Someone emailed and asked:
Every time I read a passage it either gives me joy or gives me a question. Now I know that God has His people and I know Jesus came only for His lost sheep and I know that there are thorns and thistles. Now I also know that you have addressed this verse in your books but what I cannot remember in which one. A lot of Christians I am sure use this verse in their arguments, that is Mark 16, v. 15, in which Jesus told his disciples to go preach the gospel into all of creation. I have tried to compare this to your book, S.T.E. Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jonah, in which you show that Jonah was told to tell Ninevah that they would perish in 40 days if they did not stop their wickedness. Preaching the gospel to all of creation just flies in the face of casting pearls before swine and giving that which is holy to the dogs, as you write about in great length in many of your writings. In the American Standard Bible it says all creatures. Now I wonder if this gospel is being preached to birds and beasts and trees and rocks and such in light of this one verse.
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My reply:
Correct, I explain this in many books (Does God Repent...? — Can God Change His Mind...?, S.T.E.Commentary on Romans, Apologetic Expositions series, etc.)... in Greek and Hebrew "all" (or even all the earth, the whole world, etc.) does not mean every last possible representative, but all of the specific, limited group that is being spoken of (Caesar did not rule the whole world—only the "Roman world" or the part of the world that Rome in fact did rule; Cyrus did not conquer every nation on earth—only those against whom he went in battle): Christ came for the elect of God's people. Sometimes Scripture refers to this as "many" other times "all"—but the all refers to those of the exclusive, limited group already established in other Scripture. If I have a field full of cattle and I say to my cattle-punchers, "Go out and gather for me all the yearlings of the white cattle". At the end of the day, I may ask them "Did you get all the cattle?" That does not mean every last cattle in the field; it means all those that I had given them instructions to go get.
Anti-intellectualism destroys the understanding of the Biblical text with spurious, humanistic interpretations that have little resemblance to what the Word of God says.
Imagine taking a novel and halfway through the novel taking a bottle of white-out and a pen, and changing the name of the villain in the text to that of the good guy, and the name of the good guy to the villain; and randomly changing the names of other key persons in the novel to the names of those who were insignificant nobodies mentioned only once in passing, like a shoe-shine boy, or someone standing reading a newspaper by a fruit stand, or a petty criminal that had been arrested by a cop and carried off in one 30-second portion of the novel and never mentioned again. It would make the novel UNINTELLIGIBLE. So do modernist, humanist, liberal interpretations of the Word of God—making it of none effect.
The same has been done to our Constitution through spurious interpretation.
A similar thing occurs with words that are used incorrectly, anti-intellectually, such with the word / concept of "favorite". If everything, as young children think, is their "favorite"—then nothing is favorite. They, in their immature minds, cannot comprehend reality. Likewise the dilemma of modern "Christians". The majority of Christians engage in "Kindergarten Theology" based upon ignorance and humanistic "feelings" of how fallen, sinful, even godless people think God is required to be, think, and act. God shall laugh at them in derision before sentencing them to destruction: those who have thrown off the moral boundaries in all areas that He established.
ALL THE PROPHETS said that God would regather whom He scattered: His sheep. Having assembled the fishers and hunters, God does not then say, "Okay; there's been change of plans: We were just going to look for and bring sheep back into the fold, but now we are going to gather the wolves and pigs and dogs and snakes and scorpions too. Won't that be fun...?"
God's Word will not contradict itself... so when one verse later says something that 'seems to' contradict a previously established truth in earlier Scripture, that subsequent verse is only to be understood IN THE CONTEXT of what God originally said, because He will not lie or change His Mind. However, what modern "Christians" do is "throw out" the older passage (as if it "expired" and "went bad") and cling to the new in the interpretation that they want to believe because it makes them "feel good"—which is idolatry. They also engage in "Smorgasbord Theology"—they pick and choose what they want from God's Word, and if something does not suit their fancy, like a tough piece of meat or strong-tasting vegetables that have the nutrition that they need, they throw it all out as unwanted garbage and go back for more strawberry shortcake. They have the gall to call God and Christ their "Lord", when He is not their Lord. They don't obey Him. They "pick and choose" what and when they feel like obeying—and that is not obedience: It is doing what "self" wants (and that self is a false god—a very weak, unholy, and confused god). It is the duty of servants / sons to conform to the will of the master / father; not vice-versa (which characterizes modern "Christianity").
Remember, as I explain in some of my books, that you are playing "Spiritual Simon Sez": don't let any false interpretation or any person fool you. Keep your eyes of what God DECLARED and even PROMISED. The Scriptures must be considered as a whole. Each verse is not its "own little Bible" with its own jurisdiction into which other verses are not allowed to encroach. The whole is in perfect harmony. Any interpretation that is disharmonious with what God established is a spurious interpretation.
If I say, "Guess how many pennies are in my pocket I will give them to you". When you guess correctly, I will then say, "Okay, I am going to give you all the pennies". —all the pennies in the world? OF COURSE NOT. All those in my pocket that I said that I would give you.
In the parable of the fishes (given after the parable of the tares) many fish were drawn into the net, MANY were not kept but the bad (rotten, putrid) cast into a furnace of fire. None of the fish drawn in a net were so drawn by the choice of the fisher; even as with a single hook and line, you have no power over which fish takes the bait—you throw back those that are unclean / undesireable... or if they are a destructive species of the native fish, you use them for fertilizer or feed the cats and dogs with them.
God said that He would make a full end of all the nations whither He scattered His people, but that He would not make a full end of Israel. The purpose of "go ye into all the world" is to find LOST ISRAEL* scattered throughout the world; the so-called (in such passages) "Gentiles" which is an abbreviation for Israel scattered among the 'Gentiles'." Gentiles, of course, is a spurious, meaningless word. The Hebrew goy/goyim and Greek ethnos/ethney are generic collective nouns and can refer to ANYONE and CONTEXT ALONE determines exactly to whom the words refer in any given passage; it is no different with the many Hebrew or Greek words for "stranger"—and it is no different with PRONOUNS.
[* —not the "Jews" or "Israelis", who are IMPOSTERS, who supplanted the tiny remnant of TRUE Israel that returned to the Land of Israel and tried to regain it from all the aliens, and were only partially successful. In Christ's day, the land was a "mixed multitude" and thus Christ spoke in parables in public because the truth was meant only for His sheep. God's true Israel appeared in Europe as the Angles, Saxons (sons of Isaac), Danes (Dan), Jutes (Judah), Goths (tribe of Gad [pronounced Gawd], which means, "to invade, overcome") around the same time that 99.9% of Israel "disappeared" after their Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. See my, Uncovering the Mysteries of Your Hidden Inheritance, and God's Chosen People. Even now, Christendom is being invaded by aliens, dispossessing us and stealing our names and spuriously replacing us, even as the Jews did. The Jews are not Judah, they stole the name of Judah / Israel; they are the Edomite-Canaanites: the very enemies of true Israel. See also my, Calling the Remnant..., and Going Ape....]
Thus, fishing for the exact type of fish that you would is like the old saying, "You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince". You have to open a lot of oysters before you find a pearl; etc. Christ did not say, "Just go out and grab anyone and convert him"; as mindless, liberal denominations of Christianity do, polluting the House of God / Christendom, to its destruction. God wants His House / Table full (to the degree of fulness that He determined)—but with HIS FAMILY; not aliens, not enemies—His wheat, not thistles, brambles, tares. Christ commanded His disciples to go to HIS people. When the majority rejected Him, Christ said go to the highways and byways... not to any other people, but to the lowest and most wretched of God's people. It is always to God's people. In the Book of Hosea, God did not say that He would choose another people—but that in other places He would call (out) His people by a different name—His same people living in different lands, (the Israelites of the diaspora, a.k.a. the "Greeks" or so-called "Gentiles").
[* The ancient Greeks (who have little-to-no relation to the modern Greeks, who are mostly Turks [Hittite-Canaanites]) descended from the Israelites, even as the Greek language derived from the Hebrew. The Greeks founded city-states along the entire Mediterranean coastline (north, east, and south) and isles; and it was to many of these places that many other Israelites of the disaspora migrated, as well as northwestward into Europe. See again my books mentioned in the previous bracketed note above, as well as my color wall-charts / posters: The Peoples of the Bible, and The Migrations and Languages of Israel after the Captivity.]
Similarly, "adoption" in Greek more properly means "son placing" and BIBLICAL adoption does not violate the moral boundaries that God established—as well-meaning, but ignorant Christians do, to the destruction of Christendom and the true Church of God, turning it into Babylon. God commanded that children sired by alien women (who should not have been married in the first place) were to be sent away forever, along with their divorced alien mothers—and therefore, the notion of adopting aliens is BLASPHEMOUS. God commanded His people to be separate from all alien peoples and no intermingling at all.
Son-placing refers to a son coming of age (before that age is reached, Scripture says, even a young heir differs little from a servant). Son-placing also refers to a disgraced son being restored to a place of honor (like the Prodigal). Son-placing also refers to adopting the legitimate children of deceased family members.
The modern "Christian" notion of missions and evangelism (and adoption of aliens) VIOLATES ALL that God and Christ commanded, and seats the dogs at the table with the Master's children to eventually breed God's children out of existence—and neuters God and forces Him to conform to modern, liberal, godless notions of "equality" and forces God to accept all corrupt assortment of peoples and perverted notions of alternate genders and other forms of fornication and perversion and uncleanness as "wonderful" and "wholesome" and "moral". It forces God to adopt Satan's children and accept Satan's corruption of God's creation as something better than what God created. Unlike immoral, weak fathers of modern families that have been destroyed by mixing, God will not "give in" and lovingly bounce Satan's baby on His Knee and adopt it as His Own. THIS is the polluted doctrine of the HARLOT Church—to whom Christ shall declare (to those "Christians" who will say unto Him, "have we not done all these 'wonderful things' in Thy Name)— "Depart from Me ye that work iniquity [anomia, "lawlessness"] I never knew you". They preach another gospel, they follow a false christ (antichrist), they worship a false god—they are accursed. God does not change with the times. People corrupt themselves. A remnant shall be preserved.
Mark 16:15 is no exception. "To every creature." —which creatures? —the ones to whom Christ sent them: the lost sheep of the house of Israel. "As the Father sent Me so send I you." How was Christ sent? "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel". That's what all the prophets said. The Second Great Commission changes the SCOPE (worldwide instead of local) but NOT the "target" (Israel only in both). In the first Great Commission (local) Christ said, GO NOT TO ANYONE EXCEPT ISRAEL. The Second Great Commission did not change that. It only changed the venue. The First was local, under Christ's direct supervision while He trained them for the greater mission to the very same people, but throughout the entire world. Those who are doing other that what Christ commanded, even the very opposite, are antichrist. Christ said, "He that is not with Me is against Me and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad." What is a person called that is not with, but against you? —an enemy. What is a person that gathereth not, but scattereth doing? —instead of gathering the sheep / wheat, he is gathering the dogs and swine / tares which scatters the sheep / wheat who know that they are not supposed to be joined unto aliens. "Good intentions" are meaningless if you murder your family through stupidity. Ignorant sin is sin nonetheless. Its results are just as tragic. Its penalty is still Judgment.
Also, you need to look at ALL FOUR GOSPELS; they will not contradict each other, but give deeper insight to the whole, when logically pieced together.
Correct, "all creatures" in an anti-contextual, unbiblical interpretation would include frogs and snakes and snails and birds and dogs and cats and camels and elephants, and spiders, etc. Christ meant NONE of those things, and neither did He mean the dogs, swine, wolves, serpents, or scorpions—of which He warned us, to whom He told us NOT to preach, and who shall be SEPARATED and cast into Hell, not "adopted" as sheep and gathered into the sheepfold. Again, if someone does not know what a sheep looks like, he has no business being a shepherd or a "game tracker", a.k.a. "hunter", but not employed to kill, but to find the lost sheep and bring them back alive.
Finally, the Greek word translated as "creature" is #2937 ktis-is and more properly means, "original creation / formation", that is, "that which was founded, established". This does not refer to corruptions, perversions, or hybrids, in the meaning of the Greek word. Furthermore, the implication of immediate context would not include trees or rocks, for it is "living" (i.e., not merely breathing, but intelligent) creatures and it would not apply to animals or just any type of "living creatures" but those capable of rational thought; and in overall context, it would only apply to the elect of God's people, to whom alone God said that the Redeemer would be sent "to deliver those under [the curse / judgment] of the Law"... as Gabriel announced to Mary after Christ's Conception: "Call His Name Yehoshua:* For He shall save HIS PEOPLE from their sin." "Sin is transgression of the Law." God gave His Law to Adam-Israel and preserved the elect line therefrom. God gave His Law to no other people (Deuteronomy 4:8).
[* Yehoshua means, "Yahweh-saved" or "saved of Yahweh". While God is the God [Creator] of the whole earth, He is not Father nor Covenant God of all the earth, but His people alone: The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob / Israel. Neither is Christ Redeemer or Saviour, but to His people. God can only be known if He reveals Himself and He reveals Himself only to His people.
"Not in the lust of concupiscence [passion of their lust], even as the Gentiles [nations] which know not God" (I Thessalonians 4:5).
Why do entire nations not know God...? —because He has not revealed Himself to them.
Jeremiah 31:1: "I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be My people".
Jeremiah 31:13ff. is again repeated in Hebrews 8:8ff. The New Covenant (which did not cancel the Old, but revised the part dealing with the remission of sins), the Christic Covenant, the Covenant of Salvation, was made with WHOM...? Look the two passages up. See also my commentaries, on S.T.E.C. Jeremiah 31 and S.T.E.C. on the Book of Hebrews.
God does not change. Covetous, sinful, rebellious people pervert what He has declared, and shall stand Judgment for it, in addition to their other sins. Yes, false doctrine is sin. False doctrine is not merely an idea or an attitude—it governs all of life, and destroys lives, both here, and hereafter.]