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NASB | Matthew 16:18 "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Matthew 16:18 "And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades (death) will not overpower it [by preventing the resurrection of the Christ]. [Eph 1:22; 4:15; 5:23; Col 1:18] |
Bible Question: Did Jesus really intened to found the church? |
Bible Answer: Jesus was not the founder of the church for many reasons; the "founders" of the church were men who created the church after Jesus's death, burial, and resserection, and I do not believe he had any intentions to form a church. When we study Jesus within the proper Jewish context, we discover a Jew. At every point, what the Gospels tell us about Jesus, where we have reason to believe that their information is authentic,fits into Judaism. It does not fit very well into present day Christianity. In fact if we start from Christianity and work back to discover that it began with Jesus, we find very few links from the early Christian church to Jesus-so few, indeed. that only with some ingenuity can any connection be traced between them. Let us put the matter in more pictorial terms. In our western world, we imagine Jesus as a tall, blond hair and beard,blue eyes, and wearing a white robe(as Hollywood has in their many portrials of him). The truth is he was probably short by modern standards, dark-skinned, black beard, long untrimmed hair, and earlocks worn by all Jewish men of his day. We know he wore fringes on his garments(tzitzit), as commanded by G*D in Numbers 15:37, he wore tefillin(called phylacteries in the Gospels)as outlined in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 when he prayed formally, and perhaps at other times, and took it for granted that others would do the same; he objected only when they were ostentatious in wearing them in public, as some did in his day. He personally obeyed all the commandments, ethical and ritual, and took part in the sacrifical worship of the Temple when he was in Jerusalem. As did Paul who followed him, see Acts 21:26-29. I could go on and on but I will finish up with this, Jesus was scathing in his criticsm of religious phoniness, it was not because he opposed Judasim, or regarded it as intrinisically defective, but because he wanted the Torah(Law) to be fulfilled by everyone as completely and perfectly as possible, from the heart. In Yeshua's name |