What Is “This”?

I received the following question:

What is the ‘this’ referred to in Joel 2:28?  The Hebrew word for this is ken.  What is this?

It is difficult to say for certain. “This” could be the prophet’s own days, and he is saying it will come to pass once these evil days are ended. In Acts 2:17, this is explained as meaning “in the last (eschatos) days.” If this is explanatory rather than supplemental, it could tell us that this is what the prophet meant.

Talents Are…?

I received the following question:

I have a question regarding Matthew 25:30. “Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This seems to be saying that he has been condemned, i.e. thrown into hell. So wasting your talents can get you tossed into hell?

I have heard people in talking about this parable speak of our “talents and abilities.” They play off of the fact that we have an English word “talent” that is basically the same as the Greek word talanta for a unit of money. Just because this coincidence exists does not mean that what we think of as “talents” is what was represented in the parable. The word El means “God” in Hebrew. The word el means “the” in Spanish. We cannot conclude from this that “God” and “the” are synonymous, or symbolic for each other.

What Is Love?

I received the following questions:

What is love? What does it mean to love God, especially in the context of Mark 12:30,31. And, what does it mean to love your neighbor? Does our attitude of love have different characteristics to non-Christians as to Christians? Does 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 have any ties? And, then is there a significance that is important to us when it love is mentioned as what seems better than faith and hope?

Another thing I would like to take in to consideration is Galatians 5:22-23, the fruits of the Spirit; I want to understand them more, this includes love, but the other qualities of the fruit of the Spirit I think are intertwined. And then, there is Colossians 3:12-14 where love is mentioned as binding the other virtues mentioned there.

So, you see, I really want to understand love.  And, maybe it is a thing that will take time.  Please examine these with me, and give any insight that you might have.  I think in order to love God, love others, and to love myself, I need to get a deeper understanding of what love is.

Ancient Greek actually had four words for love.

How Long is a “Time”?

I received the following question:

I’m looking into some prophecy claims.  One of the claims is that when the bible refers to ‘times’ as in ‘7 times’ that one time equals 360 years.  So 7 times would be 7 x 360 years.  Is there anything in the bible to back up this claim of a time being the same as 360 years?

The word for “time” that they are referring to is, somewhat unfortunately, Aramaic, so it only really occurs in the book of Daniel (Daniel chapters 2-7 are in Aramaic, whereas only one other chapter and a few scattered verses are Aramaic elsewhere.) But it is pretty easy to establish from its usage in Daniel that a “time” is not 360 years.

The passage they are probably trying to make to be 7 X 360 years is Daniel 7:25.

“Last Days” in Hebrews

I received the following question:

So what is the “last days” of Hebrews?  It is my understanding that the last days here tells us that when the current age is ending and the new age is here (i.e. the great ingathering of Jews) that the book of Hebrews is the message to be given to those Jews.  If this is the case, the book could be dispensationally written in the Acts period or in the Grace period. Also it could be written by anyone who God inspired (likely one of the apostles).

Hebrews 1:1. God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2. has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;

Remember that eschatos days are the resultant days. They result from what has gone before. In this case, the reference is to all that the prophets spoke and all that they predicted, by the inspiration of God, would come. As a result of these words, and of the truth of God that they had expressed, the days had come in which God had spoken to the people to whom Paul wrote by His Son. The people to whom Paul wrote were Israelites living in the Acts period, which was the early part of the Kingdom of God. They were living in the time that all the prophets had promised would come…the days that resulted from God’s promise to bring them in. So yes, they were in the eschatos days.

Definition of “Fornication”

I received the following question:

Nathan, I have been studying the word fornication because someone I love has decided to move in together. They will be getting married hopefully and I was surprised to find these meanings of the word. I would like your opinion. Thanks.

It becomes difficult to glean meanings from our English Bibles when one English word is used to translate multiple Greek words. It is clear our translators used “fornication” as a kind of “catch-all” word for multiple sexual sins. The Greek words seem to also be catch-alls in many cases, although they have different shades of meaning.

Divine Interchange Applied to “Owlam” and “‘Ad”

I received the following question:

In 2 Corinthians 9:9 Paul quotes Psalm 112:9 “He scattered abroad, He gave to the poor, His righteousness endures forever.” The word for “forever” in 2 Corinthians is Aion, and throughout my studies I’ve seen that it matches up exactly with the Old Testament’s Owlam. However in this particular match up we find the word ‘Ad in Psalm 112:9 and the question arises, does Ad follow suit? Do all three mean the same thing?

This is a very interesting point you bring up. A quick study of the word shows that “for ‘Ad” is a common phrase in the Old Testament. Just as common seems to be “for owlam and ‘ad,” and just three times, “for ‘ad and owlam.” The two seem to be used together quite often, much more than ‘ad is used on its own.

Divine Interchange Applied to YHWH

I received, in part, the following comments:

The rule of Divine Interchange states that any New Testament quotation of the Old Testament provides a divinely inspired linkage between the Hebrew and the Greek. This enables a translator to have a divine equivalence between the two words…There are many dozens of occurrences in the New Testament where the Greek word ‘kyrios’ is used for the tetragrammaton in Old Testament quotations.  There are only two times when the word ‘theos’ is used instead of ‘kyrios’. Applying the rule of Divine Interchange one can replace every occurrence of ‘kyrios’ with ‘YHVH’.  Doing this there are occurrences where a created being is referred by the tetragrammaton…There are some places where using the tetragrammaton does seem out of place.  Such as in Revelation 7:14 where we see John refer to one of the elders from around the throne of God as ‘kyrios’.  Another place in I Peter 3:6 has the matriarch Sarah referring to Abraham as ‘kyrios’.  Again the tetragrammaton seems out of place.  Also Jesus says in Matthew 10:25 that a slave can attain to the same level as his ‘kyrios’.  Taken seriously this could bring about a heresy if the tetragrammaton were used.  So clearly there appear to be some problems with taking the rule of Divine Interchange to its logical conclusion.

You make an interesting study, and do point out correctly that there is an exception regarding the Law of Divine Interchange here. However, I do not believe that this breaks down the law, or that there is a problem here taking the law to its logical conclusion.

The Sheep and the Shepherd: An Introduction to John 10

In the tenth chapter of John, we have a beautiful picture of Christ as the Good Shepherd caring for His sheep.  This is a passage that many in the churches of today have taken to themselves as a picture of their relationship to their Savior.  Yet I think that in order to truly understand the meaning of this passage and what the Lord would have us to learn and know about it, we need to realize that this picture of the Lord as a shepherd has its root in the figurative language and the promises of the Old Testament.

Let us look at several passages from the Old Testament that have to do with the shepherd and the sheep.  First, let’s look at Psalm 95:6-7.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand.

Here we clearly see the picture, just like John 10, of a people who are the sheep of the LORD.

Souls in Genesis

In our last message, we had been studying the meaning of the words “spirit” and “soul” as they are used in Scripture. To do this, merely looking at all the occurrences of these words in our English Bibles is not enough. Many times, our translators have hidden the truth concerning these words, and what the Lord means when He uses them, by translating the Hebrew and Greek words by different words when their usage doesn’t fit the modern conception of what these words mean. To get God’s truth, rather than man’s re-written truth, we must examine the original Hebrew words that are translated “spirit” and “soul.”

The Hebrew word for “spirit” is ruach. In our last message, we examined all the occurrences of ruach, and established the different meanings that this word has in the book of Genesis. We discovered the following four meanings of the word “spirit” in the book of Genesis: