024006 Finding God in the mysteries of every day-Free Devotional
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Matthew 16 18b …I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail…
Considering all of the bloodshed in the name of religion, both in internecine and interdenominational as well as the inevitable conflicts arising from the adherents of groups with different interpretations of the identity and activity if God it is little wonder that most of the world seems to think that denial is the best approach to the whole question. However, the “wait and see” approach will always result in failure.
So, I wonder, just exactly what are the “gates of hell” and how does the church go about “assaulting or breaching those gates, and to what end? First of al , hell and Hades, sheol, and Gehenna seem to be used interchangeably in the Greek New Testament. Second, the usage here translated as hell is actually –pulai adou (pulai hadou) would actually translate as gates or portal to Hades. As you may already know in Roman mythology Hades was the ruler of the underworld or death. So, by inference, and this is most likely the that way Peter would have understood the phrase, Jesus was implying that through the testimony that Jesus is the messiah of God death would be conquered by those who followed Jesus. How foolish then seems all the warring and battling and killing in the name of peace.
More to come…
Larry M Lawrence- Mysteries 