Dear John, If I have any gift, it is in recognizing broad principles and patterns: I am not so good at details, so I have no detailed thoughts on the broad principle I stated. Actually, as I was preparing for Sunday night's service, I found that statement in a set of notes from a message I preached maybe 15 years ago. After my time at Cedarville, I spent six years in Ashland, KY under the ministry of H. Mahan, and there I learned radical Christ-centeredness in thought and preaching. So it was only "natural" that such thoughts would permeate my preaching. When I first heard of NCT, and read some of the material on it, I recognized it as a good systematic statement of WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED. One of the great defenses of NCT is that it is truly "Christocentric" (as theologians like to say). As I said, I am not a detail man, so there may be some statements associated with NCT I am unaware of, but the basic thrust of it is Christ, and that goes along way toward commending it as a theological system. I have not seen such Christ-centeredness in CT or Disp.- it seems they must go out of their way to bring Christ into their system, even so far that Christ seems subservient to their system.. But it seems quite natural to find Christ in NCT. In fact, we may go so far as to say that in NCT (as much as I know of it) Christ IS the system. However, you have spurred me to think the matter through some more, and maybe I'll preach a message on that very theme if God is pleased to give me one. Until then, you may want to look at an article I wrote a few years ago on what it means to preach Christ: that would certainly have some bearing on Christ as prophet and message. The article can be found here: http://www.grace-for-today.com/513.htm Thanks for your encouraging word, Joe T ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Reisinger" <24jreisinger26@...> To: <soundofgrace@...> Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 9:48 PM Subject: Re: [soundofgrace] inferred deeper meanings > Joe: Thanks for the folowing > > BTW, one way in which this telos has been acheived in the fullness of the > gospel is the way in which Jesus fulfills all the mediatorial offices of > messiah: He is more than just the prohet, priest and king of his people: > He > is prophet, AND the message; Priest AND the sacrifice, King AND law. All > things, indeed, have joined in him. He is the perfection of God;s > purpose. > > I am doing a book on Christ our New Covenant Prophet, Priest and King. > Have > you developed the above in any way? JGR > > -- > Read the Sound of Grace pages at > http://www.soundofgrace.com > > To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: > soundofgrace-unsubscribe@... > > To view our online archive go to our web page at > http://www.associate.com/groups/soundofgrace > > > > >