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In Reply to: Can anyone explain Matthew 20:28 to me??
posted by #####
Hi #####, I hope I can add a little insight to your question regarding Matt. 20:28. ***** was very obvervant when he pointed out that some English translations leave out the definite article in some places which make "many" seem like not all when the context plainly means "all." Rom. 5:15 is a classic example proving that these "many" were actually "all" who died in Adam which is everyone. "In Adam ALLL died, in Christ shall all be made alive."Another thing which should be noted is just because God has the power to destroy a person body and soul in Gehenna, the city dump, it doesn't mean that He will. God can threaten without fulfilling His threat.
Hebrew is a highly exaggerative language. While Matthew comes to us through the Greek, nevertheless, the language of the Jews was Aramaic/Hebrew, NOT Greek for most of them. God's threats in the Old Testament were often couched in much more graphic and catastrophic language than what actually occurred. This is a trait of the Semitic languages which we must take into consideration when we read the Bible.
Furthermore, look at the context of those words. He is encouraging his disciples not to be afraid of the religious leaders who were going to persecute them. He was trying to show them that God is MUCH more powerful than men, that they did not have to be afraid of men because God was on their side who had much more power than the men who would try to stop them from preaching. Jesus tells them they are worth much to God.
By the way, the very men, Jesus said would come against them found their own bodies thrown into the very valley that many Christians say is Hell...Gehenna, the city dump. And the fires of gehenna, the city dump of Jerusalem, hell, have long ago gone out. I've been to hell, gehenna, walked through its streets and I wasn't burned or tormented. For the Jew, gehenna was the most disgraceful thing that could happen to a Jew. They loved grand funerals; they would hire professsional mourners to cry over them. For Jesus to tell the Pharisees their lives were fit for nothing better than to be thrown into the city dump (Gehenna, hell) was to tell them their lives (body and soul) were totally worthless. The dumps of ancient days were truly filled with things of absolutely no value. At the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD, the very Pharisees Jesus addressed found their own bodies thrown over the southwestern Wall of Jerusalem during its siege. Their bodies were left there unburied, burned and left for the maggots...the most disgraceful thing that could happen to a Jew...and it happened to the very people who were threatening the poor sheep of Israel with everlasting burnings...a teaching which they borrowed from the Babylonians during the Babylonian captivity. Eternal Punishment in fire is a heathen invention..it is NOT found anywhere in the Old Testament and where it occurs in the New Testament in SOME Bibles, it is a gross error which can easily be proven. Hope that helps a little. In Him, Gary
P.S. Three good books on this subject are "the Bible Hell," "The origin and history of the doctrine of Endless Punishment," and "Bible Threatenings Explained." They are all available for free download under books at the Tentmaker Books page.
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