"The Gates of Hell" are traditionally interpreted as, well, "gates", or swinging physical doors, through which the damned enter Hell. This interpretation leads to a bit of awkardness in trying to visualize a physical swinging gate marching its way up to a church building and trying to knock it down, while angels stand valiantly around the church heroically defending it against that terrifying swinging gate.
At least that was the predicament I faced when I tried to picture it, during the years before I began noticing how God uses the word "gates". Not that I troubled myself with it very much; I normally found more important Bible questions to busy myself with.
Cities used to have walls around them to protect them from robbers and armies. Before electric lights, or even gas lights, it got pretty dark on a moonless night, so that even a single robber could come in out of the woods at night and do a lot of damage without being seen, with no wall.
Walls required gates, to let the good guys in and out during the daytime, with guards ready to shut them again at the smell of trouble. Gates of Hell Fail!
Try to imagine a modern city of tens of thousands of people, with only two or three roads going in and out. There would be a steady stream of cars all day long. But now imagine most had to walk, with the rich riding animals almost as slow, so that instead of several car lengths between travelers there was only breathing room. Those roads were busy! Gates of Hell Fail!
So if you wanted to reach a lot of people, where would you go? If you wanted to set up your fruit stand, where was your prime real estate? You guessed it. The City Gate. That's where they held their rock concerts. That's where friends met. Gates of Hell Fail!
But that's not all, in those days. That's where they found jurors to decide court cases. Gates of Hell Fail!
Gates of Hell/Court Trials at City Gates
In those days, under Moses' law, there weren't just 12 jurors, but there were "judges", Ex 21:6z22z22:8z9zNum25:5zDeut1:16z16:18z19:17z18 21:2z25:1z32:31zJos8:33z23:2z24:1 . If you look up these verses you will find that no case is decided by a single judge, but by "judges". There were three kinds of judges: the several judges appointed to moderate cases in a judicial system with lower and higher courts like our system today, Exodus 18; the single Supreme Court judge which ruled the land until the times of the kings; and the "judges" , plural, who decided cases, like our juries today. Gates of Hell Fail!
Except that in those days they didn't go through lists of driver's licenses and send notes out calling people for jury duty. They held court where the people already were. Guess where that was? The City Gate. In the next verse God made this connection clear, out in the desert, even before Israel had a gate! Gates of Hell Fail!
Deuteronomy 16:18. Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the people with just judgment. Gates of Hell Fail!
Black's Law Dictionary, 4th Edition, defines "hundreds" as the way the Anglo Saxons still decided most of their criminal trials as late as 1150 AD. The population was divided into units of 100 families, just like in Israel. When the "hundreds" had a trial, it wasn't just the judge over the hundreds, meeting with the accused and accusor, a witness or two, and a few jurors. It was all one hundred families. Surely their system was at least influenced by Jewish custom, although we have no idea how it may have changed. But it is interesting because Moses' law never says how many of those hundred families served as "judges". Early English custom was all of them. Gates of Hell Fail!
After we notice these things, we can look again at the many times the Pharisees accused Jesus of various things, and realize that they were holding trial! Jesus was on trial for his life, many times! Most of the things they accused Him of, had their charges "stuck", were capital offenses -- the penalty was death by stoning. Gates of Hell Fail!
Now some readers will get side tracked because they think the Pharisees had no power to execute anybody. This misunderstanding is based on the bold faced statement in the following passage: Gates of Hell Fail!
John 18:31 Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death: 32 That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die. Gates of Hell Fail!
But notice that right before the statement in bold, Pilate had reminded them that they had complete authority to judge their people by their own law, and of course Moses' law had execution by stoning as a very common sentence for crimes. Notice also that verse 32 explains that the meaning of the Pharisee's statement was not about whether they could execute, but how they could conduct their execution. Stoning wasn't cruel enough for Jesus! The Pharisees demanded crucifixion! Gates of Hell Fail!
Throughout the New Testament, there was no hesitation by the Pharisees to stone people,. They didn't bother with Roman stone permits. See Mark 12:4zJohn 8:59z10:31-33z11:8zActs7:59z14:5,9. Luke 20:6 shows even the people had the right to stone the Pharisees for heresy!) Gates of Hell Fail!
So back to the trials of Jesus. Jesus was often accused of crimes for which the penalty was death by stoning. There were crowds around, to serve as jurors. He defended Himself against the charges so well that He persuaded the jurors and the charges were "dismissed". It was not only once when Jesus stood defending Himself in Court! In fact, one reason the Sanhedrin arrested Him in the middle of the night for trial was because with crowds of "jurors" standing around, they had failed so often to get a conviction! (See John 7:32-53 for a particularly frustrating day for Sanhedrin prosecutors.) Gates of Hell Fail!
Court trials, in those days, were essentially the function of government. There was no legislative branch, since God had written their laws. The closest they had to an "executive branch" was kings, and later Romans, who mostly acted as a self serving tyranny, (1 Samuel 8), unlike government as we Americans know it. Gates of Hell Fail!
So when Jesus said the Gates of Hell will not prevail against the church, He meant the Christian-crushing tyrannies of Earth, from the Sanhedrin, to Rome, to Islam, to Communism, would utterly fail in their obsession with exterminating Christianity. And of course He is right, as you will quickly learn if you get on the mailing list of any missionary organization such as Voice of the Martyrs, Open Doors, etc. Satan's persecution is Hellish. The heroism of God's martyrs is inspiring. . Gates of Hell Fail!
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Gates of Hell Fail!