What A WEREWOLF Has To Do With Jesus’ Promise To Never Leave Us

For this week’s blog, my obsession with words has won out over any sense of trying to write something that others might find interesting or relevant—though I hope they will. I fear many will take this musing as trivial minutia, needless nuance, but it really isn’t. It can make a world of difference in our understanding of some scriptures. The keyword of the last sentence was WORLD. It is necessary to set this up with a basic fact about translation: Two or more different words in one language are often translated into a single word in another language. Take WORLD for example: When we read in our Bibles, “For God so loved the WORLD...” (John 3:16), the Greek word of the original text that was translated WORLD is kosmos. The same is true in John 1:10, “He was in the WORLD and the WORLD was made by Him, and the WORLD knew Him not.” Each occurrence of WORLD in that verse is a translation of kosmos—speaking both of the material planet and the people on it. However, when Jesus makes that great promise of Matthew 28:20, “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the WORLD.”, WORLD is translating a completely different Greek word—aion. WORLD as aion means age, as in epoch, era, a period of time. If one doubts that, note that the Greek aion has found its way into our English. Aeon, or as we Americans spell it, eon. Eon is a long period of time, an age. Jesus’s promise was that He would be with His disciples always, even to the end of the EON, the AGE. This isn't to say that He would be with them unto the world, the planet Earth, was no more--though He will, but that He will be with them until the age in which they lived would end. Having known this, I always wondered why the KJV/Elizabethan English translated the Greek word for age (aion) as WORLD. Recently, during my reading and studying I stumbled over the reason: In old English “wer” was the word for “man” and “-eld” is our “old.” Put them together and you get wereld, or werold. Werold we now spell WORLD. By the way, say WORLD out loud. You most probably pronounced it (wer-eld). Werold meant literally how old a man was or a man’s age. A man’s age is how long he has existed. A man is a human. Thus, werold became the reference to the period of a person, persons, or humanity’s existence. Werald, written later as WORLD, came to refer to an AGE. As an asterisk but explanation of my title, if you struggle to believe that “wer” was once the word for "man," we still have words that preserve this meaning. Take werewolf. Werewolf is a compound noun that means "MAN—wolf." Well, back from mythical creatures to Jesus’ very real promise—“ I am with you alway, even unto the end of the WORLD,” uhm, “unto the end of the AGE. The disciples were on the brink of an awful period of time that would culminate with the destruction of Jerusalem and the slaughter of their people. In a broader meaning, they and the soon-to-be-many converts to Christ were on the brink of an age of persecution of believers. Yet, there’s an even broader meaning of “age” in Jesus’ promise. He often spoke of the Kingdom as existing in two ages. The present age and the age to come. God, earlier, and the NT believers, later, called the present age the Last Days. In its widest meaning, the age in which Jesus will be with His people is the Last Days, the period of perilous times, times of deception, times of wars, times of calamities, catastrophes, times of cosmic disturbances. By this promise, Jesus said He would be with His disciples whenever they lived, wherever they lived, whatever they faced until the completion of this age—the age of the Last Days. Yes, He will be with us to the end of this age, this world. Now, this is not the same as saying, “I will be with you to the bitter end.” Because, as Jesus clearly taught, the tumultuous age of the Last Days ends with His Return which will inaugurate the New Age, which will be eternal. He will always, eternally, be with us in that age as well. He will be with us to the end of this world, and we will be with Him in the next world. That world (age) never ends. That’s why the NT uses the aion twice in an expression to mean “forever.” Into the aionas aion. Into the eons of eons. Into the ages of ages. When you read those “for ever and ever, evermores,” in NT Scripture, those words referencing eternity, you are reading “into the ages of ages,” or as it’s put in Eph 3:21, “…world without end.” Jesus will be with us unto the end of this WORLD, until we get to the “world without end,” to the end of this age to the ages of ages. Whatever season of life you are in, whatever period of darkness, difficulty, despair, whatever kinds of time you’re living in—whatever the world you’re living in is like at this moment, Jesus has promised He will be with you until you’ve reached the end of it. He will be with you until this age ends and the age of ages begins. Until this world is over and the world without end begins. He’s with you in whatever time you’re in for its duration.