{"id":6072,"date":"2015-07-18T21:39:20","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T21:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=6072"},"modified":"2015-07-18T21:39:20","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T21:39:20","slug":"matthew-1112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/6072\/matthew-1112\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 11:12"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pastor John,<\/span><\/p>\n

I like your translation of Matthew 11:12, especially the “being earnestly sought” – which is the 3rd definition for biazo. (The transliteration of the word found in the Greek text.)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Is this verse basically saying that for many, the kingdom of heaven is being sought by some other means than what God has ordained (such as seeking the kingdom of heaven “forcibly” by the will of the flesh, \u200bor the use of \u200bceremonies\u200b, etc.)?\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n

Your Translation:\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n

“12. The kingdom of heaven is being earnestly sought, from the days of John the Baptizer until now, and the forceful are seizing upon it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Vince<\/span><\/p>\n

=============<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bHi Vince,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Matthew 11:12 is an extraordinarily difficult verse to understand and translate. I came to my translation partly based on the fact that John the Baptizer was \u200bnot in the kingdom of God, even though he was \u200bthe first to declare the kingdom of God to be “at hand”, or near. \u200bWe know that John was not in the kingdom of God because \u200bnobody but Jesus was. The holy Ghost was not yet given (Jn. 7:39; Rom. 14:17); \u200btherefore, John could only pr\u200boclaim it\u200bs nearness\u200b.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

So, when Jesus said the\u200bse\u200b words in Matthew 11:12, \u200bit seems unlikely that \u200bhe \u200bwas saying what the King James and other translations have: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”\u200b \u200bThat translation \u200bmight be seen as suggesting \u200bthat John\u200b was \u200bin \u200bthe kingdom of God \u200bwith Jesus, \u200band \u200bso, their cruel maltreatment by men meant the kingdom of God was suffering violence. \u200b On the other hand, although John was not in the kingdom of God, \u200bI do see how that Jesus could say the kingdom was “suffering violence” if those proclaiming it (John and Jesus) were mistreated. But consider the alternative:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

If the gospel that John and Jesus preached had stirred up people to seek the kingdom of God as never before, and if some of those people were zealously (“forcefully”) pursuing it as never before, then Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:12 can be translated as we did.\u200b People were certainly stirred up as never before, and there was great spiritual warfare going on. So, I opted to translate that verse as reflecting that reality.\u200b<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bOf course, \u200bI remain open to a different way of looking at this verse. As I said, it is one of the most difficult verses \u200bin the Bible to understand and translate. But there is my reason for the translation we ended up with.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you for asking about it.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pastor John, I like your translation of Matthew 11:12, especially the “being earnestly sought” – which is the 3rd definition for biazo. (The transliteration of the word found in the Greek text.) Is this verse basically saying that for many, the kingdom of heaven is being sought by some other means than what God has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}