THREE DIFFERENT WORLDS?

Wednesday 5 February

And He said to them, “Go into all the WORLD and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. Mark 16:15-16 (NKJV)

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the WORLD as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24:14 (NKJV)

In whom the god of this WORLD hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 2 Corinthians 4:4

When we come to scripture, the way we read is of vital importance. A lot of Christians read their Bible in the same manner that they would read a news paper article. This is why we are told to study, not just read. The reason is simple there are certain words in English that have more than one meaning in Greek or Hebrew. Take the above verses for example. Here we see the word ‘world’ has been capitalised. ‘The word for ‘world’ is a combination of two Old English, separate words, wer old, meaning “the age of man.”’

The Hebrew words for ‘world’ are olam and tevel. Olam is the same meaning as aion in Greek. Tevel is the same meaning as kosmos in Greek. Now that we established this fact, we have three words left for ‘world’ within the Greek. If we skim over our Bibles we may never know the difference between them.

The Greek word for world is ‘kosmos’ in Mark 16:15. It has several meanings but here it is ‘the inhabitants of the earth, men, the human family, the ungodly multitude; the whole mass of men alienated from God, and therefore hostile to the cause of Christ’. The pretext and post text provide us with the context. John 3:16 says for God so loved the ‘Kosmos’… not the world of things but the world of people.

In Matthew 24:14 we see another word for ‘world’ in the Greek: oikoumene. It means the physical terrain of the world. It even says that it is the parts of the world that are inhabited. So here we are not talking about the people. We are focusing more on the geographical locations that are habitable by people in the earth. We see this again in Luke 4:5. ‘And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the ‘oikoumene’ in a moment of time.’

Lastly we have ‘aion’ that is another Greek word for ‘world’. Again there are several meanings for the word but the pretext (few verses before) and the post text (few verses afterward show us the context here. It is referring to a set period of time or an age. We are living in the days of grace which is in essence an ‘age’. During this time Satan is the god of this age to those who are outside of Christ. In John 14:16 the meaning is ‘forever’ because it is in reference to receiving the Holy Spirit. ‘And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you aion;’

Think about this for a moment. When you read the writings of Apostle Peter, you must take into account that he had a Jewish mindset, writing in Greek to a Jewish audience, set in the culture of the Roman Empire. Remember not every word in English has the same meaning in Greek or even Hebrew for that matter. This is why we must study and rightly divide truth as Apostle Paul encouraged Timothy to do the same.

‘Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God approved (tested by trial), a workman who has no cause to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skillfully teaching] the Word of Truth.’ 2 Timothy 2:15

Learn to excavate the scriptures and not innovate. After all no prophecy of the scripture is open to private interpretation or is of personal origin.

Let’s all keep growing and being edified in the word of His grace!

APPLICATION

Make up your mind to become a student of the Word and be like the Bereans who searched out diligently everything they were taught.