Week 3: Jesus's Ministry Begins...

This week we went over Mark 1: 1-20 and covered a wide range of topics that came from this text. We where introduced to John the Baptist, a camel hair clothed Man VS Wild type of guy who lived in the dessert surviving off of locusts and wild honey....yummie. ( He probally looked much like a logger with rattier clothing, like James pointed out in our discussion .) We saw how John the Baptist was the messenger or forerunner of Jesus's ministry and how John the Baptist preached that people had to have a cleansing of the heart , not just outer religious or moral practice. He foreshadowed the messiah ( Jesus according the Bible) who would come and "baptize" (or cleanse and make new) peoples hearts. Jesus himself was baptized to symobolize his humanity and his willingness to identify with sinners (all who violate God's moral command) and need cleansing.

After Jesus's baptism we saw how Jesus went out and confronted Satan (polar opposite of God, morally corrupt/evil adversary) and was tempted by Satan for 40 days, this showing that he had came to overcome corruption and sin.

Jesus began his ministry after John was put in prison for his teaching. Jesus went out and taught that " Kingdom of God is near. Repent (turn from what you are doing) and believe the good news!" We discussed that the Kingdom of God was the spirtual kingdom and rule that Jesus was claiming to bring to Earth with his life and teaching and then later his death and reasurecction according to the Biblical account.

We saw that Jesus choose simple people to help spread his Kingdom. He choose Simon, Andrew, James, and John (not John the Baptist), all probally lower class fisher men that probally did not smell to good. They followed Jesus without delay after he told them he would make them "fishers of men" refering to the message that they would help him spread during and after his life.

.....Next episode will contain a demon pocession, a bunch of healings, and an encounter with a guy with chronic skin lessions....haha Stay Tuned!

Jesus Conversation Group...Finally Under Way!!! Week 1 and 2.

Finally after months of waiting and combination of bad planning and poor timing, the Parkland Jesus Discussion group is finally off the ground. So weekly we will be doing a recap of what we talked about and give you chance to even blog a little bit more about the things that we discuss or topics that come up in our discussion.

Week:1

We got a chance to meet together and go over the thesis of the class. We circled up boyscout pow-wow style and went around the room and shared who Jesus was to us and the picture that had painted for us concerning this character. For example my chiseled, callused hands, dusty, masculine Jesus , who had a dark tan because he cut down trees and did carpentry with shirt off...ah what a man. That not the typical picture you got from Sunday School Jesus

It was sweet to see the different dynamics this class has and hopefully that will manifest itself into some sweet discussion to come.

Week 2:

We started by going the history of the Book of Mark. We talked about Mark is one of the most bonified and legit ancient authenticity, and why the New Testament of the Bible is the best backed source of who this figure Jesus is. Doesn't necessarily mean that you have to believe that everything that is written down is really true and the authenticity is unparalleled in ancient documents. The New Testament has 24,000 manuscripts and the earliest copy we have is only 40 years from the original or possibly even as earlier. The next best well backed ancient document is Homer and the Iliad with only 643 manuscripts and gap of over 200 years from original. The Works of Aristotle the Philosopher are backed by 5 manuscripts with a gap of 1,300 years! What we see from this is that the New Testament and for purposes, the Book of Mark, are very well authentic ancient works and actually the most authentic and well documented. That doesn't mean that you have to believe what it says about Jesus, but we can reason that it is our best resource in seeing who history said this mysterious figure was.

This takes us to the book of the New Testament we will be using as the basis of our investigation and discussion, Mark. The Book of Mark was written most likely in the 50's AD, 20 years or so after Jesus's Crucifixion. The author was a man of name of John Mark who was Peter ,Jesus's disciple, partner in ministry after Jesus's death. John Mark more than likely was dictating Peter's memoirs of walking with Jesus and recount of the Stories of Jesus starting from the beginning of Jesus's Ministry when Jesus was 3o years old to Jesus's death at the age 33.

Well that is about it and I am really excited to kick off group discussion this week!