Rey has the Spirit of an Antichrist
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. (1 Jn 4:1-3, emphasis added)
In this post, Rey has been arguing with me over the Virgin Birth. Naturally, Rey takes the position that the Virgin Birth never happened, while I take the orthodox position that it did happen.
There is something very subtle that I want everyone to see. Aside from the fact that Rey has to quote established heretics to make his position stick, that is. First, Jesus took on our sinful flesh according to Hebrews 2:14 (yet he remained without sin, Heb 4:15). Logically, he had to receive this flesh from somewhere. So, second, Jesus was born. He did partake of the same things, as the letter to the Hebrews makes plain. The gospels of Matthew and Luke say he was born of a virgin because Romans 5:12 says that it is man that spreads the taint of sin to the child. Third, and most important, note the snippet above from 1 John.
Rey, by saying that Jesus just one day appeared on the scene, is effectively denying that Jesus came in the flesh. According to 1 John 4:1-3, that puts him square in the antichrist camp. Rey has the spirit of an antichrist.
Now, I leave it to Rey to convince us why we should still listen to him, given this information.
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Posted on September 22, 2009, in Heresy and tagged Jesus. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.
Josiah Concept Ministries 
I said Jesus came in the flesh. I also said there is no taint in flesh. Sin is an action not a nature. Cory is trying to make it out as though I am trying to make Jesus not be born because I think flesh is evil, but I don’t. He thinks flesh is evil which is why he misinterprets Rom 5:12 as saying males pass on a taint (it says no such thing). I am not even arguing that Jesus wasn’t born necessarily, just that the birth narratives are not original to the gospels and that the whole concept of the virgin birth is based on misinterpretation of Isa 7-8 and kept around by paranoid fear about the taint of original sin being passed to people who are born normally (a fear I do not share). My position is that Jesus either was born normally or wasn’t born, leaning more heavily toward being born naturally. However, I recognize that if he was born it causes problems with the saying “Of all those born of women none is greater than John.” So, either Jesus wasn’t born or he didn’t say this. But that Jesus came in the flesh is important to me, and that his flesh is the same as ours. I make no distinction between a sinful flesh and pure flesh, between flesh with ‘original sin’ and flesh without it. No flesh inherits such a taint. Sin is an action not a nature. It is the Augustinians who deny Jesus came in real flesh, for they have to make his flesh not our ‘sinful’ flesh, as in the Docetic tare in Romans “in the LIKENESS of sinful flesh.” To me, Jesus came in the flesh. To Cory, in the “likeness of sinful flesh.” Born or made it doesn’t matter to me, for either way the word was made flesh, but we must be able to deal with “of all those born of women none has arisen greater than John.” If Jesus really said that and was born, then Jesus was saying John is greater than himself, so either his birth goes or this statement goes. Which should go, Cory?
A man will always behave like the person he thinks he is. The question is, who do you think you are? There are only two options, we will either be found in adam or in Christ. The former is earthly, fleshly and the latter heavenly, spiritual in nature, and the Truth (Eph 4.21).
Sin is most definitely more a nature (adam) than it is an act. We only “act” out of our innermost nature, who it is that we believe ourselves to be. This is the gospel, getting the wrong man (adam) out and the right man (the second man, the Lord from heaven meaning the spiritual man, Christ) in. The inherited, adamic, faulty, sinful nature which we took upon us in the fall is that which Christ came to “set the captive free of”. This is mankind’s problem, his corrupted nature. Like JC said “out of the heart proceeds all manner of evil…murder, adultery, envy, etc”. It’s new heart, a new nature (His) we are desperately in need of. So we hear these true words “Christ in you is the mystery of the ages”. Col 1.27.
We are changed from “glory to glory”, going from one level in Christ (the Spirit, the kingdom of heaven being found within us-luke 17.21) to another higher level where we progressively walk in greater degree’s of light and truth which sets us more and more free. Freedom from our lower nature, that is wondrous work in us that He (mercifully) undertakes-for He will complete that which He began in us, He is a faithful Father indeed.
Actually, now that I think about it, isn’t there a difference in coming in the flesh and bein born in the flesh? When John says Jesus “came” in the flesh isn’t he denying he was born? He ‘came’ in the flesh not ‘was born’ in the flesh, according to John.
It is further interesting that John anathemizes those who say Jesus did not “come” in the flesh not those who say he was not “born” in the flesh. In other words, John’s anathemizing of the antichrists can itself be taken as a confession that Jesus only came in the flesh and was not born in the flesh. See also my latest post on my blog “Did Jesus deny being a son of David?”
Jesus most definitely came into this world in the same way as you and I did. The difference was, as in His telling of the wilderness temptation…”but he (satan) found nothing in me”. Nothing of the wrong (adamic) nature, nothing of “this world” for He was not, as He said “of this world”, but from “above”, meaning the heavenly, spiritual plane-and so are we if we are born from above, are found in Him.
That citation is not in the wilderness temptation but rather is where Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane and says (John 14:30) and the words are “Hereafter I will not talk much with you, for the ruler of this world cometh, and he has nothing in me.” He does not mean by that that he (Jesus) doesn’t share our ‘adamic’ nature, but that he apparently doesn’t want the devil to hear his teachings to them yet. After all, it was God not Satan who made Adam, was it not? How then do you make Adam’s nature devilish? Is it because he ate the apple? But the OT has God say “now the man has become like one of Us to know good and evil” and not “now has man become like Satan”!!! This whole business that makes sin a nature rather than an action forces you to denie that Jesus came in the flesh and thus makes you become an antichrist. In saying Jesus shares nothing of our adamic nature, you deny he came in the flesh. But I in saying he was not born yet maintaining that he came in the flesh and shares our adamic nature do not deny that he came in the flesh, but confess more literally that he CAME in the flesh (for John says ‘came in the flesh’ not ‘born in the flesh’ and that is what I literally confess).
Rey, thanks for correcting my verse reference, I appreciate it. I should have taken the time to look it up, my memory didn’t serve me too well there.
Adam (who was an adam/eve, an ethereal dual unity prior to the fall) yielded to the prince of this (lower) realm, the realm of the beastly, the flesh realm and became subject to death and decay and he took on flesh, became like what he succombed to for whatever we yield ourselves to we become subject to. He “became as God” meaning that now separated from God who had been his life’s source, he now had to find life within his own (fallen) self. The Father was no longer his life source since his spirit had now receded so far into the interior of his being that he was no longer even aware of that aspect of himself-like many (unregenerated) today. An inversion, a perversion of man’s nature occured, so now he was flesh dominant as opposed to spirit dominant, to put it plainly he was self motivated (selfish) not God (spirit) motivated. Now he propogated this new distorted image and nature to his seed, the adamic, since all things reproduce after their own kind. God’s creation had been marred, usurped. Christ redeems and transforms us back into the original (God-man) image. But this is all an internal occurance in the heart of man(kind).
Christ was the “last adam” as scripture declares, in many ways it was really adam (represented) on the cross that died that day. “As in adam all died (a spiritual death) so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15.22). This is who dies in us, our adam meaning our fleshly man who is naturally opposed to God, to the spiritual man. Scripture says “you died, and now your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3.3). Also Paul declaring in Gal 2.20 “its no longer “I” that lives, but Christ is now doing the living in me”. So if we find ourselves both “buried and resurrected” in Christ we have undergone a transformation. But the manifestation of that is walked out in our behavior and actions, our daily living “testifies” to His resurrected power and life dwelling within us for “Of the increase of His governement (the government of our lives) there shall be no end”. Isaiah 9:7.
All the best…