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Rumors of Life & Death
Reporters of News

And this rumour of him went forth throughout all Judaea, and throughout all the region round about.
Gospel of Luke 7:17 – KJV

Sojourners become clarions of news to uninformed ears in new places from the places where they have witnessed life.

The ‘rumour‘ to which the Gospel-writer Luke refers (above) is Jesus’ raising a young man from his coffin along his own funeral procession in Nain in remote Galilee. Other English translations of the same Greek word [λόγος] use “report.”

When we return to John’s Gospel (Good News) we will encounter such reports again, some stories which veer from the truth.

Good News/Bad News: True or False?

The Disciples who traveled with Jesus from town to town reported the Good News of Jesus the Messiah of Israel to many who had not heard in places distant from the events they had witnessed. Reliable reports from other witnesses also reached the ears of thousands who had not yet seen Jesus in Person.

The four written NEWS accounts of JESUS CHRIST are not the only news of the Savior. Many reports are oral, even many first-hand stories from witnesses to Jesus’ many miraculous events recorded by the Apostles.

Picture the Apostles after Jesus’ death and resurrection as reporters and add to their number every saint of the Church who consequently believed their report of the Lord Jesus Christ, then you may realize why John and others had to address false reports of their time.

While reading the Gospels we discover many who reject the “Good News” of Jesus which challenges one or more of their earthly embraces of sin. Many reject God and refuse to acknowledge or let go of their sins.

Some will believe in anything in order to deny the Truth.
Roger Harned – talk of Jesus .com

All the REPORTERS of Jesus had to be taken at face value for their rumors (stories) of the Messiah. Those who did not witness an event had to ask themselves the same questions we would ask today.
- Is this even possible?
- Is their report TRUE or FALSE in some way?
- If it is true, is this GOOD NEWS or BAD NEWS for me?
- How should I react? (What must I do?)
- What is my response to this NEWS to others who have not heard?
Brief Vitae of the Good News Reporters

As mentioned previously in Witnesses to Jesus Risen! John and the Apostles continue to report their GOSPEL to others until the end of their lives and John writes to some who have witnessed even more miracles than he reports in his Gospel.

Briefly from our Gospel archives take a look at these dates of the reports.
- Jesus was crucified around the year AD 30
- John Mark’s Gospel – before AD 49; martyred AD 68
- Matthew’s Gospel – as early as AD 50, before martyrdom ~AD 60
- the physician Luke’s Gospel/Acts – AD 60-61, prior to the great persecution that began under Nero in A.D. 64; Luke likely martyred in AD 84
- John writes his Gospel to the churches after AD 85 [~AD 90-100]
- 2nd c. AD – many Church fathers, disciples of John, Peter & others, testify to the truth of their Gospels and oppose false reports by false teachers.
Countering False Reports

So this rumor spread to the brothers and sisters that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not tell him that he would not die, but, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? ”
John 21:23 CSB

John 21:

Recall from John’s previous report [Witnesses to Jesus Risen! – Peter] of a third time they encountered Jesus after His resurrection:

5 So Jesus said to them, “Children, you do not have any fish to eat, do you?” .. 7 Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”
- Peter enthusiastically dove into the water and swam to meet Jesus on shore before the other Disciples came onshore in a boat filled with fish.
- Simon Peter and Jesus have a conversation about feeding His sheep and Simon hesitates in his answers to the Lord (our Shepherd).
- Jesus asks:
  - “Simon, son of John, do you agapaō Me more than these?” then, “Simon, son of John, do you agapaō Me? and finally,
  - “Simon, son of John, do you phileō Me?”
- Peter’s hesitates in answering Jesus call to agapaō and each time confirming that he loves Him (phileō differing slightly in meaning).
- The Lord commands him with some subtlety after each response:
  1. Tend My lambs.
  2. Shepherd My sheep.
  3. Tend My sheep.
And to the reader knowing that Peter has already died for his Lord, (Peter’s dearly departed friend) John offers an explanation.

17 .. Peter was hurt because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?” And he said to Him, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You..

Good News, Bad News

John gives the reader some ‘bad news,’ which is no longer NEWS to most and the ‘good news,’ which the other Apostles also witnessed. (Most of them had also died for their witness of the risen Christ Jesus!)
Rumor vs. TRUTH

Who said it?
What is the RUMOR?
Where were they when it happened?
When might this have taken place?
Why would your NEWS source tell you?
How does this impact you?

WHO DO YOU BELIEVE?
As the last surviving Apostle, John witnesses the Good News of Jesus Christ and His resurrection for decades!

What happens when a rumor creates a myth short of truth?

This would happen later when the Church tells stories not supported by Scripture.

When the saying (or story or myth) multiplies, then eventually encounters truth what most certainly will happen? The rumor is crushed and faith along with it (when the aging Apostle dies).

And remember, regardless of when or how the saying had started, it has already been around for a time since the original witness is some fifty years before John writes his Gospel truth.

Many disciples of The Way and saints of the church might easily elevate John (or for that matter, Simon Peter, other Apostles or even family of Jesus) to glory and worship due only the LORD.

John’s simple approach to false witness

The always esteemed and ever truthful Disciple does two things:
1. John states the false witness (translated: saying, rumor, story)
2. He refutes it by his own authoritative true witness.
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE? It’s as simple as that.

The incident in question involves what JESUS said to Simon Peter. Only six other Disciples including John witness it first hand. So John states:
- 21:23 Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die:
- yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die;
  - (FALSE rumor – John categorically states: – Jesus said NOT)
- but,
  - (here is the truth I witnessed, says John)
- [Jesus said ..],
  - If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? [KJV] or
- “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?” – NASB
The Disciple by quoting Jesus refutes the rumor of John’s alleged immortality told in this story circulating among early Christians.

John squashes this rumor before it can multiply into false teaching which will cause us to doubt the ‘Gospel Truth.’

His own witness, true to facts unknown through rumor, states what happened (decades ago):
- 20 Peter turned around and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them—the one who also had leaned back on His chest at the supper and said, “Lord, who is the one who is betraying You?”
- So Peter, upon seeing him, said to Jesus, “Lord, and what about this man?”
- Jesus said to him, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!”
  - Peter turned around, John was following him and Jesus.
  - Peter asked the Lord about John, because Jesus had just told Peter:
18b “.. when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will put your belt on you, and bring you where you do not want to go.”
- John tells the reader, who likely knows of Peter’s crucifixion, why Jesus said this.
- After having refuted the rumor with the truth, John puts his seal on the whole truth of restating the ‘story.’
This is the disciple who is testifying about these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
John 21:24 NASB

John’s closing is comparable to Paul writing, “I sign this in my own hand.” At stake is the Authority & Truth of the Lord Jesus
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Rather than adding questions on this section of John,
I leave you to question Truth vs. fiction.
Please click PG 2 
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December 23, 2020
the son of perdition vs. The Son of Man
“While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.
John 17:12 NASB – High Priestly Prayer of Christ Jesus

Judas vs. Jesus

We have entered Gethsemane with Jesus and eleven of the Apostles.
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Jesus – The Last Prayers of Gethsemane
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As Jesus prayed to our Father God they fell asleep.

Just hours before in Jerusalem the Lord had prayed for all of them except Judas.
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Protect them from the evil one
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Jesus had acknowledged in His High Priestly Prayer that Judas, who had left the upper room quickly, was not included in His protection.

John 18: Judas betrays Jesus

2 Now Judas also, who was betraying Him, knew the place, for Jesus had often met there with His disciples.

Judas then, having received the Roman cohort and officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, came there with lanterns and torches and weapons.

4 So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth and said to them,

“Whom do you seek?”

They answered Him, “Jesus the Nazarene.”

He said to them,

“I am He.”

And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.

6 So when He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground. Therefore He again asked them,

“Whom do you seek?”

And they said, “Jesus the Nazarene.”

8 Jesus answered, “I told you that I am He; so if you seek Me, let these go their way,” to fulfill the word which He spoke, “Of those whom You have given Me I lost not one.”

Observation by an awakened Apostle John, witness to this sad scene and seeing Jesus’ betrayer leading the lantern-lit faces into Gethsemane:

And Judas also, who was betraying Him, was standing with them.

The Beginning of the End

Now we turn the page to focus on Judas, the son of perdition (a description long forgotten) and how evil enters into those professing Jesus as their Master and Teacher and Lord.

John adds additional detail to the beginning of the dark night, while Matthew and others witness Jesus’ betrayal from their perspectives.
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September 11, 2020
Father, the hour is come
Jesus uses ‘Father’ as a relational approach to God, just like the trust which the boy Jesus surely must have had with Joseph, husband of His mother Mary, many times.

Yet what does this mean to a disciple of Jesus’ teaching to address the Lord God as Father?

Father, the hour has come

There’s a certain immediacy to saying, ‘the hour’ is come, or now is or has come. It is the precise time we have been awaiting – a time prepared long before now.

Our present focus of The Hour Is Come is Jesus’ prayer at the precise time after Judas left the room and prior to the Lord and the Eleven departing for Gethsemane where He is about to be betrayed.

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come;
glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.
John 17:1-2 ESV

Jesus begins His conversation in prayer by addressing the LORD God in a most intimate and relational way.

“Father,” the Son of Man so boldly addresses Almighty God in heaven. What a connection!

A Man Who IS more than a man — speaking directly to the LORD GOD, as if He Who IS the very Son of God would humbly address his papa on earth.

Trinity begins with the Father

The lesson and relationship learned from Jesus’ prayer is both mysterious and wonderful — glorious in a sense of worship and humbling in the light of an intimate relationship.

Later we will focus again on Jesus the Son of God, His connection through the Holy Spirit and a new covenant of grace for all who will follow Jesus as Lord. But for now we look up only to the Father, as did Jesus in His prayer..

πατήρ – patēr

Choose any of the three definitions you like, but realize that John and the Eleven are listening to the Son of Man, Jesus their Master and Teacher, pray directly to the LORD God in heaven, whose Voice they have heard previously.
1. generator or male ancestor
2. metaphor for:
  1. the authors of a family or society of persons animated by the same spirit as himself
  2. one who has infused his own spirit into others, who actuates and governs their minds
  3. one who stands in a father’s place and looks after another in a paternal way
  4. a title of honour
    teachers, as those to whom pupils trace back the knowledge and training they have received (We don’t really honor teachers in this way in these last days, but some give this authority to a priest leader of a flock.)
    the members of the Sanhedrin (As you know, Jesus had some issue with these ‘fathers of Israel’ as well & they will be the ones to clandestinely convict the Messiah of God our Father sent as our atoning Sacrifice to save a remnant of Abraham.)
3. God is called the Father (This applies is many ways you may read here, but above all ‘Father of spiritual beings and of all men.’)
By all Authority implied in Jesus’ opening of HIS High Priestly Prayer, it is highly significant that the Lord Jesus ‘lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father …’

And from Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament the definition instructs us from the everyday Greek word used by Jesus and those in Jerusalem governed by Rome:

πατήρ : ‘from a root signifying “a nourisher, protector, upholder” (Lat., pater, Eng., “father,” are akin), is used

[God’s] “Fatherhood” in spiritual relationship through faith is the subject of NT revelation, and waited for the presence on earth of the Son. The spiritual relationship is not universal.
Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament

[& an additional insight: Note: Whereas the everlasting power and divinity of God are manifest in creation, His “Fatherhood” in spiritual relationship through faith is the subject of NT revelation, and waited for the presence on earth of the Son, Mat 11:27; Jhn 17:25.

The spiritual relationship is not universal, Jhn 8:42, 44 (cp. Jhn 1:12; Gal 3:26).] [I will leave you to your own further revelation of the Father through your research of these scriptures. RH]

The ‘Father’ of Jesus’ prayer

With additional insight of bowing down to God the Father in our prayer to heaven, let us recall that Jesus had already taught the Disciples that which we know so well and do take for granted.

The Lord’s Prayer

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Matthew 6:9 KJV

‘Our,’ which precedes Father, in the Lord’s Prayer is a personal possessive pronoun, a possessive plural in corporate prayer.

So perhaps appropriate in a singular personal possessive sense in prayer, you or I might reasonably pray,

“My Father in heaven. Holy is your Name.”

(And recall that the Lord Jesus has declared: “I and the Father are One.” [John 10:30]

What glorious mystery for us to observe Jesus and the Father, who are One, in this, His most personal prayer prior to the Son’s sacrifice on a Cross for our sins.

The Disciples had been accustomed to Jesus praying to the Father at many times corporately before the multitudes, more privately among them and privately away from them at times.

Luke 11:

And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him,

‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.’

And he said unto them, ‘When ye pray, say,

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
as in heaven, so in earth.
Luke 11:2b KJV

When your mortal ‘time is come’ will you able to approach your heavenly Father saying, ‘Thy will be done?’
Roger Harned – talkofJesus.com on Jesus’ prayer in John 17

So from this final prayer following the last supper of Jesus and the Disciples, John witnesses this high priestly prayer of their Master and Teacher Jesus, a beloved father to the Twelve for these past three years.

πατήρ – patēr – a title of honour – teachers, as those to whom pupils trace back the knowledge and training they have received

John 17:

… “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You…

5 Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself…

11 I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You.

Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me,

that they may be one even as We are.

One with the One Father

Do you think that it is important to the Apostles that Jesus again prays to the Father with words confirming that He and the Father are ONE?

שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֶחָֽד׃
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!
Deuteronomy 6:4 Masoretic Text, NASB

Jesus continues and prays just a short time later:

21 that they may all be one;

even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You,

that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

Relationship with our Father in heaven

Paul, Apostle to the gentiles, later writes to the church in Corinth:

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? … But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him… Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you
1 Corinthians 6:15-19 excerpt NASB

Again, the Apostle Paul and Jesus both point to the glorious mystery of the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as ONE, as well as a personal relationship between the spirit of a redeemed man like you or me to the ONE GOD, Who IS Spirit and truth.

John 17:

Jesus continues His High Priestly Prayer as intercession for these disciples and those to follow:

24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am…

25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me…

What must the Disciple have thought following Jesus’ prayer to the Father?

What do you think of this prayer to the Holy Father in heaven by the Highest of High Priests praying for your soul?

“Lord,” they called Jesus — “the existing One” as more than a Son of Man, as the LORD GOD IS ONE!

אֱלֹהִים

‘elohiym – ʼĕlôhîym, el-o-heem’; plural of H433; gods in the ordinary sense; but specifically used (in the plural thus, especially with the article) of the supreme God

Our LORD is the ONE GOD — Trinity — the Son interceding by prayer and His own priestly Sacrifice for those who believe and would be saved.

When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered.
John 18:1 ESV
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To be continued...
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May 28, 2020