Silvertusk stated:
We die. Our spirit (life) goes back to God, our soul goes to sleep and our Bodies decay. In a blink of an eye to us it is Judgement day (although it may be 100s to millions of years in the future). New imperishable bodies are created for us and are joined with our wakened souls and the spirit of life breathed back into them. We are judged. Then we are either sent to live in the New earth and Heaven or we are cast into the lake of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
That is the way I see it anyway.
Silvertusk, Your view more closely matches the scriptures.
IRQconflict quoted
Luk 23:43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
Well, we know the old manuscripts did not provide punction marks! So the verse could also easily have read “And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee today, shalt thou be with me in paradise.” This is in fact more likely since Jesus spent 3 days in Hades. He could not be in paradise and Hades at the same time!
Jenwat3 wrote:
But you didn't answer me about resurrection.
Not really, so we need to look at scripture to understand what happens at death. Let's start in the O.T. and move forward to the N.T.
The spirit is not the same as the soul. (Gen 2:7) The Spirit is the breath of life (Psa 146:4) His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; In that very day
his thoughts perish. (Job 7:21). "Why then do You not pardon my transgression And take away my iniquity? For now
I will lie down in the dust; And You will seek me,
but I will not be."
Let's see what the scriptures say about the soul and death. (Psa 78:50) He leveled a path for His anger; He did not spare their
soul from death, But gave over their life to the plague, (Psa 116:8) For You have
rescued my soul from death, My eyes from tears, My feet from stumbling. (Psa 115:17)
The dead do not praise the LORD, Nor do any who go down into silence; (Ecc 9:10) Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might,
for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
It appears death is a type of sleep too. (Psa 13:3) Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; Enlighten my eyes,
or I will sleep the sleep of death, (1Th 4:13) But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. (Dan 12:2). "Many of
those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. (Act 7:60) And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this,
he fell asleep.
Is it our bodies or soul that dwell in the grave? (Joh 5:28-29)
Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
Do we have immortal subsistence? (Job 10:5) 'Are Your days as the days
of a mortal, Or Your years as man's years, (Isa 13:12) I will make
mortal man scarcer than pure gold And mankind than the gold of Ophir. (1Co 15:53-55). For this perishable body
must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and
the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" Psa 146:3 Do not trust in princes, In mortal man, in whom there is no salvation.
And the telling verse is… (1Ti 6:16)
who alone possesses immortality (God) and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him
be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.
Immortality is what we receive from the tree of life (Jesus). (Rev 22:14) Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may
have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.
Who is in Heaven? (Joh 3:13)
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
What does Paul tell us? 2Ti 2:18 men who have gone astray from the truth saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some.
John tells us Rev 20:5 The rest of
the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection.
Looks like we stay dead until the resurrection.
Let me end with a few quotes from some of our early Church Fathers' and other sources.
The celebrated
Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible:
"No biblical text authorizes the statement that the soul is separated from the body at the moment of death" (Vol. 1, p. 802).
Christian Words and Christian Meanings, by John Burnaby (pp. 148, 149):
"Greek philosophers had argued that the dissolution which we call death happens to nothing but bodies, and that the souls of men are by their native constitution immortal. The Greek word for immortality occurs only once in the New Testament, and there it belongs to none but the King of Kings….
The immortality of the soul is no part of the Christian creed, just as it is no part of Christian anthropology to divide soul and body and confine the real man, the essence of personality, to supposedly separable soul for which embodiment is imprisonment….
Jesus taught no doctrine of everlasting life for disembodied souls, such as no Jew loyal to the faith his fathers could have accepted or even understood. But Jewish belief was in the raising of the dead at the Last Day."
(Why then do churches constantly say that disembodied souls have gone to heaven or hell?)
Companion Bible by E.W. Bullinger, on II Cor. 5:8:
"It is little less than a crime for anyone to pick out certain words and frame them into a sentence, not only disregarding the scope and context, but ignoring the other words in the verse, and quote the words
'absent from the body, present with the Lord' with the view of dispensing with the hope of the Resurrection (which is the subject of the whole passage) as though it were unnecessary; and as though
'present with the Lord' is obtainable without it."
Law and Grace, by Professor A. F. Knight (p. 79):
"In the Old Testament man is never considered to be a soul dwelling in a body, a soul that will one day be set free from the oppression of the body, at the death of that body, like a bird released from a cage. The Hebrews were not dualists in their understanding of God's world."
Martin Luther: "I think that there is not a place in Scripture of more force for the dead who have fallen asleep, than Ecc. 9:5 ("the dead know nothing at all"), understanding nothing of our state and condition — against the invocation of saints and the fiction of Purgatory."
Here are the words of Irenaeus of the mid-second century (
Against Heresies, Bk. 5):
"Some who are reckoned among the orthodox go beyond the prearranged plan for the exaltation of the just, and are ignorant of the methods by which they are disciplined beforehand for incorruption. They thus entertain
heretical opinions. For the heretics, not admitting the salvation of their flesh,
affirm that immediately upon their death they shall pass above the heavens. Those persons, therefore, who
reject a resurrection affecting the whole man, and do their best to remove it from the Christian scheme, know nothing as to the plan of resurrection. For they do not choose to understand that, if these things are as they say, the Lord Himself, in Whom they profess to believe, did not rise again on the third day, but
immediately upon his expiring departed on high, leaving His body in the earth. But the facts are that for three days,
He dwelt in the place where the dead were, as Jonas remained three days and three nights in the whale's belly (Matt. 12:40) . . . David says, when prophesying of Him: 'Thou hast delivered my soul from the nethermost hell (grave).' And on rising the third day, He said to Mary, 'Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father' (John 20:17). . . . How then must not these men be put to confusion, who allege . . . that their inner man [soul], leaving the body here, ascends into the super-celestial place? For as the Lord 'went away in the midst of the shadow of death' (Ps. 86: 23),
where the souls of the dead were, and afterwards arose in the body, and
after the resurrection was taken up into heaven, it is obvious that the souls of His disciples also . . . shall go away into the invisible place . . .
and there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event. Then receiving their bodies, and
rising in their entirety, bodily, just as the Lord rose, they shall come thus into the presence of God. As our Master did not at once take flight to heaven, but awaited the time of His resurrection . . . , so we ought also
to await the time of our resurrection.
Inasmuch, therefore, as the opinions of certain orthodox persons are derived from heretical discourses, they are both ignorant of God's dispensations, of the mystery of the resurrection of the just, and of the earthly KINGDOM which is
the beginning of incorruption; by means of this KINGDOM those who shall be worthy are accustomed gradually to partake of the divine nature."
The protest of Justin Martyr against what later became orthodoxy, and remains so to this day, is no less incisive (
Dialogue with Trypho, Ch. 80):
"They who maintain the wrong opinion say that there is no resurrection of the flesh. . . As in the case of a yoke of oxen, if one or other is loosed from the yoke, neither of them can plough alone;
so neither can soul or body alone effect anything, if they be unyoked from their communion . . ." [i.e. the soul can have no separate existence]. For what is man but the reasonable animal composed of body and soul?
Is the soul by itself man? No; but the soul of man. Would the body be called man? No; but it is called the body of man. If then neither of these is by itself man, but that which is
made up of the two together is called man, and God has called
man to life and resurrection, He has called not a part, but the whole, which is the soul and body. . . Well,
they say, the soul is incorruptible, being a part of God and inspired by Him. . . . Then what thanks are due to Him, and what manifestation of His power and goodness is it,
if He purposed to save what is by nature saved. . . . but no thanks are due to one who saves what is his own; for this is to save himself. . . . How then did Christ raise the dead? Their souls or their bodies? Manifestly both. If the resurrection were only spiritual, it was requisite that He, in raising the dead, should show the body lying apart by itself,
and the soul living apart by itself. But now He did not do so, but raised the body. . . . Why do we any longer endure those unbelieving arguments and fail to see that we are retrograding when we listen to such an argument as this:
That the soul is immortal, but the body mortal, and incapable of being revived. For this we used to hear from Plato, even before we learned the truth. If then the Saviour said this and proclaimed salvation to the soul alone, what new thing beyond what we heard from Plato, did He bring us?"
Justin is here refuting the arguments of Gnosticism which denied the resurrection of the flesh. Traditional Christianity has taken a similar, but slightly different tack by including in the creed a belief in the resurrection of the body, while
also teaching an immediate salvation of
the soul alone in a conscious disembodied state. This is said to be the real person, albeit disembodied. Such an idea is flatly contradicted by Justin and Irenaeus and is identified by them as pagan.
Justin Martyr:
Dialogue with Trypho:
Trypho : "Do you really admit that this place Jerusalem shall be rebuilt? And do you expect your people to be gathered together, and made joyful with Christ and the Patriarchs...?"
Justin: "I and many others are of that opinion, and believe that this will take place, as you are assuredly aware; but on the other hand, I signified to you that many who belong to the pure and pious faith think otherwise. Moreover I pointed out to you that some who are called Christians, but are godless, impious heretics, teach doctrines that are in every way blasphemous, atheistical and foolish. . . . I choose to follow not men or men's teachings, but God and the doctrines delivered by Him.
For if you have fallen with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit the truth of the resurrection . . . who say that there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls when they die are taken to heaven, do not imagine that they are Christians . . . But I and others
who are right-minded Christians on all points are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned and enlarged, as the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah and others declare. . . . We have perceived, moreover, that the expression, 'The Day of the Lord,' is connected with this subject. And further, there was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the Apostles of Christ, who prophesied by a revelation that was made to him that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem; and that thereafter the general and the eternal resurrection of all men would take place."
Modern scholars realize that the view of death which has prevailed (and is now promoted in church constantly) is not biblical . Far from it, it is, amazingly, actually "pagan" and "Gnostic." In a standard text of Christian Dogmatics we read:
"...the hellenization process by which Christianity adopted many Greek [PAGAN] thought patterns led in a different direction as the eschatological hope came to be expressed in Hellenistic categories. Irenaeus said: 'It is manifest that the souls of His disciples also, upon whose account the Lord underwent these things shall go away
in the invisible placeallotted to them by God. and
there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event. Then receiving their bodies and rising in their entirety, that is bodily, just as the Lord arose, they shall come into the presence of God.' Irenaeus' statement contains the concept of an abode or purgatory in which the soul of the dead remains until the universal resurrection. We should not denounce this as a deviation from biblical teaching, since the point of the assertion is antignostic.
Irenaeus wanted to reject the Gnostic idea that at the end of this earthly life the soul immediately ascends to its heavenly abode. As the early fathers fought the pagan idea that a part of the human person is simply immortal, it was important for them to assert that there is no rectilinear ascent to God. Once we die, life is over" (
CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS, BRAATEN/JENSON, VOL. 2, p. 503, section written by Hans Schwartz, Professor of Protestant Theology, University of Regensburg, Federal Republic of Germany)
There is a further impressive protest against the popular idea that the dead survive as conscious "souls" in heaven. One might expect that such protest would initiate a wide-scale reform amongst the clergy. Alan Richardson writes in
A Theological Word Book of the Bible (pp. 111, 112, emphasis added):
"The Bible writers, holding fast to the conviction that the created order owes its existence to the wisdom and love of God and is therefore essentially good,
could not conceive of life after death as a disembodied existence [as millions of sincere believers now do] ("we shall not be found naked" — II Cor. 5:3), but as a renewal under conditions of the intimate unity of body and soul which was human life as they knew it.
Hence death was thought of as the death of the whole man, and such phrases as 'freedom from death,' imperishability or immortality could only properly be used to describe what is meant by the phrase eternal or living God 'who only has immortality' (I Tim. 6:16).
Man does not possess within himself the quality of deathlessness, but must, if he is to overcome the destructive power of death, receive it as the gift of God who 'raised Christ from the dead,' and put death aside like a covering garment (I Cor. 15:53, 54). It is through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that this possibility for man ((2 Tim. 1:10) has been brought to life and the hope confirmed that the corruption (Rom. 11:7) which is a universal feature of human life shall be effectively overcome."
The fundamental confusion about life after death which has so permeated traditional Christianity is brilliantly described by Dr. Paul Althaus in his book,
The Theology of Martin Luther (Fortress Press, 1966, pp. 413, 414):
"The hope of the early church centered on the resurrection of the Last Day. It is this which first calls the dead into eternal life (I Cor. 15; Phil 3:21). This resurrection happens to the man and not only to the body. Paul speaks of the resurrection not 'of the body' but 'of the dead.' This understanding of the resurrection implicitly understands death as also affecting the whole man....
Thus the original Biblical concepts have been replaced by ideas from Hellenistic, Gnostic dualism. The New Testament idea of the resurrection which affects the whole man has had to give way to the immortality of the soul. The Last Day also loses its significance, for souls have received all that is decisively important long before this. Eschatological tension is no longer strongly directed to the day of Jesus' Coming.
The difference between this and the Hope of the New Testament is very great."
That difference may be witnessed in contemporary preaching at funerals which, though claiming the Bible as its source, reflects a pagan Platonism which both the New Testament and the early Church Fathers rejected.
Hope this helps,
Paul
