Matthew 24:40-42 … Two in the Field (09/14/16)
“Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left … Keep Awake, therefore, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming.” ~ unknown (Matthew 24:40-42)
If this is not one of the more misunderstood passages in the Bible, it is almost certainly one of the most misinterpreted … You see, standard Christian dogma would have us believing that these verses have Jesus saying that God Himself is coming at some unknown time in the future to gather all the righteous with Him and send them to “heaven above” and cast all others into eternal torment in “Hell below.” And while such an abjectly immoral Soul-sorting might indeed one day take place, it will most certainly not be the heavenly Father of Jesus Christ who does that sorting.
You see, if conservatives are going to take this passage “literally” and use it as license to condemn all those who do not worship God as they do, then they are also required to take all other verses in the New Testament with the same level of exactness – including Matthew 5:48 & 1 John 4:18; two verses that, when combined and read literally, show quite unequivocally that the celestial Father of Jesus Christ will never damn anyone to Hell for any length of time, much less for eternity … Indeed, what kind of a deity would ever do such a horrendous thing, and why would anyone in their right mind (or, better stated, their Right Heart) worship such a capricious Being?
So, that having been said, what could Jesus be saying here instead? What interpretation can we give this passage that harmonizes with the words of Matthew 5:48 & 1 John 4:18 (and indeed all of Jesus’ other biblical teachings)? Well, when we examine Jesus’ own words in the Gospels, it becomes quite clear what he is intending to say with these verses – namely, that we all choose to be either selfishly taking “goats” or selflessly giving “sheep” in every moment of our lives, and that we should all err on the side of the latter in as many moments as possible. For no one knows when death will come for us, and when it does – and our last moment of consciousness stretches out towards what seems like eternity during our final, dying breath – we will suffer to the degree we were self-centered during our lives, and we will know Bliss to the degree were we Generous & Kind.
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