Sunday, February 3, 2013

2/3/13 Neat Facts from Acts

February 3, 2013

I am taking the Second half of the New Testament and I have learned some extremely neat things that have helped me to better understand the scriptures and Jesus Christ. It is truly amazing to me that the Lord has planned for every insignificant detail and it will all be taken care in the end. The Bible is true as far as it is translated correctly, so on occasion you have to dig a little deeper in different verses of scripture to completely understand what is being said. I learned of one such occasion in the scriptures in Acts 17:24 which says, "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temple made with hands." This scripture is often used again the LDS church  as trying to prove that God says himself he cannot dwell in a temple made with human hands on the earth when the Church has built temples all over the earth in this dispensation. The answer to this question is with the word temple. 
The problem is with the English word, temple. It is an incorrect translation of the Greek word that was used before the Bible was translated into English. The word that was actually used in the Greek translation is "naos" which means idol, shrine, or small structure. God actually dwells in our body or shrine; he is part of us and if we allow him he will dwell in our "temple" or our naos. Another scripture where naos was used is the phrase "I will destroy and raise the temple in three days." This scripture does not refer to the griheeron, the large temple, but it refers to Christ as a person. Jesus Christ died and was resurrected three days later.  
The world that actually means "large temple" in Greek is griheeron. The griheeron is the large temple in Jerusalem and was the temple cleansed by Jesus Christ.
The neat part of learning this is realizing that for Christ to dwell with me I have to choose to let him in. I have to allow the light of Christ to be apart of me and abide in my life. 

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