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VIEW FROM THE PULPIT: Part 1: What do you make of Jesus?

Do you ignore him? Do you believe he was a good man, or an important teacher, like Buddha?

Do you ignore him?  Do you believe he was a good man, or an important teacher, like Buddha?  Do you consider him to be a prophet, like Muhammad?  Are you confused because you see a huge disconnect between the God of the Jews and the Jesus of the Christians?

In 1921 William Booth Clibborn, grandson of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, wrote the hymn, Down From His Glory, which included the sentence, “The great Creator became my Savior and all God’s fullness dwelleth in Him.”  This statement echoes the belief of a thousand other witnesses.

He joins, for instance, the Gospel writer, Matthew, who, in recounting Joseph’s dream, identified the child in his fiancée’s womb as “Emmanuel,” meaning, God with us. (See Matthew 1:23.)

He agrees with the apostle Peter, who, when asked by Jesus who he was, forthrightly declared, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (See Matthew 16:23)

He is “eye to eye” with the apostle John when he says that the Eternal Word, who was really God, the Creator (“by whom all things were made”) actually became flesh and dwelt among us. (See John 1:1-4,14; Psalm 33:6-7.)

And so with the apostle Paul, who wrote that the one equal with God took upon himself man’s form. (See Philippians 2:1-11.)

And furthermore, Clibborn would not have been among those who attempted to stone Jesus when he told them plainly that he was, “I AM.” And obviously, this is also my view from the pulpit of the Grand Forks Seventh-day Adventist Church.  In Jesus the Father is revealed. (See John 14:9.)

–submitted by Douglas Pond, pastor of Grand Forks’ Seventh-day Adventist Church