Saturday, April 20, 2024

SEEKING THE TRUTH SCIENTIFICALLY

Pontius Pilate, obviously a student of Plato in a Greek oriented society, asked Jesus as He was about to be crucified, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Without going into esoteric reasons, Jesus showed Pilate what was truth; His death revealed God in Jesus as Jesus gave up the Ghost (Mark 15:37).

The ‘Ghost’ that left Jesus was a Phantom, the very Image of God from the beginning. As it turned out, Pilate was shown the truth in a very Platonian manner; the Holy Ghost of Jesus was a ’fragment’ of the physical Image of God. The truth was revealed to Pilate that Jesus was as much God as was the Spirit dwelling within Him, and vice-versa.

The truth is that God is who He says He is without regard to appearances. Some still reject that truth. That is the prerogative of everyone; God does not force His Image, neither Jesus nor the Holy Ghost on anyone. With that said, the man, Jesus, pleases people. However, the Holy Ghost scares them. That God is with them all the time does not make them feel safe but insecure.

There is a Holy Ghost, and He is the One that keeps you safe in the world until the end. Jesus said, “He (the Father) shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever” (John 14:16). Christians have on them a ‘Comforter’ in much the same manner as Adam and Eve had on a ‘Garment’ from God (Gen 3:17).

That was the truth in what Jesus said. That ‘Comforter’ is the One Thing that Jesus gave up for your safety. The Holy Ghost, Pilate realized, was as much God as Jesus. Pilate saw that Jesus was God regardless of His Substance. Jesus was God on the outside as well as within.

Literally the ‘Comforter” (Greek; parakletos) is one who pleads for you in a High Court. The Comforter advocates on your behalf and as such is your defender against the prosecution led by Satan. Indeed, that Christians have someone to plead their cause on the judgment day is comforting.  There is hope so long as the Comforter is with you, but like anything given by God by grace, He does not force Himself on you, and as a free agent, the Christian can refuse to have anyone act on his or her behalf. The Comforter can be rejected at the soul discretion of the Christian, but there are consequences. Jesus said: 

Verily, (truly) I say unto you, “All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme, but he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost has never forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation.” (Mark 3:28-29)

 Jesus gave a warning; He would not always be there to plead the cause of the Christian. The Comforter would advocate for you as a proxy for Jesus, the judge. He will intercede on your behalf, and each one of us knows that even Christians still sin and will someday need an advocate. Christians, if they reject the Holy Spirit of God, the truth is that is as if rejecting Jesus as the Savior.

With the Advocate there on your behalf, Jesus said that all sins will be forgiven. We must believe in the Advocate whether we see Him or not. We must believe that the Ghost of Jesus is working on behalf of all serious Christians, and pro bono (“for good,” by grace).

As a young man, the thought of the Holy Ghost intimidated me at best. When a sincere Christian said to me, “The Holy Ghost was here today!” she in excitement, I was dumbfounded. I thought, I did not see the Holy Ghost, and felt like I belonged to some zealot organization with a bunch of religious fanatics. In time, I too became a fan for both Jesus, whether it was His Person or His Ghost. I nearly lost my Advocate at an early age because He was so mysterious.

Jesus was speaking to Christians when He warned them about “blasphemy” — speaking without piety for the invisible Image of God — the Holy Ghost.

Pilate found out that Jesus was the visible Image of the Invisible God, and there was within Jesus another Image that few shall ever see. Pilate was privileged to see the Holy Ghost — the invisible Image of God — remove Himself from the visible Image. Pilate saw that both Images were God regardless of substances.

Holy rollers still scare Christians! A ‘Holy Roller’ is anyone who takes the Holy Ghost seriously. They feel comfortable speaking of the Holy Spirit but very uncomfortable even saying “Holy Ghost.” Either way, in the Greek, both ghost and spirit are pneuma, sort of a dynamic ‘wind,’ but the specific Spirit of Jesus frightens even Christians.

A ‘spirit’ is simply an unseen essence attributed to God by Christians and Jews. A ‘ghost’ is a specific and peculiar essence attributed to God that has resided in the body of a dead person. That Jesus has a Ghost is a scary proposition, hence the “Holy Ghost” as the name suggests is the ‘Agios Pneuma,’ in the Greek, literally “An Awful Spirit.” That may be the case for some, but for true Christians, the Ghost in Jesus is an “Awesome God.” Whether awful or awesome now depends on context about how the person sees God.

To those who reject the Holy Ghost of Jesus as Advocate, He is awful; to those who depend on the Advocate, see the Holy Ghost as awesome. It is the same Ghost of Jesus, but His awesome or awfulness depends on the viewpoint of the beholder.

Those who reject the Holy Ghost, in a spiritual sense, reject God as much as those who reject Jesus are rejecting God. The man, Jesus, is easy to accept because He was visible. The Ghost of Jesus is difficult to accept because He can only be sensed as being there as ‘God With Us’ (Emmanuel). If that is rejected, then so is the truth that Pilate accepted.

Proof is impossible in inferential statistics. Jesus was the evidence that God is real, and it was, and still is, rejected by many.

In inferential statistics, failure to reject the null is not absolute proof but reliable to a certain degree.

The hypothesis was that Jesus was who He said He was. The man said that He was God. That was impossible to prove even though He performed miracles — doing things beyond the science. Even that was rejected as proof that Jesus is God. Simon the Sorcerer levitated and said that he was the Savior. That did not prove that he was God either.

Jesus was the positive Image of God but was rejected. To be accepted as true, the null must be disproved. The Holy Ghost was the null of the hypothesis. Failure to disprove that the Holy Ghost was not God was the evidence that the positive hypothesis was true.

Pilate accepted that the Holy Ghost was God because even though on the Cross in the Body of Jesus, the Spirit did not die. Truly the Holy Ghost was God as Pilate was surely convinced. Since the Holy Ghost was the null ‘fragment’ of the Person, Jesus, then Pilate accepted the premise that Jesus, the Person, was in fact God.

You may not understand inferential statistics but when Pilate saw the null of Jesus leaving Him, that was reliable proof for him. There was little doubt to Pilate that Jesus was who He said He was, and Pilate accepted Jesus was God as the truth!

You did not see what Pilate saw, so since God is graceful, He allowed others to see the truth after it was finished. Many people saw Jesus alive and well after His death. The lively Spirit that God had breathed unto Him at His baptism returned. Jesus got His Ghost back.

Pilate was revealed the truth because He saw it. There was no degree of doubt, so he washed his hands of the test even before the test was completed. He accepted the evidence that Jesus was God, but then God revealed to Pilate that he was correct in his belief; Pilate found no fault in Jesus. Jesus had not come short of the Glory of God since the Holy Ghost glorified Him (John 7:39) to substantiate Pilate’s conclusion.

Before I ever recognized the Holy Ghost was as much as God as Jesus, I did recognize Jesus as God. On the other hand, the Holy Ghost comforts me in times of duress. Now I understand that the Holy Ghost is God because he is the Presence of Jesus that remains with us.

With all that said, I am not a Pentecostal. However, Christians should never fear the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is no longer a threat to my comfort but is the True God who still comforts me.

If I reject the Holy Ghost, I am rejecting God as much as if I rejected Jesus as God. Likewise, Jews, if you reject Jesus as God, then you are rejecting the Holy Spirit of God that was revealed to Moses! And so it goes. 



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