8 Comments

The part about abortion laws reminds me of my brief online encounter and involvement with AHA (abolish human abortion). I even bought their merch. 😬I am gonna openly say it. They (AHA) claim to want to save babies, but they are secretly abusive towards their wives and children behing closed doors. I know because I was friends with one of the founder's wife.

This also reminds me of how Doug Wilson and Jeff Durbin engages with culture and government. And more and more Christians are following their style, being antagonistic and skeptical about anything fun, unless it's produced out of Moscow. There is a lot more I could say.

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Well I have to clarify. AHA, Doug Wilson and Jeff Durbin are postmil types who want to actually be the government. Then there are dispies who want to look for a new conservative hero to save them.

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Thank you so much for sharing this. I think your point about eschatology is hugely important. Arguably the biggest theological shift from the evangelicalism that led for abolition to 20th century evangelicalism was a shift in eschatology.

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All wonderful insights.

I have to comment on the use of the word “from” in “My kingdom is not from this world.“ :

It is true that God’s kingdom is not from this world. But the word “from” is too limiting, whereas the word “of“ includes the meaning “from”, but it also contains a wealth of meaning. Within it are embodied the ideas of “belonging to”, “originating from“, “a product of“, “made out of“, “containing“, “related to“, “part of”, “characteristic of”, “removed from”, “possessed by“, “connected to”, and even “for“ in some cases. “From” is not a “clarification” for the word “of”. It is a reduction. It is possible that Jesus was honing in on only the meaning “from”, but it seems unlikely to me.

The reason I am reaching for such in-depth understanding is that I believe we should put a high priority on discerning the whole meaning of scripture.

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I understand what you're saying, Bob, but that's not quite right. In Greek, the syntax of the sentence does limit the semantic range of a word. And limiting that semantic range does provide clarity. So "from", in this instance, does both limit the range of the former sentence as well as clarify it.

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I like your answer. But I would like it a lot more if the original text, assuming that it is Aramaic, also supports your statement.

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The original text was Greek, not Aramaic. Jesus may have spoken Aramaic, but since you and I have a high view of scripture, I think we would agree that the text the Holy Spirit inspired (in Greek) is perfect in its translation of Jesus' meaning and intent.

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I now completely agree with you. I discovered that only a small percentage of people believe that the Peshitta Aramaic text is legitimate.

Out of curiosity I found it and read it anyway. For what it’s worth, it also says “from”.

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