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Consider that when Jesus came to live in human form, He had to abandon something. He had to step down and become a little lower than the angels. Doesn't that mean that He had to abandon His memories? If He didn't, and hadn't grown up the way a human being does, then He would have had a separate consciousness competing with the one forming inside of Him when He was developing. At every stage, those memories would have informed His developing memories.
It's my consideration that Jesus was born with the essence, the nature of God, but not the memories. He trusted in Himself, that He would be who He knew Himself to be out of that nature. Then, later in life, He completed the process, by reintroducing those memories. He reintroduced them, and became one with the one who brought them. He became one with Himself. He had to, as growing up a man necessarily made the two understandings different enough. I think He had to do it that way to get Himself into the world where He could act for man.
Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They lay it out very well. Matthew, especially, does an excellent job. But you do need to be willing to put aside your traditions.
Go read those, you might be surprised. But if you're not willing to consider them, then nothing I can say will cause you to believe. I don't have that silver bullet of belief that will make you suddenly become rational in this.
Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They lay it out very well. Matthew, especially, does an excellent job. But you do need to be willing to put aside your traditions.
Go read those, you might be surprised. But if you're not willing to consider them, then nothing I can say will cause you to believe. I don't have that silver bullet of belief that will make you suddenly become rational in this.
I know your NT backwards and forwards...Again, how is Psalms 110 messianic?...Verse one is a reference to
Berei**** - Genesis - Chapter 23
6 "Listen to us, my lord; you are a prince of God in our midst; in the choicest of our graves bury your dead. None of us will withhold his grave from you to bury your dead."
They are calling Avraham, ‘my lord’...
Here’s something of an explanation, if you’re willing to read it:
Quote:
The error by Christian missionaries to think that it is G-d being spoken of in both the L-rd and the master may come from a mistranslation into the Greek in the Christian bible. In Psalms there are two words: G-d's holiest name is the first and a word meaning a human master is the second.
However, in Matthew 22:44-45 the same Greek word is used -- the word kyrois. "The L-rd / Κύριος / Kyrios said to my Lord / Κυρίῳ / Kyrio: "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet."' If then David calls him 'Lord,' / Κύριον, / Kyrion, how can he be his son?"' Matthew 22:44-45.
He did not fulfill what the Israelites THOUGHT were the Messianic prophecies because they mistakenly used them as divination. Prophecy is only recognized AFTER the fact by its fulfillment NOT by expectation through divination. What Jesus fulfilled and accomplished was definitely prophesied but can only be identified as prophecy after the fact. They have been doing so for millennia.
You mean aside from the Messiah quoting from it and appealing to it as a prophetic statement about him?
Quote:
...Verse one is a reference to
Berei**** - Genesis - Chapter 23
Who?
Quote:
6 "Listen to us, my lord; you are a prince of God in our midst; in the choicest of our graves bury your dead. None of us will withhold his grave from you to bury your dead."
They are calling Avraham, ‘my lord’...
Here’s something of an explanation, if you’re willing to read it:
..................The 3 persons of the Trinity are also seen together at Jesus' baptism.
I find a neuter "IT" is Not a person. God's spirit (Psalm 104:30) is a neuter "IT" at Numbers 11:17,25 and Romans 8:16,26.
( Newer Bible versions took the liberty to change "IT" to he or him ) , but that does Not make an "IT" a person.
Plus, how could a person end up in Job's nose - Job 27:3 _____________
Many people would benefit greatly by reading two or three good books on the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. If you think it was fully and absolutely settled at Nicea, you are off by several hundred years. My point is not to call into question the doctrine of the Trinity, but to say that many of the misconceptions that reappear again and again on forums such as these were dealt with - exhaustively - by the early Christians. No clever notion is going to occur to you that wasn't floated and addressed (and probably rejected) 1,500 to 2,000 years ago.
The divinity of Jesus, and exactly how a man could be both human and divine, was massively and understandably disorienting to the early Christians. The fact it took intense debate to arrive at a consensus should not be surprising or concerning to us. The "nuts and bolts" of the Trinity and the Incarnation remain mysterious to a large extent even today. We can put words around them, but we can't fully grasp them.
Regarding prophecy, it's not clear to me what purpose it would serve if it could only be grasped in retrospect. Almost by definition, prophecy is forward-looking.
I myself used to be troubled by the way Christians seemed to find prophecies about Jesus in verses that, to me, seemed clearly to have nothing to do with Jesus. A phrase or two seemed to be pulled entirely out of context and applied to Jesus. Then I learned this was standard Jewish practice long before Jesus arrived on the scene. It was considered perfectly legitimate to find clues in passages that, on the surface, seemed to have little or nothing to do with the Messiah. So the fact a passage "clearly" refers to some ancient person or event doesn't mean it doesn't also apply to Jesus.
Lastly, I found very helpful a systematic theology by the late Thomas Oden. He makes the point that much confusion can be avoided if you understand that Jesus sometimes spoke and acted from his fully human perspective and other times from his fully divine perspective. This doesn't mean he flipped back and forth between two minds, but merely that in some circumstances he realized a human perspective was more appropriate and in others a divine one was. I do find that some passages that otherwise seem puzzling fall into place if you appreciate this is what's going on.
You know, it's funny how people assign all kinds of properties to God when they consider what a hypothetical God would be like. Then, when they are faced with the reality, they fall apart intellectually. God can be in more than one place at a time. This can even be true when two instances of Him are operating within the same person.
If you want a prophetic image to help understand it, then consider Moses. Moses insisted that he could not speak. Eventually, God provided Aaron. Aaron did the talking. He even had his own rod. Jesus had the Holy Spirit. Aaron was the older brother. The Holy Spirit came into the world before Jesus, in John.
As far as God being so different from us, aren't we made in His image? Mary and the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit should have been compatible. She had faith, if it took that. She was impregnated by spirit, after all.
We only have the problem, then, of an eternal God coming into an infant and perverting the course of that infant's development by already being fully formed within its psyche. The child would have to be born with the nature of God, but not things like the memories. Maybe that stuff could bleed over into His consciousness now and again, but not so much that it would destroy Him as He grew and formed a self.
Jesus was tested after the Spirit came upon Him. After He got back everything, the perspective if you will, He still wasn't sure of Himself. Maybe he was, but knew that testing was wise? But we can certainly see how He could gain the ability to observe and have compassion from multiple perspectives, divine and human, now. This seems like reality. Look at how God dealt with that uncertainty. He tested Himself. That's interesting. His human nature was so important that He took the risk that it would overcome even His nature. Or was that more a message of His caring for us?
I find a neuter "IT" is Not a person. God's spirit (Psalm 104:30) is a neuter "IT" at Numbers 11:17,25 and Romans 8:16,26.
( Newer Bible versions took the liberty to change "IT" to he or him ) , but that does Not make an "IT" a person.
Plus, how could a person end up in Job's nose - Job 27:3 _____________
He did not fulfill what the Israelites THOUGHT were the Messianic prophecies because they mistakenly used them as divination. Prophecy is only recognized AFTER the fact by its fulfillment NOT by expectation through divination. What Jesus fulfilled and accomplished was definitely prophesied but can only be identified as prophecy after the fact. They have been doing so for millennia.
Then it is not prophecy...
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