ALWAYS AND FOREVER

Acts 18: 9 – 11


Biblical Greek is fascinating to study out. For instance when in Mathew 28 the Lord tells us;

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

I began to think of the word always and what it meant to the people hearing what it was that Jesus was actually saying, because He tells us that He will be with us always. Then He tells Paul that He is with him.

9 One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: "Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent.
10 For I am with you, and no-one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city."
11 So Paul stayed for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

Anyway during my word search, I found that there were many derivations of the word always, and that the word appears in many places in the Bible, each time with a slightly different meaning.
We use the word quite frequently ourselves in our every day conversations; “I always do that”, “I will love you always”, “Do you always do that”? Just to show a few examples. In our modern language, always, always means the same thing, “at all points in time”.
But as I said in the Greek, always, is not always the same thing.
For example( Aei ) means perpetually.
Then the word goes all the way to ( pantote ) which means at all times, of all days.
Maybe that's knit picking, but as one of our former presidents said;
“It depends what the meaning of is, is”.

I think that I like the translation of pantote. That means that God will be there for us whenever and where ever we are. At all times we can call on him, and He is there, ready to carry us in crisis, and walk beside us in our joy.
I don't know, but, I think that sounds better than perpetually.