There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
For the writing of the Scriptures and the preserving of them pure and entire to this day.
I thank you that I have the Scriptures to search, and that in them I have eternal life, for it is they that bear witness about Christ; John 5:39(ESV) and that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16(ESV)
That whatever was written in former days was written for my instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures I might have hope; Romans 15:4(ESV) and that I have this sure prophetic word, as a lamp shining in a dark place. 2 Peter 1:19(ESV)
That the vision has not become to me like the words of a book that is sealed, Isaiah 29:11(ESV) but that I hear in my own tongue the mighty works of God. Acts 2:11(ESV)
I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that the things which you have hidden from the wise and understanding and which many prophets and kings desired to see but did not, 1 Peter 1:10(ESV) are revealed to little children like myself; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. Luke 10:21(ESV)
LTRP Note: Recently, a Lighthouse Trails reader sent us a link to a group called “Awaken the Christ Within.” To the discerning eye, it will be quite obvious that this is a New Age “Christian” website with one main basic message: christ consciousness (meaning that every person has God (i.e., Christ) already within him or her self). Unfortunately, because this website uses numerous Bible verses and contains “Christian” language, it is going to draw in many undiscerning Christians or seeking-truth people. Interestingly, the main figure of the Awaken the Christ Within group, Aaron Abke, grew up in a Christian home and graduated from a Christian university. Also worth noting is Mike Adams of Health Ranger (who became very well known during the Covid years and is followed by many Christians) is involved with this group. The article below by the late pastor, Larry DeBruyn, explains the difference between the biblical Jesus Christ and the New Age false christ.
The False Imagining of the False Christ
By Larry DeBruyn
And he [God’s Son] is before all things, and by him [God’s Son] all things consist. Colossians 1:17
In 1971, John Lennon came out with the hit song Imagine. The lyrics project Utopian vision of the world in which, because there is no heaven or hell, no countries or religion, no possessions or greed, nothing to kill or die for, all the people will be one.1 Internationally, Lennon’s song about the new world remains most popular. Increasingly, political, religious, and media ideologues are suggesting that for Lennon’s dream to become a reality, a one-world community must become committed to one-world spirituality.
As these societal movers and shakers might imagine, the new Utopia will necessitate the dawning of a new spiritual consensus. Such messianism envisions christ to be mental, not personal, and that being the case, asks people to “shift” their consciousness to a one-world spirituality in order to build a one-world community. Utopia would, it is theorized, be based upon spiritual unity. Religion will no longer divide, but unite. There will be no heaven or hell, no countries or religion to die for. Terrorism will become obsolete. As John Lennon imagined, the world will be as one. But, under what guise might this spiritual shift be coming?
Its core belief appears to be this: In essence, the cosmos consists of a panentheist (God in all) or pantheist (God is all) christ spirit permeating everything.2 Thus, everything, animate and inanimate, becomes “sacred.” This sacred christ is the one reality which comprises both the center and circumference of the universe. That’s why it’s called the cosmic christ. Christ is whatever constitutes time, matter, and space. Christ is Source. Christ is Moment. Christ is Energy. Christ is Thing. Christ is Presence. Christ is Being. Christ is Consciousness. Christ is Oneness. Christ is you. Christ is me. Christ is . . . In all of this, and unlike His portrayal in Holy Scripture, there is no sense in which Christ is personally before, above, without, or outside the world. This christ is co-existent and co-extensive with the universe. Because the New Age christ permeates nature, it is nature. If the universe didn’t exist, this christ wouldn’t exist. According to the math of the twin deceptions of New Ageism and the New Spirituality, christ minus the universe equals nothing. Arbitrarily, they take whatever is, assign divinity to it, and call it “christ.”
After stating that a god-essence resides “in every creature, every flower, every stone,” New Age guru Eckhart Tolle theorizes, “All that is, is holy.” Then he adds, “This is why Jesus, speaking entirely from his essence or Christ identity, says in the Gospel of Thomas: ‘Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.’”3 Similarly, Matthew Fox wrote that God and Christ are in all things. As the “pattern that connects,” Fox sees his cosmic-christ as offering hope “by insisting on the interconnectivity of all things and on the power of the human mind and spirit to experience personally this common glue among all things.”4 In his book Quantum Spirituality, emergent-evangelical Leonard Sweet advocates monism that nuances panentheism. Investing the cosmos with “christness,” he states, “The world of nature has an identity and purpose apart from human benefit. But we constitute together a cosmic body of Christ.”5 Even Rick Warren’s reference to the New Century Version of Ephesians 4, and verse 6 (“God . . . is in everything”), plugs into the growing popularity of monistic spirituality.6 So what might a Christian believer think about this redefinition of Christ?
Differing from the mystical spirituality of New Ageism, Holy Scripture presents a far different Christ than the one the New Spirituality imagines. The christ of New Ageism (pantheism/panentheism) and the Christ of the New Testament (theism) are worlds apart. While “the christ” of the New Age is the world, the Christ of the New Testament is the Word (See John 1:1-3, 14; Philippians 2:6-7.). In a one-time act of the divine incarnation, the Word became flesh, thereby delivering the Christian faith from the theological extremes of deism and transcendentalism on the one hand, and pantheism and immanentism on the other.
In a balanced way, again and again, the New Testament affirms the otherness of Christ from His creation and the togetherness of Christ with His creation. For reason of His incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, Christ is present amidst His creation. But for reason of His incarnation, ascension and glorification, Christ remains transcendent above His creation. Paradoxically, but really, Christ is now physically present in heaven (Hebrews 1:3) while, at the same time, He is spiritually present on earth (Matthew 28:20). Though Christ is before and above time, matter, and space, He also is involved with time, matter, and space. But for reason of pantheistic or panentheistic monism which denies the otherness of Christ from the world, New Ageism neither needs nor wants Jesus’ personal, historical, and exceptional Incarnation, Substitutionary Death, Resurrection, or Second Coming–redemptive events based upon the original separation of the Word from the world.
Yet, amazingly, and disingenuously, New Ageism quotes and spins the words of the Bible to prove their anti-Christian point of view. One text they use is Colossians 1, verse 17, which reads, “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” New Ageism reads the second half of the verse to mean that nature is saturated by a christ spirit which forms the essence of the cosmos.7 But does this text even hint, let alone teach, the permeation of a christ-spirit in nature? For a number of reasons, it does not.
First, we observe that Paul makes two emphatic statements about God’s Son.8 One, the Son “is before all things.” And two, “by him [i.e., the Son] all things consist” (Colossians 1:17). The two clauses express two distinct relationships the Son possesses to “all things”: He is precedent before all things and also provident over all things.9 That God’s Son is “before all things” indicates that He is separate from all things. Scripture presents the eternal Christ as being before creation. There never was a time when the Son was not (John 1:1-2). He is the uncreated Creator of everything (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; etc.). Christ does not derive from the cosmos. Rather, the cosmos derived from Christ. For reason of its commitment to pantheistic/panentheistic permeation, New Ageism denies this biblical understanding of Jesus Christ.
Second, in light of this, what does the second half of the apostle’s statement (“by him all things consist“) mean? Literally, the Greek text reads: “all things in Him stand together.”10 While all things are in Christ, Christ is not in all things. The Son is therefore, the agent by whom all things hold together.
If Christ did not continually preserve His creation, the universe would disintegrate.
To guard against this heresy of christ-consciousness, both in his day and in ours, the apostle Peter assured believers:
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16)
Though the Word entered the world, the Word is not the world. And against any supposition to the contrary, Paul writes that we are to cast down “imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,” and to bring “every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Concerning our relationship to all the christ-imagining being advocated by the gurus and promoters of New Ageism and the New Spirituality, the apostle Paul warns:
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2:8).
(images from istockphoto.com; used with permission; design by Lighthouse Trails)
Endnotes:
1. I am grateful to Warren Smith for his input into this article and drawing my attention to Lennon’s lyrics. The words of Imagine are available online at https://eduteach.es/songs/j-m/john-lennon.html. For a detailed commentary on the relevance of Lennon’s song to the spirituality of Eckhart Tolle, see Berit Kjos, “Oprah and Tolle Fuel New Age Revival,” https://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/tolle.htm. 2. Readers will note that “christ” is spelled with a lower case “c.” I will not dignify the “christ” of New Age imagining to the level of the Christ of Holy Scripture. Though slight, the terms pantheism and panentheism differ. The pantheist ascribes divinity to everything. If I kick a tree, I’ve kicked God. The panentheist invests the tree with divinity for reason that it harbors the divine soul. Thus, if I kick a tree, though I’ve not directly kicked Him, I have kicked an object in which God resides. In their attempt to invest nature with sacredness, both views commit idolatry for reason of betraying the biblical God’s holiness or separateness from His creation (See Isaiah 40:18-*25; Romans 1:20-23.). 3. Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999), p. 134. Tolle places awareness of “the God-essence” in feeling. Of that “intense present-moment awareness,” he writes “you become conscious of the Unmanifested both directly and indirectly. Directly, you feel it as the radiance and the power of your conscious presence–no content, just presence. Indirectly, you are aware of the Unmanifested in and through the sensory realm. In other words, you feel the God-essence . . .” (Power of Now, p. 133). It is obvious that the basis of Tolle’s pantheism rests upon a fantasy of mystical “feeling,” an illusion which is delusion. 4. Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (New York: Harper Collins, 1988), p. 133. 5. Some emergent-evangelicals may object to the association of Leonard Sweet with the Episcopalian priest Matthew Fox, a former Roman Catholic Dominican dismissed from that order in 1992, by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). But to support his statement regarding “a cosmic body of Christ,” Sweet approvingly cites Fox’s book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. See his online version of Quantum Spirituality, pdf pages 89, 195, and footnote 66 (https://web.archive.org/web/20030720050215/http://leonardsweet.com/Quantum/quantum-ebook.pdf). 6. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), p. 88. 7. Fox employs Colossians 1:15-17 to demonstrate that his christ is “the pattern that connects.” See Coming of the Cosmic Christ, p. 133. 8. Greek grammarians note that the pronoun “is used emphatically–He Himself, in contrast to the created things . . . Here it means ‘He and no other’ . . .” See Cleon L. Rogers Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), p. 461. The NRSV carries the emphasis into its translation which reads, “He himself is before all things . . .” (Emphasis mine, Colossians 1:17a). 9. The preposition “before” (Greek, pro) can carry a temporal or a rank meaning. Wallace suggests both are appropriate. He writes, “Jesus Christ takes priority over and is before all things.” See Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), p. 379, Footnote 67. 10. Between the Logos of the Bible and the logos of Stoicism, and based upon Colossians 1:17, a scholar observed this contrast: “He [i.e., the biblical Christ] is not in all things but all things are in him. The Logos of the Stoics gave unity and order, and meaning to all things because it permeated all things as dia-existent principle; the Colossian hymn praises him in whom all things begin, continue, and conclude because they are in, through, and unto him as a pre-existent being.” See David E. Garland, Colossians and Philemon, The NIV Application Commentary, quoting Fred B. Craddock (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), p. 89, Footnote 29. From Craddock’s observation, the similarity between the philosophical christ of Stoicism and the spiritual christ of New Ageism is apparent. While not viewing Christ as “a pre-existent being,” the New Spirituality does embrace christ as “dia-existent principle.”
“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee” – Isaiah 43:2
Bridge there is none: we must go through the waters and feel the rush of the rivers. The presence of God in the flood is better than a ferryboat. Tried we must be, but triumphant we shall be; for Jehovah Himself, who is mightier than many waters, shall be with us. Whenever else He may be away from His people, the LORD will surely be with them in difficulties and dangers. The sorrows of life may rise to an extraordinary height, but the LORD is equal to every occasion. The enemies of God can put in our way dangers of their own making, namely, persecutions and cruel mockings, which are like a burning, fiery furnace. What then? We shall walk through the fires. God being with us, we shall not be burned; nay, not even the smell of fire shall remain upon us. Oh, the wonderful security of the heaven-born and heaven-bound pilgrim! Floods cannot drown him, nor fires burn him. Thy presence, O LORD, is the protection of Thy saints from the varied perils of the road. Behold, in faith I commit myself unto Thee, and my spirit enters into rest.
With today’s post, we’ve flowed through the first section of this series, in looking at verses that prophesy Jesus’ coming, His arrival, and His early life.
Starting tomorrow, from Day 12-16 we will look at verses that focus on Jesus as The Son.
From Day 17-26, verses will focus on the preeminence of the Son, His works, and Ministry.
Days 27-30, His resurrection, ascension, and return.
Jesus’ Obedience
Coffman’s Commentaries on the Bible
The precocious wisdom of the boy Jesus, and his certain consciousness of his unique relationship to the Father in heaven, were not looked upon by Jesus as sufficient to his earthly mission; he recognized himself still to be a child. The hour of his emergence as the world’s Saviour would be awaited by him until some sure indication of the Father’s will informed him that “his hour” had come. In the meanwhile, he would not disgrace himself as a child prodigy. He manifested the noblest quality of youth, that of loving submission to his earthly parents.
Some Christmas specials, “history” documentaries, and apocryphal writings or media depict Jesus as a boy healing injured birds or raising dead children. None of this happened. Firstly, the word of God does not contain any such events. Secodnly, His prophetic timetable was specific and sure. Jesus repeatedly said in the Gospels He would not do certain things because ‘his hour had not come’.
Further Reading
Answers in Genesis: Christ’s Obedience to the Father Jesus honors the authority of His Father through complete obedience. A very clear but seldom pondered truth of the New Testament is that Christ’s entire life and ministry were orchestrated by His Father and that Jesus was careful to carry out every detail according to the will of His Father. “Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come . . . to do thy will, O God’” (Hebrews 10:7).
Jesus Obeyed His parents “Among all the miracles and surprises surrounding God himself becoming man, Luke 2:51 may sound the most unexpected note of all: Jesus “went down [from Jerusalem] with [Joseph and Mary] and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.””
Why do some people claim that the Bible contradicts itself? And how should Christians answer this criticism? In this message, R.C. Sproul explains the difference between a contradiction and a paradox—and why this matters for interpreting Scripture.
Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need. (4:16)
The One who understands us perfectly will also provide for us perfectly. “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13). Jesus Christ knows our temptations and will lead us out of them.
COME TO GOD’S THRONE OF GRACE
Again, the Holy Spirit appeals to those who are yet undecided about accepting Christ as their Savior. They should not only keep from going back into Judaism, but they should hold on to their confession of Christ and, finally—and necessarily—go on to draw near with confidence to the throne of grace. Most ancient rulers were unapproachable by the common people. Some would not even allow their highest-ranking officials to come before them without permission. Queen Esther risked her life in approaching King Ahasuerus without invitation, even though she was his wife (Esther 5:1–2). Yet any penitent person, no matter how sinful and undeserving, may approach God’s throne at any time for forgiveness and salvation—confident that he will be received with mercy and grace. By Christ’s sacrifice of Himself, God’s throne of judgment is turned into a throne of grace for those who trust in Him. As the Jewish high priests once a year for centuries had sprinkled blood on the mercy seat for the people’s sins, Jesus shed His blood once and for all time for the sins of everyone who believes in Him. That is His perfect provision. The Bible speaks much of God’s justice. But how terrible for us if He were only just, and not also gracious. Sinful man deserves death, the sentence of justice; but he needs salvation, the gift of grace. It is to the very throne of this grace that any person can now come with confidence and assurance. It is the throne of grace because grace is dispensed there. How can anyone reject such a High Priest, such a Savior—who not only permits us to come before His throne for grace and help, but pleads with us to come in confidence? His Spirit says, “Come boldly all the way to God’s throne that has been turned into a throne of grace because of Jesus. Come all the way up, receive grace and mercy when you need it—before it is too late and your heart is hard and God’s ‘today’ is over.” The time of need is now. What a High Priest we have. He sympathizes and He saves. What more could He do?
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1983). Hebrews (pp. 114–115). Moody Press.
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. What encouraging words! The writer throughout his epistle exhorts the readers numerous times, but in this particular verse he has a special word for us. This time he does not exhort believers to rectify their way of life; he commends us for coming in prayer to God and urges us to do so confidently. a. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence.” The invitation to approach the throne of grace implies that the readers are already doing this. The author also uses the same verb in Hebrews 10:22 (“let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith”). He later repeats the same invitation in slightly different wording (see Heb. 7:25; 10:1; 11:6; 12:18, 22). The verb approach may have a religious connotation, because it often referred to the priests who in their cultic service approached God with sacrifices (Lev. 9:7; 21:17, 21; 22:3; Num. 18:3). In Hebrews 4:16 the writer urges us to come near to the throne of grace in prayer, for the only sacrifice a believer can bring is a broken and a contrite heart (Ps. 51:17). The great high priest has brought the supreme sacrifice in offering himself on the cross on behalf of his people. The merciful and faithful high priest invites the weak and tempted sinner to come to the throne of grace. What is meant by the phrase throne of grace? This is an explicit reference to the kingship of the Son of God (Heb. 1:2–4). Jesus sits at the right hand of God and has been given full authority in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18). But the word grace implies that the reference is also to the priesthood of Christ. The sinner who comes to the throne of grace in repentance and faith indeed finds the forgiving grace of Jesus. Moreover, we are exhorted to come to the throne with confidence; that is, we may come boldly (Heb. 3:6; 10:19, 35), not rashly or in fear of judgment, but “in full confidence, openness to God and in the hope of the fullness of the glory of God.” Jesus invites his people to approach freely, without hesitation. He holds out the golden scepter, as it were, and says, “Come!” b. “So that we may receive mercy and find grace.” Although the terms mercy and grace are often interpreted as being synonyms, their difference ought to be noted. Westcott makes the distinction succinctly:
Man needs mercy for past failure, and grace for present and future work. There is also a difference as to the mode of attainment in each case. Mercy is to be “taken” as it is extended to man in his weakness; grace is to be “sought” by man according to his necessity.
The mercy of God is directed to sinners in misery or distress; they receive God’s compassion when they approach him. And whereas God’s mercy extends to all his creatures (Ps. 145:9), his grace, as the writer of Hebrews indicates in Hebrews 4:16, extends to all who approach the throne of God. Mercy is characterized as God’s tender compassion; grace, as his goodness and love. c. “To help us in our time of need.” Help is given at the right moment in the hour of need. The author is not saying that the help is constant, but rather that it alleviates the need of the moment. That need may be material, physical, or spiritual. When we call on the name of the Lord in faith and approach the throne of God, he will hear and answer. He stands ready to help (see Heb. 2:18). This aid, in the form of grace, comes when temptation seems to sway us. God provides the means to find a way out of our temptations. God is faithful (1 Cor. 10:13).
Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of Hebrews (Vol. 15, pp. 126–127). Baker Book House.
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one. (Zechariah 14:9)
Blessed prospect! This is no dream of an enthusiast but the declaration of the infallible Word. Jehovah shall be known among all people, and His gracious sway shall be acknowledged by every tribe of man. Today, it is far from being so. Where do any bow before the great King? How much there is of rebellion! What lords many and gods many there are on the earth! Even among professed Christians what diversities of ideas there are about Him and His gospel! One day there shall be one King, one Jehovah, and one name for the living God. O Lord, hasten it! We daily cry, “Thy kingdom come.”
We will not discuss the question as to when this shall be lest we lose the comfort of the certainty that it shall be. So surely as the Holy Ghost spake by His prophets, so surely shall the whole earth be filled with the glory of the Lord. Jesus did not die in vain. The Spirit of God worketh not in vain. The Father’s eternal purposes shall not be frustrated, Here, where Satan triumphed, Jesus shall be crowned, and the Lord God Omnipotent shall reign. Let us go our way to our daily work and warfare made strong in faith.
And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee. (Deuteronomy 28:10)
Then we can have no reason to be afraid of them. This would show a mean spirit and be a token of unbelief rather than of faith. God can make us so like Himself that men shall be forced to see that we rightly bear His name and truly belong to the holy Jehovah. Oh, that we may obtain this grace which the Lord waits to bestow!
Be assured that ungodly men have a fear of true saints. They hate them, but they also fear them. Haman trembled because of Mordecai, even when he sought the good man’s destruction. In fact, their hate often arises out of a dread which they are too proud to confess. Let us pursue the path of truth and uprightness without the slightest tremor. Fear is not for us but for those who do ill and fight against the Lord of hosts. If indeed the name of the eternal God is named upon us, we are secure; for, as of old, a Roman had but to say Romanus sum, I am a Roman, and he could claim the protection of all the legions of the vast empire; so every one who is a man of God has omnipotence as his guardian, and God will sooner empty heaven of angels than leave a saint without defense. Be braver than lions for the right, for God is with you.
Christmas itself is a story that’s told in songs. It began with four songs, and all the way through Christian history, from the earliest reinterpretations of the Christmas story and the wonder of the Incarnation, Christians have reenacted those songs. Songs about Christmas are as old as Christmas itself. It has attracted the greatest artists in history, whether it’s folk art or classical art. We have such extraordinarily great hymns and an extraordinarily deep tradition that at Christmastime, it is possible to see carols in Hollywood movies and in high street stores that have nothing to do with Christianity—because that’s what great art does.
Christmas hymns have become the lead Bible storytellers of the season. They connect to people in such deep ways, even if they’re not tracking with the depth of everything that’s being sung. It is a phenomenal opportunity to communicate the things that are true about Christmas in the songs that people sing.
There’s something so significant about repeating these year after year so that they become part of people’s lives. When you “repeat the sounding joy” in a Christmas hymn, you find that people can sing them better. People know the songs their whole lives, and they think about their meaning in more profound ways and emotionally interact with the song more.
Christmas carols do a great job of not just taking you through the Christmas story but taking you through the big narrative of the Bible story. A lot of them dig right into Old Testament prophecies and Old Testament verses, giving you a vision of heaven and the second coming of Christ. They offer a massive arc, a big metanarrative through the Scriptures, and that’s a huge opportunity. And a lot of the traditional carols are melodies that are not only easy to sing but also wonderful to sing. They’re fun, they’re great for harmonies, and you can really use that to great effect to help encourage kids to sing and to have a positive time with family.
There are so many good hymns, and it can be hard to narrow them down. But these are six of our favorite Christmas hymns.
There are many reasons I love this hymn. I love the breadth of the story it introduces. I love how it connects the Old Testament with the coming of Christ. I just love the majestic nature of it—the grandness of it. One other reason that I love it is that it’s one of the first moments that the congregation really stands up and sings during our Irish Christmas show. I love that moment. There’s a visible rise as well as an audible one. People love to sing that song. I love the melody. I love what the band plays. I absolutely love it.
Since Kristyn went with an Advent hymn, I’ll go Advent as well. I would say “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel,” “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” There are very few pieces of music that really feel like onomatopoeic pieces of music. In other words, they sound like both the lyric and the emotion. “Holy, Holy, Holy” is a good example of that, and I think “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is similar. The text for this song was a Latin text going back to the seventh century, but the melody that we adapted was from the fifteenth century and is actually a French melody. And French music has always had an element of mystery through it. This melody has that, and I love that. The sense of the mystery and the anticipation are perfectly matched in the music.
As Kristyn said, I love how this song goes through the Old Testament. You get the Rod of Jesse, and you get Dayspring, and so on. It’s taking people through the whole story of Jesus, which only begins to make sense when you’ve walked through the Old Testament first.
And the chorus is amazing. As a songwriter, it’s just amazing how that melody sounds right everywhere. It sounds right when it’s monks singing unaccompanied. It sounds right with an organ. It sounds right in the Royal Albert Hall with an orchestra. It sounds right with rock bands, with metal bands, and with Americana singers. It doesn’t matter. It’s just so perfect.
This is a hymn that I have only become familiar with in the last few years. Ricky Skaggs, the great bluegrass singer and mandolin player, introduced it to us. He joined us for one of our Christmas concerts and sang the first verse a capella. It was just incredible and stopped us all in our tracks. It was amazing.
The words are beautiful. The melody is just so achingly beautiful. It’s an epiphany hymn written by Reginald Heber, who also wrote “Holy, Holy, Holy.” I’ve been singing that one since I was a little girl, and it’s wonderful to find other hymns written by hymn writers you’re already familiar with. But this was a little hidden gem for me.
It’s beautiful because it is a meditation on the beauty and wonder of Christ. It’s very poignant and revels in the beauty and the light now revealed in Christ. I love singing this song.
John and Betty Stam were missionaries and published writers in their twenties when they left for China where they were martyred for the cause of the faith. Frank Houghton, who was an Anglican bishop, wrote this hymn after hearing about their deaths. “Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor, all for love’s sake becamest poor.” I can never sing the hymn without thinking of that story. I think it’s extra poignant for a couple of reasons. First of all, John Stam’s hymn collection was given to his brother, who then gave it to his great nephew, who then bequeathed it to us. We have lots of hymnbooks that belonged to the Stam family, and in some ways, The Sing! Hymnal is an extension of a gift that was given to me by the Stam family.
But I think the biggest thing is this: we think about the Christ child who came for the nations and who these wise men and Gentiles came to visit, and then we think about where China was in the 1920s and 1930s and about the promise of the Red Army to eradicate Christianity from the country. Today, depending on who we speak to, are there 75 million or 100 million or 125 million Christians in China today because of the faithfulness of some of these people? It’s extraordinary. It really is. It puts to shame some of our own small ambitions and small daily concerns when you think about the radical witness of those people. So that is a great hymn.
A broad set of resources, including piano scores, chord charts, and powerful search tools, is available on SingHymnal.com to help music leaders, pastors, and musicians lead worship in a variety of contexts. Learn More.
Do you know what’s really interesting in this song? Christina Rossetti was writing this at a time when education wasn’t a given for young ladies. They wouldn’t have had the same access as men to education, nor would they have the same access to livelihood and employment. So it’s interesting when she reaches the last verse, “If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; if I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what can I give him? Give my heart.” It’s a wonderful conclusion that even at that time with all the things that were going on culturally—the gains and the losses—the beauty and glory and gift that is Christ is so superior to anything at any time. She resonates deeply with that idea at the end of this hymn. That’s the best line: “Yet what can I give him? Give my heart.” It’s so simple, and I love the poetry of it. I think with Christmas carols there is greater license for poetry and imagery and a little more mystery, and I just love that.
The greatest songs are always written by the Irish. And so I’m going to finish with an Irish hymn: “Once in Royal David’s City.” The second half of our Christmas carol service always begins with this song. Cecil Frances Alexander was the wife of the Bishop of Derry who was later the Anglican Primate over all of Ireland. Cecil was concerned, as a young pastor’s wife, by the shallowness of the songs that were being sung by children (almost 200 years ago). She was so deeply concerned that she decided to take the Apostle’s Creed, break it down into parts, and write hymns on each subject in the creed so that children would know and learn about the beauty of the Lord Jesus and what we believe. For example, from “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” she wrote the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” That was from the collection called Hymns for Little Children.
She did what all carols do so well, and she told a story. “Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed, where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed.” And she relates it to children. “He came down to earth from heaven who is God and Lord of all, and his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall; with the poor and mean and lowly lived on earth our Savior holy.” She likens it to children: “Through all his wondrous childhood he would honor and obey.” But then she takes it right through the whole story, and she finishes with, “Not in that poor lowly stable, with the oxen standing by, we shall see him; but in heaven, set at God’s right hand on high; where like stars his children crowned all in white shall wait around.” So in this one song Alexander takes all the imagery of the Christmas story, and she tells the whole Christian gospel. For the courage to write hymns that make Christ and his gospel and the truths of the Scriptures so beautiful to so many generations of children (and of course, just for being Irish as well), I’ll pick this as my favorite Christmas hymn.
Hymns from Every Nation and Tribe and People and Language
You need all types of writers to write for the church. Each writer brings a little something different. Another great reason why a hymnal is so important is because the voicings are so full of variety that they give us different perspectives, which is great. Even in these six carols we’ve looked at, that represents music or text from ten different countries and from quite a few different centuries. It’s amazing. And that’s the beauty of this, isn’t it? This gives us the humility that we need as Christians. In each generation we have to have the humility to stand on the shoulders of the previous one and learn from them.
Keith Getty is a Grammy-nominated songwriter and author. Together with his wife, Kristyn, he cofounded the Getty Music organization to equip believers with hymns to carry for a lifetime. As the cowriter of many of today’s most-sung hymns—including “In Christ Alone”—he became the first church musician of the modern era to receive the OBE from Queen Elizabeth II for services to music and hymn writing. He is also the coauthor of Sing! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church and leads the annual Sing! Conference, which gathers pastors, musicians, and church leaders from around the world. Originally from Northern Ireland, the Gettys now live in Nashville, Tennessee, with their four daughters.
Kristyn Getty is an author and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter. Her voice is synonymous with hymns, having founded, along with her husband, Keith, the Getty Music Organization, which helps people learn the Bible through hymns to carry for life. She is particularly passionate about helping children and families learn their faith through song. Kristyn is the author of Sing! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church. The Gettys are originally from Northern Ireland and now live in Nashville, Tennessee, with their four daughters.
We are created, commanded, and compelled (by the gospel) to sing. Our children need to see singing to the Lord as being in the “for everybody” category and not simply a matter of taste or great ability.
Keith and Kristyn Getty discuss the new Sing! Hymnal and how a hymnal can shape the history of the church, form the life of a congregation, and contribute to family worship.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (1:1–2)
Archē (beginning) can mean “source,” or “origin” (cf. Col. 1:18; Rev. 3:14);or “rule,” “authority,” “ruler,” or “one in authority” (cf. Luke 12:11; 20:20; Rom. 8:38; 1 Cor. 15:24; Eph. 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16; 2:10, 15; Titus 3:1). Both of those connotations are true of Christ, who is both the Creator of the universe (v. 3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2) and its ruler (Col. 2:10; Eph. 1:20–22; Phil. 2:9–11). But archē refers here to the beginning of the universe depicted in Genesis 1:1. Jesus Christ was already in existence when the heavens and the earth were created; thus, He is not a created being, but existed from all eternity. (Since time began with the creation of the physical universe, whatever existed before that creation is eternal.) “The Logos [Word] did not then begin to be, but at that point at which all else began to be, He already was. In the beginning, place it where you may, the Word already existed. In other words, the Logos is before time, eternal.” (Marcus Dods, “John” in W. Robertson Nicoll, ed. The Expositors’ Bible Commentary [Reprint; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002], 1:683. Emphasis in original.). That truth provides definitive proof of Christ’s deity, for only God is eternal. The imperfect tense of the verb eimi (was), describing continuing action in the past, further reinforces the eternal preexistence of the Word. It indicates that He was continuously in existence before the beginning. But even more significant is the use of eimi instead of ginomai (“became”). The latter term refers to things that come into existence (cf. 1:3, 10, 12, 14). Had John used ginomai, he would have implied that the Word came into existence at the beginning along with the rest of creation. But eimi stresses that the Word always existed; there was never a point when He came into being. The concept of the Word (logos) is one imbued with meaning for both Jews and Greeks. To the Greek philosophers, the logos was the impersonal, abstract principle of reason and order in the universe. It was in some sense a creative force, and also the source of wisdom. The average Greek may not have fully understood all the nuances of meaning with which the philosophers invested the term logos. Yet even to laymen the term would have signified one of the most important principles in the universe. To the Greeks, then, John presented Jesus as the personification and embodiment of the logos. Unlike the Greek concept, however, Jesus was not an impersonal source, force, principle, or emanation. In Him, the true logos who was God became a man—a concept foreign to Greek thought. But logos was not just a Greek concept. The word of the Lord was also a significant Old Testament theme, well-known to the Jews. The word of the Lord was the expression of divine power and wisdom. By His word God introduced the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 15:1), gave Israel the Ten Commandments (Ex. 24:3–4; Deut. 5:5; cf. Ex. 34:28; Deut. 9:10), attended the building of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 6:11–13), revealed God to Samuel (1 Sam. 3:21), pronounced judgment on the house of Eli (1 Kings 2:27), counseled Elijah (1 Kings 19:9ff.), directed Israel through God’s spokesmen (cf. 1 Sam. 15:10ff.; 2 Sam. 7:4ff.; 24:11ff.; 1 Kings 16:1–4; 17:2–4., 8ff.; 18:1; 21:17–19; 2 Chron. 11:2–4), was the agent of creation (Ps. 33:6), and revealed Scripture to the prophets (Jer. 1:2; Ezek. 1:3; Dan. 9:2; Hos. 1:1; Joel 1:1; Jonah 1:1; Mic. 1:1; Zeph. 1:1; Hag. 1:1; Zech. 1:1; Mal. 1:1). John presented Jesus to his Jewish readers as the incarnation of divine power and revelation. He initiated the new covenant (Luke 22:20; Heb. 9:15; 12:24), instructs believers (John 10:27), unites them into a spiritual temple (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21), revealed God to man (John 1:18; 14:7–9), judges those who reject Him (John 3:18; 5:22), directs the church through those whom He has raised up to lead it (Eph. 4:11–12; 1 Tim. 5:17; Titus 1:5; 1 Peter 5:1–3), was the agent of creation (John 1:3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2), and inspired the Scripture penned by the New Testament writers (John 14:26) through the Holy Spirit whom He sent (John 15:26). As the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ is God’s final word to mankind: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1–2). Then John took his argument a step further. In His eternal preexistence the Word was with God. The English translation does not bring out the full richness of the Greek expression (pros ton theon). That phrase means far more than merely that the Word existed with God; it “[gives] the picture of two personal beings facing one another and engaging in intelligent discourse” (W. Robert Cook, The Theology of John [Chicago: Moody, 1979], 49). From all eternity Jesus, as the second person of the trinity, was “with the Father [pros ton patera]” (1 John 1:2) in deep, intimate fellowship. Perhaps pros ton theon could best be rendered “face-to-face.” The Word is a person, not an attribute of God or an emanation from Him. And He is of the same essence as the Father. Yet in an act of infinite condescension, Jesus left the glory of heaven and the privilege of face-to-face communion with His Father (cf. John 17:5). He willingly “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.… He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7–8). Charles Wesley captured some of the wonder of that marvelous truth in the familiar hymn “And Can It Be That I Should Gain?”:
He left His Father’s throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace!
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race.
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
John’s description of the Word reached its pinnacle in the third clause of this opening verse. Not only did the Word exist from all eternity, and have face-to-face fellowship with God the Father, but also the Word was God. That simple statement, only four words in both English and Greek (theos ēn ho logos), is perhaps the clearest and most direct declaration of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ to be found anywhere in Scripture. But despite their clarity, heretical groups almost from the moment John penned these words have twisted their meaning to support their false doctrines concerning the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. Noting that theos (God) is anarthrous (not preceded by the definite article), some argue that it is an indefinite noun and mistranslate the phrase, “the Word was divine” (i.e., merely possessing some of the qualities of God) or, even more appalling, “the Word was a god.” The absence of the article before theos, however, does not make it indefinite. Logos (Word) has the definite article to show that it is the subject of the sentence (since it is in the same case as theos). Thus the rendering “God was the Word” is invalid, because “the Word,” not “God,” is the subject. It would also be theologically incorrect, because it would equate the Father (“God” whom the Word was with in the preceding clause) with the Word, thus denying that the two are separate persons. The predicate nominative (God) describes the nature of the Word, showing that He is of the same essence as the Father (cf. H. E. Dana and Julius R. Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament [Toronto: MacMillan, 1957], 139–40; A. T. Robertson, The Minister and His Greek New Testament [Reprint: Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978], 67–68). According to the rules of Greek grammar, when the predicate nominative (God in this clause) precedes the verb, it cannot be considered indefinite (and thus translated “a god” instead of God) merely because it does not have the article. That the term God is definite and refers to the true God is obvious for several reasons. First, theos appears without the definite article four other times in the immediate context (vv. 6, 12, 13, 18; cf. 3:2, 21; 9:16; Matt. 5:9). Not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ distorted translation of the Bible renders the anarthrous theos “a god” in those verses. Second, if John’s meaning was that the Word was divine, or a god, there were ways he could have phrased it to make that unmistakably clear. For example, if he meant to say that the Word was merely in some sense divine, he could have used the adjective theios (cf. 2 Peter 1:4). It must be remembered that, as Robert L. Reymond notes, “No standard Greek lexicon offers ‘divine’ as one of the meanings of theos, nor does the noun become an adjective when it ‘sheds’ its article” (Jesus, Divine Messiah [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presb. & Ref., 1990], 303). Or if he had wanted to say that the Word was a god, he could have written ho logos ēn theos. If John had written ho theos ēn ho logos, the two nouns (theos and logos) would be interchangeable, and God and the Word would be identical. That would have meant that the Father was the Word, which, as noted above, would deny the Trinity. But as Leon Morris asks rhetorically, “How else [other than theos ēn ho logos] in Greek would one say, ‘the Word was God’?” (The Gospel According to John, The New International Commentary on the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979], 77 n. 15). Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John chose the precise wording that accurately conveys the true nature of the Word, Jesus Christ. “By theos without the article, John neither indicates, on the one hand, identity of Person with the Father; nor yet, on the other, any lower nature than that of God Himself” (H. A. W. Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book to the Gospel of John [Reprint; Winona Lake, Ind.: Alpha, 1979], 48). Underscoring their significance, John restated the profound truths of verse 1 in verse 2. He emphasized again the eternity of the Word; He already was in existence in the beginning when everything else was created. As it did in verse 1, the imperfect tense of the verb eimi (was) describes the Word’s continuous existence before the beginning. And as John also noted in verse 1, that existence was one of intimate fellowship with God the Father. The truth of Jesus Christ’s deity and full equality with the Father is a nonnegotiable element of the Christian faith. In 2 John 10 John warned, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching [the biblical teaching concerning Christ; cf. vv. 7, 9], do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting.” Believers are not to aid heretical false teachers in any way, including giving those who have blasphemed Christ food and lodging, since the one who does so “participates in [their] evil deeds” (v. 11). Such seemingly uncharitable behavior is perfectly justified toward false teachers who deny the deity of our Lord and the gospel, since they are under God’s curse:
There are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! (Gal. 1:7–9)
Emphasizing their deadly danger, both Paul (Acts 20:29) and Jesus (Matt. 7:15) described false teachers as wolves in disguise. They are not to be welcomed into the sheepfold, but guarded against and avoided. Confusion about the deity of Christ is inexcusable, because the biblical teaching regarding it is clear and unmistakable. Jesus Christ is the eternally preexistent Word, who enjoys full face-to-face communion and divine life with the Father, and is Himself God.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2006). John 1–11 (pp. 15–20). Moody Press.
Introducing John’s Gospel
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Gospel of John has blessed the hearts of God’s people through the centuries. It has been called “God’s love letter to the world.” Luther wrote of it, “This is the unique, tender, genuine chief Gospel.… Should a tyrant succeed in destroying the Holy Scriptures and only a single copy of the Epistle to the Romans and the Gospel according to John escape him, Christianity would be saved.” Luther must have especially loved the Gospel because he preached on it for many years from the pulpit of the parish church of Wittenberg. Some of the most widely known and best-loved texts in the Word of God are from this Gospel—John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”; John 6:35: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty”; John 10:11: “I am the good shepherd”; John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life”; John 15:1: “I am the true vine.” There is the beloved fourteenth chapter: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back, and take you to be with me that you may also be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.… I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:1–4, 6). Because of these and other passages, it is not surprising that the Gospel of John has been a source of blessing to untold generations of God’s people. It has probably been the means by which more persons have come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord than any other single portion of Scripture.
A Unique Gospel
But the Gospel of John is merely one of four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—all of which tell of the life of Jesus Christ on earth. So we need to ask: What makes this Gospel unique? What makes John different? As one begins to read it, he soon notices some very obvious differences. Because of their similarities, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic Gospels; the three look at the life of Christ from similar viewpoints and employ similar and, at times, even identical language. John stands apart. In the first place, John omits many things that either one or more than one of the synoptic Gospels include. John gives no account of Christ’s birth. There is no mention of his baptism, although John clearly presupposes a knowledge of Christ’s baptism on the part of his readers. The institution of the Lord’s Supper is not included. There is no ascension. What is perhaps most striking of all, there are no parables, those pithy sayings of Jesus that occupy such a prominent place in the other accounts of Christ’s teachings. At the same time John shows a detailed knowledge of things that the other Gospels omit. For instance, John reports on an early ministry of Jesus in Judea. He indicates that the duration of Christ’s ministry was close to three years, not one year, which is the impression one gets from reading the synoptic Gospels. John alone speaks of the changing of the water into wine at Cana. He alone tells of Nicodemus, of the woman of Samaria, of the raising of Lazarus. Only in John do we find the great discourses spoken by Jesus to his own disciples during the final week in Jerusalem.
Johannine Scholarship
It is probably because John is so different (and so spiritual) that some scholars have attacked this book strongly. Otherwise, it seems strange that this Gospel, which has been such a blessing to Christian people, should become the outstanding example among the New Testament books of what a section of God’s Word can suffer at the hands of the higher critics of the Scriptures. One would have thought that the historical accuracy and apostolic authorship of John would have been defended stoutly. But this has not been the case until recently. Instead there had been a generation of scholarship (not so many years ago) that thought that John was not at all reliable. In this period all but the most conservative scholars said that the Gospel must have been written at least 150 or even 200 years after Christ’s death. Many placed it in a literary category of its own as being something very much like theological fiction. Today this is no longer true. There has been a remarkable change in the scholarly climate surrounding John’s Gospel, with the result that it is becoming increasingly inadequate to deny the Johannine authorship. A new claim is even being made for the reliability of the Gospel as history. Moreover, this claim has come about, not because the scholarly world itself is becoming more conservative but because the evidence for the reliability of John has simply overshadowed the most destructive of the academic theories. Thus today men of such academic stature as Oscar Cullmann of the University of Basel, Switzerland, and John A. T. Robinson of England argue that the Gospel may well embody the testimony of a genuine eyewitness, as it claims. And some, like the late Near Eastern archaeologist William F. Albright, are willing to date the book in the A.D. 60s, that is, within thirty or forty years of Christ’s death and resurrection. At this point someone may say, “What has produced such a turnabout in the ways these men view the Gospel?” It is a good question. The answers to it are significant. First, many ancient manuscripts and parchments of John or parts of John have been discovered, and these have pushed back the dating of the book. For a long time, before the great harvest of archaeological discoveries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the earliest copies of the fourth Gospel were from the fourth century, about A.D. 325 to 340. While this was much more impressive than any manuscript evidence for other ancient writings—for instance, the earliest manuscripts of Homer’s verses were written about 2,000 years after his death—nevertheless, it gave scholars liberty enough to date John so late that it could not have been written by anyone who knew Jesus or even by anyone who could have known those who had known him. The discovery of more ancient manuscripts has changed this. One ancient scrap of papyrus, which was originally found in Egypt as part of the wrapping of a mummy and is now part of the papyrus collection at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England, alone destroys these theories. This piece of papyrus contains just a few verses of John 18 (vv. 31–34, 37, 38). But it dates from the first quarter of the second century—in other words, less than one hundred years after Christ—and thus shows that John’s Gospel had been written early enough to have had a copy pass to Egypt to be used there and then to be discarded by the year A.D. 125. This is conclusive evidence for a fairly early dating of the Gospel.
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The second major factor in a reassessment of the dating and historical accuracy of John’s Gospel has been the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were uncovered in 1947 and the years immediately following, but the impact of their discovery is continuing even now as the scrolls are being unrolled, assembled, translated, and published. Before the scrolls were discovered, scholars evaluated the differences between John and the synoptic Gospels in a way that was highly unfavorable to John. For instance, they noticed the unique language of John’s Gospel, with its contrasts between light and darkness, life and death, the world below and the world above, and so on. They noticed that the contrasts were generally lacking in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. “Well,” they said, “it is obvious that the first three Gospels are Jewish and reflect a Jewish setting. But it is also obvious that John’s work is not. John’s Gospel must come from a Greek setting. Therefore, we must seek the origin of these unique terms not in the actual speech of Jesus of Nazareth but in Greek thought and particularly in Hellenistic Gnosticism.” Then the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. These revealed a whole world of nonconformist Judaism that had simply not been known to scholars previously. The home of the scrolls was Qumran, not far from Jerusalem, in the very area where John placed the earliest events of Christ’s ministry. And what was most significant, the literature revealed the same use of the so-called Greek terms (logos, light, darkness, life, death) that are found in John’s Gospel and actually provided a far closer parallel to them. One scholar, A. M. Hunter of Aberdeen University in Scotland, writes of these discoveries: “The dualism which pervades the Johannine writings is of precisely the same kind as we discover in the Dead Sea Scrolls.” John A. T. Robinson writes: “I detect a growing readiness to recognize that this [the historical background of John’s gospel] is not to be sought at the end of the first century or the beginning of the second, in Ephesus or Alexandria, among the Gnostics or the Greeks. Rather, there is no compelling need to let our gaze wander very far, either in space or time, beyond a fairly limited area of southern Palestine in the fairly limited interval between the crucifixion and the fall of Jerusalem.” He adds that the Dead Sea Scrolls “may really represent an actual background, and not merely a possible environment, for the distinctive categories of the Gospel.”
Other Factors
The historical trustworthiness of John’s Gospel is also supported by John’s accurate knowledge of the geography of Palestine. This has been vindicated increasingly by archaeological discoveries. To be sure, John mentions many places that are also mentioned by the synoptic Gospels, so critics could say that these were only known secondhand from their writings. For instance, John could hardly tell the story of Jesus without mentioning Bethsaida (1:44; 12:21), the praetorium (18:28, 33; 19:9), Bethany (11:18), and so on. But John also speaks accurately of Ephraim (11:54), Sychar (4:5, which is probably to be identified with Shechem at Tell Balatah), Solomon’s Porch (10:23), the brook Kidron, which Jesus crossed to reach Gethsemane (18:1), and Bethany beyond Jordan, which John carefully distinguished from the other Bethany near Jerusalem (1:28). All of these places are now known, and John himself has again and again been demonstrated to be accurate. Two archaeological discoveries are particularly interesting. In 5:2, John mentions a pool called Bethesda that, he says, had five porches. For years no one had even heard of this pool. What is more, since John’s description made it sound like a pentagon, and since there had never been any pentagon-shaped pools in antiquity, the existence of this pool was thought by many New Testament scholars to be doubtful. Now, however, approximately fifty to seventy-five feet below the present level of the city of Jerusalem, archaeologists have uncovered a large rectangular pool surrounded by four covered colonnades and having an additional colonnade crossing it in the middle somewhat like a bridge. In other words, there was a pool with five porches, as John said. It is conclusive evidence of John’s accurate knowledge of the city of Jerusalem as it was before its destruction by the Roman general Titus in A.D. 70. The second archaeological discovery involves the probable identification of Aenon near Salim, which John mentions in 3:23, as having “plenty of water” in the Jordan valley. It was obviously the place where John the Baptist found adequate water for his baptizing. These three lines of evidence—the evidence of the manuscripts, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the knowledge of ancient geography—are also supported by other lines of discoveries. There has been an attempt to show that the author of the fourth Gospel (whoever he may have been) must have spoken in Aramaic because, according to those who are experts in this field, Aramaic idiom underlies John’s Gospel. Careful study of the text has convinced other scholars that the material preserved by John may be as old as Pauline theology or the traditions preserved by the Synoptics. Thus, a better knowledge of the author of the fourth Gospel and his times has succeeded in pushing scholars away from the critical postures they once held, and has caused them to admit not only the possibility of apostolic authorship but to speak even more surely of an early and very reliable tradition that underlies and is in fact preserved in the writing of the Gospel.
John’s Purpose
What does this have to do with a study of what is obviously a spiritual Gospel? Just this: John himself insists upon the reliability of the things about which he writes. Take 1 John 1:1, 3 as an example. There John writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.… We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” In other words, John says that he is writing to them about a person whom he has heard, seen, and touched. Hence, he is writing about something objectively true that will bear the brunt of historical investigation. John sounds the same note in the Gospel: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30–31). There are always people who will say that faith is something that must be entirely divorced from evidence. But that is not stated in the Bible. Faith is believing in something or someone on the basis of evidence and then acting upon it. In this case, John has provided evidence for the full deity of Jesus so that readers, whether in his age or ours, might believe it and commit their lives to Jesus as their Savior. In John’s Gospel we have an accurate record of things that were said and done in Palestine almost 2,000 years ago by a Jew named Jesus of Nazareth and that are presented to us as evidence for his extraordinary claims. If one will believe this and approach the record honestly with an open mind, God will use it to bring that person to fullness of faith in the Lord Jesus as God’s Son and his Savior. This was John’s purpose in writing his Gospel. It is my primary purpose in writing these studies. What will happen in your case? It all depends on whether or not you open your mind to John’s teaching. Sometime ago I was talking to a young man who was very critical of Christianity. “Have you investigated the evidence?” I asked him. “What do you mean? How does one do that?” he asked. “Go home this week and begin to read John’s Gospel,” I answered. “But before you begin, take a moment to pray something like this: ‘God, I do not know if you exist or, if you do, whether you hear me. But if you exist and if you hear me, I want you to know that I am an honest seeker after truth. If this Book of John can really speak to me and show me that Jesus is the Son of God and is God, I ask you to prove that to me while I read it. And if you prove it, then I will believe in him and serve him forever.’ ” I told him that if he did that, God would speak to him and that he would be convinced that all the things that are written about Jesus of Nazareth in this book are true and that he is the Son of God and our Savior. The young man went home. I saw him a week later, and I asked, “Did you read the book?” He answered, “Well, I have to admit that there are other things to which I give a higher priority.” Here is another case. A Christian at the University of Pennsylvania entered into a series of Bible studies in John’s Gospel with a young woman who was not a Christian. The two young women went through several chapters where Jesus is declared many times to be God, but none of it clicked with the non-Christian. Suddenly, in the midst of a study of the third chapter of John, and after many weeks of study, the inquiring non-Christian exclaimed, “Why, I see it! Jesus Christ is God! He is God.” That was the turning point, and several weeks later she became a Christian. That is what we are looking for in the following studies of John’s Gospel. Moreover, as that happens, we will also look for a strengthening and encouraging of believers in the service of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and our Lord.
Jesus Christ Is God
John 1:1–2
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
What do you think of Jesus Christ? Who is he? According to Christianity this is the most important question you or anyone else will ever have to face. It is important because it is inescapable—you will have to answer it sooner or later, in this world or in the world to come—and because the quality of your life here and your eternal destiny depend upon your answer. Who is Jesus Christ? If he was only a man, then you can safely forget him. If he is God, as he claimed to be, and as all Christians believe, then you should yield your life to him. You should worship and serve him faithfully.
Four Gospels
If you are one who has never answered this question personally or if you have assumed (perhaps without much investigation) that Jesus was only a man, then the Gospel of John was written particularly for you. It was written for those who do not yet believe that Jesus Christ is God, to lead them to that conclusion. I do not know which literary critic once said, “A novel without a purpose is like a life without a career. In order to be a story it must have something to say.” But, whoever the author may have been, the statement itself is a correct one. What is more, it is as correct for biblical literature as it is for works by purely human authors. In one sense the Gospel of John has the same purpose as each of the other three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke. That is, John wishes to present to the reader the earthly life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew who was born under the reign of Herod the Great and who died when Pontius Pilate was the Roman procurator in Judea. In another sense, however, John has a purpose that is distinctly his own. That purpose is to show that Jesus Christ is God. That is his thesis. To some extent, Matthew’s Gospel portrays the Lord Jesus primarily as the Jewish Messiah. In fact, it is possible to argue that everything that goes into his account of Christ’s life supports that theme. Mark’s purpose is to reveal Jesus Christ as God’s servant. Luke deals with Christ’s humanity. John, however, reveals Jesus as the eternal, preexisting Son of God who became man in order to reveal the Father and to bring men access into eternal life through his historical death and literal resurrection. How do we know that? We know it because John says so. He writes, “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30–31). Arthur W. Pink, one of the great students of this Gospel, has written, “In this book we are shown that the one who was heralded by the angels to the Bethlehem shepherds, who walked this earth for thirty-three years, who was crucified at Calvary, who rose in triumph from the grave, and who forty days later departed from these scenes, was none other than the Lord of Glory. The evidence for this is overwhelming, the proofs almost without number, and the effect of contemplating them must be to bow our hearts in worship before ‘the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ’ (Titus 2:13).”
John’s Thesis
It is not surprising, therefore, when we turn from the end of John’s Gospel to the beginning, that we find John presenting there the thesis that Jesus Christ is God. I think that John would have done very well in one of our universities today. When you write a paper in a university the best way to do it—although you can be more subtle than this—is to say in your opening paragraph what it is that you are setting out to prove, then prove it, and when you get to the end, sum it all up and say, “See, I did it. It’s just what I said I would do at the beginning.” That is exactly what John does. He starts out in the first two verses stating that Jesus Christ is God. He proves it in twenty-one chapters. Then, when he gets to the end he says that the things written in his book were written so that you and I, his readers, might know that Jesus Christ is God and that we might believe on him. At the beginning he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1, 2). We know from verse 14 that the Word is Jesus, for in that verse John says that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Thus, we find John to be saying that Jesus existed from the beginning, that he was with God in the beginning, and that he was God. In other words, the opening verses of the Gospel contain a full statement of Christ’s divinity. These verses teach three things about the divinity of Jesus Christ. The first statement is that Jesus existed “in the beginning.” In other words, Jesus was preexistent. He was “before” all things. There are several ways in which the phrase “in the beginning” is used in the Bible. In 1 John it is used of the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry. John writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). In the first verse of the Book of Genesis the phrase is used of the beginning of creation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The use of the phrase in John’s Gospel goes beyond even that, however, for John says that when you begin to talk about Jesus Christ you can do so properly only when you go back beyond his earthly life—back beyond the beginnings of creation—into eternity. That is where Jesus Christ was. Moreover, this is found wherever the Bible speaks in detail about Christ’s person. The author of the Book of Hebrews looks back to the beginning when he says, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe” (Heb. 1:1–2). The Book of Revelation reveals Jesus to be the “Alpha and Omega … the First and the Last” (Rev. 1:8, 17). Paul writes that before Jesus became man he was “in very nature God” and had “equality with God” (Phil. 2:6). These statements all point to the preexistence of Jesus as one important aspect of his divinity. The second statement is that Jesus Christ was with God. This is an affirmation of Christ’s separate personality, and it is a very subtle statement. John wishes to say, and indeed he does say, that Jesus is fully God. He reports Jesus as saying, “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). But John is aware also that the Trinity is involved here, that there is a diversity within the Godhead. Thus he also expresses this truth in his statement. The final phrase is a declaration that Jesus is fully divine, for John says, “and the Word was God,” or literally, “and God was the Word.” This means that everything that can be said about God the Father can be said about God the Son. In Jesus dwells all the wisdom, glory, power, love, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth of the Father. In him, God the Father is known. John then sums up his teaching by saying, “He was with God in the beginning” (v. 2). With these words the highly emphatic and unequivocal statement of the full divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ is ended.
Knowledge of God
At this point we need some practical applications. What does it matter to say that Jesus Christ is God? First, to say that Jesus Christ is God is to say that we can now know the truth about God. We can know what he is like. The counterpart to this statement is that apart from Jesus Christ we really cannot know him. Is God the god of Plato’s imagination? We do not know. Is he the god of Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher? Is he the god of other philosophers? Is he the god of the mystics? The answer is that apart from Jesus Christ we do not know what God is like. But if Jesus Christ is God, then we do know, because to know the Lord Jesus Christ is to know God. There is no knowledge of God apart from a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ apart from a knowledge of the Bible. One of the saddest stories in the Word of God concerns this theme. It is in John’s Gospel. Toward the end of his ministry, Jesus explained carefully that he was going away from the disciples but that he was going to prepare a place for them and would one day return. The disciples were depressed at the thought of his leaving them. He went on to say that if they had really known him, they would have known the Father. At this point Philip, who was one of the disciples asked him, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us” (John 14:8). In other words, Philip was saying, “If I could just see God, I would be satisfied.” How sad! The disciples had been with Jesus for almost three years and now were nearing the end of his ministry. Still they had not fully recognized that Jesus is God and that they were coming to know God through him. Jesus then had to answer by saying, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (v. 9). If you want to know what God is like, study the life of Jesus Christ. Read the Bible! The things recorded there of Jesus Christ are true. What is more, if you read them, you will find that the Holy Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of truth, will interpret and explain them to you.
Always Like Jesus
The second practical application of the truth that Jesus Christ is God is that God was always like Jesus. William Barclay, who knew this truth, writes, “If the Word was with God before time began, if God’s Word is part of the eternal scheme of things, it means that God was always like Jesus. Sometimes we tend to think of God as just and holy and stern and avenging; and we tend to think that something that Jesus did changed God’s anger into love, and altered God’s attitude to men. The New Testament knows nothing of that idea. The whole New Testament tells us, and this passage of John especially tells us, that God has always been like Jesus.” Does Jesus Christ hate sin? Yes! So God has always hated sin also. Does Jesus Christ love the sinner? Yes! Therefore, God loves him also. Barclay says, “What Jesus did was to open a window in time that we might see the eternal and unchanging love of God.” In fact, God so hates sin and so loves the sinner that in eternity he planned the way in which he would redeem the race. We read the Old Testament and we find God saying, “There must be an atonement for sin.” We read the accounts of Christ’s life and death, and we find God saying, “There is the atonement for sin.” We come to our time and as the Word of God is preached we find God speaking to our hearts and saying, “That was the atonement for sin. Believe it and be saved.” God has always been like Jesus.
An Acceptable Sacrifice
Third, the truth that Jesus Christ is God means that his death on the cross was significant. It means that in this way he himself became the one sufficient and acceptable sacrifice for man’s sin. If you or I were to be so foolish as to make a statement that we would die for another man’s sins and then were somehow to lose our lives, in terms of sin our death would mean nothing. We are sinners. If we were to die for sin, or pretend to do it, the only sin we could die for would be our own. But Jesus had no sin. Being God, he is sinless. Hence, when he died, he died for the sins of others, in their place; he removed forever the burden of sin from those who believe on him. Finally, because Jesus Christ is God, it means that he is able to satisfy all the needs of your heart. God is infinite. Jesus is also infinite. Therefore he is able to satisfy you out of that inexhaustible immensity. There is a story that illustrates this truth. Do you remember the verses in Ephesians in which Paul prays that the Christians to whom he is writing might “have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18–19)? These verses speak of the four dimensions of God’s love—breadth, length, depth, and height—and they say that out of that fullness God is able to satisfy the one who comes to him. During the Napoleonic period in Europe some of the emperor’s soldiers opened a prison that had been used by the Spanish Inquisition. There were many dungeons in the prison, but in one of them the soldiers found something particularly interesting. They found the remains of a prisoner, the flesh and clothing all long since gone and only an ankle bone in a chain to tell his story. On the wall, however, carved into the stone with some sharp piece of metal, there was a crude cross. And around the cross were the Spanish words for the four dimensions of Ephesians 3:18–19. Above was the word “height.” Below was the word “depth.” On one side there was the word “breadth.” On the other there was the word “length.” Clearly, as this poor, persecuted soul was lying in chains and was dying, he comforted himself with the thought that God who in himself contains the breadth, length, depth, and height of all things was able to satisfy him fully. He is able to satisfy you fully whatever your need or your longing.
“Who Is This?”
This is John’s thesis. We are going to see the evidence for it as we go on in these studies. But even here we must raise the question with which we began and which is above all questions: What do you think of Jesus Christ? Who is he? This was the question that was raised all through Christ’s earthly ministry. When Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey on what we call Palm Sunday the people turned to one another and asked, “Who is this?” (Matt. 21:10). The disciples asked the question after Jesus had stilled the storm on the Lake of Galilee: “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (Mark 4:41). Herod asked, “I beheaded John. Who, then, is this I hear such things about?” (Luke 9:9). When Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic, the scribes and Pharisees asked themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:21). This is the question. Is Jesus only a man? If he is, you can afford to forget him. Or is he God? If he is God, then he demands your belief and your total allegiance. Do you believe that Jesus is God? You should be able to say with doubting Thomas, in the story that is really the spiritual climax of the fourth Gospel, “My Lord and my God.” To draw back from making that confession is to perish. To believe it is to enter into eternal life.
Boice, J. M. (2005). The Gospel of John: an expositional commentary (pp. 13–25). Baker Books.
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FBI Finally Finds the Pipe Bomber? Douglas Andrews After four years of malign neglect from Chris Wray’s weaponized FBI, Director Kash Patel yesterday announced that the bureau has their guy.
Third World Immigration and Somalia Emmy Griffin As part of a broader effort to undo the damage done by Joe Biden, Donald Trump is addressing legal immigration granted to America-hating immigrants.
Garbage In, Garbage Out Nate Jackson The controversy over Donald Trump calling Somalis “garbage” is a perfect opportunity to talk about some mitigating circumstances.
To Move, or Not to Move? Brian Mark Weber As more Americans pull up stakes and move to states that align more closely with their political views, it’s worth considering the consequences.
Midterm Elections, Dead Ahead! Jack DeVine Get ready, American voters — NOW is the time to make sure that next November’s elections don’t unravel a year of major achievements.
The Inflationary Bite of Electric Bills Michael Swartz Regardless of which factor gets the most blame, the reality is that high electricity prices are here to stay unless the underlying issues are addressed.
America’s Military Men and Women More Faithful Thomas Gallatin The number of American military members actively committed to their faith has grown, even as the broader American culture has secularized.
Trump’s Pardon Pen Problems Mark Alexander In a poorly timed executive order, a Trump pardon has undermined his critical national security agenda.
Wajahat Warns Whitey Douglas Andrews A bomb-throwing racist podcaster let loose with a string of insults directed toward white European Americans and their culture, but was anybody listening?
Obama Celebrates ObamaCare as It Defies ‘Affordability’ Emmy Griffin With insurance premiums about to spike, the former president’s blithe self-congratulation is a testament to his utter disregard for the people he was supposed to help.
The Republic at 250: A Crisis of Civic Memory Michael Smith America’s fading understanding of constitutional liberty is opening the door to rival ideologies eager to fill the void.
Biden, Democrats, and the Deadly DC Assault Nate Jackson Two National Guard members were shot, one killed, by a radicalized refugee from Afghanistan, but Democrats blame Donald Trump.
QUOTES Shot/Chaser “How much earlier could we have caught this guy if resources hadn’t been diverted?” —Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) on the J6 pipe bomber arrest “We did not discover any new information. … [We] reexamined every piece of evidence, sifted through all the data — something that the prior administration refused and failed to do.” —FBI Director Kash Patel explaining how the Trump FBI found the J6 pipe bomber Can’t Fix Stupid “I think, in many ways, the uniformed military may help save us from this president.” —Sen. Mark Warner “Mark Kelly is a patriot. … Secretary Hegseth, all these guys: [screw] you guys. You’re not gonna be able to scare us. … We have a right to tell other service members that they have a right to ignore illegal orders.” —Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) “People on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean carrying cocaine are not a direct threat to the lives of our service members or Americans.” —Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) A Trip Down Memory Lane “Let’s go after the drug lords where they live with an international strike force. There must be no safe haven for these narco-terrorists, and they must know it.” —Joe Biden circa 1989 Lawfare, Continued “The one thing that should be clear to all of these Republican extremists … is that the statute of limitations for any crimes being committed now [is] five years. It will extend well beyond the end of the Trump administration.” —House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) Who Wants to Tell Them? “Time has run out on Republican inaction. They have done nothing over the last 60 days but stumble, fumble, and bumble as it relates to addressing the healthcare crisis that they’ve created.” —Rep. Hakeem Jeffries “Democrats want to lower healthcare costs for families. We want to make healthcare cheaper, more effective, more accessible. … Republicans, meanwhile, are a total mess when it comes to healthcare.” —Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Braying Jennies “It’s a catastrophe. I think Pete Hegseth — it’s impossible to imagine that he survives this as secretary of defense. I think he must resign, and I think Republicans will ask for that ultimately once they investigate this. But this is a disaster for this generation of people serving in the United States military.” —MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow “I’m so sick of these pundits that wear the flag pin on their suit. It doesn’t make you a bigger patriot, big boy. It makes you look like a [wuss].” —podcaster Jennifer Welch “[Illegal aliens] are what make this country great, not your thuggish ICE agents.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) “The Department of Homeland Security … is the single biggest threat to public safety right now.” —Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) “[Donald Trump’s] always been a racist, a bigot, xenophobic, and Islamophobic.” —Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “I think what happened is that, you know, when you have these, kind of, new programs that are designed to help people, you’re oftentimes relying on third parties to be able to facilitate, and I just think that a lot of the COVID programs … were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created.” —Rep. Ilhan Omar on Somali fraud “Somali Minnesotans are a part of the fabric of our beautiful state. Somali Minnesotans are teachers, nurses, neighbors — our friends. Trump’s vile hate has no home here.” —Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan “We are in every industry, and Minnesota would not be able to survive nor thrive without the Somali community here.” —Minnesota State Senator Zayna Mohamed Behind the Mask “The mistake that you made is you let us in in the first place. The best thing about brown people, and I’m going to say this as a brown person: There’s a lot of us. Like, a lot. … I want [Americans] to realize this: You have lost. … Your story is a s****y story filled with misery.” —Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, a child of Pakistani immigrants Non Compos Mentis “This is also the party that supposedly is about Christianity, and I just imagine what they would have done to a little baby Jesus.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett on the GOP Rainbow Mafia “We’re going to make this a city that doesn’t just protect trans kids but also celebrates and cherishes them.” —New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani Village Idiot “[Donald Trump’s] our dictator. … It’s like 18 times the worst behavior one has witnessed ever anywhere. It’s worse. Think of the worst thing that you’ve ever seen humans accomplish. This is so much worse.” —former late-night host David Letterman You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy “Why you may not want lower prices as much as you think you do.” —Washington Post headline Race Bait “I have inherited a white supremacist system.” —Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Belly Laugh of the Week “I actually think that the mainstream news still does a very good job of just presenting facts.” —Barack Obama
One Way Israel and Hamas came to a ceasefire agreement in October. Since then, Israel has made multiple attacks. People are upset … but no one seems to ask why? They carried out another one this week, and the media is quite sure Israel is the offender. No one seems to admit that Hamas keeps shooting at Israel, threatening to pull out of the agreement, failing to release the promised hostages, and targeting civilians. No, no, it’s evil Israel’s wrongdoing. A strange “one way” to look at the situation.
Enemy at the Gates After Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal debacle that left Afghans … women especially … in peril, a program of allowing Afghans to come here almost indiscriminately has caused its own problems. Last week it was a shooting in Washington D.C. by an Afghan. This week, DHS arrested another Afghan national for a bomb threat in Texas. Can this be directly attributed to the Biden administration? Maybe … maybe not … but … it’s not good. Are the open border types, “sanctuary city” types, going to defend these immigrants?
Can You Hear Me Now? Here’s an interesting one. Costco, a traditionally left-leaning company (They don’t lobby or endorse … but 98% of their political donations are to Democrats and their aims.) is suing the Trump administration for his tariffs. Presidents have used tariffs in the past even if it’s Congress’s job to do it, but Costco is finally making a political statement and revealing their true position. That is, if, in our nation, it is illegal for Trump to do this, the authorities should be handling it, not … Costco.
Duh! I’ve thought this for a long time, but now a study agrees. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD) between 2018 and 2020 concluded that children who are given smartphones before the age of 12 are at a higher risk for obesity, poor sleep, and other problems. Starting with television before the age of 5 all the way to smartphones before the age of 12, we’re finding over and over our “improved technology” has some astoundingly bad unintended consequences for our children … and we just keep going it.
Your Best Source of Fake News A woman in Boulder, Colorado, did her part in fulfilling the Great Commission by going out and purchasing a mug that says, “All I need Today is a little bit of coffee and a whole lot of Jesus.” She’s wearing her faith right out front and taking the gospel to the world … sort of. It seems that Minnesota has made the list of “foreign countries” HSS Secretary Kristi Noem is planning to ban travel to (actual story). I can sympathize. In many ways it does seem like a foreign country. Finally, in a little reported story, apparently Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in his assault on illegal drugs (14 strikes since September) sent drones to target Hunter Biden in an attempt to decrease the demand for illegal drugs. Well … I mean … it does make some sense … right?
From Portland to Minnesota to Washington and beyond, once again, Jim had much to share from the news desk. Here’s a selection of stories from the first half hour:
–The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral arguments over the legality of President Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship in the U.S.
–After nearly 5 years, Brian Cole, Jr., of Woodbridge, Virginia, the alleged January 6th pipe bomber, was arrested by the FBI yesterday.
–Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro has confirmed that he had a phone call with President Trump amid a major military build-up in the Caribbean and the threat of an attack on his country. He said the call, which occurred last month, was cordial.
–Two people who survived the U.S. military’s early September strike on an alleged drug carrying vessel were attempting to climb back onto the boat before it was hit a second time.
–Russia has begun evacuating its citizens from Venezuela.
–The White House has debuted a new page on its website aimed at lambasting media outlets over fake news coverage of the Trump administration.
–Democratic Senator Mark Warner is facing a firestorm after suggesting he believes members of the U.S. armed forces should save us from President Trump.
–Iranian-run, Soros-funded billboards, are urging soldiers to disobey orders.
–Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is at the center of a widening scandal as federal prosecutors continue to unravel one of the nation’s largest COVID-era fraud cases.
–My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has filed paperwork for a possible run as a Republican for the position of governor of Minnesota.
–Portland, Oregon’s tree lighting ceremony had almost no mention of Christmas but it did have chants of “Free Palestine!”
–The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered that a redrawn election map expected to increase Republican representation in Texas’s U.S. House delegation remain in place.
–The Indiana State House approved a new slate of congressional maps that tilts all nine congressional districts in favor of the GOP.
–Large scale voter fraud rocks Michigan.
–California’s top elected officials announced a new online portal with the stated purpose of having members of the public share information with the state’s Department of Justice about “potentially unlawful activity by federal agents and officers across the state.”
Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson said Friday on Fox Business that Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faces serious political fallout as public frustration mounts over the state’s massive […] The post appeared first on The Western Journal .
Radiation levels at airline flight altitudes briefly reached levels that could be potentially harmful to pregnant women.
Radiation levels in Earth’s atmosphere rose to the highest level in nearly two decades in November after a rare solar super-flare pummeled the planet with high-speed particles from the sun. The solar flare, an extremely bright flash of light, erupted from the AR4274 sunspot on Nov. 11. Classified as a powerful X5.1, the flare followed a series of milder flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that treated skywatchers to mesmerizing aurora displays as far south as Florida.
Apart from being the most intense solar flare of 2025 to date, the X-class flare also unleashed a stream of high-speed protons and other energetic particles toward our planet, something very few solar flares do. This year, about 20 X-flares hit Earth ?— but only the one from Nov. 11 was accompanied by the high-speed proton stream. That day, when Earth-based monitors began showing elevated radiation levels, researchers released several stratospheric balloons with sensors to see how radiation levels evolved throughout the atmosphere.
They found that at altitudes where most commercial aircraft travel — around 40,000 feet (12 kilometers) — radiation briefly rose to levels ten times higher than the normal cosmic-ray-related background. If a pregnant woman were to be exposed to such radiation levels for more than 12 hours, she would have exceeded a limit officially considered as safe for a fetus. Fortunately in this case, the worst was over in about two hours, according to Benjamin Clewer, a space weather researcher at the University of Surrey in the U.K. “Typically, these events peak right at the beginning and that might only last about half an hour,” Clewer told Space.com. “In this case, the event officially finished in 15 hours, but only the first two hours were significant.”
CMEs also expel clouds of energetic particles into interplanetary space. Those particles, contained in clouds of magnetized plasma, take days to reach the planet. The protons unleashed by a solar flare, however, travel at nearly the speed of light and arrive within minutes, Clewer said.
When those energetic protons hit the top of Earth’s atmosphere, they interact with molecules of air, triggering showers of secondary, less energetic particles including neutrons, muons and electrons. Such particles constantly trickle down onto Earth’s surface as a result of the battering our planet experiences due to cosmic rays that arrive from the most distant parts of the galaxy. But when a stream of solar protons hits, radiation levels on Earth’s surface and around the planet suddenly spike. The phenomenon is called a Ground Level Event (GLE) and is rather rare. In fact, since measurements began in the 1940s, only 77 such GLEs have been registered, according to Clewer.
California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton joins ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss his tip line to expose what he believes is significant fraud in California and respond to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s slow recovery efforts following the L.A. wildfires.
The FBI apprehended the J6 pipe bomber, something the Biden FBI had somehow been unable to do. Weirdly, he turned out to be a left-wing extremist. The Democrats chose their latest cause: standing up for Venezuela’s narco-terrorist regime. They advanced a novel “legal” theory, that it is perfectly OK to kill drug dealers in the Caribbean by blowing up their boat, but only if you do it in a single explosion. Makes perfect sense, just like how we fought World War II.
But the biggest story of the week was corruption in Minnesota–billions stolen from taxpayers, mostly by Somalis, under the somnolent eye of Governor Tim Walz. Actually, that was the big story of 2022, but better late than never. We welcome the national press to the fray, and have participated enthusiastically in their reprise of the stories we have been writing for years.
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