How come Jesus used allegorical stories to make points when teaching?

Question

...only to have everyone assume God's word was literal?

Answer 1

For two reasons: by using down to earth stories - 1) those that wanted to know the truth would get the point and 2) those that didn't want to know the truth would think it was just a story. God's word is literal. God used many techniques to get the truth across to dense people ... you see, He literally used allegorical stories!

Answer 2

So that those with wisdom could understand the Truth behind His stories.

For example, the story of the virgins with the lamps made ready and the virgins who had to leave to find oil for their lamps.

The groom came for virgins with lamps made ready and the others were left behind.

This story tells of the Bridegroom (Christ) coming for His Church at the end of the Church Age. Those who are not ready like those virgins will be left behind.(Matthew 25:1-13)

Thus His Word is literal even though the stories He used were allegorical.

Answer 3

There were many reason and it depended upon whom he was speaking to. He used parables with his diciples that the average person at that time wouldn't have gotten the meaning of. With large crowds his used parables that used common things so that people could get the point easy. Sometimes when discussing deep subjects he would use parables that were not easily understood. This was to show who was really interested in what he had to say and who wasn't. Those that cared would go to him and ask him to explain and he would, others would walk away thinking what a nice little story but without getting the real meaning.

Answer 4

Maybe it was to find out who is ready for being taught. Most of the apostles didn't understand what he was talking about. Maybe when people are able to connect the dots in the parables, they're ready. Don't know. Just what I think. Maybe the ones that don't make the connection and take it literally are not ready. What do you think?IM me or email me or something. I like your questions. Take care.

Answer 5

He used parables not to "dumb everything down", but to show the simplicity of his teachings. The literal translation of God's word came through individual clusters and sects of people who took it upon themselves to delineate and discern the truth, not realizing that the people who penned the Word were writing it in terms people of THEIR day could understand in it's NEWNESS and people in OUR day could understand in translation. Case in point, the Book of Revelation is full of alliteration that most people couldn't possibly comprehend when the book is read LITERALLY. But, John was a man living 1,900 years ago, charged with conferring the most staggering testament of God upon man ever written! He in a sense was the world's first and only time traveller when the angel catapulted his mind into the future, then returned him to the time he lived in and asked him to "write all that he saw and heard for these things ARE (not WERE) TRUE and FAITHFUL". How could a man living then describe weapons of mass destruction of today and have it relate to people of his time who would never live to see these things come to fruition? Such things became the wild-sounding alliterations John used like the "scorpion with death in it's tail and a face like a man". Who's to say that what John actually saw in that instance wasn't a military helicopter with a split cockpit like giant eyes or actually seeing a man in said cockpit FLYING the "scorpion"? And who's to say the "death in it's tail" like a real scorpion's stinger wasn't some sort of nerve gas agent sprayed from it? These allegories and alliterations were also intended to help the Bible withstand the test of time as far as world government attempts to stamp it out were concerned. If God had intended every single generation of man to be the forbears of the full nature of the truth about the FAILURE of man to reconcile government and God, then the book of Revelation as well as the rest of the Bible as we came to know it would've been perceived as a book of sedition and heresy intended to inspire the Jews of the Roman occupation (world government during the time of Revelation's writing) to attempt to overthrow the government! Of course, that wouldn't have been God's intent, for He already showed Ezekiel in a dream about the statue that was made of gold, brass, iron, clay and etc. that was crushed by the giant stone that world subjection would come by the decadence of each empire destroying one another from without in battle and from within by bankruptcy, scandal, and the gradual REVELATION of the truth about God's word a little bit at a time each succeeding generation until the generation would be born that would see the restoration of Israel and begin to see the fulfillment of ALL the book of Revelation (which we live in today!)

Answer 6

He wants us to learn for our selves. How much does it help if He just tells us everything? Don't you understand things better when you find the answer for yourself?

Answer 7

Only those who truly believed in Him could understand what He
was telling them.

Answer 8

That is what people associate with.