Replies

Why excerpt? If you want a discussion of Free Republic, why not bring the text to Free Republic?

- - - -

Jesus and Guns Part 1 (Repost by Request)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - April 17, AD 2011 9:52 PM MST
Originally posted November 27, AD 2010

We need to have a frank discussion about Christianity, war and pacifism, because we may all be making direct decisions about these huge questions in our own lives before long. Some scripture popped into my mind earlier this week, and I was able to really dig into it yesterday. I was taken aback by what I found – but in a good way. I hope that this will help bring some clarity, or at the very least start some discussions. I have been thinking all day about whether or not my exegesis is being influenced by my own personal leanings on this subject. Perhaps it is. You will need to be the judge of that – but consider yourself disclaimed.

First, a small but necessary sidetrack. I have been asked many times about which Bible translation I use or think is best. I used to hemm and haw and say something non-committal about the King James version. I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt what translation we need to be using. We need to be using the Douay-Rheims translation which was begun in 1582 and completed in 1610. It is only two steps removed from the original texts. The Douay-Rheims is the direct translation of St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. St. Jerome was commissioned to translate the entire canon of scripture into Latin in the year 382 in preparation for the Church Councils which finally set and canonized the Bible, particularly the Coucil of Carthage in 387. St. Jerome worked from ORIGINAL texts as much as possible, and translated from Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. The Douay-Rheims is the direct translation from St. Jerome’s translation of the original texts into modern English. Remember, English as we recognize it today has only been around for 550 years or so. If you were to be dropped into England earlier than the year 1450, you would have a very, very difficult time communicating. So, the Douay-Rheims has between it and the original texts only St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. I personally use a Bible that is Douay-Rheims side-by-side with the Latin Vulgate. As I pick up more and more Latin, I find myself reading the Latin, and using the English as a cross-check. You’re about to see that this is all very, very important.

Let’s go to Luke 22 – the Last Supper. Christ has just instituted the Eucharist and the Christian liturgy. By doing this in anticipation of His death on the Cross the next day, He has made Calvary the centerpoint of time. He has drawn the Old Testament forward to the Cross, and He has pulled the time after Calvary backward. Every moment in time will now pass through and be reconciled to Calvary. (“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.” John 12:32) What I want you to appreciate is the enormousness of the occasion. This is one of the most important things that has ever or will ever happen. This isn’t just a farewell meal. The entire world and everyone in it is utterly pivoting on what is happening in this room.

Let’s go to verse 35 through 38. Jesus has just told Peter that he will deny Him three times.

“When I sent you without purse and scrip and shoes, did you want anything? But they said: Nothing. Then said He unto them: But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a scrip: and he that hath not, let him sell his coat and buy a sword. For I say to you that this that is written must yet be fulfilled in Me. And with the wicked was he reckoned. For the things concerning Me have an end. But they said: Lord, behold, here are two swords. And He said to them: It is enough.”

FYI: “scrip” means money. What He is telling them is that they are about to encounter evil, and in preparation for this they need to do whatever they need to do in order to prepare. He is saying that they need to reallocate their assets and “buy a sword”. In Latin, “emat gladium”. Emat = buy, purchase, acquire, procure. Gladium = sword.

Wow. I can hear the hippies screaming from here. “He didn’t really mean it! He wasn’t speaking literally! He was speaking figuratively!”

He was speaking, as God Almighty almost always does, on multiple levels, INCLUDING THE LITERAL. Oh, yes. I’ll concede that we should take from this scripture His call to reject materialism and gird ourselves for spiritual battle. No doubt. But if we delude ourselves into thinking that this is the ONLY sense in which He is speaking, we are missing something huge. Look at the last verse:

“But they said: Lord, behold, here are two swords. And He said to them: It is enough.”

Okay. Stop, stop, stop. Hold the phone. Put out the cat. First of all, this proves that He was speaking in the literal sense in addition to the figurative sense. But more importantly, do you realize what this means? At least two of the apostles arrived at the Upper Room wearing side arms, which they then took off so they could sit on the floor around the low table that was used in those days. What this also means is that there were side arms present, in the room, at the Last Supper.

Now here is where all of the hippies are going to absolutely lose it. What is the contemporary, technological equivalent of a sword? What is considered a “side arm” today? That’s right. A handgun. Now you can scream and spit and stomp and rage and retch all you want, but you know I’m right. The apostles report that they have two swords, and Jesus says, “It is enough.” I saw in my research that some scholars try to paint Jesus as snapping at the apostles, trying to translate “Satis est (It is enough)” as “Oh, enough already!” I don’t hear that at all. I hear Him simply saying that two swords will be enough. This is where we get into huge problems with modern quasi-Christian “scholars” projecting their own agendas onto their translation of the Bible. Here are a couple of examples of bad, agenda-driven translations:

“Enough of that!” (Holman Christian Standard)

“Enough of that; no more sword talk!” (The Message – not a joke, they completely fabricated that second phrase.)

Even if you go with these false translations, you’re still stuck with the fact that there were side arms IN THE ROOM at the Last Supper. What, are you going to argue that Jesus didn’t KNOW that there were swords in the room? Who is Jesus? He’s God Almighty. He knows EVERYTHING. Further, if this was just a horrible mistake or coincidence, why would Jesus make specific reference to swords and arming one’s self, thus leading the apostles to inventory the weapons arsenal in the room? FURTHER, why would the Holy Spirit, through Luke, put all of this down in writing? Why are we all sitting in front of our respective computer screens, poring through our Bibles, reading and discussing this 1977 years after the fact? Dude. It is not sufficient at this point to simply declare me a bloodthirsty, gun-toting war monger and then walk away. You have to refute and rebut the logical progression I just laid out. Good luck with that.

Now, let’s go to verse 49. They’re in the Garden, and Jesus has gone through His agony. Now Judas, with the Jewish guards, approaches. Judas kisses Jesus to show the guards which man they should arrest. The apostles see this and ask, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” Dude, they’re STILL ARMED. If Jesus was disgusted with the swords back in the Upper Room, why are the apostles wearing SWORDS in the Garden? Don’t you think that hippie, pacifist Jesus would have told them to LEAVE THE SWORDS BEHIND? And then scolded them? He didn’t do that. They put on their swords and walked to the Garden. You know why? Because Jesus is neither a hippie nor a pacifist. Lord, I want to be like Jesus. In my heart. In my heart. Lord, I want to be like Jesus, in my heart. Next, Peter (and we know it was Peter from John 18) struck one of the guards and cut off his ear.

Jesus and Guns Part 2 (Repost by Request)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - April 17, AD 2011 9:48 PM MST

“And they that were about Him, seeing what would follow, said to Him: Lord, shall we strike with the sword? And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.”
So just to make certain that we are all appreciating this, Peter, the prince of the apostles, is carrying a side arm and knows what to do with it. Now this next verse is the one that really surprised me:

“But Jesus answering, said: Suffer ye thus far. And when He had touched his ear, He healed him.”

Huh? What does “Suffer ye thus far” mean? Hmmm. Let’s look at some contemporary translations and see what they say:

“Stop! No more of this.” (New American Standard)

“Let them be. Even in this.” (The Message)

“No more of this!” (Holman Christian Standard)

Uh-oh. This is not good. These modern translations aren’t anywhere close to the Douay-Rheims. The words “stop” and “no” were obviously part of the English lexicon when the Douay-Rheims was made, and they are not used in this verse. Something is wrong here. In order to figure this out, let’s go to the Latin. “Sinite usque huc.”

Sinite: second person plural active imperative of “sino” Sino: let, permit

Okay, so sinite means “you all let” or “you all permit” in the imperative case, which means a command. (That makes sense! Like “suffer the little children to come unto Me” means “permit the little children . . . “)

Usque: adverb meaning “all the way”

Huc: adverb meaning here, hence, to this place, to this point

You all permit + all the way + here.

Jesus isn’t scolding them. Jesus isn’t saying “no more of this” and barking at them to stop. Jesus is giving them the command to hold and stand down. “You all permit all the way here.” This is a HUGE distinction. If a military commander gives his men the order to hold fire and stand down, is he criticizing them? Is he attacking and rebuking their use of weaponry? Is he communicating that they should be pacifists? Is he rejecting their vocations as soldiers? No. He is simply telling them to hold their fire and stand down because there is, at the moment, a tactical reason to do so. That is EXACTLY what is going on here. Jesus isn’t rebuking the apostles because they are doing exactly what they should do – they are defending their Beloved Friend. If your spouse, or your child, or your best friend, or whoever you love most in this world was being physically attacked and seized, what would you do? What would every fiber of your being be screaming out for you to do? Come to their defense and aid. This is called the Natural Law. God MADE us this way. God made us with the instinctual drive to physically fight to defend those we love. Failure to do so is the sin of cowardice. Cowardice is a violation of both of the Great Commandments: to love God above all else, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Cowardice places the self above both neighbor and God. And in the case of the apostles, they were engaging both commandments directly in the person of Jesus.

This is why Jesus had to give the order to hold and stand down. He had to specifically release them from the Great Commandments in that moment. Why? Two reasons: Obviously, it was the will of the Trinity that Jesus be arrested and crucified. These things had to happen. The apostles couldn’t be expected to understand this at the time, so there was no expectation for them to quietly sit and watch as Jesus was arrested.

Remember who Jesus is. Jesus is God. He knows everything and everyone. Jesus knew every one of the men who came to arrest Him. Not only did He know them, He loved them all infinitely. He MADE every one of them. He wove them together in their mothers’ wombs. He knew every detail of their lives, every thought, every deed. And He loved them. Every single one of them. He also had a plan for every one of them. Like, oh I dunno, CONVERSION? Can you imagine the amount of grace those guards were exposed to? They got to TOUCH Him. They got to look right at Him, and speak to Him. He probably locked eyes with every one of them at some point. Don’t discount that. Even though they were absolutely horrible to Him, they were primed for conversion. We know that Malchus, the guy who got his ear cut off, and then was healed by Jesus, converted. We don’t know about the other guards, but we do know that thousands and thousands of Jews were converted in the first years after the Resurrection. We also know who the first Gentile convert was. It was the Roman Centurion Longinus. Longinus was the Roman soldier who drove the spear into Jesus’ side to make certain He was dead, instead of breaking His legs. When the spear went in, it bursted the cardiac edema, or the water that had built up around Jesus’ Sacred Heart as He died of heart failure. Longinus, standing beside and below Jesus, was sprayed with that water. Baptism. When the water had all come out, Jesus’ Precious Blood sprayed out. Eucharist. The first Gentile convert was a man who had just spent the past nine hours participating in the torture and execution of Jesus. Grace. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of the Jewish guards in the garden were converted too. So we can see an additional reason, beyond the obvious, why Jesus told the apostles to stand down. It was His will that some or all of the guards survive and convert, not die in battle in that moment.

Finally, some might reference Jesus’ words in Matthew’s gospel:

“Then Jesus saith to him: Put up again thy sword into its place: for all that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”

Do you know what I think Jesus is doing here? I think this may be a veiled prophecy about islam. Islam teaches that the way to convert people is to put a sword to their neck and give them a choice: convert or die. This is referred to as “the Sword of islam”. This is how all other evil, satanic systems operate as well. Marxism leaps to mind. In Marxist tyranny, people are arrested and imprisoned, given the choice to “learn the new system” or die. In addition to a veiled prophecy, Jesus is telling Peter that Christianity does not and will not convert with the sword. It converts only with love. AND, He is telling Peter and us that Christians do not and will not punish apostates (people who leave the faith - like Judas) with the sword. Both islam and Marxism execute apostates. But the second phrase, “shall perish with the sword” is very telling. Jesus is saying that those who “take the sword” and try to convert people to, and hold people in their evil systems by force will in the end be killed WITH THE SWORD. Who will be wielding that sword? Christ will be victorious, so doesn’t it stand to reason that the Army of Christ will be the one wielding the sword in the second phrase? Boy, this sure sounds like a ratification of self-defense and just war, doesn’t it?

So there you go. Like I said, I’m no authority. I’m just a chick with a Douay-Rheims/Vulgate Bible and a Latin dictionary. I hope you find this interesting, and I hope it spurs thought and discussion. I also hope it drives home the point that the translation of the Bible that we use is utterly critical. It isn’t a mere “detail”. It is the difference between the Truth and a lie. I think my exegesis is rooted in Scripture, logic and love. I don’t think I’m simply fabricating things that aren’t there in order to support my own personal philosophical leanings - but then, I’m not a “theologian”. I guess we’ll all find out - someday.