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Th•
P LA IN TRUTH
• Milgaiu of
UNDIIISTANDING
The
WORLD TOMORROW
A
WORLD-WlDB BROADCAST
H
8
I.
B B R. T W .
A
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W S
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G
Proclal"'• ro 1he World
lht
GooD
Na•s
OP
TH.II Woau>
TOWOU.OW
Box
111,
PASADENA,
CALtFORNlA
Dear Friend:
A startling stat ement is found in Mark
9:48.
In this passage of Script ure, Christ spoke of a worm
t hat
11
dieth not.
11
Whoever heard of t he immortality
of worms? What did Chris t mean?
Some
PEOPLE
think that Jesus was referring
to people .as worms and was trying to say that these
11
people
11
never died -- but lived on in agonizing tor–
ment. Those who say this fail to n otice that Jesus does
not call the wicked people "worms
11
but instead speaks
of THEIR worm. The lexicons define t he Hebrew (Isa.
66:24)
and Greek (Mark
9:48 )
words t ranslated
11
worm
11
as a grub or maggot and
in
~
way refer to a man.
Christ was not teaching the i mmortali ty of peopl e
~
worms!
Actually, Jesus was here warning his listeners
that those who would "of f end' ' -- who would live a life
of rebellion against God and His children -- would be
cast into
11
hell fire." Most Bibles s how in the marginal
rendering that this was "Gehenna fire.
11
Jesus was
referring to Gehenna as a type of the second dea t h
in
the
11
lake of fire" which will befall the ungodly.
Gehenna, or t he Va l ley of Hinnom, was located
outside of Jerusalem and was a p ace where t ras h , filth,
and the dead bodies of animals and despised criminals
were thrown. There were ledges along t he edge of this
val ley on which these dead bodies might land instead of
falling down into the f i res benea t h where everything was
burned. Smith•s Bible Pic t ionary gives a descri p t ion of
this valley -- which was something like one of our city
dumps today where trash and rubbish are burned
~-
If anything, especial l y a dead body, landed
on a ledge above the fires ,
it
would be dev oured by many
worms or maggots which. we re ke pt a l ve by the animal and
vegetable substances
depo~te d
t here.
It was to these worms tha t Christ was referring
when He said
11
the1r worm d1eth not.
11
But Christ didn't
mean that each individual worm con tinued to live forever!