“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” (Matthew 11:12).
Like many of you I have read, and repeated this Scripture hundreds of times in my life but I don’t know if there is a more mis-understood verse than this in the entire Bible.
We hear a lot of talk about how much violence there is in the world, and certainly none of us want to see others get hurt. But the connection of violence to bodily injury is a mis-application of the true meaning of the word.
Words do have meaning and nothing has been more disastrous to the well-being of America than the politicalization of language. Years ago, 2009, I wrote a commentary entitled “Change the Words, Change the World.” This is true in so many areas of this fallen world.
Whenever I run into a language issue, I fall back to Webster’s 1828 dictionary. Noah Webster is the one credited with bringing some commonality to the English language. Because of so many dialects in the early days of America, it was necessary for someone to clarify the COMMON meaning of words so that a common language was used in the direction of education in the nation.
Over the years, the meaning of so many English words have changed. Hence ...
