https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-uncomfortable-subject-jesus-addressed-more-than-anyone-else/
"A friend once challenged me to show her where Jesus talks about hell in the Gospels. Even a cursory read-through shows Jesus talked about it plenty. In fact, Jesus talked about hell more than any other person in the Bible. In , he describes a great chasm over which “none may cross from there to us.” In , Jesus tells of a time when people will be separated into two groups, one entering into his presence, the other banished to “eternal fire.” Jesus doesn’t only reference hell, he describes it in great detail. He says it is a place of eternal torment (), of unquenchable fire (), where the worm does not die (), where people will gnash their teeth in anguish and regret (), and from which there is no return, even to warn loved ones (). He calls hell a place of “outer darkness” (), comparing it to “Gehenna” (), which was a trash dump outside the walls of Jerusalem where rubbish was burned and maggots abounded. Jesus talks about hell more than he talks about heaven, and describes it more vividly. There’s no denying that Jesus knew, believed, and warned about the absolute reality of hell."
https://tbn.uk/jesus-top-5-teaching-topics/
The Kingdom of YHWH
YHWH The Father
Faith
Money
Sin/Satan
https://ayebeleef.design.blog/2020/08/13/some-statistics-of-jesus-words/
https://thechristianexile.com/2024/04/27/what-jesus-talked-about-the-most/
AI Summary FWIW
- The Central Theme: Across the Gospels (especially Matthew, Mark, and Luke), nearly every major sermon, teaching, and parable points back to the reality, arrival, and nature of God's kingdom.
- Opening Message: In Mark 1:15, Jesus summarizes His entire public ministry with: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel".
- Common Misconception: Many people hear the claim that Jesus spoke about money more than anything else because 11 of His parables involve finances. However, scholars and resources like RELEVANT point out that money was typically used as an illustration or metaphor rather than the core subject—for comparison, food appears in even more parables
6 comments:
That was my major criticism throughout Dan's three-part series about "The Bible and Economics". He basically included every utterance of Jesus in which money, wealth or riches was mentioned as if it was the point He was making when He said it.
Clearly these people haven't seriously and prayerfully studied Scripture.
Yeah, Jesus used money, debt, and other examples to make larger/spiritual points. He wasn't always making an economic point. It's bizarre how Dan can hide behind "figurative language" to obfuscate what is clear in the text, yet be so woodenly literal when it suits his preconceptions.
What I find funny is that one of my "sources" is TGC which is not conservative in any sense of the word, while TBN is hardly the most orthodox of sources.
I suspect that Dan's explanation would be that The Kingdom of YHWH (which he would relabel as something else because he doesn't like the idea of YHWH as a king with a kingdom) is what he's talking about. It's Dan redefining what The Kingdom of YHWH is to suit his subjective, personal, human, hunches.
I've been spending a lot of hours watching videos by Chad O. Jackson, and his stuff about the "Social Gospel"...which was what non-Christian, the Rev. Dr. Marxist Luther King Jr. preached...sounds incredibly similar to what we hear from Dan. Indeed, King popularized the term "Beloved Community". It makes me wonder to whom Dan was listening when he eventually rejected his alleged "conservative" upbringing to embrace this graceless aberration of Christianity.
The problem with the Social Gospel is that it takes something that Jesus clearly taught (care for the poor) and expands that into something beyond what Jesus or the 1st century Church practiced.
One thing I noticed was that in the Gospels and Acts the care for the poor was primarily focused at those who were part of the Church, not broadly based across the whole society.
Care for the poor was clearly not a function of the government but was focused in the local community of believers.
I'm not suggesting that the believers refused to care for anyone who was not a believer, just that there is no indication of caring for those not believers was not the priority.
I'm also not suggesting that we 21st century Christians should primarily focus our care for the poor on fellow believers, or that we shouldn't care for the poor wherever they are found. However, I also do not believe that this justifies subcontracting this responsibility for care to the government. Which is more likely to actually care for people, the government or local communities of believers.
Finally, I believe that the Social Gospel tends toward a couple of errors.
1. That salvation comes through "good works".
2. That meeting people physical/material needs, with no regard for their spiritual needs ignores the Gospel part of the name.
"What good does it do to gain the whole world (or even food or clothing), but to lose one's soul?"
Like a lot of things (the Prosperity Gospel for example) the Social Gospel takes something which is clearly present in Jesus teachings, and gives it a disproportionate focus.
Post a Comment