But that's sentimental nonsense, as Jesus' public mission to Israel shows. In Luke 10, Jesus gives 72 disciples their instructions for the mission throughout Israel:
10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
Jesus' public message, publicly stated, and publicly delivered through Israel was that all the towns that turned against their Lord would be subject to a judgement worse than the one that befell Sodom. All Israel was to know of the consequences of disobedience to her Lord, and was to know in the most graphic of pictures, a picture that had become a byword for the LORD's anger.
Very much a 'turn or burn' message, delivered in terms that even the thickest Israelite could not fail to understand.
3 comments:
I don't kow what to think in broad terms about the discussion you've been having with Michael and Bruce, but this seems a bit of a strange example. It seems like the fire and brimstone is all in what Jesus tells the 72, not in the message he gives them, which seems quite basic.
It is only strange if you assume that the disciples did not pass on the reason why they were shaking dust off their feet to the people they were speaking to—that is, until Luke wrote it down . At that point, unless the gospel of Luke was only known outside Israel, the villages concerned would certainly know the words spoken against them.
But did they know earlier? (As in, when the 72 told them while on mission?) I have a few thoughts on that which I will hold off for another post, but there is, I think, a clue in the immediate preceding context.
Oh, and not to mention the other mission in Luke 9, and the parallel accounts in Mark 6 and Matt 10. Whatever your theory of who the synoptics were aimed at and when they were written, the account of terrible coming Sodom-like judgement on these towns was certainly available by the time these gospels were circulating in written form. And on those grounds, it's reasonable to conclude also that they were circulating in oral form well before they were written.
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