M E S S I A H

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATION

by Robert Brow   (www.brow.on.ca)

JLP Digital Publications,  Odessa Ont., 2000




Introduction

Today, June the 11th, 2000, is the Day of Pentecost.  Early this morning about 3 a.m. I woke with the title of this book on my mind. Very quickly I had a list of some chapters I wanted to write. And I was very excited.

Yesterday with the wedding of Julie Shalane Winter and Michael John Douglas Knox,  I finished five months of a very happy interim ministry at St. John's Anglican Church, Portsmouth, Kingston, Ontario. Chris Doering, the new Rector, will be taking his first services this morning.

As that chapter of my life was ending I had been concerned for several weeks about my next writing project. I planned to spend the summer at our cottage on Dog Lake, near Battersea, Ontario, and I had thought up three or four outlines which did not grab me at all. Now I sense that this book titled Messiah is exactly what I long to write.

My concern was that I needed Mollie's encouragement. We wrote one book jointly (Adultery: An Exploration of Love and Marriage), and she has edited with great skill most of the other books on our web site (www.brow.on.ca). The problem was that she had often objected to my fanciful interpretations when they went beyond what was clearly written in the Bible. And this book, written in the first person was certainly going to be fanciful. How could I know what the Messiah experienced on earth and in heaven?

When I brought up our morning cup of tea, I explained what I had in mind. To my astonishment she showed me a diary entry written just yesterday. Her prayer was that on the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit would make our Lord King Messiah known. So she agreed to work with me as long as I made clear that what I wrote in the first person was only one of many possibilities. The reality must have been far more astonishing, and wonderful beyond any human telling.

As Paul quoted from Isaiah, the Spirit reveals "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived" (1 Corinthians 2:9, Isaiah 64:4). Admittedly "we see in a mirror, dimly" (1 Corinthians13:12), and it is very easy to get the details wrong. But it is still worth trying to probe and picture what we can. The art is to be open to correction as we go along.

I will come back to that in the Postscript, which I have already written for the ending of this book.

Hopefully as the work proceeds I will receive some needed corrections (Robert Brow) before the book is finally deposited in the Canadian National Library electronic archives. To assist readers in identifying some of the sources in this book Scripture references are given in the text.


Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Adoption

2 Maria

3 Baptist

4 Satan

5 Disciples

6 Ethics

7 Parables

8  Women

9  Pharisees

10  Judge

11  Bethany

12  Preparation

13  Lamb

14  Resurrection

15  Pentecost

16  Paul

17 Comings

Postscript


Chapter 1  .....