Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7 ~ My Words will never pass away

Adoration from the Magi ~ Murillo

Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7 (The Message)

Titus 2:11-14

11-14 God's readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation's available for everyone! We're being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now, and is whetting our appetites for the glorious day when our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, appears. He offered himself as a sacrifice to free us from a dark, rebellious life into this good, pure life, making us a people he can be proud of, energetic in goodness.

Titus 3:4-7

3-7 It wasn't so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath (baptism), and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God's gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there's more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.

Mark 13: 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

John 1: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

Matthew 5: 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Hebrew religious and 'Hebraic Sacred Science' traditions hold that the text of the Torah was originally given to mankind in a single long string of 304,805 Hebrew characters. The spaces, punctuation, sentence, chapter and five-book structures were all added later to form the modern Pentateuch. This "Word" of the Creator was, according to this tradition, delivered to mankind in the form of a single 304,805 letter word. It is in this context that the Torah is uniquely, specifically and literally considered to be "The Word".

For this reason, Hebrew tradition dictates that Torah scribes must complete many years of training, much of which has to do with learning the proper meditative techniques, before being allowed to copy Torah scrolls. The tradition holds that not a single "jot or nor one iota" of the Torah must be added, changed or omitted from "The Word".

Believers in this tradition sometimes point to a purely literal interpretation of the first seventeen words of the Gospel of John from the New Testament as evidence for their belief.
Messianic Jews further believe that "the Word was made flesh" in a literal sense;

John 1: 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Since 1994, more recent views extend the analysis of biblical texts to include Old Testament texts outside the Torah and also to the New Testament. The traditional view of the codes further asserts that the "information" encoded in the Torah cannot be used to predict the future, and that at best the codes provide evidence of an all-knowing creator whose knowledge of the Universe and all of its possibilities spans both space and time.

Mark 13: 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.