God created all things, that is not only possible for Him to come to earth as the Son of God, but it is highly probable that He did come. It is not that God Himself emptied Himself to the point where He traded His Spirit to become non-spiritual, no, God does not live in our existence for He stands outside of all that exists for He created the existence in which we exist. So this Grand Miracle of the incarnation of God stands just as that: A Grand Miracle. As Christians we are not just claiming that simply 'God' was incarnate in Jesus. Authentic Christians are claiming that God, the Only true existent One is the one whom the Jews worshipped as Yahweh, and that it is He who descended to earth. We say in Christianity that there is a hypostatic union and this is true for on one hand Yahweh is the God of Nature, it is He that created Nature but is not a Nature-God for Yahweh does not die and be reborn and He is not part of Nature as a Pantheist would say. God is a different sort of Being as anything that was and is that exists for He stands outside of all that exists. This One, God, is Love, Mercy, Just, Grace, and those are not attributes, they are God. God created man and angels and gave to them a "free will" and this made possible sin. God by doing so rendered a portion of His omnipotence (if He had not done so man would not be free or have free will) and this He did because He saw that out of this world of free creatures, even if they fell into sin, He could and would work out more than man could know or admit, a deeper and fuller happiness. 
     Jesus could make those claims that seem outlandish because He was God incarnate to do just that, to bring "rest" and "peace" and life eternal to everyone, whosoever may would learn of Him and come to Him. This claim was, and all other claims by Jesus come to fruition and reality by the resurrection. This resurrection was not some hidden and secret event, no, for He was seen by upward of 500 persons, and this was certainly a miracle for those who saw Him also knew that He had died upon the cross, was buried, and now was alive, just as He had promised. When those present saw Jesus arise to go into heaven this event marked the time that Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of God was more than just a Grand Miracle: He is God, He is the Son of God, and He is the One who will judge the world, and He is the One who can redeem all who will learn of Him, and come to Him. 

QUESTION: WILL YOU COME? WILL YOU LEARN OF HIM? WILL YOU SEE THAT HIS CLAIMS ARE NOT OUTLANDISH BUT GOD REVEALING HIMSELF TO HUMANKIND? WILL YOU PUT YOUR FAITH IN HIM? 

Then Job answered the LORD, and said,
    I know that Thou canst do every thing,
and that no thought can be withholden 
    from Thee.
                  Job 42:1-2

Put your faith in the One who can save

Richard L. Crumb