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Some Crucial Words

This document is not an attempt to eliminate controversy, and it is equally not an attempt to lay out that which is flatly true and/or otherwise. It is an attempt merely to present one writer's set of meanings of certain words, which words are crucial in teachings given Personally by the Lord Jesus Christ. You are strongly encouraged to discuss all of these with Him directly, in order that you be taught better.

God

Son of God

Father in Heaven

Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost)

Good and Evil in People

The World

God

God is One Person, who is in fact multiple People who live and love and joy and do together as the only entirely perfect, flawless, and entirely good One. One of the ways to conceive of this, is to use the modern word "telepathy", and to think about how we are different than God. We have such evil inside us that we would tear each other apart if we were in constant total telepathy; but They have no evil at all, they have total love and joy and appreciation of and for each other, and so their togetherness is very different and far better than anything we have. We have three such Persons of God named in the Bible; these are the Father in Heaven, the Son of God called Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
ref. Deuteronomy 6:4, John 12:44-45, John 6:45, John 15:26, John 1:1-18, Mark 13:11, Matthew 28:19.

Son of God

The Son of God is one of the Persons who are God. He has always existed; there was never a time in which He did not exist. God caused Him to be born as the baby called Jesus, born of the woman named Mary, without any man having touched her, in Nazareth; later, He was falsely accused and convicted as a criminal, and executed by being nailed to a large wooden crosspiece which was then secured high on a larger upright post. Three days after He was dead and buried, He was resurrected, and from that moment on He has sat at the right hand of His Father. The Father in Heaven required these things to happen for a variety of reasons, one of which was the need for the bloodshed of a person called the Lamb of God. When we do wrong against God, a little bit of death happens in our souls, and the only way God has made it possible for that death to be healed, is with an injection of life. Because the Son of God was sacrificed on the cross and His blood spilled, the all-powerful life of God is in the world, and can be put into us to heal us of the death of our souls. All we have to do, is ask Him, to talk to God and honestly desire to be healed of the evil within us.
ref. John 1:1-18, Luke 1:26-35, Luke 23:1-4, Luke 23:18-21, Matthew 12:40, Matthew 26:64, Leviticus 17:11, John 6:53-54.

Father in Heaven

The Father in Heaven is how Jesus, the Son, referred to God. When we honestly desire God to heal us of the evil within, and ask Him for the help, the Father in Heaven begins to adopt us as sons and daughters. Before this adoption, we are not sons and daughters of God; the Son Himself called us "sons of vipers", referring gently to the snake of the Garden of Eden. Our connection to the spiritual is evil, not good, until God responds, after we humble ourselves to God and ask Him to make us better. One of the ways in which Jesus made this clear, it to state that only God Himself, is good.
ref. Matthew 7:21, Matthew 5:45, Galatians 4:5, Matthew 12:33-34, Mark 10:18.

Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost)

The Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, is one of they who are God. It can be useful to remember, that the words "ghost" and "spirit" meant exactly the same thing until sometime after the beginning of the twentieth century. He is described almost exclusively by what He does. One of these is to give comfort; the Son calls Him the Comforter several times. Another is to "fill" the sons and daughters of God. If a person is truly a son or daughter of God, the Holy Ghost has "filled" him or her. This is not too different than the way a demon filled a child in The Exorcist, but in the case of the sons and daughters of God, it is a very good thing, not an evil!!! Very often it happens that a very bad man or woman learns of the badness he or she is, talks to God, is filled by the Holy Ghost, and then begins a very long walk towards knowledge and participation in the good things God does in this world. But people who have very little badness to be aware of, also experience a tremendously good change, when God comes in, because God is tremendously better than any of us.
ref. 1 John 5:7, John 14:26, Romans 8:9, 2 Corinthians 6:16.

Good and Evil in People

According to the Lord Jesus Christ, the only person who is truly good, is God Himself. No one else is truly good -- even the Lord Jesus, if a human being thinks of Him as being separate from the Totality of God, is not to be thought of as good. Thus it is that none of us deserves to live forever; no one deserves Heaven at all, no one deserves good in their lives at all. We receive the good simply and only because God has mercy upon us in our situation, and loves us.
ref. Mark 10:17-18, Matthew 11:27, Matthew 6:25-34

The World

God has described the world as his "footstool", in contrast to his "Throne" which is the place called Heaven. The analogy is quite significant, when one considers what happens to any footstool when its usefulness is over. We have human beings quoted in Holy Scripture stating that the world is forever; but we have God quoting Himself saying that the time of the world is limited indeed, telling us that we must not worry about this world, we must not hold onto "the cares of this world", but instead must seek the purposes of the Kingdom of the only One who is good, who is God.
ref. Isaiah 66:1, Luke 21:33, Matthew 13:18-33, Mark 10:17-18

Jonathan Brickman
Please do email me!
jeb@christian-oneness.org