My Father’s House has many Mansions
My Father’s House has many Mansions
“In My Father’s House are Many Mansions…”
This is a passage of Scripture, in John chapter 14 verse 2, which causes some people to believe that Jesus was offering a place in heaven but, as Mark Buckler explains, the Lord had something quite different in mind.
Jewish Book
Many of us easily forget, when we read the Bible, that it is a Jewish book, written mainly by Jewish writers about Jewish people. It is so easy for us to read it with two thousand years of ideas and interpretations in our minds that we forget to ask a simple question:
What did the writers of this passage understand by it when they wrote it and what did their readers or hearers understand?
So, when Jesus talked about the many rooms in his Father’s house, what did he mean by this and what would his hearers have understood?
Incidentally, this is a passage that is often read in church funeral services and today it is thought to promise an inheritance with God in heaven. Is that what Jesus meant?
God’s House Read more
saw no evidence for any other life than this life, and out of this belief they formed this proverb:
FOR many people the organisation and traditions of religion create large barriers to its acceptance. Believing that God can be worshipped acceptably by an individual in a forest or on a mountain – places which bring readily to mind His awesome creative power – they shy away from grand robes and imposing buildings. When it is suggested that somehow God cannot he properly worshipped other than through a human intermediary and according to set rites, their worst fears are confirmed. The hierarchy of priests (cardinals, archbishops, bishops, canons, etc.), is confusing to them and also suggests that there are two categories of worshipper – priests and lay people. Possibly, even that those who claim to be ordained by God are more favoured than everyone else.
