In the gospel of John, the account of the Last Supper has no mention of Jesus taking bread and wine and speaking of them as his body and blood ; instead it recounts his humble act of washing the disciples ' feet, the prophecy of the betrayal, which set in motion the events that would lead to the cross, and his long discourse in response to some questions posed by his followers, in which he went on to speak of the importance of the unity of the disciples with him and each other.

Indeed, at the end of the 19th century scholar Ernest DeWitt Burton wrote that there could be " no reasonable doubt " that 1 John and the gospel were written by the same author, and Amos Wilder has said that, " Early Christian tradition and the great majority of modern scholars have agreed on the common authorship of these writings, even where the author has not been identified with the apostle John.

John Ernest Grabe found an otherwise unreported saying of Jesus, attributed to the Apostle Barnabas, amongst the Greek manuscripts in the Baroccian collection in the Bodleian Library ; which he speculated might be a quotation from this lost gospel ; and John Toland claimed to have identified a corresponding phrase when he examined the surviving Italian manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas in Amsterdam before 1709.

The gospel is closely related in style and content to the three surviving Epistles of John such that commentators treat the four books together, yet, according to most modern scholars, John was not the author of any of these books.

the majority do not believe that John or one of the Apostles wrote it, and trace it instead to a " Johannine community " which traced its traditions to John ; the gospel itself shows signs of having been composed in three " layers ", reaching its final form about 90-100 AD.

According to the Church Fathers, the Bishops of Asia Minor requested John, in his old age, to write a gospel in response to Cerinthus, the Ebionites and other Hebrew groups which they deemed heretical.

Conservative scholars consider internal evidences, such as the lack of the mention of the destruction of the Temple and a number of passages that they consider characteristic of an eyewitness, sufficient evidence that the gospel was composed before 100 and perhaps as early as 50 – 70: in the 1970s, scholars Leon Morris and John A. T. Robinson independently suggested earlier dates for the gospel's composition.

In the earliest surviving gospel collection, Papyrus 45 of the 3rd century, it is placed second in the order Matthew, John, Luke and Mark, an order which is also found in other very early New Testament manuscripts.

In 2004 Scott Kellum published a detailed analysis of the literally unity of the entire Farewell Discourse and stated that it shows that it was written by a single author, and that its structure and placement within the Gospel of John is consistent with the rest of that gospel.

As a gospel, John is a story about the life of Jesus.

Following on from " the higher criticism " of the 19th century, Adolf von Harnack and Raymond E. Brown have questioned the gospel of John as a reliable source of information about the historical Jesus.

" Sanders points out that the author would regard the gospel as theologically true as revealed spiritually even if its content is not historically accurate and argues that even historically plausible elements in John can hardly be taken as historical evidence, as they may well represent the author's intuition rather than historical recollection.

Geza Vermes discounts all the teaching in John when reconstructing his view of " the authentic gospel of Jesus.

While a large number of 20th century biblical critics argue that the teaching found in John does not go back to the historical Jesus, they usually agree that gospel is not entirely without historical value.

Recent evidences such as the pool and a turn away from the vestiges of positivism as evidenced by the growing number of books addressing the historicity of John reveal that the final word has not been said on how much of the historical Jesus inhabits John's gospel.

Harris believes that the tradition that John lived to old age in Ephesus developed in the late 2nd century, although the tradition does appear in the last chapter of the gospel, though this debatable tradition assumes that John the Evangelist, John the Apostle, the Beloved Disciple mentioned in John 21 and sometimes also John the Presbyter are the same person.

The gospel gives far more focus to the relationship of the Son to the Father than the other gospels and it has often been used in the Christian development and understanding of the Trinity.

The well-known gospel tract " How the Lost Sheep was Saved " gives his personal account of a visit he paid to a dying shepherd boy in this area, painting a vivid picture of what his work among the poor people involved.

John's gospel is the only canonical one that gives Thomas the Apostle a dramatic role and spoken part, and Thomas is the only character therein described as having apistos ( unbelief ), despite the failings of virtually all the Johannine characters to live up to the author's standards of belief.

* Aretha Franklin gives birth to her first child, at the age of fourteen, interrupting her career as a gospel singer.

Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel ... 14: Concerning church government it is taught that no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper call.

He gives no indication that he considers the John of the Apocalypse to be a different John from the author of the Gospel of John ; indeed, by calling the author of the Apocalypse of John the " predecessor " of Paul, who, he assumes, wrote to seven churches ( Rev 2-3 ) before Paul wrote to seven churches, he most likely has in mind the gospel writer, since he assumes that the writer of the Gospel of John was an eyewitness disciple who knew Jesus, and thus preceded Paul, who joined the church only after Jesus ' death.

In this ' gospel ,' the Holy Spirit is a thief who willfully indulges in all manner of vice, including violating a sleeping virgin who then gives birth to Jesus Christ, or God the Son.

He gives four examples of its use: it is used of ‘ Herod ’ s instruction that the wise men should search diligently ’ for the child Jesus, it is used to ‘ describe Luke ’ s detailed knowledge of the gospel from the very first ’), and the ‘ careful picking of his steps to which the believer is exhorted by Paul ’, and ‘ of the complete dossier of evidence concerning the Lord ’ s return possessed by the Thessalonians.

The parallel passage in Mark's gospel gives ( in the majority of manuscripts ) a quite different place name, Dalmanutha, although a handful of manuscripts give either Magdala or Magadan presumably by assimilation to the Matthean text — believed in ancient times to be older than that of Mark, though this opinion has now been reversed.

He wrote, " Duty-faith, then, calls upon every one who hears the gospel to exercise a faith which at once gives him the warrant to believe, and will ultimately give him to know, that Jesus loved him and gave himself for him ..."

" If then the gospel is good tidings because it proclaims blessings that are given to, secured for, and wrought in the souls of all interested in them, independent of creature merit, creature wisdom, creature seeking, creature asking, or creature diligence ; then that gospel which gives an opposite view of these things is not good tidings.

However, postulating Luke's acquaintance with the gospel of Matthew overcomes these same problems and gives the source for the common material.

In which Charles Hill gives evidence that the Gospel of John was used between CE 90 and 130, the possible use of uniquely Johannine gospel material in several works which date from this period.

Barnes ' Notes on the Bible identifies the word " the faith " in this context with " the gospel ", a view with which Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible agrees, as does the People's New Testament, while Clarke's Commentary on the Bible remarks that one manuscripts gives, in place of " the faith ", " the resurrection of the dead, which is one of the greatest mysteries of the faith.

Since the natives of that place, who will be concerned in our plantation, are utterly strangers to Christianity, whose idolatry, ignorance, or mistake gives us no right to expel or use them ill ; and those who remove from other parts to plant there will unavoidably be of different opinions concerning matters of religion, the liberty whereof they will expect to have allowed them, and it will not be reasonable for us, on this account, to keep them out ; that civil peace may be maintained amidst diversity of opinions, and our agreement and compact with all men may be duly and faithfully observed ; the violation whereof, upon what presence soever, cannot be without great offence to Almighty God, and great scandal to the true religion which we profess ; and also that Jews, heathens, and other dissenters from the purity of Christian religion may not be scared and kept at a distance from it, but, by having an opportunity of acquainting themselves with the truth and reasonableness of its doctrines, and the peaceableness and inoffensiveness of its professors, may, by good usage and persuasion, and all those convincing methods of gentleness and meekness, suitable to the rules and design of the gospel, be won over to embrace and unfeignedly receive the truth ; therefore, any seven or more persons agreeing in any religion, shall constitute a church or profession, to which they shall give some name, to distinguish it from others.

Since Luke was not prominent there is no obvious reason that this gospel and Acts would have been attributed to him if he didn't write them.

As examples of the distinction, " Amazing Grace " is a hymn ( no refrain ), but " How Great Thou Art " is a gospel song.

And I had no desire to preach the gospel to the converted.

this is no preacher manufacturing establishment the Lord alone has the prerogative of calling men to preach the gospel.

The short and comparatively straightforward Apocalypse of Thomas has no immediate connection with our gospel, while the canonical Jude – if the name can be taken to refer to Judas Thomas Didymus – certainly attests to early intra-Christian conflict.

In terms of faith, however, no major Christian group accepts this gospel as canonical or authoritative.

* The Jewish songwriter Harold Rome wrote, for the musical " Pins and Needles " in 1937, a gospel song, " Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin ," which made the analogy between Belshazzar and Hitler, saying the former " didn't pay no income taxes :/ The big shot of the Babylon-Jerusalem Axis.

*“ The moral teaching of the higher spirits may be summed up, like that of Christ, in the gospel maxim, ‘ Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you ;’ that is to say, do good to all, and wrong no one.

Antinomianism ( a term coined by Martin Luther, from the Greek ἀντί, " against " + νόμος, " law " +-ism ; compare antinomy ) is a position defined by its holding that, under the gospel dispensation of grace, moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone ( Sola Fide ) is necessary to salvation.

A baptism may be held after the ' Lord's Table Meeting ' ( Sunday service ) or gospel meetings, though there is no explicit time required.

go thy < way > walk in my statutes and keep my commandments behold I am the Lord of glory I was crucifyed for the world that all those who believe on my name may have Eternal life < behold > the world lieth in sin and at this time and none doeth good no not one they have turned aside from the gospel and keep not < my > commandments they draw near to me with their lips while their hearts are far from me and mine anger is kindling against the inhabitants of the earth to visit them according to thir ungodliness and to bring to pass that which < hath > been spoken by the mouth of the prophets and Apstles behold and lo I come quickly as it written of me in the cloud < clothed > in the glory of my Father.

According to the LDS Church, the vision teaches that God the Father and Jesus Christ are separate beings with glorified bodies of flesh and bone ; that mankind was literally created in the image of God ; that Satan is real but God infinitely greater ; that God hears and answers prayer ; that no other contemporary church had the fullness of Christ's gospel ; and that revelation has not ceased.

There are a minority of postmillennial scholars, however, who discount the idea of a final apostasy, regarding the gospel conquest ignited by the Great Commission to be total and absolute, such that no unsaved individuals will remain after the Spirit has been fully poured out on all flesh.

The words of Jesus include several sermons, as well as parables that appear throughout the narrative of the Synoptic Gospels ( the gospel of John includes no parables ).

And the debates continue, e. g. Wells changed his views over time and while he used to argue that there was no historical evidence supporting the existence of Jesus, he later modified his position, and in his later book The Jesus Myth accepted the possible existence of Jesus based on historical sources, although still disputing the gospel portrayals of his life.

As an example, Bart Ehrman states that gnostic writings of the Gospel of Thomas ( part of the Nag Hammadi library ) have very little value in historical Jesus research, because the author of that gospel placed no importance on the physical experiences of Jesus ( e. g. his crucifixion ) or the physical existence of believers, and was only interested in the secret teachings of Jesus rather than any physical events.

Alpheus Cutler taught that with the murder of Joseph Smith, the " Gentiles " ( non-Native Americans living in America and the world ) had rejected Smith's gospel, and thus there was to be no more preaching to them.

It is described that on the Sarcophagus in the centre of the Crypt of Christian Rosenkreutz were written, among other inscriptions the words, " Jesus mihi omnia, nequaquam vacuum, libertas evangelii, dei intacta gloria, legis jugum ," ( being in translation, " Jesus is everything to me, by no means empty, the freedom of the gospel, the untouched glory of god, the yoke of the law ") testifying to the builder's Christian character.

He has since become a critic of religious belief, appearing at Freedom From Religion Foundation's annual conventions and stating in its paper Freethought Today, " If, as the true believers claim, the word ' gospel ' means good news, then the good news for me is that there is no gospel, other than what I can define for myself, by observation and conscience.