huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/2 … 92859.html
Have you folks read this. I’m not defending it by any means.
The topic seems a bit familiar. 
(I mean the losing fear of hell part, not the Aurora tragedy part.)
Thanks for the heads-up, though! Too busy right now to comment, hopefully others will.
Nihilist tragedies like that occur not from a loss of the fear of hell but because the world as it is is descending into a living nihilist hell. The loss of all hope and sense that there is a God and meaning to existence. Hell is here and no one is going to heaven. Those in hell cannot even look toward heaven let alone begin to crawl over the broken glass of their despair and pain towards it. The hope of the Gospel is “Heaven” coming to us who are living in this hell on Earth. The truth of the Gospel is Jesus crucified going into all the hells to bring the healing and resurrecting Life of YHWH to all those in hell. Where the Life of YHWH is present there cannot be any hell, death or despair.
The fear of God is not at all about fear of punishment by God.
the letter ה (h). When the first word of the construct phrase ends with the letter ה (h), it changed to the letter ת (t).
Below is a complete list of construct phrases from the book of Genesis where the second word in the construct is “the Lord” (Yahweh).
The Word of the Lord (Genesis 15:1)
The Voice of the Lord (Genesis 3:8)
The Face of the Lord (Genesis 4:16)
The Name of the Lord (Genesis 4:26)
The Eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8)
The Garden of the Lord (Genesis 13:10)
The Angel of the Lord (Genesis 16:7)
The Way of the Lord (Genesis 18:19)
The Mount of the Lord (Genesis 22:14)
You will notice that in every instance the first word in the construct (word, voice, etc) belongs to the second word of the construct (Yahweh). The “fear” in the phrase “the fear of the Lord” is not our fear; it is the Lord’s fear. Because God cannot “fear” we must look to the Ancient Hebrew concrete meaning of this word to understand it.
The word yirah comes from the parent root yar which means “to flow” and is related to words meaning river and rain, from their flowing, and to throw in the sense of flowing. From this we can see that when one is afraid the insides begin to shake, a flowing of the insides. But as the word yirah means “to flow” it is not limited to “fear” alone.
In our introductory verse we saw that wisdom comes from this “fear of the Lord.” Compare that with Exodus 31:3 - “And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.” It is “the Spirit of God (the Lord)” that gives us wisdom in the same way that “the fear of the Lord” does. The Hebrew word for “spirit” is “ruach” literally meaning the “wind,” which is also a flowing. The “fear of the Lord” is his Spirit which flows out of him into us giving us wisdom, knowledge and understanding. By: Jeff A. Benner
Flow, river, rain, ruach do these sound like terrors and threats from God or blessings and life all-bountiful? The river of Life flowing from the throne of YHWH and the Lamb. The tree of life along side the river of Life healing and taking away from the creation of all the wounds and trauma of those nihilistic hell on Earth experiences. The Gospel of Jesus Christ–His suffering and dying for all of creation–is what brings us the revelation, understanding and wisdom of who God really is. Because of what Jesus has done for all of us–especially for those who cannot believe or hope and thereby commit the most unspeakable nihilistic acts–all things will be made new, the slate wiped clean in the eschatological Jubilee and all will be reborn with a new name and life into the resurrection of the cosmos.
Very interesting, Dave!
What does Jeff have to say about {phobos} in the New Testament (and LXX)? “Fear of the Lord/God/Jesus” doesn’t show up often, but it does on rare occasion occur in an apparently positive fashion; as does the slightly more common verb-object exhortation “to fear God”. (For that matter, what does Jeff have to say about OT exhortations to fear YHWH?)
YES Dave <3
Hi Jason,
I don’t know what Jeff has to say about phobos. If anyone reading this thread knows please introduce that info to this thread.
I have not seen any references in Jeff’s material regarding “to fear God.” If anyone does know of such a reference please chime in here.
But I imagine that you have some opinions regarding this.
Dave
I guess my opinions in brief would be:
1.) I really really really like his etymological interpretative argument (so far as it goes);
2.) But there are in fact places where we are exhorted to fear God (not only talking about a plausible “flow” from God or belonging to God) using the same term for translating the Hebraic concept of the fear of the Lord/God;
3.) BUT the NT authors also use the same term for exhorting us not to fear God. So obviously there is some sense we should fear God and another sense we ought not to.
4.) And I think Jeff’s argument (which he might agree with in context–I haven’t seen his context) doesn’t necessarily exclude the notion that there is a sense (maybe more than one sense depending on our circumstances) in which we should in fact fear God with {phobos}.
After all, as 1 John says, phobos has kolasis but perfect agape casts out phobos.
Anyway, I still really like his attempt, and I can kind-of add something to it: in classical pre-NT Greek, {phobos} was a word for flying, which came to mean by metaphor fear by the analogy of “flying away” when afraid. We still use the same analogical connection today in English.
The attempt to translate the Greek NT wouldn’t work that way: “Fly God and give glory to Him” “Do not fly [God], little believers.” “Flying has chastening but perfect love casts out flying.” But a properly reverential fear of God would mesh pretty well with flying as a conceptual analogy, and so with the analogy of the Spirit flowing from God that Jeff is trying to talk about. 
I think that’s pretty cool, although I wouldn’t try to hang any argument from it.
Here is something interesting I came across on Dr. Joel M. Hoffman’s site regarding Jonah and yarah/yir’ah. He says the best way to convey the meaning is:
The verb yarah and the related noun yir’ah combine “fear” and “awe” in a way that’s hard to express in Modern English. (It’s approximately the feeling one might have for a beautiful lightning storm — it’s awesome, awe-inspiring, scary, etc.) This is why translations vary.
But the running theme of yarah is destroyed in every translation I can find.
goddidntsaythat.com/2009/10/01/f … ase-study/
Many years ago when I lived in Ohio there were truly awesome thunderstorms back there, still are of course, and derechos too. Even as a child I didn’t run from the storms but would sit on the porch with my father and experience the awesome thrill of it. On that “great and terrible day” of YHWH we will not be in terror trying to hide in our graves. We will be obeying the universal command from the creator: “Come forth!.” Perfect love made real and all terror (phobos) cast out.
Wow – very insightful and, shall we say, peace-making. Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called sons of God.
The Batman massacre is a sign of madness, not of the loss of fear of hell.
Not to say that our society is NOT experiencing the judgment of God. If He is merciful, how could He NOT judge us and do all that can be done to wake us up and bring us to the end of our own self-sufficiency?