Restoration 2013: Jesus.

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Restoration Ministry

Mark Howard

Jesus:  The Unknown God

Our gracious Heavenly Father, Father you brought us together here tonight once again.

Father, there is so much about Jesus we need to know.

But nobody can know the Son unless the Father reveals the Son.

Likewise, Father, you are revealed in the Son.

We ask tonight that your Holy Spirit would give us understanding, spiritual understanding, spiritual eyesight to see you clearly for who you are.

We ask and pray these things in the name of Jesus and for his sake.

This morning I told you the story about a young woman by the name of Beth Rutherford.

Now I read the story of Beth Rutherford in Guidepost Magazine back in 2000, January 2000 edition.

I was so astonished when I read that story about this young 19 year old girl, Beth Rutherford, who just had some, a little, a little problem sleeping.

Her father encouraged her to go to a Christian counselor that he knew, which she did.

And things went downhill from there As she spent time with that counselor, and I'm cutting to the chase this evening, we learned that the counselor asked Beth if she'd had an experience in any kind of sexual abuse with her parents, with anybody.

She said, no, I mean, nothing like that has ever happened.

But her therapist said that you have all the earmarks of somebody who has been sexually abused.

And she continued scheduling appointments, and the methodology of this particular therapist involved a manner of self-hypnotism, where she would teach her patients how to bring themselves into a hypnotic trance, and then she would begin to probe them for information.

And over the course of 2 and a half years, Beth regained repressed memories of being sexually abused by her parents, actually impregnated by her father twice, and having 2 abortions, 1 that her father performed on her and 1 that he forced her to perform on herself.

She couldn't believe that she had been so blind to the monstrosities that have been perpetrated by her parents, only to find out when it was all said and done that none of it ever really happened.

At the end of the course of this ordeal, Beth Rutherford, who, and I said this morning, I shared with you, those who were here this morning, that this ordeal, the memories that were brought back through this counseling session were so vivid to her, she said she actually, when she recalled them, could feel the bodily pain of being tied up by her parents and other things that she had remembered.

Incidentally, I just threw out a little plug here.

I don't know if anybody here has ever read through the books Mind, Character, and Personality volumes 1 and 2 and read some of the statements over the danger of mind over mind.

1 person trying to manipulate the mind of the other, hypnosis and those kind of things.

And the whole aftermath of it, when Beth, through a series of circumstances, became open to communicating with her parents again, she came to realize that, first of all, the whole idea of being impregnated through this ordeal was impossible because her father had had a vasectomy long before any of these things allegedly took place.

And then under the advice of their attorney, Beth had herself checked out in a gynecological exam and she was found to still be a virgin.

Even though she had been vividly recalling these memories.

She had built a whole entire history with her parents that never happened.

She was a victim of what now is called in psychiatric circles FMS or false memory syndrome.

Under the direction of her therapist, it started by her therapist suggesting doubts in regard to her father's character.

It all started with doubts in regard to her father's character.

She then allowed her therapist to begin interpreting and deciphering all communication between her and her parents.

Her therapist said, anytime you have a conversation with your parents, I want it to come to me.

And so she would tell her therapist, and her therapist would say, well, this is what they really meant by that.

And it just began, it got to the point where Beth at 1 point in this experience said she wished she could have a mother like this therapist.

She felt that the therapist was the only person who really understood who she was because that's what she had been led to believe.

Beth said she further allowed her therapist to reinterpret her childhood through these distorted pictures of her father.

So everything in her childhood that she remembered that might have been a good memory was turned into a bad memory.

I shared this morning the example of when Beth remembered her father taking the time with her to try to teach her finances when she was 9 years old, and they would get out their checkbooks, and she'd have her little checkbook, and Dad would have his, and they'd write checks together, and when she told her therapist, her therapist said, oh, bad news.

A father shouldn't be doing that with his daughter.

A father should be taking care of the finances with his wife.

That tells you, Beth, that your father preferred you over your mother.

That kind of thing happens so the therapist would reinterpret Every aspect of her life through this false picture of her father, are you hearing what I'm saying?

Because there are spiritual implications.

And in the end of it all, the picture Beth Rutherford held of her father was an entirely different picture than that of the man who actually raised her.

She had totally lost the true picture of her father.

She said later on in the experience that it was when she fled from her parents and moved with her sister to Oklahoma City, she said, at the time I didn't realize it, but it was the best move I could have made because in addition to distancing me from my parents, it distanced me from that therapist.

And now instead of going to the therapist to tell me what to think, I had to begin thinking on my own.

I can't help but think of all these things and wonder if we're not living in a generation where we ourselves have been perhaps the victims of a severe false memory syndrome and the picture of our father has been skewed.

And perhaps there's somebody who is always trying to filter every experience through that false picture.

Perhaps we need to start thinking on our own.

I told you when we started, Jesus, the subject of Jesus, Jesus period, where there's a lot in Jesus period.

Jesus period sounds so nice and neat and concise, but the person of Jesus is a multifaceted person and the person of Jesus is a revelation of that character that we need so desperately to know.

And there's much, perhaps, many ideas that we may have about Jesus, about religion, about Christianity that may not be the result of us really seeing Jesus.

And we need to start thinking on our own.

Tonight's topic is Jesus the unknown God.

I want you to take your Bibles and go with me to Acts chapter 17 and verse 22.

Incidentally, I talked to a few people after our story this morning and it was 1 of those stories again that when you're done you're talking about first of all it was a whole idea of some of these terrible instances of sexual abuse that don't just sit well when you hear them.

And then to find out the whole thing was false, and it just kind of gives you this roller coaster.

But it was interesting in talking with a few people afterwards, just how the story was just, it was, I could kind of see people say, I kind of see the point, but it's just, wow, it was just, it wasn't 1 of those warm fuzzy stories.

And I thought to myself, you know, why is it that we have to hear some really, how do I word it?

Some really degraded and corrupt and debauched story to give us that sense of repulsion when the great controversy and the lies that are being spread in the great controversy are infinitely more repulsive and more devastating.

And we live around it and amidst it every day even among ourselves as Christians with Lies being circulated about our Father.

The Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 17 has come into the city of Athens, Greece.

He notices something significant about Athens that really wrenches his heart.

In verse 16 it says, Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, that is his companions in ministry, while he waited for them at Athens the spirit was provoked within him.

His spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was what?

Now that's important for us to understand.

In other words, This culture was given over to not an idol like Ephesus and Diana of the Ephesians.

What is really fascinating to me, what we're about to see here is that there is a commonality among the idolatrous mindset that is totally opposed to what Paul is about to share.

He sees that they are given over to idols.

We jump to verse 22 and it says in verse 22, oh no, we back up a little bit, we want to back up a little bit before that.

As he begins to talk to them a little bit, they hear some of his ideas, he is reasoning with the Jews and the Gentiles.

In fact, verse 17 says, Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshippers, and where?

Now he comes into the synagogue, you can picture that, he's around believers, and then he's in the marketplace.

Who would you share with in the marketplace?

It's interesting to me that the Apostle Paul had such a burden.

You think everybody was listening to him in the marketplace?

I doubt it, but he had a burden to give them the opportunity.

And as he was sharing, some of these Epicureans and Stoic philosophers, verse 18, encountered him and said, what does this babbler want to say?

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Jesus: The Unknown God

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