You remember Jesus. He was that long-haired savior guy who went around talking about peace and love. The end. Unless he was talking about folks being cast into eternal hellfire, that is.
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00:00As it turns out, Jesus made some points now and then that might strike you as disturbing
00:04if you only have the do-unto-others vision of him in your head.
00:07Take Matthew 10, where Jesus says,
00:09"'Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
00:12I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.'"
00:14"'He said, what?"
00:17Then in Matthew 21, Jesus compares the forthcoming kingdom of God to a building where he is the
00:21cornerstone and says,
00:23"'Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces.
00:26Anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.'"
00:28There's another disturbing New Testament quote from Jesus in Matthew 25.
00:32In the parable of the sheep and the goats, he describes the apocalyptic son of man turning
00:35to a group on his left side, aka the goats, and saying,
00:39"'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and
00:43his angels.'"
00:44Let's take a look at the Matthew 25 passage with a bit of historical context.
00:48First, notice that all the disturbing passages we've mentioned come from the New Testament
00:52book of Matthew, including the one about being tossed into eternal fire.
00:56Yes, Matthew focuses on the narrative of Jesus' life and death like the other three Gospels,
01:01Mark, Luke, and John.
01:02But Matthew also paints a picture to present Jesus as a long-prophesied Messiah described
01:06in the Bible's Old Testament.
01:07This would have been a crucial point for getting local Jews on board with Christianity in its
01:11early days.
01:12The sheep and goats parable from Matthew 25 illustrates this point perfectly.
01:16All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another
01:20as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
01:24And then he'll put the sheep on his right, and the goats on his left.
01:27The people on his right side, the sheep, are those who treated him well and thus get rewarded.
01:31This is where we get the famous line,
01:33"'Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did
01:37for me.'"
01:38"'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom that has been prepared
01:43for you from the foundation of the world.'"
01:46The people on the left, however, go to the hellfire forever.
01:49Such was the king's judgment.
01:50In other words, it's a call to action to get Jews on board with the idea that Jesus is
01:54the long-foretold Messiah they've been waiting for.
01:57So you might say to yourself, that's all well and good, but it's certainly not the peace
02:01and love I was expecting to hear.
02:03There's some modern-day breakdowns that try and put the aggressive passage in more relative
02:07terms.
02:08For example, the NIV Bible focuses on the passage's call for compassion, kindness, love,
02:12and family.
02:13It describes the goats as pushy and the sheep gentle, and even connects us all to orphaned
02:17children around the world.
02:19This would tie back, in a way, to the New Testament idea that the world was lost before
02:22the Messiah.
02:23In this case, Jesus arrived.
02:26There's no real discussion, however, of the fate of the goats.
02:29Another modern-day explainer from the website GotQuestions goes one step further and talks
02:33about how the passage seems to describe good works as the way to avoid hellfire, then contrasts
02:38that with notions of Christian grace.
02:40So their take is that the goats are doomed.
02:43Literally.
02:44Yikes.
02:45The Apocalypse is a core belief that Christianity inherited from ancient Jews, who were also
02:49waiting for the end of days.
02:50And these texts tie back into the purpose of Matthew as a book intended to convince
02:54folks that Jesus was a Messianic figure associated with the Apocalypse.
02:58In other words, it's not that disturbing once you get it.
03:00It's just a specific call to first-century Jews to let them know they're going to burn
03:04in hell if they don't get on board with the new Messiah.
03:06Okay, maybe it's a bit aggressive, but those were the times.