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<body> <B> <div align="center"> <center> <table border="0" width="90%"> <tr> <td><P> <B><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Acts+1:1-11" target="_blank" name="Top">Acts 1:1-11</a>    </B> </P> </td> <td><P align="center"> <B><font size="4">THIS SAME JESUS</font> </B> </P> </td> </center> <td><P align="right"> <B> 8-8-99 </B> </P> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </B> <P>Intro: "This same Jesus". This phrase may have more meaning than one might first think. One might wonder why this emphasis by the angels as they told the disciples that Jesus would return. </P> <P>The KJV renders it, "this same Jesus" as does the NIV. Phillips has it, "This very Jesus". The Jerusalem Bible reorders the verse but in such a way as to use reduncancy for emphasis. It says, "Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heave, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there".</P> <P>Not only will Jesus’ return be just as visible, literal and actual as his ascension, he will be the very same person, the very same being, the very same man. He will be just the same as he would have been had he returned the very next day. "The same Jesus". Even though his mission will be different. </P> <P>So why is it important to emphasize "the same Jesus"</P> <blockquote> <blockquote> <B><P> JESUS HAS NOT, DOES NOT, WILL NOT CHANGE</P> </blockquote> </blockquote> <P>A. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Heb+13:8"> Hebrews 13:8</a> Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. </P> </B> <P>1. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Heb+13:9"> Hebrews 13:9</a> Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. </P> <blockquote> <B><P>Philosophy from the Greeks began to work try to explain Christ</P> </B></blockquote> <P>1. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Coll+2:8"> Col. 2:8</a> See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, (sophistry) which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. </P> <P>3. Philosophy or sophistry from the word sophisticated. "A deceptively subtle reasoning or argument"</P> <blockquote> <B><P>THE HEATHEN BENT, BENT THE GOSPEL</P> </B> <P>Joseph Priestly "As the greatest things often take their rise from the smallest beginnings, so the worst things sometimes proceed from good intentions. This was certainly the case with respect to the origin of Christian Idolatry. All they early heresies arose from men who wished well to the gospel and who meant to recommend it to the Heathens, and especially to philosophers among them whose prejudices they found great difficulty in conquering. </P> <P>For example the Greeks found the crucifixion repugnant. "They could not submit to be disciples of a man who had been exposed upon a cross like the vilest malefactor". – Joseph P.</P> <P>Lactantius – "I know that many fly from the truth out of their abhorrence of the cross".</P> <P>Paul though insisted upon it "<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=1Cor+2:1-2">1 Cor. 2:1-2</a>  <I> When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. [2] For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified</I>.</P> <blockquote> <DIR> <B><P>"Another (KJV) Jesus" </P></DIR> </blockquote> </B><P><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=2Cor+11:4">2 Cor. 11:4</a> <I>For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, </I>... </P> <blockquote> <B><P>Philosophy Plying the Person of Christ</P> </B> <P>"… they began to raise the dignity of the person of Christ, that it might appear less disgraceful to be ranked amongst his disciples".</P> <B><P>Trouble believing Christ to be a man</P> </B></blockquote> <P>1. Example with Apostles <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Acts+14:11-12"> Acts 14:11-12</a> <I>When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" [12] Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker</I>. </P> <blockquote> <B><P>Paul warned against a "another Jesus"</P> </B></blockquote> <P>1. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=2Cor=11:4"> 2 Cor. 11:4</a> <I>For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, ... </P> </I><blockquote> <P>Jesus became a person of changing forms. </P> <P>He was the second God who became man.</P> <P>Or he was an angel</P> <P>Today some teach Jesus is an angel who after returning to heaven resumed being God.</P> <P>Justin Martyr writes. Hew was the person sometimes called an Angel, and sometimes God and Lord and that he was the man who sometimes appeared to Abraham and Jacob and that he spoke to Moses from the fiery bush."</P> </blockquote> <B><P>IV.. 	WYSIWYG (says the angels)</P> <blockquote> <P>Spirit of antichrist that says Jesus was not human.</P> </B></blockquote> <P>1. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=2John+1:7"> 2 John 1:7</a> <I>Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming <B>in the flesh</B>, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. </P> </I><P>1.Joseph P. "Could it rouse the indignation of the apostles John so much as to call those Antichrist, who held that Christ was not come in the flesh, or was not truly man; and would he have passed uncensored those who denied the divinity of his Lord and Master, if he himself had thought him to be true and very God, his Maker as well as his redeemer?"</P> <blockquote> <P>"Jesus Christ, whose history answers to the description given of the Messiah by the prophets, made no other pretensions; referring all his extraordinary power to god, his Father, who, he expressly says, spoke and acted by him and who raised him from the dead: and it is most evident that the apostles and all those who conversed with our Lord before and after his resurrection considered him in no other light than simply as ‘a man approved by God by wonders and signs which God did by him" (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Acts+2:22">Acts 2:22</a>).</P></blockquote> <P>Not only do we find no trace of so prodigious a change in the ideas which the apostles entertained concerning Christ, as from that of a "man like themselves" (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Heb+2:17">Heb. 2:17</a>) .</P><blockquote> <P>".. when their minds were most fully enlightened after the descent of the Holy Spirit and to the latest period of their ministry they continued to speak of him in the same style (as Peter said on Pentecost, "a man approved of God). He does not say the God, the God-man or the super-angelic being, but simply the man Christ Jesus</P> <P>Hebrews says he was a persons "<I>in all respects like unto his brethren".</P> </I><P>Some felt that it requires a God do die to bring life. But the bible specifically says that </P><blockquote> <P><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=1Cor+15:21-22">1 Cor. 15:21-22</a>  <I>For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. [22] For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.</P> </blockquote> </blockquote> </I><P>5. To the Greeks, gods do that sort of thing.</P> <blockquote> <B><P>Docetae (seemests) </P> </B> <P>"held the human nature of Christ to be an illusion, phantasmal and not real. … (they) were adherents of the Gnostic school and their peculiar dogma was held by a swarm of Oriental sects… </P> <P>Group today who claim Jesus’ body was not resurrected (Jesus was really an angel) but dissipated into the atmosphere.</P> <P>Not even resurrection changed Jesus into someone or something else. </P><blockquote> <P><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Luke+24:39">Luke 24:39</a>  <I>Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."</P> </blockquote> </I><B><P> Currant world system of reincarnation</P> <P>48 hrs those believing in mediums talking to dead and reincarnation</P> </B> <P>Woman "I was a healer in Athens. I think I am a man".</P> <P>Person is always someone of distant past (?) and related to someone or something important and of a familiar place.</P> <B><P>Put is same package mediums talking to the dead.</P> </B> <P>But in opposition: Lady could not be talking to her dead mother if her mother would be reincarnated into something or someone else, maybe a man.</P> </blockquote> <P>Conclusion:</P> <P>	Jesus will always be man Christ Jesus. He is the man seated at the right hand of God. When he returns, he will be the same Jesus that ascended. He is the man who represents us to God, our mediator as Paul writes:</P> <P><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=1Tim+2:5-6">1 Tim. 2:5-6</a>  <I>For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, [6] who gave himself as a ransom for all men…</P> </I><P>God has accomplished forgiveness, salvation and resurrection to life through - </P> <P>: <I>Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know</I>. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=KJV&passage=Acts+2:22"> Acts 2:22</a></P> <p><a href="#Top" target="_self">Top</a></p> </body>