Chuck Missler, John Chapter 1, Session 1

[Music] well welcome to our very special study tonight we're going to enter what most people regard many people regard as the most venerated book in the entire Bible the Gospel of John and whenever we enter the Word of God we want to always do it on grid prayer so let's bow our hearts for our word of Prayer Heavenly Father we thank you for this for your word and this book in particular we thank you Father for the time you set aside we do pray father that you would be with us in this hour and open our hearts and lives to the truths that you place here for us we know that in your kingdom little accidents we're all here by your divine appointment so we commit this hour and ourselves into your hands in the name of Yeshua our Lord Jesus Christ amen yes indeed we are in the Gospel of John and in the first session and this is a strange book because it is so direct and open and simple that the it's a great many people recommended as the first place to start studying your Bible on the other hand it's also the book that is incredibly deep and reward always rewards this the diligent or student they say it's shallow enough for a child to wade in but it's deep enough the elephant in Washington is one way it was quipped the Gospel of John and we're going to explore the first fourteen verses of it to give you a perspective what we're going to do during this coming hour is that we will of course have so many rectory remarks but I want to indulge in some hermeneutical caveats hermeneutics is your theory of interpretation everybody has a slightly different way of viewing this text we want to make you aware of how we view it if for no other reason that you least understand why we come to the views we have and we're anxious for you to form your own views do through your own study but we also going to highlight why did John write this gospel he had a very specific purpose in doing so and the and we'll also take a look at how this gospel fits into the other for the other three to four the four Gospels and and why and in what ways is the Gospel of John unique among the four and we'll talk of course we'll focus on the pre-existent one the origin the beginning if you will in a sense at least of the Lord Jesus Christ but we're also going to indulge in exploring several metaphors that are too important just to gloss over the logos and pose for light these are two words that come up so frequently and we don't want to be clumsy or casual with you their use and we're going to also explore something that most people are not aware of an area called the meta cause and so and we have a final little surprise of something that I think you'll find interesting when we cook as we complete this section what we're going to be dealing with here but getting into the interaction here these hermeneutical presuppositions I want to highlight the fact that our ministry has been based on two discoveries and the the primary one being the integrity of design when we take our Bible we have pick up 66 separate books and these 66 books were penned by at least 40 maybe 40 for some people have slightly different reckonings but over 40 guys that penned these that didn't even know each other for the large measure and all of this occurred in over a period of almost 2,000 years and so let's get that in mind 66 separate books 40 different authors and what we discover is first of all that we have here in our possession as we as we pick up the 66 books we discover that is it is an integrated message system I'm using that in the professional sense and the information science sense and that is we have 66 books 40 different writers over those years yet every detail in those books is anticipated by deliberate design and very skillful design and once you discover that for yourself you'll be confronted with a second discovery that emerges from it and that is that that what the origin of that integrated design had to come from outside the time domain outside the dimension of time simply because it writes history before it happens with the precision it's breathtaking and so those two discoveries are the cornerstone of our Roman uruk's here an integrated design we believe that the new testament go demonstrate in fact in the study the New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed and the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed its really an integrated design even though it can it's composed of such diverse parts so I want to cover the integrity of design as one of them as extra rest extraterrestrial origin I also want to highlight why we make such a fuss over details because we're convinced that every detail is there deliberately by the Lord as part of that design and Jesus declared that not only in Matthew five in several amount he makes this remark he says think not that I come to destroy the Torah or the prophets I come not to destroy but to fulfill and the for verily I say unto you till heaven and earth pass one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled now a yacht or a kettle that's a Hebrew expression that is it is the smallest of the 22 Hebrew letters it's something you and I would mistake for an apostrophe or blemish on the paper a tittle our little decorative hooks if we take a look at Hebrew yacht is a little tiny letter and the petals are little details that accompany them and so when you say one yard or one kettle that's the equivalent of you and I saying not the dotting of an eye the crossing of T and when he says that that's a call to taking the text seriously so we've talked about the relevance of details and broad terms you will see that as we go that also has led us to a view that we don't see synonyms there are two there do words can be synonymous in that they mean almost the same thing but watch out for that almost because that in that overlap they may be hiding a treasure that you could overlook so what took a moment about resolving power you go and spend a few dollars and get a telescope and look at a star you see a bright spot big deal you go and spend a lot of money and buy a really good telescope you discover looking at that same star that it's actually two stars the ability of optics to discern two things that are almost the same is called resolving power in optics but it also is a term that you can use in language and it's important to be sensitive to that for example Matt Mark Luke and John use a term the kingdom of God frequently in their in their writings and their Gospels Matthew and he's the only one that does this uses a different term thirty-three times the kingdom of heaven and you pick up any of a hundred commentaries and you'll find out the expositors regard those as synonymous that Matthew because the passages seem to be pretty much the same whether court of this way but this is just a choice of Matthew except if you're really careful you'll discover that Matthew also uses King of God five times but 33 times uses the other one and what you discover is that it's Matthew's using a genitive of source not a genitive position it turns out once you understand that it changes the implications of the whole gospel Becky so that's an example of I'm using there's another example and that has to do with the Olivet discourse which is the recorded of course in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 virtually and ethically and most commentators including some of our lease that is also presumed like most people that Luke 21 which is a very similar presentation by Lord Jesus Christ is part of the Olivet discourse and now both of these writers both these accounts involve a cluster of signs that Matthew calls the beginning of Sorrows but if you study them carefully you'll discover they're given at different times to different audiences and Luke talks about things that will happen before that cluster of science and math if you talked about those things that happen after those cluster of signs you discover the two different briefings with two totally different purposes and so it's another example to be on your guard with this you know this issue what Luke talks about them the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD in great detail and because he did there were no Christians that fell in that disastrous seek but in Matthew 24 have a whole different thing that's the desolation of Jerusalem that is yet future and those things need to be discerned or you fall into error so okay we've talked about integrity design relevance of details absolute sins in our ministry for more than four decades we've had a trademark verse we use which I call the briam challenge and I want to focus on that for a minute Paul is gang they they went from Luke records how they went from Featherlite to Berea and speaking of the Bereans they said these were more noble than those investment like in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily to prove whether those things be sold and we've adopted that verses our trademark verse as I say for four decades but and most of the emphasis I've had during most of that time is focusing on searching the scriptures to prove other things and so I I usually equip that this is where Luke tells you don't believe anything chuck Missler tells you check it out for yourself our desires not to to instill a specific viewpoint we're really anxious to help you grow your own tools to come your own conclusions we will share candidly what our views are and how we got there but only as an aid not as an assistance if you will and so but we always felt that that first book there the last part the Scriptures daily was the difficult part discovered in recent years that the really difficult part is the first part to receive the word with all readiness of mind I discovered in my travels that most people have trouble with the Bible because they have been miss taught about bad science they have concepts they bring to the thing that are ingrained that are incorrect and part of our challenge in discovering truth is to come at it with an open mind to try to set aside our preconceptions and so forth put them to the test if you will shedding our erroneous presuppositions is usually the more difficult part of the two so when you talk about them when searching the scriptures that the word their anak you know is actually to prove you you search it in the sense of investigating to judge it to evaluate it and so forth and of course the radiance of mind is the most difficult part that's what I want to focus on here a little bit now one of the things that we also have in our background studies I just want to summarize quickly because it's going to touch upon what we're dealing with not only tonight but through our gospel John and that is to realize that what we think of is our reality a physical reality has boundaries that may surprise you but those boundaries are well understood in modern-day science if I use da Vinci's Vitruvian Man to as a symbol how far man can reach and I want to explore what's larger than he and then we'll let size increase to the right on this little diagram going towards largeness we call the macrocosm largeness the universe if you will and that plunges us into astronomy and astrophysics the great discovery of 20th century science was the discovery that the universe is finite not infinite it may be expanding but it's finite and that has that's what led to the conjectures about the Big Bang and all that sort of thing that the universe has a limit of largeness that's a shock but well understood today now on the other hand if we and the fact that's fine if we go the other way and look at smallness we come to an even more amazing discovery that there's a limit to smallness that plunges us into the area of quantum six subatomic particles and the like and the profound discovery of science today is the discovery that there's a limit to smallness that everything you deal with whether it's length mass energy or time is made up of indivisible units you know if it cannot be divided and so that's why they call them quanta if you will and so the fact that they're indivisible unit there's a there's a when you stand back from this there is a staggering discovery as you put this all together and that has been the subject of many scientific articles incidentally and that is that there's a limit to largeness and is a limit to smallness in fact the smallness is made up of individual units that means that you and I find ourselves within a simulated environment Heights is a digital simulation that we find ourselves in and of course there's some science fiction stories always building that very thing where people discover that they're in some sense not real themselves anyway the so we are in a our what we think of a physical reality is a subset of something larger that larger in this that something that's larger than large and smaller than small is called the meta Khasan this is the region within which our reality is a subset and that is not a conjecture in my part that was a subject of an article site of the American back in 2005 and June 2005 the conclusion is that our universe is but a subset of a larger reality and that blew me away because that's exactly what the Bible has been saying all along we need to understand it in fact our difficulties in trying to understand the Bible often come from our failure to fully realize what we have discovered about the reality that we're in and so we want to deal with romans chapter 1 paul deals with a sense for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are are without excuse that's he's using that as his argument there indeed and so as we go on we're going to be talking about a lot of controversial subjects I'm not going to tiptoe around them someone try to convey as much as we know about those subjects to you but with the hope that you make your own decisions and some of the things that we will talk about different good scholars have different views on will try to present those fairly but Agustin is credited with a very interesting challenge that hangs in my wife's ministry in her Lobby that I I think was very well chosen August and said in essentials unity in non essentials Liberty but in all things agape there are some things that are really crucial that we if we're going to be Christians and we're going to be faithful to our master we do need to agree on on the other hand there's many things that we'll encounter are good people have different views and in that we want to have Liberty but all these things let's not lose sight of the thing that should identify all of us and that's the love of our Lord but let's move on here then okay let's just said why did John write this gospel when you get to chapter 20 he makes he lays it down quite clearly you know John says and many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Christ the Son of God and that believing ye might have life through his name that that's his goal John's goal is that you might have life through his name that's what this is all about and I'm always amused when people say Jesus never said he was God that some of you has never cracked this Bible and clearly it says the acquaintance of the Gospel of John in fact let's talk a little bit before I go on about how John fits in the total package we have four Gospels and so Matthew being a Jew and being a Levi presents Jesus as the Messiah that's his focus that's his agenda mark is really the amanuensis for Peter focuses on his servanthood geez as the sir it's an action it's a it's like a shooting script Luke is a dr. Gentile doctor and he presents Jesus as humanity the son of man John focuses on the Son of God those are three different focuses we're going to see the gospel and quadraphonic in a sense okay now when you get the first in each one of these you have a genealogy almost everyone in Matthew because he's Jewish he starts with the first view with Abraham and he lays down the genie on the legal line from Abraham all the way down to Joseph the legal father of Jesus Christ mark because he's dealing with the servanthood we don't worry about the pedigree of a servant it's the one before that has no genealogy but when you get to Luke being a doctor he starts with Adam and he takes Adam down to Abraham and from Abraham to David and identical but at David Luke does a strange twist he doesn't go through the first surviving son of Bathsheba Solomon as Matthew did he goes through a second surviving son of David and carries that down to Mary it's a different reality it's the bloodline and they are distinctives for a number of interesting reasons that we won't try to develop here but worth your careful study and of course John is dealing with the pre-existent one so his first few verses are what you might consider the equivalent of a genealogy of the one who has always existed and we'll get at that shortly and now but moving on they each have a different focus Matthew focus on one jesus said as the Messiah what he claimed what he declared mark what he did it's a shooting script an action-oriented Luke focuses on humanity it's in Luke we find out how he felt and we see we really feel with him through those experiences and the John focuses on his identity who he actually was or is I should say and so Matthew writes to the Jew mark to the Roman look to the Greek in the minds of many and John of course to the church for many reasons so that's one reason probably all of us especially as believers have special comfort and fascination with John the first miracle in each one of these supports their basic the basic theme Matthew has a leopard cleanse which is a very Jewish kind of thing both mark and Luke focusing to Gentiles they have a demon being expelled John picks a very strange thing the water to wine we're going to encounter that in their next session but they also end slightly differently Matthew ends with a resurrection again a very Jewish emphasis mark with the Ascension Luke with the promise of the Holy Spirit and by doing so he sets up his sequel Luke vol 2 we call the book of Acts and John also ends with a promise of his return a second coming and of course sets up the fifth of his books the book of Revelation John wrote three epistles and the gospel were setting we also wrote an extraordinary visit into the meta cosmic called the book of Revelation and for a number of reasons it's my suspicion that the gospel that we're going to study was written after the experience of Patmos and we'll see if we can see evidence of that as we go with that speculation on our part now it's interesting that these four Gospel when when we study cherubim these super angels in the scripture we discover they seem to have four phases and these four phases seem to parallel these four Gospels we have a lion which of course speaks of the Lion of the tribe of Judah the Messiah we have the ox which is symbolic of a beast of burden and we have the man and we have the eagle and these four phases constitute the four phases of Jerry then they also are the ensign of four of the twelve tribes the ones that have the lead tribes in the camps of Israel the camp of Judah and two others a camp east of the of the tabernacle ephraim and two others to the west Reuben two others to the south and then two others to the Nordik those four costume the four camps and those four camps also rallied around those same four faces so as we study our Bible we sort of see that coming up along so I mentioned in passing as we go here and so with that a couple of other things there's there are many many miracles recorded in all the Gospels but John simply limits himself the seven changing the water to wine in Cana we'll see that in chapter two and healing the official Sun in Capernaum in a nickel above both Bethesda feeding the 5,000 the Sea of Galilee walking on the water that really loves to talk about healing the blind man in Jerusalem and raising Lazarus and Bethany these seven he chose five of these are unique to Luke by the way but he chose these four reasons of his own we'll try to sort out as we go something else we'll discover is that his gospel is based on 7:00 a.m. declarations by Jesus Christ says I am the bread of life in Chapter six I am the light of the world in Chapter eight I am the door anyone that comes in any other way comes as a thief and a robber and I am The Good Shepherd in chapter 10 I am the resurrection of life and I am the way the truth and the life and I am the true vine these are I am statements and it may surprise you and get to into chapter 8 Jesus makes it quite clear that he claims to be the voice of the burning bush before Moses in Missouri shadrin's mixes John the person John the Apostle it is he and his brother got a nickname from the Lord Jesus Christ their nickname was born urges which means sons of thunder and both James and John they're both sons of Zebedee they picked up that nickname not as you tell us something that may surprise us for some strange reason the Renaissance artists and others throughout literature always seem to portray John because he's the bull the Beloved Disciple as some kind of soft effeminate kind of character that's so contrary to what the text would cause us to understand these guys were these guys were pretty fiery and destructive zeal they were more like a thunderstorm that was so they were macho guys both of them apparently and now also James and John along with Peter become an inside threesome of the twelve those three were favored it's there there's several places where only those three were they were at the Transfiguration they were at the Olivet discourse they were allowed in at the raising Jarvis's daughter they were somehow the inside three of the twelve and so for whatever it's worth it's interesting that John himself when Jesus on the cross he gives the custodianship of his mother to John the Apostle not one of his own half-brothers who later become by the way they be after insurrection they become believers and but the one that Jesus assigned to his mother's care too was John the Apostle who tells you something we also discover John is the only one of the 12 that died an actual death all the others became martyrs rather dramatically but John was able to read altom utley retire in Ephesus and died a natural death apparently and so now we also know that John along with Peter was a very very active newer Church in Jerusalem they were called whether one of the reputed killers of Jerusalem church in Galatians and by Paul and the Jerusalem church was led by apostles John Peter and James and brother Diaz often took the initiative we've seen them very very prominent in the early church so the outline of the book we're going to look at the first fourteen chapters in this session the rest of this chapter which is about John the Baptist and the call of the disciples we're going to take off in the next session because I want to spend some time here getting started properly on some other things shortly here I want to really examine some key metaphors that are going to lurk with us through our entire Christian experience we want to deal with those with a little more depth and then the rest of the book later on the next time chapters after session will be with the book of signs but what's interesting is the rest of the book but following nine chapters virtually half of the whole book is devoted to the final week of our Lord's ministry and one-third of the verses in the entire book 247 out of a hundred and seven nine are devoted to just one 24-hour period so we're going to see John really zeroes in from chapter 12 on to that final week as we go forward here well let's jump right into the text itself and we're confronted right up front with these first few words - a couple of verses but in the beginning was the word the Word was with God the Word was God the same was in the beginning with God and superficially it sounds like a little bit of double-talk in the beginning is actually before time began we need to understand that no you and I have the benefit of Einstein and some of the discoveries of 20th century science we know that time is a physical property time varies with mass acceleration in gravity so time itself is a physical property before even time existed was the word is what it's saying and say God is outside our time domain eternity is not having lots of time he tourneys me outside the time domain that we live in the Greek really implies here before the world was created the world the word already existed is what it's really saying there okay in the beginning was the word now here we encounter this Greek term called logos it's a title it's the end it's a title that God puts even the head of his name we need to be sensitive to that it's more than just a Greek term forward like a element on the list of words it's a principle thought or concept in fact it's the expression or utterance of that thought that's what's really am in cluded in the logos if you will and it's not just it can be rendered word but that may doesn't give the Majesty what it deserves here Greek has two other words it could individual words if they occur in a list or something like that and so this is really an expression a message of communication or revelation is the flavor of this so it's more than a metaphor the word logos and and I'm this is one of the reasons because of John's use of this and this approach here it convinces me that I think he had the benefit of the Patmos experience when you put this gospel together it has retirement days and Ephesus my background professional background has been the information sciences it's interesting to discover that information science is now at the vanguard or at the foundation of all the other sciences in physics quantum mechanics it's all an information science issue in biology microbiology DNA it's an information science issue it fascinates me that information sciences come at the lead and it's interesting to see the evolutionists cannot explain the origin of information and that's that's why the whole evolutionary thing is at this point of programs among thinking people these days and so if they're informed properly the highest title of deity is logos I think it's fascinating that as information Sciences you can get if you will and the very definition of truth I'm indebted to my wife's researched I really stunned with this as the definition of truth what is truth pilots have cynically asked truth is when the word and the deed become one and the word was predicted in Jenin garden of eden genesis 3:15 and the presence of Christ was the fulfillment of that that's what he could say I am the way the truth and the life and he will make that as we get into it one of my favorite Psalms also emphasizes this by the way some 19 the heavens declare the glory of God the firmament show there's any work as we go through the psalm I want you to be sensitive to the information labels here the heavens declare the glory of God the firmament showeth his handiwork they and day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge there is no speech nor language where our voice is not heard their line has gone through all the earth their words to the line the communication here is it the word sound so it's a it's an audio type of thing some translations would say influence influence is going to and the words to the end of the world so and we could go on but I think that's very very provocative that the highest title of Jesus Christ is the logos and information science term and in some light he speaks of the heavens points that Jesus created everything including the angels or something inside of that and he created it from nothing and the word there is in the arrows tense meaning it's already done at a specific time that's completed and in Romans Paul in Romans 10 Paul deals with ESA's but have you not obeyed the gospel for Isaiah said Lord who hath believed our report so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God so but I say have they not heard yey-hey verily their sound went to all the earth and their words unto the ends of the world well getting back to the John's opening here in the beginning was the word the Word was with God Word was God the same as the beginning of God but word was with god and this preposition often conveys the sense of reciprocity and it was not be merely the president of God there existed a mutual and we fit Burkle relationship between the two is what that word implies a mutual inner communication if you will if you look at the first verse of the Bible you obviously recognize a similarity with Genesis and John here in Genesis in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and if we look at thatmy Hebrew the word for it God there is Elohim which because of the I am ending and ask it masculine verbs with I am ending Mena plural so the word Elohim is a plural noun everywhere in the in the Old Testament where Elohim shows its using with a grammatical exception because it's a plural noun but it's always declined as if it was singular it's a contradiction in the sense the word Elohim is in the plural okay and that's the word for God here what makes that provocative is you need to know something about Hebrew in Hebrew plural is three or more in Hebrews one of those language that has a dual as well as the plural in the plural means three or more and I think that's something worth knowing when you see Elohim in it's already a an echo if you will of the Trinity which of course is all through the Old Testament and the study in its own right but the beginning was the word the Word was with God the Word was God the Word was in the beginning with God there was there is imperfect meaning continuous existence not not coming into being but it was continuously in existence of course that's consistent with here all things were made by him without him was not anything made that was made and that's very similar to what Paul declares in his letter to Colossians for by him we're all things created that are in heaven that are in earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones dominions principalities or powers those are ranks of angels incidentally all things were created by him and for him he is before all things and by him all things consist or are held together in that lest that's often overlooked the Greek estate which means sustained held together established he not only created he's holding it together and there's a de witte coming when he may say enough already and Peter talks about then it's a second letter the writer of Hebrews points out that God who in sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the father's by the prophets have him these last days spoken unto us by his son whom he hath appointed heir of all things and by whom also he made the world's here again said testimony event who being in the brightness of his glory and in the end the Express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power when he by himself purged our sins sat down at the right hand of majesty and I Wow that's the way the Epistle to the Hebrews opens up and it goes up from there boy let's get back to verse 6 of John 1 there was a man sent from God whose name was John now this he's talking here about John the Baptist let's not get confused as John himself doesn't refer to himself directly in this gospel this way there was a man sent from God whose name was John the same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe he was not that light but was sent to bear witness of that light so he makes that distinction right up front and we're talking not Talmud John the Apostle here we're talking about John the Baptist John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament that's important thing to understand and we'll encounter that later it says expressly designated that way in Luke 16 in Matthew 11 but he also told about this was also the first Herald of the New Testament and that's his role here and we're going to focus on him in our next session but continuing here in him was life and the life was the light of men in the light shine offend darkness and the darkness comprehended it not and so he's the light of men this word light is something we can't be too casual doubt we want to try to understand that Jesus claimed the I am the light of the world you can interpret that philosophically if you like but there may be far more operative here then then that would deal with and I'll come back to that a minute the darkness comprehended it not and so the term here is the era's active indicative darkness was not overtaken or extinguished the light so what darkness here is not simply the absence of light as we might simplify it that's not something much deeper going on here well the Apostle John is just to summarize what he says about all of this if the light will invade the Dominion of darkness indeed Satan the ruler and his subjects will resist the light but they will be unable to frustrate its power the word will be the chorus in spite of opposition that's that's the flavor what's going to unfold here but I think there's another issue here with light as a metaphor that's the first quote of God in the Bible in Genesis chapter one and third verse let light be is what he says it's more than a metaphor and johnnyo says that was the true light which lighteth every man and cometh into the world he was in the world where was made by him and the world knew him not that sounds like really discover true light here in shortly the we'll see examples of the true light shortly here he was crucified on a cross of wood yet he made the hill on what - stood we need to understand that when you see the representations of Jesus hanging on the cross let's not decide that he made the hill and which is stood at any time he could have said enough already I'm out of here no no it was his love for you and me that held him that cross we need we'll go we'll be going into all that then we get to verse eleven and twelve very key verses in chapter one he came unto his own and his own received him not and that's the great tragedy that is a tragedy of Israel's history but as many as received him to them gave he the power to become the sons of God that's a Old Testament term it has unique meaning even to them that believe on his name the B'nai held him in the Hebrew in the Old Testament was a term used of a direct creation of God that we applied to angels and that's why that term is used in for angels all through the Old Testament and it also applied to Adam Adam as a direct creation all of us are indirect we're descendants of Adam not direct creations of God except here's what he's talking about as many as received Christ to them gave he the power to become a direct creation of God the sons of God even to them that believe on his name so there's what's going on here is much deeper than it may sound and we're going to deal with all of that in depth when we get to chapter 3 of John thickening this is going to open that door for us and we're going to go and drive the truck through it okay so so in terms of God new creations direct from God himself okay which were born not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor the will of man but of God and so and Jesus well he says I say hillocks expound on all of this when we get to chapter three of John and the predestination issues that lurk behind us some of these will also deal we get to chapter 6 chapter Ken chapter 17 so those are thorns of another kind that we'll deal with we get there the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth dwell where does tabernacled and the holy spirit's indulging a pun here and that he Deborah nettled among us and we beheld that is it we inspected his glory the Shekinah if you will the glory of the only begotten of the Father the absolute uniqueness of Jesus the word Tabernacle are dwelt is a deliberate pun here Tabernacle is God's dwelling place with man that portable sanctuary that they spent 40 years wandering through the wilderness with it was temporary it was humble deliberately outwardly unattractive it was the center of the camp it was the place where the law was preserved it was the place of sacrifice it was the place where the priests fet were fed and also the place of worship so all these things are true of that Tabernacle they're also true of Jesus Christ who tabernacled among us and there's a deliberate pun here and will retrace many of these things as we go through the study - in Scripture we look at me if you study that I encourage you to study the tabernacle as is described in the Old Testament and if you approach it all you saw as a white linen fence it was if you accept a foot-and-a-half was a cubit roughly it was about say five by 150 feet area that was circled by white linen you could only enter it through a door but the first thing you counted was the altar of sacrifice and the Laver and that would send that you up for the the knowledge itself the key place that we this portable building that was a center of it and that building a holy place and inside it had a Holy of Holies in the other door and it had a menorah set seven seven branch candlestick and the table of showbread and then there was a small altar a golden altar for the incense which represented the players of the saints and then we have the Ark of the Covenant and don't confuse its lid it was a separate item called the mercy seat two separate items different construction different purposes and so forth in fact the whole voids defined this location of the mercy seat and what's interesting here of course is that Jesus Christ made claimed to be a neat I am the door I am the light of the world I am the bread of life he makes intercession for us he identifies with each one of these pieces if you will our propitiation is over so he's going to make those statements we're going to lean on that as we go through the thing here in John 14 we actually have an echo if you will of John the first opening verses of John let's look at them together in the beginning was the word we read in verse 1 and the word was made flesh in John 14 and the Word was with God we discovered in the word well Timaeus verse 14 the Word was God and full of grace and truth it's interesting how these orchestrate together we're going to find that kind of thing happening all through John John that we look the book when you go through the book of Revelation it's a highly organized choreography if you will with events and codes and what have you when you go through the Gospel of John it is that way also it's just not as conspicuous because it reads comfortably and it isn't to your study to begin to realize that it's a very intricate skillful design itself but I'm haunted by a thing that came to be the middle one night about a year ago I believe that the Lord whispered in my ear something that's haunted me since and I want to deal with two metaphor to see I'll show you why one is the logos of the word and the other is exposed to light and I think they're more than metaphors and the thing that came to me one night was metaphors rain or men is resigned that phrase went through my mind I've been haunted by it for almost I think over a year now what does that mean what is he giving me here and I suspect that well metaphors can be masquerades to hide the fact that we are that there are underlying mysteries we have yet to resolve and so I don't want these metaphors to go casually I want us to be sensitive to their depth before we go further that's exactly what happened to very set of feelings and that's how we discover the speed of light with slowing down the Lord total met one night defiled throw on it well I have the same flavor something going on there's something here that I want to make sure we're diligent about the word logos we've talked about it's more than a metaphor it's the title of the pre-existent one a title he puts above his name and so the he is the creator not just of the macrocosm the microcosm but of the meta Kazem all else the microcosm largest as well as all else are subsumed by that there's something more here following the fall of man the creation has been subjected to futility and bondage we learned that from romans 8 in other places to reveal himself more clearly the Creator has given us his word or his logos and it's a new officially one that when when you were speaking of the creation they would use the word Elohim but I was personal revelation his word seven times David uses the covenant name Yoda bhave most rabbis won't pronounce it Yahweh some people will others will just spell it the Oh Dave Ave but anyway the point is here we're dealing with a word his word is pure we know from the Scriptures he doesn't play games he I mean doesn't mince his words that pure they're reliable and he puts his word even above his name that staggered me when you realize how God feels about his name that he puts the word even ahead of that speaks volumes and so see the creation is all under the curse we know that from Genesis 3 but the revelation and is redemptive by his word now one of the questions is which was which is more important the creation of the redemption well the answer that you have two ways to go what is how much space is devoted to it well the creation couple of chapters Genesis a couple of Psalms a couple of chapters knives a and that's that's the bulk of it on the creation the redemption and revelation and redemption boy that's the whole book of Genesis certainly whole book of Isaiah Exodus you suddenly realize the redemption occupies every book of the Bible as its primary theme well another way to evaluate this is what did it cost him the creation he breathed it into life in six days and his redemption cost him the Sun so I think we want to pay attention and where we learn we can learn about the creation from the creation itself redemption we have to learn from his word and he that hath seen me has seen the father Jesus declares avalue will get Internet in John 14 so how do you discover God loudly okay how do we discover God how do you discover God by learning about Jesus that's really what we're all about something I want to be saved though it sounds like a semi school lesson no no it's one of most profound Adventures of your entire life to really learn about the Lord Jesus there's another metaphor I don't want to let go lightly and that's the word for light folks in the greek and metaphors rain or mysteries reside and this is more than a metaphor light is one of the continuing mysteries in physics they still this day can't decide and by is it is a wave or a particle it has a property called nonlocality we'll touch on briefly and it's the source of all life in a very literal sense I want us to understand that and I want to touch briefly on the hologram as a model because there's some things developing on a horizon that may cause some major perturbations in that regard so and I'll leave you with a little something about the constants at the end I think you'll find everything let's talk about this paradox is light waves or is it particles that duality in 1906 JJ Thompson got the Nobel Prize for proving that electrons or Oh tons for that matter were particles in 1937 three decades later his son was awarded the Nobel Prize for proving electrons were waves which were they see this duality remains the central paradox in quantum physics and there's now compelling evidence that quanta only manifest as particles when we are looking at them you've got to be kidding no that is that is the view there's a thing called the to two slit experiment if I take a source of photons and I have a slit in that thing that's light acts as a source and the distribution of the photons will distribute themselves as a typical Gaussian distribution on a photographic plate or what have you okay no problem let's assume I have a say if it falls on a two-slit and again I'm going to plug one of the slits I get the same thing will happen I'll get a distribution that is a Gaussian distribution if I move this if i plug that one and open the other one I get obviously the same kind of thing but what happens when I open both sets you would expect that the two together would give me something like a squared plus J squared two different bumps but it turns out what actually happens requires their interaction because there's a term that shows up that implies that there each one is working with the other the the particles that are leaving one split are aware of the other particles leaving other slit so they're operating cooperatively and that's disturbing to realize that gets to a whole property of nonlocality the world of quantum physics they get in when you get into this it's a strange world it's non-causal non-deterministic everything is probabilistic and some very strange ways nothing is considered real we cannot say anything about what things are doing when we are not looking at strangely enough that gets into a hole the reality is non-local any particle universe is somehow connected with every other particle universe and there's a concept in physics called nonlocality and in 1964 John Stuart Bell Geneva formerly the mathematical approach try to demonstrate that called the Bell inequality but we didn't have the technology back then to actually try that until about 1982 three guys at the Institute of theoretical Applied Physics in Paris conducted a landmark experiment the so-called two particle experiment where they used protons from cesium atoms with lasers and they send the opposite directions to make a long story short they switched in less time than the speed of light between them they they demonstrated the improved nonlocality each proton knew what the other ones were experiencing and that was demonstrating the lab has been demonstrated other ways since then metaphors rainwear mysteries design see folks or light is more than a metaphor it's where the containing mysteries we looked at paradox waves of particles let's talk about the source of life itself the psalmist tells us that the that the Sun going forth from the end of heaven that circuit to the ends of it and nothing is hidden from the heat thereof and that's physically absolutely true the Sun is the source of light for the entire services and the source of life to the whole entire system including the planet Earth and so we see that when in the fall when we see the trees fall with different colors those different colors are evidences of photosynthesis processes that are tuned to different frequencies of light and they become visible and yet when they die in the fall and so if you look at one of these leads you discover it's an incredibly complicated system to do it to translate light into sugar and oxygen and so forth and that's photosynthesis which means to build light these sugar factories produce millions of new glucose molecules per second most plants produce more glucose than the use in order to starch another heart card rate that creates food for the rest of us each year photosynthesizing ourian's approves about 170 billion metric tons of extra carbohydrates about 30 metric tons for every person on the planet Earth and so what's interesting not only do the plants produce oxygen and sugar but also that gets used by the animals which then produce the co2 which the plants need in order to complete the thing we discovered this whole thing is an elegant elegant design again light photosynthesis it's all done by light is the source of life obviously on the entire planet but let me talk about something a little differently I want to talk about the hologram most of us have seen steps in synthetic anima is that real ones holography is a phenomenon you want to be at least superficially acquainted with here and I have the opportunity to meet with them at least these ciders that took the concept of the hologram and added the technology of a laser to create three-dimensional photography back in this laboratory and university of michigan back in 64 and so I was involved with because I was at forward and what had you but anyway the in superficially the the provocative transform of holography I want you to understand you take a piece of film and you put a laser light on it but you also arrange that laser light to fall on a three-dimensional object what falls on the plate then is the waves that are reference and the waves that are reflected with three three dimension object and what's recorded on the film is the interference between them and that technically is what a mathematician called Fourier transform of the image when you process that film you think you've made a mistake because it looks like just a gray film but if you illuminate it with the laser to create it in the first place you discover it's a window in you into a three-dimensional space that is as properties that are extremely provocative in many ways and so if you look through that you see a three-dimensional image that's been recorded let me explain what I mean if that were me and I was wearing a necktie and you took a photograph of me my Bible here you would not be able to tell what necktie was wearing but if it was a hologram you could move your eye around the Bible and see a necktie that's what I'm trying to get across it's a three-dimensional image not a two-dimensional representation and so so that's a virtual image into a three-dimensional space John 1:9 makes reference to a true light you see the Bible turns out to be like a hologram the hologram is very peculiar because if I had a hologram I can cut a piece of it out and I haven't lost anything because I can look around the missing hole and see whatever I could see with it there it won't be quite as sharp every piece of information on the hologram is distributed on the entire surface that makes the hologram immune to jamming and that's exactly what's true the Bible every doctrine in the Bible is is distributed throughout the available bandwidth and that's exactly what isaiah explains precept upon precept here a little verily the line upon line precept upon precept and so it's immuned hostile jamming you can care a page out of your Bible you haven't lost any critical doctrine that's why you don't need on any one verse doctrines anyway it turns out that the Bible is in effect designed in anticipation of attempts at hospital jamming if you will and so this is again in the example of supernatural design deliberate design it's interesting too that if take the hologram look at natural light it has no attractiveness if you look at the Bible without the Holy Spirit the collection of traditions or stories doesn't say anything to you when it's illuminated by the light that created it in the first place you have an image image of Jesus Christ on every page on every page and so that's a we can talk a little bit more about that the want to talk about the fact that there's a view growing that our universe may be a very elaborate hologram and that's you promoted by david bohm of course against eine it came out of the plaza of physics world in the 50s and they went to he made distinguished himself at the lawrence radiation laboratory in that area and sorry that he moved princeton 47 worked with on the manhattan project with Einstein and so forth and he hate formulated this idea along with Einstein of a way implications of quantum theory and he was obsessed with the fact that at the subquantum level location ceases to exist that caused him to infer that the universe is actually some kind of super hologram physics caused that location not existing as a nun ultimately called nonlocality and so many visits today are skeptical of his ideas because they're obviously pretty old ones now but there are some that are sympathetic to that Roger Penrose is a creator of modern black holes and so forth españa as Paris and Brian Josephson these guys are prominent in their field and they think that he may have something what's come along the way is a project in Germany called the GE o 600 the goal of this project was to try to sense gravity waves very very small ripples in the structure of space-time and they were predicted by Einstein back in 1916 but never been observed we're trying to find those but they just in doing so they made these incredibly sensitive interferometers and they attempt to detect relative changes on the order of 10 to the minus 20 the size of a single atom compared to the distance of the Earth to the Sun these things very incredible and in trying to do this they discovered a noise and that mystery noise is one of the hypotheses it may be evidence and what they've discovered is far more important in the gravity ways they may have discovered evidence that supports the idea of a holographic universe and so that that's still being explored we don't have to spend too much time on here other than be just aware of it for another reason are we living in the holographic universe if so our space and time grainy as such the distant galaxy is only a virtual illusion if indeed our universe is a hologram this pieces in a hologram are virtual expressions synthetic distances as if you will so that raises all kinds of questions that are being a bit and also implies to maybe a literal fulfillment coming of Matthew 24:29 the stars of heaven shall fall the powers of heaven shall be shaken if you try to deal with that in terms of modern physics it's confusing and yet if indeed we have a hologram in the first place that makes that very easily literally come true one last thing and we'll call it an evening I want to throw in just a footnote here you might find provocative from all of this what talk about the constants of the universe it turns out there are two constants in our universe that are dimensionless because they're ratios they have no units one of these you're very familiar with that's pi the relationship between the diameter and the circumference of a circle we've all experienced that when we were in school with geometry pi there's another dimensionless constant that you probably haven't been from you with unless you've been an advanced math or an engineering what-have-you it's the base of natural logarithms called E these two are dimensionless constants of the universe okay it turns out there are two fundamental verses in the Bible about creation obviously Genesis 1:1 in the beginning God created Earth we talked about that the other one of course isn't when we open this study with John 1:1 let's take a look at this something very unusual if we take Genesis 1:1 in the Hebrew the Hebrew and Greek are unique in that every member of the alphabet has a numerical value and you can play with those if you like it turns out that in the Hebrew it goes obviously remember now it goes from right to left all languages flow towards Jerusalem countries that are east of Jerusalem go from right to left not now in Hebrew Aramaic Arabic Sanskrit what have you all nations west of Jerusalem go from left to right not only English Latin Cyrillic what have you go from us right anyway Hebrew of course goes from right to left now if you take the number of letters times the product of the letters divide that by the number of words and the product of the words you discover that you get PI to four decimal places that's staggering just a coincidence probably four decimal places as a there's a bit precise to make it too casual and slowly say okay so that's it that's an oddity who knows fine and so it's PI all right something and even though John Napier was a mathematician in the 16th 17th century he happened to be active reform in the Reformation what have you he's the guy that discovered logarithms the first place that's why batcher logarithms are called riparian law business and so for what it's worth and use decimal point in fractions and so forth the e if you in mathematics is a very strange number for some reasons I won't bore you with mathematically but it has a limiting value about two point seven one eight two eight one eight two eight five and on it goes it forms the base of natural logarithms it has it turns out it it's the only one that has a function of rate of growth equal to its own size in the language of calculus it's the only function has it's a derivative equal to itself that gives us some peculiar properties that makes it show up all through mathematics and we find it in wave mechanics we find it an electrical fairy we find it in advanced math in a lot of ways we find it the distribution of prime numbers we find defined by a limit that in order to get it here and it has some numerical value if you've been in advanced calculus or engineering you've run into II a lot just almost as much as a high school student runs into PI ok now if you go to the New Testament and take John 1:1 in the beginning was the word the word is with God's Word was God and you take that in the Greek and you do exactly what we did to Genesis 1:1 in the Hebrew by the way by now you recognize logos probably in the Greek if you if you take the Greek and do exactly what we did in the Old Testament take the number of letters as the product letters divided by the number of words divided by the product tons of product words if we go through that we get e to four decimal places that's a precision that would seem to reject any possibility that being a good guess and this was something that was discovered and in the 17th century it is in the New Testament thousands of years earlier so that's that's provocative I think interesting now the point is that if the constants are changing and we find out they are now these are ratios that they don't change but other things are changing that indicates our reality is a shadow of a larger reality we need to keep that in the back of our minds as we encounter God revealing to us a truth that goes beyond our own immediate experience and that's what this is what the Bible is said all along the Hebrews 11:3 at first Corinthians 15 and elsewhere okay for our next session I'd like you to prepare for next time by studying John the whole chapter we've covered the first fourteen verses if the next it's the rest of the chapter we'll be dealing with next time you can also prepare by reading if you have time a couple of other passages that we'll be touching on Matthew 17 which is the Transfiguration that will lurk behind much of what we're studying throughout John and also revelation 11 which has these strange career of two witnesses and we'll be touching a little bit on that next time also and so with that let's close with a standing word of Prayer father we thank you for this evening we thank you for your word we do pray father through your Holy Spirit you would increase in us a sensitivity to what you have for us here help us father to apprehend what you would have less in the days ahead that we might be more effective stewards of the truths that you've given us that we might be more effective witnesses of the logos as we commit ourselves in your hands and his most holy name the Lord Jesus Christ amen [Music] you

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Keywords: Chuck Missler, Koinonia House, Chuck Missler John Chapter One Session 1, Gospel of John, Gospel, Gospels, Jesus Christ, Messiah, Christian, Apostle John, Creationism, The Word, Logos, Road to Emmaus, Emmaus Road, Jesus, Yeshua, Salvation, John 3 16, Missler, The Lord, Christianity, I Am, Israel, Jewish, Jew, Idaho, John 1, John Chapter one

Id: 5ZWBFQ0GF40

Length: 66min 44sec (4004 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2017