Paulson Post

Jesus is  not the king of the materially minded people; he had come to rule our hearts "Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself" (John 6:15). It was an opportunity that anyone who would like to have: to become king! However, Jesus runs away from that excellent opportunity. However, in John 18 when questioned by Pilate, Jesus ascertained that "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth" (John 18:37). At the same time he also had made clear that his kingdom "... is not of this world" (John 18:36). There are crucial differences between the way kingship was understood by the people of Jesus' day (including Pilate) and Jesus. That is why Jesus had to clarify that his kingship is not an earthly kingship. The people around Jesus, who had just eaten the food that Jesus multiplied from five loaves an...

The Crowd Puller The Crowd that Jesus Really Pulls! The Gospel of John presents Jesus as a loner in the opening chapters of the book. The statement in John 1:11 is rather startling: "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him." And then we see Jesus walking (alone?) in John 1:29 when John the Baptist introduces him saying, "Look, the Lamb of God!" Then the following day Jesus gets two disciples of John the Baptist to follow him (John 1:35-42). In the second chapter, we see a small crowd around Jesus but they had come for the wedding in Cana and not because of Jesus. Then until chapter 6, he mostly ministers to solitary individuals: Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, etc. However, by the time we reach the sixth chapter he has become so popular that there were 5000 adult males in the crowd when he multiplied the fish and loaves by Lake Galilee. Rest of the sixth chapter is about the type of people who came to Jesus in large numbers. In these da...

Miracles are the display of God's power not the strength of our faith For a miracle to happen you have to have faith, that is what I was taught. I was also taught that miracles happen only when certain people pray, the anointed ones. I have thus developed a notion, as many of my readers have that miracles is a product of right amount of faith with anointing. If there is something wrong in that mixture then miracle may not happen. Now, I know those who told us this haven't really read their Bible carefully. In the Bible, miracles have happened in the context of unbelief and sometimes by people who lacked faith. They themselves did not believe that a miracle is going to happen. When God did miracles through Moses in the presence of Pharaoh, it did not depend on the faith of Moses nor the Pharaoh. In fact the miracles were performed that Pharaoh may believe. When the Syrian official Naaman was healed of leprosy what was the role of his faith in his healing? He did not believe t...

Introduction What God can do for us always exceeds what the world can offer us. We need to realise this important fact and respond to God in faith. This is the important lesson that we can draw from the first 15 verses of the fifth chapter of John's Gospel. The story found only in the Gospel of John, is set in Jerusalem in one of the porticoes of the Pool of Bethesda. In the ancient times it was a tank where rainwater was collected and stored. It was here that Prophet Isaiah in the eighth century BC met king Ahaz according to Chapter 7, of the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah 7:3 "the upper pool", near the Washerman's Field. In Jesus' time it is called Bethesda, the Jews might have pronounced in Aramaic as BET-HESDA meaning, House of Mercy. It got is name for the reputation of the miracle of healing that was going on there. It was built as a Roman Bath during the days of Jesus. In Roman times pools had porticos, and changing rooms, and steps leading to the pool. It could ha...