No wrath of God at the Cross, ALLEGED appearances to the contrary.

Is it conceivable that John the Baptist should have warned about “the wrath to come” (Matthew 3:7, Luke 3:7), meaning the impending Jewish wars and conclusive destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and that Jesus should have warned about the very same events in his woes against the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23:29-39, Luke 13:34-35) and in his Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 17:20-37, 21:5-36) and even on his very way to be crucified (Luke 23:27-31), and that even the apostle Paul should have alluded to them (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, 2 Thessalonians 1:4-10, Romans 2, etc.), yet, regardless of all these Scriptures, THAT ANYONE MIGHT SOMEHOW IMAGINE THAT GOD’S WRATH WAS COMING AT THE CROSS?  [11/04/07]

By raising His Son from the dead, God was decisively demonstrating that NONE OF JESUS’ SUFFERING OF ABUSE HAD ORIGINATED FROM HIS (GOD’S) OWN WRATH AT ALL!  THE RESURRECTION PROVED GOD’S NEVER-CHANGING GRACIOUSNESS TOWARD JESUS, DESPITE AMBIGUOUS APPEARANCES TO THE CONTRARY.  THE RESURRECTION EXPOSED THE JEWISH OPINION THAT “GOD HIMSELF HAD CURSED JESUS” AS RADICALLY FALSE AND CONCLUSIVELY DISPOSED OF THEIR SLANDER THAT GOD’S WRATH WAS “PROVED BY THE CROSS.”  [11/04/07]

The demons were not expelled from the whole world by Jesus; most were left for us to handle!  Jesus is Joshua!  The demons are the “wild beasts” of the promised land.  The conquest is to be achieved “little by little” at the hands of God’s people—the “children” not of Israel merely, but of God Himself.  We get to participate in the victories!  We need to put our armor on!  Our spiritual weapons in hand!  This age is for our conquering this present world in this way!  [11/04/07]

Traditional critical scholarship (whether taken in hand by Evangelicals or by its more authentic promulgators) generally is impotent to grasp the true and even obvious relation between Jesus’ miraculous career and his resurrection.  Apologist for the Gospel accounts often seem to be treading water…or at least thin ice, no less than over-eager prosecutors!  (James G. Kallas, however, pointed the right direction in The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles.  SPCK, 1961.)  The historical validity of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is implicit in all the other miracle narrations.  It is hardly possible, much less credible, that they could be veritable eyewitness history, yet it be not!  Jesus had dropped more than a few hints concerning his rising from the dead, and HE HAD EVEN DEMONSTRATED IT AND, FURTHERMORE, TAUGHT AND COMMANDED AND COMMISSIONED ALL HIS LEARNERS TO PRACTICE RAISING THE DEAD TOO!  So his own resurrection by no stretch of a jaundiced imagination stands alone and isolated from either his evident actual power to effect it or his predictions that “thus it must be.”  All those “tedious” recordings and corroborations, in the Gospel writings, of unnumbered oral histories about this amazing man, Jesus, COULD ONLY MEET THEIR HISTORIC CLIMAX IN…RESURRECTION AS USUAL!  [11/05/07]