What does 'The Gospel' mean to you - in 200 words or less

I feel that these questions are legitimate as they are essentially asking me to explain my view of the Gospel. I am happy to defend the ill-informed replies that have been directed my way, but I would need your go ahead as I don't want to post on this thread if your decide this discussion should not continue.I'm happy with whatever decision you make.

I thought you've said he was god incarnate, god in the flesh? So yea....he didn't disobey himself?Or is he his son, not actually god, but just his seed? So he didn't defy his father. Great! Did your dad put you on a pedestal and punish your friends when you had them over because you knew exactly what he wanted? (he is YOUR father and all)Or is jesus just a guy, chosen by god?Hopefully I don't need to point out all of the posts where you guys claim the trinity and whatnot (there are far too many).Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.

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Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people
-Carl Sagan

erased.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

brian writesIll think brian is correct here since everyone seems to be incorpulating (I do that for cavediver, AKA Space Ghost) thier personal feelings about the Gospel as well as other facts that are directly related. Also as long as that is ok with IANO, the threadmasterWhat do you thinkEAM

I agree the original responses are legitimate, but given your knowledge and their persistence; this seems to be escalating beyond the scope of the thread. Each response provides another can of worms and others are joining the fray.This thread doesn't seem to be about defending or proving the legitimacy of what one believes concerning the Gospel.I still feel that the issues that have spawned from the idea that Jesus failed his mission should be taken to a new thread.This thread should remain personal expression.Thanks
AdminPD

yes. I understand you believe this and according who you consult you will arrive at your conclusion concering the historical accuracy, BUT that is not what I have been asking you You believe he was a failed preacher and not the messiah. Again why SPECIFICALLY accurate past of what, jesus' messiahship? Where when and why? When where why and howEAMEdited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.

Admin writesEAM writes: Just wanted to say thanks for the website, its a neat tool and place for study

No problem! I cherry-pick your posts for content that I feel I can contribute something worthwile in response to. You are actually much more conscientious than me in this regard.But I also read your whole post very carefully, in an attempt to make sure that I understand your actual point. Sometimes I make mistakes, but I would prefer not to ... Thank you! This is a perfect example of what I am talking about. In this case I would side with Lee and regard his opponents as being in need of at least one less idol. No need, they are just there for the sort of people who spot a tangential controversy and demand proof, potentially wasting many posts in irrelevant argumentation. They consist of charges against US interrogators, counter-charges against Palestinian guerillas, a vagely-related conviction in a German court, and some interesting statistics about how many rolls it would take. Fairer than I might be. I think he was often confused, tended toward sloppy writing, and somewhat short on Zen. On the other hand, some of his passages, like that one, are very precious to me, because they make me think and learn new things when I read them and provoke a lot of interesting controversy and exchange of information when I repeat them. As in this case ... Exactly. I would say, that God is dead. For him, Jesus is just an example.I suspect that you do not properly understand the Zen teaching that God is dead. Certainly a great many people do not. So I am going to expound on it a bit using examples that are familiar to both of us.The death of God is not something that happened at a particular time. For Christians, it touches history in a unique way in the first century, yes. But it also touches history every time communion is taken, and every time someone is baptized, and every time someone gives up an idol. It is not, however, a purely historical, merely temporal event. It is eternal. I know you prefer to think of God as life. You have a lot of good teaching that revolves around the idea that death signifies separation from God. But this is a limited, dualistic teaching.There's nothing wrong with that. John is full of gnostic dualism, he uses it every chance he gets. But it has its limits. And these limits are the limits to dualism, not limitations as to what God is. They function rather like the parables in the synoptics, that is, they are teaching tools, not suitable to embrace as fixed ideas.In the parable of the sower and the seeds, the sower may represent God, the seeds can stand for the word, the ground may be the masses that hear it, the plants could be us as spiritual beings, new creatures. But then when we get to a different one, about a tree, the plant may be God. So it is no good saying God is not a plant, is it?In the same way, when we talk about the second death, death is hell and God is life. But when we talk about the thief in the night, God may certainly be represented as death, while life is us sitting around not knowing the day and the hour. So it's no good saying God isn't death. Any God worth having transcends antitheses like these.And that's the gospel right there, isn't it? That God has been there. God is still there. Alive and dead, good and evil, human and divine, heaven and hell. All God, all the time.The neat thing about Zen is that, no matter where you stand, it will do you some good. The fact that moving meditation arose when Buddhism met Taoism doesn't make Zen an Eastern religion, anymore than the fact that freedom of the press emerged when Catholicism met Protestantism would make us sitting here typing a Western one. I seem to have gone badly wrong in this part of my post. If I were arguing these points with a Catholic, I might say the Vatican. If it were Southern Baptists, I might mention the Convention. Someone out there is litigating to suppress criticism, and I think their behavior smells of idolatry.Here's an entry-point for the body of data I am talking about, you may want to peruse it and see if it can be corrected. I'm not concerned, though.Local Church controversies - Wikipedia Au contraire, not enough time. If I had done more research, I could have been less stupid, yes? I now believe I might have provoked a little less trouble from you if I had taken my potshot at Living Stream Ministry (but not much less.) Nope, he's just an example of someone on the correct side of the Bibleolatry question. You and me, some of our audience, people who might be expected to recognize signs of idolatry in some other religion that was very strange to them.I see part of where I have gone wrong here though; when I say "someone like the Scientologists" I don't mean you. Quite the contrary, I mean that we have no trouble recognizing court actions to silence unhappy ex-members as a symptom of idolatry when it is some weird alien "space opera" group filing the briefs, but we may not notice it when it is our own church. Capiche? I don't think so? This relates to my points about a mental object of worship, and idolatry as an act of will. Note though that it is a hypothetical situation. If I undertook to commune with some Coptic brothers, I would be sure they knew how to distinguish symbol from substance.I believe Paul covers this line of thinking pretty thoroughly. If I pass around some crackers and grape juice and read from First Corinthians (or one of the synoptics) than you probably wouldn't jump up and call me an idol-worshipper. But if I yammered on about Transubstantiation, you might get a little nervous, wouldn't you? And if I went to court to accuse someone of denying the Real Presence and got the poor old fellow burned at the stake, you would no doubt be sure. I'm getting the feeling that it's the product of digestion that bothers you, more than anything in particular I might get it on. This is a very good sign Yes.Cantillation - Wikipedia
Neume - Wikipedia I can't find it as of yet, with the info you have given. If you think of any more details, speak up. In the meantime you may try this.— - ——‘——’

Hi PD,I think you are correct here, given past experiences this thread would probably end up discussing everything except what the Gospel means to an individual.With that in mind I will knock up a wee post outlining why I think Jesus was a failure and submit it this evening (hopefully).Thanks for considering my proposal.

As a Christian I drive my thinking from the revelation of the Bible. It tells me that God is the eternal and uncreated divine life.Rather than a matter of preference it is just a matter of me believing what the Bible tells me. The word "death" or "died" is used in a number of ways in the New Testament. Separation from God would be one of those usages, but not the only usage.The apostle says we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God. Or he who has died is justified from sin.It would be an interesting study to discover all the ways in which "died" or "dead" is used in the NT other than the thought of separation from God. I am no expert on "Gnosticism" or "Gnostic dualism". My understanding is that there was a strong dualistic concept in the spirit verses the material world. This strong dualism was fought AGAINST by John. He underlines that from Christ flowed blood and water when His side was pierced: This personalized stamp of John was curiously reserved for this event. I think he was going out of his way to refute Gnostic dualism that taught Jesus could not be a material man of flesh and blood. The material world was bad.John is not supporting this Gnostic dualism but refuting it by insisting that Jesus was not a phantasm. He was a real man of flesh and blood and John witnessed blood and water pouring out of the wound in his corpse.I think John was trying to reach people who were enfluenced by Gnosticism. That is different, I think, from the concept of John's writings being supportive and filled with Gnostic philosophy. This is getting just a little fuzzy to me. But what Christ has accomplished is effectual enough to consummate the New Jerusalem as the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose. So I do not agree that His work is "limited". He is "able to do superabundantly above all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20)What Christ has accomplished is able to present us faultless before the presence of His glory - There is no limitation in the effectiveness of Christ's redemption. His operation is producing the corporate expression of God mingled with man - the New Jerusalem.I don't see anything nearly as impressive in Zen. At most I see a kind of individual spirituality promised. There is no eternal city. There is no corporate habitation of God in spirit. There is no city of the living God or living temple.Whatever "salvation" Zen offers is vague, limited, and very individualistic. As far as I can see the only goal of Zen meditation is an individualistic spirituality. How can I compare an isolated individualistic spirituality with the corporate New Jerusalem as the city of the living God and capital of a new heaven and new earth?Where in Zen is there anything as corporate as [b]"the Body of Christ"{/b taught ?The limitations are with Zen Buddhism, I think, in answering the really big questions of the meaning of human life. I am not sure which sower and seed parable you are refering to. This sounds confused to me. Maybe it is because you are using Zen Buddhism to interpret the Bible.I regard Zen meditation as another form of taping into latent soulical power like many "science of the mind" or "science of the soul" disciplines.The human soul has powers buried within it. They became latent powers at the fall of man. Both and the east and the west people have devised various methods of taping deep into the soul and releasing this latent soulical power.Sometimes they can do quite extraordinary things with this latent soul power. I think they mistake these abilities for God.I have to run now. Talk latter.

Brian writes:Were you going to be able to get out the post you promised?EAM

No,
i've never said that and dont believe that. Jaywill and others belive that he was God but I believe he was the Son of God. He was the very first spirit that God created and they dwelled together as a 'father and son' you've obviously never seen any my posts refuting the trinity doctrine lol.

Be honest Peg. You should know that I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God as well as He is God the Son.

how can he be both?its completely illogical. They say that the trinity is seen in the fact that Jesus said things such as"if you have seen me, you have seen the father also"
and
"I and the father are one"But this does not have to mean that they are physically the same person.Jesus prayed with his diciples before he left them and John recorded his words in John 17:22 22Also, I have given them the glory that you have given me, in order that THEY MAY BE ONE JUST AS WE ARE ONE. 23I in union with them and you in union with me, in order that THEY MAY BE PERFECTED INTO ONE, that the world may have the knowledge that you sent me forth and that you loved them just as you loved meJesus clearly shows here that the diciples anc be 'ONE' if they are in 'UNION'this is what Jesus meant when he said "I and the father are one"it was obviously a term of speech that people of the day understood...shame its been so bitterly twisted to mean something completely false about Jesus and Jehovah.

Do you also not believe in the virgin birth story, either?

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Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people
-Carl SaganFor me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan