Transcript of Radio Show #345:
Event #4, Beginning of Jesus Ministry, Part 2,
from “the Four Gospels series by events" based on the book "Horizontal Chronology of the Four Gospels"

Radio Show...

This program continues on various series of different topics on theology such as end times, prophecies, daily living, etc. as the subject matter comes up.

The e-book on End times, Prophecies and Revelation, answering the questions “where are we in the events of the end times?” and “Are we now in the tribulation?” is available on this web site, which you can find throughout the pages.

Opening Narrative

Hello and welcome to another exciting radio program today on end times and prophecies and scriptures to live by... which is all about old-time gospel and worship music, praying for needs and preaching the Word of God....

We continue with the brand new series of the Four Gospels in chronological order on this “Virtual Church for the Spiritual Unchurched” weekly radio program.

As already mentioned earlier, we also celebrate the awesome fact that it's been 8 years since the Lord called me to produce and host these radio shows that deliver the good news of Jesus Christ, our Lord God and Saviour, and God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. It's all about the beginning of time and the whole of God's Creation as we know it... and all the rest of the Word of God which He gave us to know where we are in the timeline of the end times and prophecies, and who we are.

This new series right now is based from my book “The Horizontal Chronology of the Four Gospels” which is different in that it presents the Four Gospel by main events in chronological order.

This is not some new narrative, or novel, or anything like that, but it is pure scripture from the Word of God as presented in the Bible by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

And remember this radio program "Virtual Church for the Spiritual Unchurched" is broadcast every Sunday at 7 am and 7 pm pacific time... and if you unfortunately miss it for whatever reason at any time, you can hear the program any time after that for 4 weeks...at my web site TimingRevelation.com

So as you will recall if you were with us in the last couple of weeks, there are 9 particular events that we are looking at – if you miss any program at any time, remember, they are replayed on my web site TimingRevelation.com for up to four weeks.

The 9 events we're looking at in this series are:

#1—Pre-human existence of Christ
#2 – Pre-natal to Jesus's Incarnation
#3-- Birth and Childhood of Christ

which we have already covered so far...

#4-- Beginning of Jesus' ministry
(and this is where we are now going through at the moment)

And yet to come:

#5-- Galilean ministry
#6-- Judean and Perean ministry of Jesus
#7-- Jesus' last week
#8-- Jesus' last 6 hours
#9-- From the Resurrection to the Ascension

And so we will get to it right after this

opening music, prayer and worship time...

Narrative #1

Alright so let's carry on with event #4, where we are now about halfway into the “Beginning of Jesus' ministry”.....

As you will recall last week we ended with the time when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was led into the 40 days in the wilderness to be tempted by the arch enemy of God...

We read about that in Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13...

Now today we will pick up with John the apostle, chapter 1, verses 35 to 51 where Jesus returns to Bethabara, from the 40 days in the wilderness, and actually begins his public ministry... in around A.D. 27....

Let's read those verses:

Here we start to hear about the disciples followers of Jesus:

35_Again the next day after, John stood, and two of his disciples;

36_And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!

Wow, that alone is something to contemplate... I can picture in my mind this scene where Jesus returns after 40 days, and the Holy Spirit presses upon John the Baptist – who is still there baptizing in the Jordan river area and people are still coming to him to hear the call for repentance... and he sees Jesus and exclaims: “Behold – Look, the Lamb of God!... it was like an introduction to His (Jesus) beginning ministry...

the Thayer's Greek Lexicon describes this word “behold” as an utterance used as an interjection to denote surprise; lo, behold, see... as the utterance of one who wishes that something should not be neglected by another... etc.

Verse 37_And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.

So the two disciples of John the Baptiest heard Jesus speak and that was enough for them to be drawn to follow Jesus... remember later on in the gospel – we'll see that later on, where we will read that the people who heard Him speak were astonished, saying: “we've never heard anyone speak like this before!” It must have been awesome to see Him and hear Him in person at that time...

verse 38_Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou?

Now in the “Complete Jewish Study Bible”, it says it this way:
“ Yeshua turned and saw them following him, and he asked them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi!” (which means “Teacher!”) “Where are you staying?”

They came and saw where Jesus lived

39_He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt (was staying), and abode (remained) with him that day: for it was about the tenth hour.

40_One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.

41_He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ.

Actually the word Mashiach means the one who has been anointed... again this was very well understood by the Jews of this time because they were awaiting Him according to their Old Testament prophets.

Verse 42_And he brought him to Jesus. (speaking of Andrew who brought his brother Simon Peter to Jesus) .And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.

Again in the “Complete Jewish Bible Study Guide”, it says:
“He took him to Yeshua. Looking at him, Yeshua said, “You are Shim‘on Bar-Yochanan; you will be known as Kefa.” (The name means “rock.”). So from the Jewish translation, it actually means “a rock” rather than “a stone”.

43_The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.

44_Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.

We have found him!

45_Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

46_And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.

This is very interesting... it portrays people just as common human being... Nathanael responds as if he believes that Messiah could not possibly come out of Nazareth.

Verse 47_Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!

48_Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.

49_Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.

So as Nathanael approached Jesus, the Lord addressed him as who he was, an Israelite of honesty for speaking what he thought... and astounded by this revelation Nathanael asked him “from where do you know me?

And Jesus answered “before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Then in a moment of divine revelation, Nathanael declares, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel”.

50_Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.

51_And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

In other words Jesus told him, you think that's something just because I told you I saw you under the fig tree... you haven't seen anything yet, you will see heaven open and the angels of God coming and going upon the Son of Man...

Music Interlude

Narrative 2

Alright let's get back to Jesus during the first week of His ministry...

It would be now around Spring A.D.27, in Cana, Galilee

You'll remember this story of His first public miracle...
And this is reported only by John the apostle...

John, chapter 2, verses 1 to 11

1_And the third day (--and that would be the third day after He returned from the 40 days in the wilderness)...there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:

2_And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

3_And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.

4_Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

Now right here, this scripture has raised many to question why Jesus addresses “his mother” as “woman” and not mother. Well, the word “mother” as a human child would call his biological mother, in the Greek would be “mētēr “ (pronounced may-tayr), and “father” would be “patēr “ (pat-ayr).

Jesus had now grown up not only to be a “man”, but as the “Son of God” He had been miraculously born in the flesh to be the Saviour of mankind – the Lamb of God, the Redeemer of mankind, the Anointed One of Israel, the Messiah! And He knew who He was...

He now had reached the point of beginning His divine ministry... He could not call her “mētēr” any more than He could call Joseph “patēr “ -- because neither were His human parents...

He was from God, He was born of the Holy Ghost through and through... and now was the time when this was all coming to revelation.

Verse 5_His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.

6_And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.

In other words there were six stone jars for the Jewish ceremonial washings, each having a capacity of twenty or thirty gallons.

Verse 7_Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. It's amazing how the Bible puts it, every little detail—they filled them up to the brim...

8_And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear (or carry) unto the governor of the feast. And they bare (carried) it.

9_When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,

10_And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

And of course this was a mighty miracle done before the very eyes of the astonished disciples.

11_This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.

I guess so... if you were there and witnessed all that, you would believe Him too!

And some people argue whether this was real wine or simply juice. I don't think the ruler of the feast would be confused as to whether this was wine or juice. Would you? They knew their wines!

To Capernaum

After the wedding celebration, Jesus moved on to Capernaum.
We read this in verse 12 of John chapter 2:

“After this He went down to Capernaum, He, His mother, His brothers, and His disciples; and they did not stay there many day.” In other words they stayed there just a few days.

This is all taking place North of Jerusalem. Cana is about 25 miles to Capernaum, and Capernaum is approximately 100 miles from Jerusalem.

Interestingly, it is said that walking 100 miles in 24 hours would take a steady pace of about 4 or 5 miles per hour for the journey.

Now we get to Jerusalem

First Passover at Jerusalem
During the first week of Jesus' ministry

So Jesus would have walked southward to Jerusalem from Capernaum.

This would take place in the Spring of around A.D. 27 still.

Our next reading in the chronological Gospels is John 2, verses 13-22..

This is about the cleansing of the temple. I'm sure that most of you who are Christians remember this story when Jesus was angered at the commercialization of the House of God and made a whip of small cords and drove them all out and poured out the changers' money, overthrowing tables, etc...

You can read this later on, but I have to bring up a theological comments on this at this point of the chronological order of events that we are looking at...

John's gospel records the cleaning of the temple at the beginning of Jesus' ministry right here.

But all three synopsis gospels (in other words the other gospel writers) record the cleansing of the temple in the last week of Jesus' ministry.

Many people believe there were two cleansings – one at the beginning and another at the end of His ministry...

...however that cannot be, for several reasons:

First off, such a situation on the part of Jesus would not be wise to do at this time of the very beginning of his public appearances.

Secondly, the other three gospel writers are all writing about this in the very last period of the gospel story when they speak of end times events that will take place. And this places the timing at the very end of the eschatology of Matthew 21, Mark 11 and Luke 19.

We can make an educated analysis that since John wrote his gospel later on in his life, between the time-line reported of between 70 – 96 A.D., as opposed to the other writers around the 50 to 60 A.D., the placement of John's event of the cleansing of the Temple would be at the beginning for whatever his thought was leading up to Jesus' first visit to Jerusalem and Judea.

This would make sense because, again, the gospel is always delivered with the Jews first in mind, and this event that took place in the very venerated Jewish Temple would have been something prominent to bring up within the narrative of John's presentation of Jesus as the Son of God.

So, right now, in this chapter 2 of John the apostle, we read about the cleansing of the Temple from John's perspective. Later on we will be looking at the other reportings of this cleansing of the Temple by the three other writers, Matthew 21, Mark 11 and Luke 19, within the chronological timing of the event.

Music interlude...

Narrative #3

So right now, we will continue on to the next verses of John chapter chapter 2, where we are told that many believed Jesus during His first visit to Jerusalem...

John chapter 2, verses 23 to 25:

“Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did.
“But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men,
“And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.

Now what are these last two verses saying?

I like the way the Liberty Bible Commentary explains it:

“Christ did not entrust Himself to them because they were not true believers. He concluded this because he knew all men. These were nominal believers whose only interest was the miracles. He did not need their testimony for he knew what was in man. These people had not accepted Him with saving faith, but rather they accepted Him as a powerful miracle worker.'

So this right here corroborates very well with the reasoning that we saw earlier about the cleansing of the Temple having taken place once only, at the end of His ministry. This would have only been provocative to the people at this time of His of introductory ministry beginning.

Remember He was just starting out in His public ministry. People only had heard of the miracles he was able to do – particularly here the first big miracle at the wedding of Cana where He had turned water into wine... that was just a week earlier.

And now, we get into John chapter 3 where the famous revelation of the spiritual birth is presented...

Interestingly, again we have something very unique about John the apostle's reporting of this critical doctrinal truth – the new birth, where we find one of the most popular and known scripture, if not THE most known scripture: John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Wow!

And the first one Jesus told this to was a Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

Wow, that's interesting. Again we see the emphasis of reaching and teaching the Jew first.

The Pharisees were the top of the line in the hierarchy of the rulers of the Jewish law. And that's where Jesus started His teaching.

Let's take a look at this very important and crucial conversation -- literally life-and-death matter:

1.There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:

2.The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

3.Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus asks 'How can' questions...

4.Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?

5.Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

6.That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

7.Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

8.The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

In other words it's not something that you see physically...

Nicodemus asks another 'How can' question...

9.Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?

10.Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

11.Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.

12.If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

13.And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. “Even” here means “that is”... so “no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven... so again jesus speaks very clearly about Himself to this Jewish religious ruler.

What is Jesus saying here?

Simply that no man knows spiritual things except one who came from heaven—the spiritual world.... speaking of Himself...

Then He proceeds to illustrate further from Jewish scripture, Numbers 21... that's the book of Numbers chapter 21...

verse 14.And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

15.That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

So He's starting to speak of Himself to this religious knowledgeable man...

Then Jesus wraps up the Love of God for the salvation of the world not just the Jew

16.For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

17.For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

And of course Nicodemus knew who Jesus was talking about every time He was saying His Son, the Son, etc...

18.He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Then Jesus explains the contrast between the light of heaven and the darkness of the world

19.And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20.For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21.But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

That light that lighted the darkness

And of course this conversation took place just after the appearance of John the Baptist who introduced Jesus and preached on that light that lighted the darkness... remember in that famous opening page of the gospel of John the apostle, chapter 1 -

“In the beginning....

Speaking of Jesus who was sent

1.In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2.The same was in the beginning with God.

3.All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4.In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5.And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

All that was in preparation of the Son of God coming as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world...

They had all heard the message of John the Baptist, who was to them the first prophet called by God since the book of Malachi in the Old Testament, some 400 years earlier...

and you remember they were coming to John the Baptist for months and months repenting, listening to his preaching and getting baptized...

Actually John the Baptist was still preaching the coming of the Christ back in Judea, as we will see right after this...

And, with this, we ran out of time -- again!... so I will pick up from here next week...

Music interlude...

Closing Narrative…

Before I dismiss the service today, I want to read to you the Blessing that was read to the people of God in Numbers 6:24-26 which is the benediction from God to you today:

“The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."

I hope and pray that you will come back next Sunday at SpiritFM.ca, 7 am and 7 pm pacific time. And if you want to hear the service again at any time, you can go to my website at TimingRevelation.com, and click on the Radio Shows navigational tab along the left side. The replays are available there for five weeks, then they are transcribed into articles as new radio shows are put up.

I encourage you to go to your Bible and read further on the scriptures that were given throughout the program today. And if you like these programs and you've been blessed, call or write the station and let them know... if you said the prayer and have accepted the Lord or you've been healed or touched in some way by the Holy Spirit, write to me on the contact form of this web site...

...and this web site is also where you will find the Free Offer of the “Christian Growth and Maturity Chart” that I talked to you about in the last weeks... you will see the graphic on any page called “Get your free CGM Chart”, click on it and it will take you to a page that will tell you about it and how you can subscribe to my newsletter to get your free copy of the Chart sent to you.

Until next week, Maranatha, the Lord is coming, very soon. Goodbye and Blessing.

/DMH

Click here to hear the song "When the Saints Go Marching In".

/DMH

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Blessings,