Waltzing Matilde...
Having visited the Gold Coast many times the Lyrics escape me.
“Waltzing Matilda, often called Australia’s unofficial national anthem” and a 4 chord song!
**The swaggy is driven to suicide, whereas Peter recovers to become the rock upon which the Christian church was built.**
Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. Peter said so himself.
As far as Peter’s denial: all of the Lord’s handpicked disciples said they would never leave him, yet they all skidaddled when Jesus was arrested (fulfilling prophecy). When the Lord told a fiesty Peter to put his sword away, that is when Peter became afraid.
What changed Peter into the fearless servant we read of in Acts: the Holy Ghost infilling.
You know in reading the meaning of that song, Waltzing Matilde, I don’t think the comparison to Peter is a good comparison.
The swagman really broke the law in stealing a sheep to kill and eat. It wasn’t his to do that too. Jesus instructed his disciples to keep Caesars law and that mean follow the laws. This was an example of breaking a law. Peter would not have been a lawbreaker by diligence to the Lord Jesus admonitions. He would not steal a sheep. He would know that was wrong.
I personally don’t see the act of betrayal here either. In the days of Jesus if one was without food the law allowed the ones who had none to glean for themselves in the fields after they had already been gone through by the farmers and so this comparison that he was denied his basic right to food by an unjust society is not accurate.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6704-gleaning-of-the-fields. There was always some left.
Also, the swagman jumped in the water to escape arrest and accidently drowned. He did not commit suicide but he was guilty of the crime of stealing. Peter was no thief.
Peter would never commit suicide because it was thought as killing oneself and a great sin against God who gave the gift of life to one.
Just my personal opinion. The comparison does not work for me.
Betrayal Of His Own Best Self
Are you Joel Osteen?
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No, the Peter was not the rock upon which the Christian church was built. The "this" in "this Rock" refers to the Divine Son of the Living God whom Peter confessed, under Divine inspiration, by faith in which Rock the church has its members (1Cor. 12:13; Eph. 1:13) and overcomes the gates of Hell, rescuing sinners. "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1Jn, 5:5; cf (1Jn. 2:13,14,25)
Thus, in contrast to Peter (“petros”), that the LORD Jesus is the Rock (“petra”) or "stone" (“lithos,” and which denotes a large rock in Mk. 16:4) upon which the church is built is one of the most abundantly confirmed doctrines in the Bible (petra: Rm. 9:33; 1Cor. 10:4; 1Pet. 2:8; cf. Lk. 6:48; 1Cor. 3:11; lithos: Mat. 21:42; Mk.12:10-11; Lk. 20:17-18; Act. 4:11; Rm. 9:33; Eph. 2:20; cf. Dt. 32:4, Is. 28:16) including by Peter himself. (1Pt. 2:4-8) Rome's current catechism attempts to have Peter himself as the rock as well, but also affirms: “On the rock of this faith confessed by St Peter, Christ build his Church,” (pt. 1, sec. 2, cp. 2, para. 424) which understanding some of the so-called “church fathers” concur with.)
While men can argue about the significance of the difference between the Greek (the language the Holy Spirit chose to express the New Testament revelation in) words “Petros” (Peter, or stone in Jn. 1:42) and “petra” (rock) in Mt. 16:18, and what the LORD might have said in Aramaic (one can follow an examination here on that), among other things, I see the phrase “this stone” (“touton lithosis”), used to identify the cornerstone which is the foundation of the church, (Mt. 21:42) as only being used of Christ as regarding a person. (Mt. 21:44)
The perpetual Petrine papacy, that Peter was the exalted infallible head whom all the church looked to as the first of a line of infallible popes ruling from Rome, is one of the distinctive Catholic teachings that are not manifest in the only wholly God-inspired, substantive, authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels).