From a semi exhaustive exegetical study that I have done on this verse, but succinctly summarized here:

-the Greek word “biazomai” translated here as “violent’ actually refers to “(mental) bias” thus it refers to one who acts with a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue situation; influence in an unfair way; or going across the grain.
It speaks of forcefully acting with a mindset and not pointedly to the physicality involved. It involves changing a bias mindset.

So here Christ was saying that the Kingdom of God until John was being overun by people with various bias against it in it purity. This indeed was seen the major and distinct factions presently in Israel as the Pharisees (Conservative), Sadducees (Liberal), Essenes (Separatists) and Zealots (Militants) [see this David Asscherick sermon [01:34:38-01:45:00] on this]. So Christ was inviting those with now his biased mindset for the true Kingdom “Good News” to actively, correspondingly act against these biases. In other words, those who wanted this True Kingdom to triumph had to now ‘steel their minds’ against these other stubborn and obstinate wrong ways of thinking. That was all indeed fully Biblical, =Ezek. 3:5-9, which was probably the basis of Christ’s statement here.



Seriously Tom??... Adam Clarke and Albert Barnes....Coming from a Seminarian Tom, I am frankly quite disappointed. I would rather expecting from you mentions from more exegetical commentaries such as the Word Biblical Commentary and/or the SDABC. Rather than, at lastest/best, scholastically speaking, respectively: ca. early (d. 1832), and ca. mid (d. 1870), 19th century works. Matter-of-factly speaking, I virtually chucked these works ‘out of my Windows’ 13 years ago, because no matter what they ‘so reverentially and sincerely express,’ it rarely if ever is, at least transparently exegetically demonstrated. So I personally feel that I merely reading personal opinions.

And the actual context of Christ statement, which they could have better grasped if exegesis had been used, is that John had just sent disciples of his to Jesus expressing his doubt about Christ as he was still imprisoned and probably sensing that he was going to be killed. So Jesus counsel here, after these disciples had left, probably because John needed to build and maintain his faith in Christ on the great evidence that he already had been given, was in this light this suffering and doubting of John. Thus from then on, the Kingdom needed people who would not be mentally dissuade by mere physical suffering. But who would through these adversities maintain a mind “biased” for the Kingdom according to Christ true Gospel. The same holds true today, especially in terms of the mental resolve.

I read in Desire of Ages this morning chapter 51, "The Light of Life". While reading, I was reflecting on what has been written in this thread. Here are a few quotes from this chapter.
Jesus was God in the flesh. Everything that we need to know or can know about God was revealed by Christ.
All suffering, all death, is the result of what Satan has done.

This looks to agree with what I said.



It seems that the issue of those falsely trying to obtain, such as the Pharisees, was a key point Jesus had in mind. I quoted the commentaries because they were easily available, being on line, and I found the following point interesting:



The idea here is that a figure of speech was being used, similar to the taking of a city.

My own idea, based on just reading the text, was similar to what you wrote, that Jesus was referring to a mental bias that people had.

I haven't said this. This doesn't mean I disagree with it, but the fact that you use quotes here is a bit confusing, since quote marks usually indicate that you're quoting someone. What I've said is that there is an organic relationship between sin and death; that the inevitable result of sin is death. As James puts it, sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. Also the sting of death is sin; the wages of sin is death; the soul that sins shall die; convey the same thought. God Himself said one of these, and inspired others to say the rest.



If they are filled with violence, then they're killing others, and the Tree of Life is no help in this case. It doesn't resurrect the dead. Eventually only one would be left, the strongest, most cunning violent person (or the luckiest), and then that person would kill himself or herself. Given what we know to be the case about sin, this seems like a very plausible scenario. What prevents things like this from happening is not the Tree of Life, but the grace of God. Take away the grace of God, and the scenario I've traced out, or a worse one, would take place so fast it would be head-spinning.

We simply have no idea of the "sinfulness of sin," as EGW often said, not giving the credit we should to the grace/kindness/mercy of God, because we don't perceive its importance.

You don't see the difference between an active action and a passive action? First of all, it's hard to believe that you don't see the difference between these two things. Secondly, if you don't see a difference, then why argue against my point of view? At the very least, if there's no difference, then my point of view, from your perspective, should be a possibility.

It doesn't seem to matter. You said you don't see the difference. If you don't see the difference between God's sending poisonous serpents upon the Israelites, and God's permitting serpents which were already there to act, what difference would it make how many examples I provided?

We've spoken some about the plagues of Egypt. The traditional view is that God applied more and more force against Pharaoh until he finally capitulated. I've mentioned that this idea presents God as acting in a similar fashion to someone wanting protection money. Accidents, or plagues, keep happening until the one applying force gets his way.

Regarding the flood, a couple of quick thoughts. One is that models creation scientists have developed, the Bible, and the SOP, all agree that the waters of the flood were primarily under the earth. These waters exploded into the atmosphere, and that precipitated the flood. The amount of water released was nothing like any flood we've ever seen.

These waters, to explode into the atmosphere, must have been under tremendous pressure. Both of the following possibilities harmonizes with the ideas I've been presenting:

1.God knew the disaster was going to take place. He could have prevented it, and would have, given a favorable response to Noah's preaching.

2.God was preventing the disaster from occurring, but stopped doing so when His overtures were continually rejected, after the many years of preaching of Noah.

If God were acting directly to cause the flood, He would have had to cause the pressure in the first place, as well as not prevent the action from occurring.

But you wrote elsewhere that you don't seen any difference between God's sending fiery serpents upon the Israelites, and His withdrawing His protection, so why would you care here, or in the other incidents you mentioned, what happened?

You could mention Herod as well. I think if you have the idea that these incidents involve God's acting different than Jesus acted during His time here in the flesh (4BC - 31 A.D.), then these incidents are being misunderstood, just as much as any such OT incidents are.

Once again, given that you see no difference between God's sending fiery serpents and withdrawing His protection from serpents which were already there, why would you care how these incidents are perceived?



No, this isn't necessary. If the underlying principles are understood, it's not necessary to apply them to any arbitrary list of incidents a person can mention. If this were the case, one would be constrained to go through all of them, as any arbitrary list is as good as another.

What I've been asserting is that there are certain principles at work, including:

1.All that can be known of God was revealed by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ during His earthly mission.
2.God is just like Jesus Christ in character.
3.Jesus Christ was not violent, and taught anti-violence.
4.There are thousand dangers from which God protects us constantly. Any degree of destruction is possible by God's simply withdrawing His protection. There is no need for God to act actively to produce destruction.
5.The use of force is contrary to the principles of God's government.

These are a few. Now if these are genuine principles, then there are always in effect. We don't have to consider cases where God acts according to these principles and cases where He doesn't, because there aren't any cases where He doesn't. Therefore understanding any situation which involves these principles is sufficient. The incident that we have the most information about is the destruction of Jerusalem, so that's the one I've spent the most time on.

Another incident which would bear great fruit to study is the cross. What happened there? Understanding the cross opens the door to understanding all the incidents you mentioned.



This seems like you're putting your own understanding of things as the final arbiter of truth. God sends a prophet, who provides more information upon a subject, and if that information disagrees with what you think, you write that information off as the prophet being "mistaken." I don't believe I'm misrepresenting your position here, do you?

So you have more faith in your exegesis than in the words of the prophet.

Also you appear to have the understanding that divine inspiration worked completely differently for Ellen White than for Bible writers. I see the inspiration as being identical. Bible writers were just as prone to be "mistaken" as Ellen White was. Do you disagree?

Do you see that it's necessary to look outside of Jesus to know what God is like?



That's too bad. The Great Controversy is being fought regarding this and similar questions. It revolves around the question of God's character and the principles of His government.



What do you think happened in the Egyptian plagues? How did God get Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to leave if He didn't use force?



Then Jesus didn't fully reveal God's character. That's a fair conclusion if what you're suggesting is the case, isn't it?



I agree with your last sentence here.



I agree that man, acting contrary to God's will, cannot live safely or healthfully. Apart from God, man cannot live even for an instant, let alone eternally.



Not only not man, but no created being, can live for an instant apart from God. At every moment of one's life, whether human, bird, insect or amoeba, God's action is required for their to be life. Life apart from God does not exist.



See what? These are questions. You're saying you don't see these questions as being considered anywhere in Scripture? What's your point here?

Surely what God wants from us in an important consideration. I don't see how you could disagree with this.



What were you just saying? It looked like you were saying that these questions weren't revealed anywhere in Scripture, and then you answered the question. How do you know the answer? Presumably from Scripture. In this case, they *are* considered in Scripture.

You say that God wants loving obedience. On what do you base this conclusion?

You seem to imply that God doesn't want us to get to close to Him, that if we do so, we'll get shot, like a person who tries too close to the president. You gave the example of hugging the president, as opposed to someone who had a threatening action in mind. Was it your intent to convey they idea that we better not try to get too close to God?



I changed "happy" to "unhappy," as I think that's what you meant. You're saying here that when God is unhappy, He acts like human beings act when they are unhappy, correct? I assume that's what you mean by saying, "As any one who is unhappy will act."

Thanks for your answers here NJK. I found this exchange to be among the most helpful that we've had.

As these answers within that prior reply post may have been missed due to my formatting coding error, I repost them here:



Fair enough, I perhaps did misunderstand your view. However your clarification that: “the Tree of Life was a means for God to teach us of our dependence upon Him” confirms and further heightens my observation of substantive vacuousness.

Again, and this is not a rhetorical question: How was man to live forever before sin? By “learned dependence” osmosis??? You, uniquely in this thread, blindly and unbiblically refuse to see any ‘life-perpetuating “supernatural power” in the Fruit of Life’. Even Jesus does not endorse your view (e.g., Rev 2:7 and many other SOP statements confirm this fact.)

Do we need the Tree of life in Heaven to supposedly continue to learn dependence on God???



Indeed I did, and still do, because the Bible and SOP are clear that sinners can live forever (Gen 3:22-24; PP 60.3). Your rationalizations trying to disprove these Biblical facts are mere human reasonings. Indeed, and especially in our day when the many lessons of sin have been learned, if sinners today had access to the Tree of Life, they of all generation would be able to live forever as they would like, as most seek to do now, and given many advances in knowledge, science and technologies, would staunchly live by at least the last 6 commandments and ignore the first 4.



The Bible [+SOP] fully teaches that with such a genuine faith, our sins are forgiven and will, in persisting in this faith, be all blotted out in the judgement, and thus we can have the unshakable assurance that Jesus will one day in the future let us enter into Heaven to access the Tree of Life so that we can ingest the life-perpetuating supernatural powers contained therein. However show the Second Coming tarry, we can and will die in this life.