God Is A Benevolent Dictator Who Came “Not To Send Peace But A Sword”
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God Is A Benevolent Dictator Who Came “Not To Send Peace But A Sword”
Job 1:21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither:
the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Isa 45:5 I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
Isa 45:6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.
Isa 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Mat 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
Introduction
This time of year we hear a lot about “peace on earth, good will toward men”, which is what we read in:
Luk 2:14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
So how do we make Mat 10:34, “I came not to send peace, but a sword”, accord with the message of the angels in Luk 2:14, “…on earth peace, good will toward men”?
The answer is that those two verses, as they are translated, do not agree with each other. Christ either came to bring “peace… on earth” or He came “to send a sword”.
But before we look into how those verses can be made to accord with each other, let’s just ask the simple question. Is the world experiencing “peace… on earth”? Where in history, since Christ, has the earth known peace? Did Christ himself have a ministry marked by peace and joy? What are the words the holy spirit chose to characterize Christ’s experience on this earth?
Here is what we are told:
Isa 53:3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
It is “we” who ‘hide our faces’ from our own Savior. It is “we” who ‘despised Him and esteemed Him not’. And soon enough, after we repent of doing so, we discover that we have been given that very same calling because:
1Jn 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
Is Christ still “despised and rejected of men? According to the scriptures, while it is denied, and while the opposite is proclaimed by ‘many’, the truth is that He and His doctrine are despised and rejected more today than ever, simply because this is the Truth:
2Ti 3:12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
2Ti 3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
All who have ever chosen to be obedient to God have always, from the beginning, been hated by those who do not fear God. From Abel to Enoch to Noah to Abraham to Joseph to King David to “Daniel and his fellows” (Dan 2:13 and 18), those who typified God’s elect have always been “persecuted, despised and rejected of men”.
The positive and negative ‘sword of the Lord’
When ‘Daniel’s fellows’, the ‘three Hebrew children’, were facing the wrath of King Nebuchadnezzar and his fiery furnace, they did so having been told how the Lord had brought their nation up out of Egypt and how He had destroyed Egypt in the process of doing so. They knew exactly why they were now slaves in Babylon. They knew their parents had taken possession of the promised land and had then become complacent and adopted the customs of the nations they had driven out of the land, exactly as they had been warned not to do by the Lord their God:
Deu 12:29 When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land;
Deu 12:30 Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.
Deu 12:31 Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.
It is shocking that well-known Christian ministers, with huge followings, admit that so-called Christian holidays have deeply pagan roots. But that doesn’t matter, they argue, because those pagan lies and practices have now been “Christianized”. God’s answer to that nonsense is “You shall not do so unto the Lord thy God”!
The story of ‘the three Hebrew children’ is here in the scriptures to tell us that we, too, are enduring the same process they endured. It was “an experience of evil” [Ecc 1:13]. They endured this trial at the hand of those who bear the Lord’s sword, as it is revealed to us in these scriptures:
Gen 9:1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
Gen 9:5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.
Gen 9:6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
Secular governments have not yet been replaced by the kingdom of God. That day may be near (Rev 11:15), but it is not yet here. Until that day arrives those who are the ambassadors of that inward kingdom must outwardly submit to the Lord’s sword which `He has placed in the hands of wicked men, “the basest of men”.
Dan 4:17 This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men.
What knowing this means is that even the injustices of “the basest of men”, who are placed by God as rulers over the kingdoms of men, are actually the works of God Himself. In other words it was by the sword of God Himself in the person of Nebuchadnezzar by which the three Hebrew children were cast into the fiery furnace. It was by the sword of God that Darius cast Daniel into the lion’s den, and it was God who sent Satan as His sword, His hand, to take all of Job’s earthly possessions and all his children and then to strike Job with boils from his head to his feet. There is simply no denying what God Himself unashamedly owns:
Psa 17:13 Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:
Ecc 1:13 I applied my heart to inquiring and exploring by wisdom concerning all that is done under the heavens: it is an experience of evil Elohim has given to the sons of humanity to humble them by it.
Isa 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Eph 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
So until “the kingdoms of this world… become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ”, we are commanded to be subject to the powers that be because all those powers, to the consternation of all politically-minded Christians, we are told in the New Testament as well as in the Old Testament, are ordained of God:
Rom 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. [Dan 4:17]
What happens to us when we are not granted to submit ourselves to the Lord’s anointed wicked? Is it not the Lord Himself we are resisting?
Rom 13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
Rom 13:3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
Rom 13:4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword [of the Lord] in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
Notice what we are commanded: “Do that which is good, and [we will] have praise of the same”. There has never been an act of mankind more evil than the slaying of the unspotted Lamb of God. There has never been, and there will never be a more worthy person for whom we should be willing to fight and give our lives. But “that which is good” simply does not include fighting against flesh and blood with a physical sword. The moment we take up a physical sword, whether it is to save our own physical life or the physical lives of others, we have at that very moment lost our spiritual protection and our spiritual standing with our Lord, as He made clear to all of us through the natural reaction of the apostle Peter when the Jewish mob came to arrest and crucify our Lord:
Mat 26:52 Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
Christ is the ruler of all things in heaven and in earth. That includes every organization of men, from the most murderous dictator who has ever lived, to the most hypocritical, militaristic religious leader, to the worst terrorist or group of terrorists who have ever lived.
We read earlier:
Rom 8:24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
Rom 8:25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
It was with the hope of being rewarded with deliverance from death that Daniel’s “three fellows… were not careful” to answer King Nebuchadnezzar. The Word of God increases our hope and our faith in the Works of God, by demonstrating just how “the Lord and His Christ” will be given the powers of the kingdoms of this world. When I say “just how the Lord and His Christ will be given the kingdoms of this world” I am not speaking of physical details but of spiritual principles which demonstrate just how that goal will be accomplished. The story of Daniel and his “fellows” demonstrates for us the spiritual principles which will empower those who will be in that “blessed and holy… first resurrection” to rule over the kingdoms of this world” (Rev 20:4). Daniel’s three “fellows”, like any of us, did not know when they were summonsed before the King Nebuchadnezzar just how they would fare in every detail. Nevertheless this is what they told the king:
Dan 3:16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
Dan 3:17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
Dan 3:18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
“If it be so” demonstrates the hope of salvation that was in these three men. God had not taken them into His confidence to the extent of telling them exactly how He would deliver them, but “He will deliver us out of your hand” demonstrates the faith and hope they had in the power of their God to do what He had promised before to do for those who were obedient to Him under the most dire circumstances. These men knew and had read that He had promised to be “a very present help in time of trouble”, and they believed His promise.
Psa 46:1 To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song upon Alamoth. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Those words “if not” demonstrate that these men had hope of something beyond this earthly realm. Their hope was not only in physical deliverance, even though, “for our sakes” (1Co 10:11 and 2Co 4:15), they were physically delivered from the fiery furnace, and like Joseph they were then rewarded with a physical position of rulership in the kingdom of Babylon. Those things physically happened to them, and they are written as types of the spiritual power we will inherit over the kingdoms of this world if we keep our hope in Christ to the end. Without that hope we could not endure the trials which are placed upon us. Without that hope we could not be saved:
Rom 8:24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
Rom 8:25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
This is the same hope Christ had in the sovereign, benevolent, uncompromising work of His Father. Christ was placed by His Father in the same physical position as the three friends of Daniel.
King Nebuchadnezzar offered Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego a way to avoid having to endure the flames of the fiery furnace.
Dan 3:14 Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
Dan 3:15 Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?
Just like them, Christ had also been offered a way to avoid having to endure the shame, the anguish, and the humiliation of the cross.
Luk 4:5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
Luk 4:6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
Luk 4:7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
“For it is delivered unto me” again demonstrates the work of our sovereign, benevolent dictator, God who has come to send a sword and to turn the whole world against His chosen few whom He is now using all this hatred and evil to prepare to be trusted, proven, servant kings and priests in His soon-coming kingdom.
Act 14:22 Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
Rom 8:17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
Rom 8:18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.2Ti 2:12 If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:
We are not saved for our own sakes. Our salvation necessitates our becoming kings and priests in the next age, and then to be used of God as those who will bring life to all who have ever lived and died (1Co 6:2-3).
Rev 1:6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Rev 2:26 And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
Rev 2:27 And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.Rev 5:10 And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.
There is a great parallel between Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and the words of the three Hebrew children spoken to King Nebuchadnezzar. The only difference is that while Daniel’s friends were speaking to the King about their resolve to obey God rather than man, Christ was taking to His Father about His same resolve.
Notice what Daniel’s friends told King Nebuchadnezzar:
Dan 3:17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
Dan 3:18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
Compare those their words to King Nebuchadnezzar to the words of Christ to His Father:
Luk 22:42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
The natural man cannot see it, but Christ, with the same resolve demonstrated by those three men, was also “saved… from death”:
Heb 5:7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
The three Hebrew children were “saved from death” only as types and shadows of what Christ experienced in actual spiritual reality. Their salvation was of their flesh, and it was temporary deliverance from death, while the salvation of the captain of our faith is spiritual and permanent. That is the salvation we are all hoping to achieve through Christ.
Faith, hope and patience are not all one and the same, but we cannot have one without the other. We cannot have saving faith without having patience, and we cannot have faith or patience without having the hope by which we are saved.
Luk 21:19 In your patience possess ye your souls.
The three are inseparable, and the degree of these three virtues, we are told, is essential for our salvation and nothing less than a gift from God and a work of His benevolent, dictatorial, sovereign will.
Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Eph 2:9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
Eph 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
It is a wonderful and blessed gift from God to be given to see the Lord’s wicked servants as His wicked, rejected anointed who we are to “touch not”. We may and we must “flee to another… city”, when He uses His sword of wicked men to try us, but we must never lift a finger against the Lord’s own sovereign, wicked, anointed sword.
King Saul is but one of many types of “wicked men, who are thy sword”:
1Sa 24:6 And [David] said unto his men, The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD’S [wicked] anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD.
1Sa 24:7 So David stayed his servants with these words, and suffered them not to rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his way.
1Sa 24:8 David also arose afterward, and went out of the cave, and cried after Saul, saying, My lord the king. And when Saul looked behind him, David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed himself.
1Sa 24:9 And David said to Saul, Wherefore hearest thou men’s words, saying, Behold, David seeketh thy hurt?
1Sa 24:10 Behold, this day thine eyes have seen how that the LORD had delivered thee to day into mine hand in the cave: and some bade me kill thee: but mine eye spared thee; and I said, I will not put forth mine hand against my lord; for he is the LORD’S anointed.
So it is to this day. Wicked men of the world, the basest of men are “the Lord’s anointed… sword”, and when we take up arms against them, we are not “doing that which is good” (Rom 13:3) regardless of how much it may appear that we are doing so by saving the physical lives of others. Saving the physical lives of many others is always the ‘what if’ scenarios with which we are challenged to forsake the doctrine of Christ to save our own flesh and to avoid the persecution which is the certain fruit of being faithful to Christ and His doctrine.
Christ tells us that He has has been given all power in heaven and in earth:
Mat 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Christ is at this very moment sovereign over all men and all earthly rulers. They are merely clay in His hand (Jer 18:4). The great Potter does not consult with or give an accounting to the clay in His hand.
Rom 9:20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Rom 9:21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
Rom 9:22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:2Pe 2:12 But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;
We are told that at the appointed time the beast will turn on the harlot who has ruled him and will “eat her flesh and burn her with fire”:
Rev 17:16 And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
In the outward application of this prophecy, the beast has already turned on the great harlot of religion. That beast is already telling the whole world that “no monotheistic religion is peaceful”. The beast who hates the great harlot, and all of her daughter religions, is actually quoting Christ’s own words to make their point:
Mat 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
Mat 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
Anyone who knows the voice of the True Shepherd, Christ, and who knows and recognizes His doctrine, His “voice”, knows that Christ alone knows the way of peace, and that to say that His doctrine is not a doctrine of peace is an ignorant and blatant lie. The very meaning of Matthew 10:34-38 is verse 39:
Mat 10:36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
Mat 10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Mat 10:38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
Mat 10:39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
It is the doctrine of Christ that until He establishes His kingdom on this earth, His true disciples are commanded “turn the other cheek, [and] resist not evil”:
Mat 5:38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
Mat 5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.Joh 18:36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world [Greek: aion, age], then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
The beast will be dethroned by Christ, and at that time Christ’s servants will, at His command and with the power of His word, fight against the kingdoms of this physical world. They will not need to do so with a physical military, because at that time they will be abundantly supplied with the power of His word, to physically destroy those kingdoms. In the meantime, “the power of His word… His hand” which will and which is destroying the nations, is the physical kingdoms who are already in the process of destroying themselves until ‘a man’s life will be more rare than the golden wedge of Ophir’.
Isa 13:12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
Isa 28:22 Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth.
Jer 5:31 A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for the LORD hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh; he will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith the LORD.
Hos 4:1 Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.
That is exactly what is just now beginning to take place. The Lord’s “consumption… determined upon the whole earth, [His] controversy with the nations [which will] give them that are wicked to the sword”, will all be accomplished by these, the words of God. They take place within first, and when these words are fulfilled “[we] shall know that I am the LORD”. Then those in whom the Lord first fulfills these words will then become the saviors of all the rest of mankind who have ever lived and drawn breath upon this earth.
Exo 9:16 And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.
Exo 14:18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen.
This destruction of Egypt is also revealed as an inward process, within God’s elect as well as in the outward world, in the New Testament:
Rom 9:17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.
Rom 9:18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
Those are the words of our benevolent dictator, sovereign Lord, who came to send a sword and to separate us from this world.
In closing we will consider how…
Mat 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
… has always been compatible with Luke 2:14, but not as Luke 2:14 has been translated:
Luk 2:14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
That verse appears thus in the King James because it was so translated by men who have no concept of what these verses of Luke 17 mean:
Luk 17:20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Luk 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
For us to understand how Matthew 10:34 accords with Luke 2:14 we must be made aware of the truth of Luke 17:21 where we are informed that the only men who will experience the “peace, [and] good will” spoken of in that verse are those who have “the kingdom of God within [them]”.
Here is how that point is to be made. Here is Strong’s definition for the Greek word translated as ‘within’ in Luke 17:21:
G1787
ἐντός
entos
en-tos’
From G1722; inside (adverb or noun): – within.
Total KJV occurrences: 2
That word appears only twice in the New Testament:
G1787
ἐντός
entos
Total KJV Occurrences: 2
within, 2
Mat_23:26, Luk_17:21
But notice form what word G1787 is derived. We are told it is “from G1722”, and what is G1722? Here it is:
G1722
ἐν
en
en
A primary preposition denoting (fixed) position (in place, time or state), and (by implication) instrumentality (medially or constructively), that is, a relation of rest (intermediate between G1519 and G1537); “in”, at, (up-) on, by, etc.: – about, after, against, + almost, X altogether, among, X as, at, before, between, (here-) by (+ all means), for (. . . sake of), + give self wholly to, (here-) in (-to, -wardly), X mightily, (because) of, (up-) on, [open-] ly, X outwardly, one, X quickly, X shortly, [speedi-] ly, X that, X there (-in, -on), through (-out), (un-) to(-ward), under, when, where (-with), while, with (-in). Often used in compounds, with substantially the same import; rarely with verbs of motion, and then not to indicate direction, except (elliptically) by a separate (and different) prep.
This word appears far more often than the Greek word ‘entos’, and one of those entries is Luke 2:14, where we discover that it is translated as “towards’ instead of ‘among’ or even ‘within’, as it is far more often translated. It appears as ‘towards’ only three times.
G1722
ἐν
en
Total KJV Occurrences: 536
among, 119
Mat_2:6, Mat_4:23, Mat_9:35, Mat_11:11, Mat_16:7-8 (2), Mat_20:26-27 (3), Mat_21:38, Mat_26:5, Mat_27:56, Mat_28:15, Mar_6:3-4 (2), Mar_10:43 (2), Mar_15:40, Luk_1:1, Luk_1:25, Luk_1:28, Luk_1:42, Luk_2:44, Luk_7:16, Luk_7:28, Luk_8:7, Luk_9:46, Luk_9:48, Luk_10:3, Luk_16:15, Luk_22:24, Luk_22:26-27 (2), Joh_1:14, Joh_1:26, Joh_7:12, Joh_7:43, Joh_9:16, Joh_10:19, Joh_11:54, Joh_15:24, Act_4:12, Act_4:34, Act_5:12, Act_6:8, Act_12:18, Act_13:26, Act_15:7, Act_15:12, Act_15:22, Act_17:34, Act_18:11, Act_20:25, Act_20:32, Act_21:19, Act_21:34, Act_24:21, Act_25:5-6 (2), Act_26:4, Act_26:18, Act_28:29, Rom_1:5-6 (2), Rom_1:13 (2), Rom_2:24, Rom_8:29, Rom_11:17, Rom_12:3, Rom_15:9, Rom_16:7, 1Co_1:10-11 (2), 1Co_2:2, 1Co_2:6, 1Co_3:3, 1Co_3:18, 1Co_5:1 (2), 1Co_6:5, 1Co_6:7, 1Co_11:18-19 (3), 1Co_11:30, 1Co_15:12, 2Co_1:19, 2Co_10:1, 2Co_11:26, 2Co_12:12, Gal_1:16, Gal_2:2, Gal_3:1, Gal_3:5, Eph_2:3, Eph_3:8, Eph_5:3, Phi_2:15, Col_1:27, 1Th_1:5, 1Th_2:7, 1Th_5:12-13 (2), 2Th_3:7, 2Th_3:11, Jam_1:26, Jam_3:6, Jam_3:13, Jam_4:1, Jam_5:13-14 (2), 1Pe_2:12, 1Pe_5:1-2 (2), 2Pe_2:1 (2), 2Pe_2:8, 3Jo_1:9
within, 13
Mat_3:9, Mat_9:3, Mat_9:21, Luk_3:8 (2), Luk_7:39, Luk_7:49, Luk_12:17, Luk_18:3-4 (2), Luk_19:44, Luk_24:32, Rom_8:23
into, 12
Luk_5:16 (2), Luk_23:42, Joh_3:35, Joh_5:4, Act_7:45, Rom_1:23, Rom_1:25, 2Co_8:16, Gal_1:6, 1Ti_3:16, Rev_14:10
toward, 3
Luk_2:14, Rom_15:5, 1Jo_4:9
As is most often the case, the more literal translations catch this glaring mistake which appears to make the scriptures contradict themselves. This is how Rotherham’s translates this verse:
Luk 2:14 Glory, in the highest, unto God! And, on earth, peace, among men of goodwill.
In other words, ‘Peace among men in whom the King and His kingdom resides in this age.’
Luk 17:20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Luk 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
I hope our study today has helped you to see that our Lord does not need, and indeed will not tolerate, our ideas in accomplishing what He already had written in His book before we were ever born and before the world began, simply because He really is a benevolent dictator, whose ways are as high about ours as the heavens are above the earth. (Psa 139:16 and Isa 55:9).
His ‘sword’ which He sends in this earth with which we wage spiritual warfare, and with which He separates us from our families and friends in this world, is not a physical sword, but it is the sword of His word:
Eph 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
Other related posts
- God Is A Benevolent Dictator Who Came "Not To Send Peace But A Sword" (December 27, 2015)