Featured Were Men Born Again Before Pentecost?

Actually, do you not think that John 3:13 is the Lord Jesus preaching Himself to Nicodemus as the Messiah. Is He not showing Himself to be the answer to the riddle posed by Agur the son of Jakeh?
Proverbs 30:4. 'Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if you know?'

'These are [the Scriptures] that testify of Me' (John 5:39).

 

That is what my Bible says and I do my best to obey the command found in Duet. 4, I think it's verse 2 and found again at the end of Revelation. So, yes, that is where I stand.

 

And that response lacks a certain amount of respect and is meaningless.

 

Also no dispute and without purpose. I thought you much more of a man than that.

 

You indite, do you also seek to serve? This answer does not.

 

There are people here I have read in the past and respected but when a man accuses me, by innuendo, of Catholicism without so much as a verbal inquisition, there is an obvious ignorance of scriptural behavior and certainly Southern and Missionary Baptist Ethical Behaviour and in that manner any man naming himself Baptist tosses all of any earned or deserved respect into file 13. That is sad! And that neighbors, is not of the Holy Spirit, it is of one spirit but not the Holy Spirit.

 

Tom,
I was called off the stage into Church, the Baptist Church and if we are not face to face so I can ask a question, it is incombant upon you, just as it is on me, to explain before a mater has the opportunity to offend.

My posts are sometimes more inclusive and longer than some believe required but that is not so, i am still teaching and I know because this despicable ministry is one my LORD called me to and so I work not to say stupid things, just as I did in my class and from the pulpit when I was asked to take it. The Internet requires the same care, not because a member may leave, no, I never cared about that anyway but because the Lost Man might not ask!

 

Grest poat!

 

Cassidy is mistaken. Brown (the late Father Raymond E. Brown) takes the opposite view that Cassidy advocates for. On page 132, He makes a reference to scholars who hold to Cassidy’s view, “For those scholars who believe that the evangelist is speaking here and not Jesus….”, but he does not hold to that view himself, but merely comments upon it. Indeed, on page 145 we find the view of Brown himself, “And Jesus insists that he is the only one who can do so since no one else can has ever gone up to heaven.” Furthermore, Brown explains in detail why the reasoning of scholars who hold to the view held by Cassidy is not sound.

Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John I-XII. “The Anchor Bible”, Volume 29. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1966.*

*This the first of a two-volume commentary on the Gospel According to John by Raymond Brown. It is currently being published, along with other volumes in The Anchor Bible series, by Yale University Press with the series having been renamed as “The Anchor Yale Bible.”

 

Thank you for your honest and polite reply!

 

That which seems to be obvious in the first stages of study often becomes much less obvious as one pursues his studies.

Understanding the Gospel According to John requires much more than correctly parsing verbs—it requires getting into the head and the heart of the man whom God chose to use to pen the Gospel. In this case, I believe that both the internal and the external evidence points to John, the son of Zebedee, as the “writer,” but redactions appear to have taken place between the first draft and the Gospel as it has come down to us. The question before us in John 3:13 is who is speaking—Jesus or John. Cassidy argues from the tense of the verb ἀναβαίνω that it is “obvious” that John rather than Jesus is speaking. However, scholars of the gospel disagree and have explained the use of the perfect tense in various ways. Raymond Brown explains it using just one sentence, “In the Johannine references to Jesus there is a strange timelessness or indifference to normal time sequences that must be reckoned with (iv 38).

I do not necessarily agree with Brown on every point, but I do agree with his analysis and comments that prove that correctly interpreting The Gospel According to John requires a very substantial amount of knowledge of the writer and what he wrote. I do commend Cassidy for recognizing that Raymond Brown, although a Roman Catholic priest who was Roman Catholic to the very core, was an exceptionally fine New Testament scholar. Perhaps Cassidy is also familiar with Joseph A. Fitzmyer and Luke Timothy Johnson who also are exceptionally fine New Testament scholars—even though they are Roman Catholics . As for me, I am a Baptist who loves wisdom, knowledge, and truth wherever it may be found.

 

It is 'indict' and on target in this day and age sir.