B. W. wrote:
Starhunter wrote:
Say for instance Ezekiel 32:31, the next verse says, God speaking, "For I have caused my terror in the land of the living..." not of the dead. Pharaoh sees his great army demolished.
Then Verse 21, during a battle the strongest warriors are usually the last to go down, they are the ones that "speak out from the midst" of the hell zone. Nothing seems to indicate communicating to the dead. They are yelling to the rest of the living.'
You need to look at the context of Ezekiel 32:19-32 (also note Psalms 9:17) and Ezekiel 32:21 it explains where such are hearing and seeing - very much alive...
Also these verse add clues as well: Ezekiel 26:20, Numbers 16:30,33;, Psalms 28:1, Isaiah 14:11-19
Lastly if they are yelling at the living, then would not that show that they are not asleep? -
Yes of course, living people are not dead or asleep, especially if they are running around on the battle field.
These texts mention things like hell, Sheol, the pit, the earth etc. When people die they go down to the earth, death is like a pit that you don't get out of, unless you are raised through a resurrection either to go to heaven with all the other resurrected saints, or to judgement on this earth at the end of the thousand years.
If the wicked awaiting judgement are alive, then God would not have to resurrect them for judgement.
And if they are suffering already, before the judgement, then that is punishment without a fair trial.
The nature of the judgement is like this, neither God the Father or the Son pronounce judgement, they only give a recollection of the person's life, as well as the story of the conflict between good and evil since the beginning.
As the Bible states "thine own mouth shall either condemn or justify thee."
So the judgement brings about a confession of truth and fairness, and it also becomes very clear to them that they are not fit to enter heaven, their characters would not find peace in heaven let alone eternity. Their own thinking would be torture to them. Just imagine being jealous for eternity, after a few years you would not want to live.
In regards to hell, the grave and all the other terms used for death, if one believes that human beings have an immortal disembodied spirit or ghost or soul that has consciousness and some kind of mobility and interaction with another kind or physicality, then in essence we have another creation or reality besides the one we live in. Like a ghost picture to everything. Then having that idea, we would naturally apply these thoughts to anything that talks about hell etc, and imagine people talking, having food and being tortured or whatever in that place.
But apart from the pagan parable that Jesus used for the pharisees, there is no text in the Bible which says that man has a part of him that can ghost it. I would like to see just one text that says that after you die you are whisked up to heaven or float down to hell as a disembodied ghost.
And I would like one text that shows that the meaning of these words - spirit/soul/ghost/breath/mind means a disembodied /immortal entity.
I am not suggesting that a doctrine cannot be proven by a set of texts, with combined themes from here and there to make the one idea, but I was just wondering if there are any texts that you feel would say it outright - "man has an immortal entity within."