Cualquiera que haya leído los Evangelios sabe que Jesús conocía el poder de la retórica.  Sin embargo, la retórica de Cristo (a diferencia de la retórica griega) contribuye muy poco al arte de la persuasión formal.  Jesús a menudo hablaba en enigmas, en parábolas e imponderables que re-organizaban el alma humana, y hablaba con una "espada", que hacía la última pregunta a todas nuestras artísticas evasiones.  Para decirlo de otro modo, Jesús no trataba de ganar debates culturales o religiosos, ni de apuntalar regímenes, y de acuerdo con la misma lógica, tampoco trataba de "gan

Anyone who has read the Gospels will know that Jesus understood the power of rhetoric.  Yet, Christ’s rhetoric (unlike its Greek counterpart) contributes little to the art of formal persuasion.  Jesus spoke often in riddles, parables, and imponderables that re-arranged the human soul, and he spoke with a ‘sword’ that put the ultimate question to all of our artful dodging.  To put it another way, Jesus did not try to win any cultural or religious debates, prop up any regimes, nor, according to the same logic, did he try to ‘win’ any souls over to a purely ideological commitmen

Observaciones introductorias

I am, by nature, an orthodox soul, but when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, I find myself strangely unsettled. After reading the best of the ancients (Tertullian, Athanasius, Augustine) I still get the sense that this doctrine is just a bit 'too clever by half'.

(Traducido por Carlos Enrique Espinosa)

Zechariah’s vision of the High Priest dressed in ‘filthy garments’ may be one of the best cliché busting scenes in the entire Bible.  Yet, Adventist readers may find themselves quite impervious to its power.  We have known this scene from childhood.  The phrase, ‘filthy garments’ lives in our brains like so many other Bible verses nearly worn-out through vain repetition.

El trágico caso del "Hombre de Dios" (1Reyes13) tiene una especial relevancia para las creencias adventistas. Para empezar, Jeroboam hace dos cosas que lo marcan como un precursor sombrío del Anti-Cristo: hace la religión hebrea "más fácil", y también se mete con el calendario hebreo. En ambos casos anticipa, muy claramente, lo que Elena de White advirtió con respecto a un emergente "protestantismo apóstata", totalmente enamorado de dos cosas: los falsos días de reposo y los avivamientos falsos.

The tragic case of the “Man of God” (1st Kings 13) bears special relevance to Adventist belief. For starters, Jeroboam does two things that mark him as a shadowy precursor of the Anti-Christ: he makes the Hebrew religion “easier” and he also messes about with the Hebrew calendar. On both counts he anticipates, quite neatly, Ellen White’s warning of an emerging “Apostate Protestantism”, fully enamored with both false revivals and false sabbaths.