Sorry it has taken a few days to respond Paul. I believe my Melchizedek reference should qualify as being valid. If you look at the bottom of any page in the Bible concerning a certain verse you are always referred to many other verses that are in other books of the Bible. It is quite difficult to stick to one book without referencing another and that is what I love about the Bible in that it all adheres together quite nicely.


Mark 12:36 is actually a recital of Psalm 110. Verse 4 says The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: "You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek." This is actually a prophecy that ties in directly with Matthew 3:15 as I was trying to state earlier. In the "order of" means Jesus had to be consecrated the same way that Melchizedek was consecrated. John had to baptize Jesus in order to fulfill Psalm 110:4. Mark 12:36 refers to the Holy Spirit speaking through King David declaring the Trinity to be truth and that Jesus is not David's son but God's son. Now you would also be correct if you said that Jesus was the son of David if we were talking lineage which is what the teachers of the law were implying.


I don't see much conflict myself. Could you elaborate? It is hard for me to look at the story from the viewpoint of Mark since I'm not Mark. I see Him as my risen Savior and Son of the living God. I like when Jesus asked Peter in chapter 8 verse 29 who did Peter think He was and I think He has asked everyone who has ever read that verse "who do you say I am?" After reading the book again I think the other thing Jesus is teaching us is the importance of faith. It was because of people's faith that Jesus healed them. My question to you is who did the people have faith in? Themselves! Absolutely not! They had faith in who Jesus was. Amen!!

Lee, I will agree about the many references to other books at the bottom of the page.  Yet the Gospel of Mark was the first book written and as far as the time frame that is known it was the only Gospel for 5 -10 years.  So any reference that has to do with another Gospel or Book in New Testament would not be relative to the study of Mark.  Those references did not exist at the time that this book was written.

The difficulty with the baptism is that the only person who say or heard the Holy Spirit was Jesus.  John died in prison without ever knowing what Jesus represented. So your reference to the prophecy is invalid as the gospel does not reflect that anyone other  then Jesus knew what he represented.

In the other gospels which I would like to go over with the correct time frame in history shows the morphing of Jesus and Christianity.  One would have to admit that there is a even more modern gospel/doctrine that the church has presented.  It is not written in a book form but has come about by picking parts of each gospel to represent a person that is not written about in the four gospels.

The trinity which is a base of church doctrine, is not written about in any of the gospels or the letters of Paul. Yet, it with mixing all of the gospels together that we have created a new gospel that was not  used by earlier Christians.  It is the study of this morphing of our religion that this blog is about.

The AG church.

Each Gospel was  written to be an entire New Testament on it's own.

Before the canon was assembled, churches may have only one or even just two of the gospels as the final word on Jesus. So, the first century churches would have a very different view of the new testament then we have today.

Such as the Holy Trinity - wikipedia - The New Testament does not use the word "Τριάς" (Trinity) nor explicitly teach it, but provides the material upon which the doctrine of the Trinity is based. The first recorded use of this Greek word in Christian theology (though not about the Divine Trinity) was by Theophilus of Antioch in about 170. He wrote:"In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity [Τριάδος], of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man."
Tertullian, a Latin theologian who wrote in the early third century, is credited with using the words "Trinity", "person" and "substance" to explain that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are "one in essence?not one in Person".
About a century later, in 325, the First Council of Nicaea established the doctrine of the Trinity as orthodoxy and adopted the Nicene Creed, which described Christ as "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance (homoousios) with the Father".


As you have indicated in your qualifications, you use different verses from different Gospel to assert your position. Yet, the gospel writers did not publish their versions as an annex to each other.  Except of course the Matthew and Luke are thought to have copied out of Mark as a reference source.

Modern Church doctrine seems to take 4 separate books and make a  super gospel, which is not duplicated in any where else in the bible.  The books of the old testament are all one story per book. Not many versions of the same story over and over again.