![CHRIST ALMIGHTY: What Jesus teaches… as opposed to what popular Christian culture claims he taught.](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin-YiUTR0d3xyk9KI5cnpN2g0HjxulgghQ9VaiX74EqGcssjN03n84BhLfGi7QLiDfQ2Yh_eyttc9pCQ9KT1tEMVwcYNwqHrtCQ8kgh_DRnu6XvtiUenzMiekTWYB4HQ7fqLPmpEXzA09VZKslruqN2W6cM1-caJ_G5bo1BI-2j3ZqohoLyiHqHew6zOb8/s640/ChristAlmighty.jpg)
John 5.24-29.
On occasion I’ll hear some Christian preacher claim that Jesus referring to God as “Father”—whether he’s talking about God as his Father, or God as our Father—was a wholly unique thing in history; that somehow the Jews had never before imagined God as their Father. It’s not true—
Deuteronomy 32.6 KJV - Do ye thus requite the L
ORD , O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee? Psalm 89.26 KJV - He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.
Isaiah 63.16 KJV - Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O L
ORD , art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting. Isaiah 64.8 KJV - But now, O L
ORD , thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Malachi 1.6 KJV - A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the L
ORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?
—but man do preachers like to claim it.
Anyway, Jesus regularly refers to God as our Father, and specifically his Father… but whereas we humans are just creations and
In John chapter 5, Jesus explains some of that idea. And it’s a doozy of an idea. Pretty sure it broke the brains of most of the Judeans he said it to. Because Jesus is making some pretty cosmic declarations about himself. He already said
Oh, and at the End,
John 5.24-29 KWL - 24 “Amen amen! I promise you the one who hears my word,
- and trusts the One who sends me,
- has life in the age to come
- and doesn’t go into judgment.
- Instead they passed from death into life.
- 25 Amen amen! I promise you the hour comes, and it’s now,
- when the dead will hear God’s Son’s voice,
- and those who will hear it, will live.
- 26 For just as the Father has life in himself,
- likewise he gives life to the Son to have in himself.
- 27 The Father gives the Son power to make judgments,
- because he’s the Son of Man.
- 28 Don’t be amazed by this, because the hour comes
- in which everyone in the sepulchers
- will hear the Son of Man’s voice
- 29 and come out—
- those who do good, into resurrection life;
- those who do little, into resurrection judgment.”
You realize this discussion started because
It’s weird how various pagans will insist Jesus was only