Saturday, May 09, 2009

The "ALL" & "WORLD" passages

When developing an understanding of what the Bible teaches, you must wrestle with all the bible, not just the bits that explicitly back your view.... so we should think about about the ALL and WORLD passages

POINT: The bible uses words like ALL and WORLD when it does not mean every human being.

example
John 12:19 The Pharisees said to one another, "Look, the whole world has gone after him."

Does anyone seriously think the entire population of earth was following Jesus?

ALSO:
Luke 2:1 (“all the world”) does not envisage the entire population of the planet taking part in a Roman census any more than Matthew 3:5 (“all Judea”) means to
suggest that every man, woman, and child in Judea was baptised by John.

--Lee Gattis, in a pretty dense but helpful paper

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