Many church congregations take the words of the gospels and epistles and try to apply them without study. They take words and make them laws. The problem is that words change. For instance Begotten use to be a word that meant to “be sent from” or “come forth from,” as in “God so loved the world He sent his Only Son..” (John 3:16). Now Begotten means to beget or birth, to create. For this reason many new Bibles omit begotten now, due to its change in meaning, because The Father never created The Son, they are Co-Eternal, Co-Equal, and Co-Substantial; Christ Jesus has always existed with The Father and Holy Spirit; One God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity.
We have to study the Scriptures, to delve into them and find out what the words of the apostles and Jesus meant then, so as to accurately gauge how to apply them now. A good example is the infamous Hebrews 6:4-6 passage about falling away from the faith and how there is no forgiveness left for one who wants to return. In the Greek, the language in which Hebrews and the New Testament is written in, Hebrews 6 really says “If this was possible,” and the apostle says that he is theorizing what something like falling away could look like. This is important, because it means Hebrews 6:4-6 is not doctrinal, not Holy Spirit inspired, but a rumination and theorizing of the apostle. We see this in Scripture when the Apostle Paul says “The (Holy) Spirit told me to go,” versus “I decided in my spirit to visit Jerusalem.”
Some of the scariest passages in Scripture when looked at in their original languages and more accurate transliterations seem less harsh and make more sense. A great example is found in The Book of Revelation:
Most translations say this:
“But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” (Revelation 2:4-5)
This terrifying passage has you asking what is the “love you had at first,”?
Well in the Greek and New Living Translation its clearer:
“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!
Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches.” (Revelation 2:4-5)
Here we have what love has been abandoned, a love for Jesus and his people, its reiterating what Jesus taught in the gospels as his three commands to love, “He answered, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,” (Luke 10:27) and “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35). With the more accurate words that Jesus said we know now why Revelation 2’s punishment seems so harsh, that Jesus is addressing a fatal failure to love Him and others; because God is love (1 John 4:18) and without love we are nothing but clanging cymbal, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal, If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-2). The whole gospel is about love, God loved us (John 3:16, Romans 5:1-8), and died so we could be with Him in love forever, and He asks us to love others too; what Jesus is confronting in Revelation 2:4-5 is people who have drifted from the gospel, from Him and loving fellow Christians; that they have lost the crucial core of what Christianity is about, and what it means to be a Christian.
It behooves us to dig in and study what words meant back then. To look at the Greek or at least transliterations and commentaries that delve into what was really said in the Greek. 99% of Scripture is straightforward and there is no mystery in what is meant, scholars and translators have worked hard to get what was meant in that day and age across to us; so we can trust our Bibles and translations. However, occasionally there is 1% where the translators did not translate it as clear as it could be and so then when we find a passage as being too harsh or we feel confused by how to apply it and understand it we must look deeper into the Greek, Strong’s Concordance, Transliterations, Word Studies, and Commentaries. Another great example in found again in Revelation:
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)
The clearer translation from Greek says:
“But as for the cowards [deilós (an adjective derived from deidō, "fear-driven") – properly, dreadful, describing a person who loses their "moral gumption (fortitude)" that is needed to follow the Lord] and unbelieving and abominable [who are devoid of character and personal integrity and practice or tolerate immorality], and murderers, and sorcerers [with intoxicating drugs, Pharmikios], and idolaters and occultists [who practice and teach false religions], and all the liars [who knowingly deceive and twist truth], their part will be in the lake that blazes with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)
I honestly don’t understand why the plethora of translators don’t just add these more descriptive translations that give better insight into what Christ and his Apostles said and how to apply the verses to our daily lives.
Words matter, for over a thousand years St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation had Jesus saying “do penance,” rather than the accurate Greek Word “repent.” Do penance means to do some act of penitence, a good deed to help repair your error with God. Repent means to ask for forgiveness and to turn from doing that sin anymore like when Jesus said to the Women they wanted to stone, “Go and sin no more.” (John 8:12) . Jerome also had in his Latin Vulgate translation that when Moses returned from seeing The Burning Bush on Mt. Sinai, he had two horns like a bull on his head [in fact this is why Michelangelo’s famous Moses Marble Statue has horns]; when the accurate Hebrew translation says Moses’ face was covered in light and they covered it with a cloth (Exodus 34:29-35), which makes more sense because Jesus himself is seen with a face shining with Light, “In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.” (Revelation 1:16). So you see getting the words right matters, because a false church called The Roman Catholic Church is built on the wrong words “do penance,” when Jesus said “repent.” Amen.
he Roman Empire was one of the most oppressive regimes. They salted fields so that nothing would grow, they crucified people and placed them at the market places so that when you got your groceries you saw friends or strangers filleted, rotting, and nailed to wooden poles and cross beams. The Romans crushed any sign of revolt and inspiration that could drive a kingdom to become independent. When the Jews tried to emancipate and annex Jerusalem, The Romans arrived with Titus, blockaded the city in a circle so no goods could enter. Josephus records women roasted and ate their babies in the city walls of Jerusalem. Eventually Titus decided to sack Jerusalem, he began burning it and even The Temple was destroyed, the gold melted and poured into cups of Centurions. Rome was totalitarian, they had a Senate, and once upon a time they were a Republic, but that was long gone with advent of the Cesars who became dictators and tyrants who helped forge Rome from Republic to an Empire (granted others had a hand in the devolution, not just the Cesars).
There is some incredible lines about this empire that broke the conquered’s spirit, “They will take everything you have, they will make you watch other’s suffering to forget your own.” (Sheik Ilderim, Ben Hur 2016, Opening Scenes). This was Rome, it played chess with people’s souls and trafficked in their lives. While it is true many Romans came to follow Jesus Christ our Lord, even Centurions (Matthew 8:5-13, Acts 10:23-40), the Roman will to subjugate all things continued, when Rome saw it could not snuff out Christianity with the torches of Nero and lions, it became content to take the Blessed Hope under its auspices and mutate the Christian faith into Paganized Cult variant that became the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church. The aim was to make those pesky insolent Christians finally bow to other gods of Rome, turning Mars into St. George, and Diana/ Artemis the Queen of Heaven into Mary Queen of Heaven. Rome would dominate the church with idolatry, paganisms, superstitions, and Roman Law until the 16th Century when a brave German monk rose up and dared to contest their supremacy. It is perhaps ironic that it was out of Germany that The Reformation came and broke the Roman yoke over the Church, for it was the German Goths who had made the Western Roman Empire fall in the time of Augustine of Hippo (He wrote about it in his work “City of God”), even more intriguing is Martin Luther was Augustinan Monk.
Today we see the spirit of Rome continue to seek the subjugation of people, to break people with its iron. This spirit drives certain nations in conquest and like Coliseum it make sport of bloodshed. We watch as the modern chariots ride across cities and the silver eagles fly into restricted air zones. Rome is a potent ideology, many nations are infected by it including the United States of America. As Christians we are called to The Kingdom of Heaven, a kingdom ruled by Christ that shall descend on earth in its totality when He returns in the flesh. The Kingdom of God is already at hand and ruling, but it is a kingdom at variance with Rome. Jesus urges us to love our enemies and to be kind to our persecutors (Matthew 5:43-48), while Rome crucifies its enemies and persecutes those who do not bow to its ways. Much of what Jesus said at The Sermon on the Mount was an answer to how to fight back against Rome; you can’t win with swords and politics, but rather saving souls and being peacemakers. Rome is very much the model of Antichrist’s coming reign (Revelation 13:7), where he will crush all people. If we are to fight back against Rome in its many forms it is not with legions of riflemen and political appointees, but with faith, hope, and love. Our victory against the savagery of Rome is in the words, life, and teachings of Jesus. If we try to fight back with swords we become simply Rome’s reflection, we turn into our enemy. We need to pray as we see Rome being reborn in current events, and spend our time doing what Jesus said, rather than what some radio or YouTube personality says. Amen.
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