Jesus on the Web

Over 5,500 messages have been posted on Jesus on the Web within five years since it has been founded in May of 2005. Jesus on the Web has continuously been growing since its creation starting with only me to around 400 members five years latter. Jesus on the Web in 2009 had risen in ranking to the top 1% for all news groups recorded by Google in its three target categories. Because the popularity and work of Jesus on the Web has interested so many people, I will explain my work on Jesus on the Web (this article makes excessive links to my work), my history of making Jesus on the Web, and the challenges of moderating Jesus on the Web.

The early years of Jesus on the Web was populated with membership from the vast majority of Christian clergy that loomed around the biggest industry for bringing new people to southern Illinois namely Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and Jesus on the Web was also populated at the same time with students and professors of the department of philosophy as well as people from many other strong intellectual disciplines. My initial work in forming Jesus on the Web as a philosophy student and as a ordained deacon from a small town more than six hours away was to make a network of people that shared the same concerns for the intellectual and deeply spiritual nature of Christianity as an outgrowth of Judaism that I deeply felt. Since the formation of Jesus on the Web, I have struggled with many challenges from within the ranks of my news group, but I have managed to lead unification and movement in 2009-2010 to interact with Christ in a whole new way that brings about scripture based revelation and intercession for the Christian to work to build the kingdom of God.

My Work on Jesus on the Web

My work on the Burning Bush demonstrating the Holy Ghost has perhaps been the most transformational for Jesus on the Web because it demonstrates how the burning bush surrenders everything to God but is never consumed by God through the fire of the Holy Ghost, and the point that I have made that brought people from a very selfish intellectual view of Christianity to a very intercessory revelation based view is that we need to be burning bushes. Soon enough the questions of how we relate to God and other people began to emerge, and this brought about the necessity and centrality of the blood atonement of Jesus Christ as administered in the New Jerusalem just like the temple on earth had a organized system for animal sacrifice. The message that came forth is that the New Jerusalem has a series of saints gathered around the throne of God that make intercession for us through the blood of Christ in the form of two witnesses, three witnesses, four witnesses, seven witnesses, twelve witnesses, and seventy-two witnesses, and the conclusion of the matter is that the bible shows a clear model for people being closer or further away from God based upon intercession. By Christmas of 2009 the subject of what (or who) belongs in the 'temple in heaven' was summarized in my Christmas message that elaborated upon the throne of God and the living creatures encircled around the throne.

The question of intercession and how Christ is the head of all intercession caused focus to be placed on the miracles of Jesus Christ in order to understand the greater mysteries and among these are the turning water into wine and Jesus feeding the multitude. Seeing the miracles of Jesus Christ from a intercessory viewpoint brings about questions of how Christ would bring about faith through his miracles and how Christ would not start a work but never finish it, but on the other hand Christ constantly working as the Word of God would bring about not a closed scripture but instead a living and growing body of Christ that constantly emerges from what God says and does. The question of who exactly the Holy Ghost is to accomplish the work of God as like the burning bush that constantly surrenders everything but is never consumed thus needed to be asked in order to understand how Christ transforms the fire of self sacrifice into the growth of the body of Christ through the blood of his body pumping through the many members that believe in him.

The conclusion of the subject of intercession often brings about the value of productivity over things that would otherwise restrain (sort of like the spirit of the law wins out over the letter of the law), and I thus have found the relationship between Tamar and Judah in Genesis 38 to exhibit this problem because Judah as a judge prevented Tamar from being saved through child birth that would in the end bring forth Christ and thus Tamar went against legal jurisdiction through faith and was not condemned for doing so. On the other hand my work on Exodus 33 demonstrates how God used the shielding of the tent for the ark in order to shroud his presence from the Israelites so that God could have mercy on those that he chooses to have mercy on, and this restriction of the presence of God provided a context for legal intercession through the yearly blood atonement of the lamb to be presented to the ark inside of the tent or curtain. Ideally God bestows the charity of faith onto us through the blood of the lamb, and this administration of his charity should compel us to be charitable for building the body of Christ through intercession among its many members like in the case of Philanthropy.

Unfortunately many people are in favor of using everyone else to server themselves out of a feeling of self love, so developing the body of Christ or forming a congregation in such an environment can be challenging at best. Clarifying the purpose of the Jews or Jewish thought in a model of Christianity that depends on heavenly temple worship and the administration of the atonement of Christ by blood can be challenging at best, but I do not find rejecting or accepting Jesus Christ to be the solution to salvation because we should not be in a place to render a judgment over God. On the other hand the administration of divine justice and the punishment of capital crimes enters into intercession just as much as atonement enters into intercession, and as a result slaying a golden calf needs to be done in one way or another in order to prevent the eternal security of people from being corrupted.

Unlike what most would think the Pharisees had actually not been concerned at all about intercession, and they most certainly did not have much care for the most important elements of the law namely the love of God and justice. Faith thus in this case is like holding onto a valuable treasure instead of investing it, and thus it is like storing food for the end of time only to find that your house is being eaten away by mice as a result. Jesus healed people with his own spit and thus made intercession, but too many people instead of making intercession decide to hold onto their faith as like a valuable treasure without performing intercession and thus cause the wall of the separation of church and state to challenge those that try to make intercession. Eventually when people cannot make intercession in order to invest the talents from Christ (the master that went away) into building the body of Christ as like investing into a bank until everything becomes subject to the bank what happens is that believers and unbelievers become unequally yoked. Overall, my work thus on Jesus on the Web has attempted to be developmental, administrative, and informational.

Christianity has always made illusions to agriculture in terms of church administration, but hardly ever do churches try to develop people into a multitude of different things (usually a congregation is treated all as one kind of livestock). Thus people that would argue for the case of diversity in ministry would have to come into the question of how faith was first handed down from God to Adam and how that faith transformed him, but on the other hand we must not forget that Christ is the author and prefecture of our faith as like the second Adam and thus all of the human efforts that we may engage in to obtain faith are like the efforts of Adam. When we however obtain the true faith, we are given that faith by Christ and thus the armor of God that we formally put on ends in the shoes in preparation for the gospel of peace until we have fully received the gospel and are thus clothed with power from on high. Overall, I find that the Lord's prayer thus acts as a template for evangelism for bringing us into the right relation to God .

My History of Making Jesus on the Web

For many years of my youth I was an atheist and God hating person, but through a long chain of people that personally mentored me during my ten years of consecutive college education I not only became a Christian but also flourished in the faith. My seminary education has been very unofficial, but at one time I was taught under a man that moderated his entire denomination that was run as a break from the main stream Episcopal church. Overall, although I feel a calling to enter seminary school in a more formal bases, I find many challenges with doing so.

The way that I got most of the members on Jesus on the Web is by personally approaching both people that I knew and by approaching people that I did not know when I would be going about my daily business. Every person that I saw for a matter of years I viewed as a potential Christian that was in need of a network of other Christian people. Eventually I obtained a informational table in the Student Center of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and I promoted my work on Jesus on the Web amongst other ministries in the greatest hot spot for ministry in all of southern Illinois. Eventually Jesus on the Web grew to include four moderators including myself, and in 2009 Larry Roy Woodsmall became a manger and has since been ambitious for seeing churches develop out of the theology that is coming forth from Jesus on the Web.

In the history of Jesus on the Web we have encountered many challenges such as tragic deaths that we have addressed theologically as well as cases of homeless people that we have encountered and even a case that happened when I found a man that would have otherwise died on the street. Despite the bad times, we have managed to celebrate most holidays and even special events such as the 150^th birthday of Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof. We have even engaged in more political issues such as the salvation of our economy. Overall, I have a long history of Christian involvement, and my ten years of college has made me qualified to manage such a diverse set of people.

Jesus on the Web has had many challenges because many that claim to be for Christian doctrine are often not at all for Christian doctrine. For example one man actually claimed to be Christ himself and posted to Jesus on the Web regularly for a while and this caused me the challenge of either removing the man or constantly having to rebuke the man in hope that he would receive the Christian faith. One of the original four moderators that I established was a C. S. Lewis scholar, and eventually he confessed that all my theology was correct as he then renounced Christ. Overall, many other challenges have occurred as well such as the shear volume of reading, writing, and careful attention to understanding that needs to be done in order to truly appreciate the position of the other party.

The challenges of Moderating Jesus on the Web

One of the challenges of Jesus on the Web is that since it is conversational lots of junk clutters the good stuff from being obvious. On the other hand the conversational nature of Jesus on the web makes many things possible that would not be possible in a non public forum environment. The challenge thus of Jesus on the Web is to always allow everyone the freedom to speak but to highlight the best work.

The problem of giving everyone freedom is that people often become abusive and destructive with that freedom. Keeping freedom free in order that intercession can occur is the greatest challenge especially when abusive behavior causes people to withdraw. Most churches will quietly silence people in order to prevent the entire group from being exposed to the harsh 'reality' of what people are really like, and the problem with this view is that it causes many problems down the road with developing a wall to separate the church and state to the extent that the church can only function in church and the state can only function outside of church. The New Jerusalem however comprises both church and state under Christ as king governing a sovereign nation as the members of the body of Christ make intercession as a kingdom of priests.