Or “No Salvation without Resurrection”!
Preliminaries:
·
The
most common description of death is “sleep”: koimao “asleep”[1]. This is
described as a deep sleep from which
people will one day be awakened (cp. Dan. 12:2).
·
CONSIDER
this: ALL the OT kings registered
are said to have “died/been laid to rest with their fathers[2]]”, that is,
fell asleep [Acts 13.36; cp. Stephen, Acts 7.60].
·
Reformed
Judaism, like Christian Orthodoxy, adopted the immortal soul doctrine:
“We
reassert the doctrine of Judaism
that the soul is immortal, grounding the belief on the divine nature of human
spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We
reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection
and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting
punishment and reward.” 1885 Pittsburgh Conference
“That
classical Judaism firmly believed in the resurrection of the dead—indeed,
insisted upon it as a defining tenet of
the community—today comes as a
shock to most Jews and Christians alike…Abba Hillel Silver [Reformed
rabbi and one of the most important figures in American Judaism, in his
influential volume Where Judaism Differed],
presents the resurrection of the dead
as a late and degraded development in Jewish thought, a borrowing from foreign sources ‘to
which the Jews added nothing original’…The Christians, vulnerable to a crude superstition about a god-man who
came back from the dead, have perverted the Hebrew Bible by introducing
something altogether foreign into it.” J.D. Levenson[3]
1. 2Cor 5.8; Phil 1.23:
“Out of the body to be with the lord”
·
No-body
means you’re a nobody!
·
Body
+ breath of life = “living soul/person” (Gen.
2:7). At the resurrection we will have spiritual bodies (1Cor 15.44-55).
·
2Cor 5.8 death = “naked,”, a fearful, unthinkable and practically
incomprehensible state.
“‘For
though absent in body, I am present in spirit (pneuma)’ (Colossians 2:5). Was his immortal spirit in one place, and
his body was in another while he was alive? If so, then the immortal spirit can
leave the body when it wants to, and the body can live without the spirit, but
James tells us that the body without the spirit is dead (James 2:26). Was
Paul’s body dead for a time while his spirit was gone to be at Colossae? No, he
was saying he was with them in his thoughts and heart, not that an immortal
spirit had left his body, went to Colossae, and returned.” W.R. West[4]
“Jesus
said, ‘And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive
you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also’ (John 14:3). Many say, ‘Not
so Lord, we will be with you in Heaven as soon as we die, Your second coming
and the resurrection will not be needed for we will already be alive and already
with You in Heaven.’ But Paul said, ‘For our citizenship is in heaven, from
which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform
the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory’
(Philippians 3:20-21). It is us (our bodies) who will be transformed, not something
that is in us that is now just as immortal as it could ever be, something that
will not need to be transformed, and it is this something that is already
immortal that is now in a person that will not wait for the Lord Jesus to come
again, but it will immediately go to Heaven to be with Him at death. Both those
in Christ who are dead, and those who are living, will together go from the
earth to meet the Lord in the air when He is coming from Heaven before we will ‘be
with the Lord.’ ‘Then we that are alive, that are left, SHALL TOGETHER with
them be caught up (from the earth) in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air’
(1 Thessalonians 4:17-18). How could Paul have said any clearer that those who
are now asleep are not now alive in Heaven, but that they will be raised from
the dead and meet the Lord in the air as He is returning?”[5]
“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.”
Summary:
The teaching of some makes Paul be wrong when he said we are “longing to be
clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven” for their teaching says
we had it at birth and will always have it even if we go to “Hell”.[6]
2. Luke
16:19-31: The Rich Man and Lazarus:
·
To
read this literally would be ridiculous. It doesn’t even work for the “no-body
soul” doctrine.
·
Assumes
that Judgment, the Last Day, has come and gone.
·
Jesus
uses Jewish/Pharisaic “afterlife/parable” stories to make ethical points about
the rich and the poor.
“[Miriam]
said to him: ‘By the life of your head, Caesar, let the sword come upon my neck
and upon his neck together.’ He said to her: ‘Heaven forbid! I shall not do
such a thing, as it is written in your Torah: You shall not slaughter it with its young on the same day (Lev.
22:28).’ The child said to him: ‘Wicked one, have you perhaps fulfilled the
whole Torah except this verse alone?’ Immediately they snatched him away from
her in order to kill him.
His
mother said to him: ‘My son, may your heart not faint, and may you not despair.
You are going to your brothers, and you will be seated in the bosom of our
father Abraham. And tell him in my name: You built one altar and did not
sacrifice your son, but I built 7 altars and sacrifice my sons on them. And for
that matter, yours was (merely) a trial, but mine was a fact.’” van Henten,
Avemarie[7]
“Naked
came he into the world, and naked he leaves it; would that the departure were
as innocent as the arrival! ...This day he sits in the bosom of Abraham, said
Rabbi; i.e., he died.” P.I. Hershon[8]
“Those
who make this parable into a literal story do not accept the main part of it as
being literal. They do not accept Abraham’s bosom as being a literal place, but
as a symbolic place; his literal bosom had turned to dust many years before,
and there would not be room for even one person in Abraham’s literal bosom;
therefore, if part of it cannot be literal none of it can be literal, if it is
a true story then all of it must be literal. It is a symbolic picture or a true
story? It cannot be a mixture of the two; it cannot be part literal and part a
true story. Does anyone believe Lazarus was literally carried to Abraham’s
literal bosom by angels?
Many
want to make this a true story and not a parable to use it to prove Hell, but
the only part they want to be a true story is the one word ‘torment’ even
though it is clear that the ‘torment’ in this parable is not torment in Hell;
the rich man was not being tormented in Hell and Lazarus was not in Heaven.”
W.R. West[9]
“We
want to know if this was a real experience, and if it teaches the condition of
the dead. Let it be remembered, then, according to the philosophy that they are
‘spirits.’ Will you tell me how you reason that a ‘spirit’s tongue’ can be
cooled with water? ‘Oh,’ you say, ‘that represents’—hold on, no representations
can be in a real circumstance. If you say it is real, stay with it. This policy
of making it half literal and half figurative, just because there is an end to
gain, is a nature ‘fakir’ in theology. It, therefore, represents nothing if it
is a real circumstance, as you affirm. How could Lazarus carry a drop of water
on his ‘spiritual’ finger? You say, ‘Oh, that doesn’t mean literal water.’ Well
sir, it does or you do not mean what you say, I care not who you are. But
reason with me. How could a spiritual tongue be cooled with a drop of water? ‘Oh,’
you say, ‘That must not be pressed too literal,’ no, not too literal, but just
a literal as in any real circumstance. If it was a literal fact, then the
details, which make it up are literal fact also. And to deny that it to deny
your position.” E.D. Slough[10]
3. Luke
23.43: Today in paradise
·
Placement
of the comma dictates the doctrine: “I tell you the truth today, you will be with me in paradise.” (cp. Acts 20.26)
·
“Heaven
is nowhere the destination of the dying” (J.A.T. Robinson). Comfort in the face
of death is always related to the resurrection (cf. John 11:21–26).
·
“Paradise”
is not heaven but the future, restored Eden/Kingdom: Rev 2.7; cp. Isa 51:3;
Ezek 36:35.
·
Jesus
promised to be in heaven with the thief on that very day. NOT SO: 3 days in the
grave, on earth after resurrection.
“…we
have been able to determine at least 3 truths regarding the words spoken here.
First, we recognize that Jesus was speaking these words in order to encourage
the thief [promising] on that day that when he established his kingdom the
thief would be a part [of it]…Secondly, the promise Jesus gave the thief was
not realized on that day based on our discovery that Jesus did not go to
paradise on the day of his death. Instead, Jesus entered the place of the dead,
the grave (Sheol or Hades)… [The
thief] too went into the grave and is awaiting the resurrection [1Cor 15.22]…Finally,
the promise Jesus gave the thief is a promise for you and me today.” Dr. Warren
II[11]
4. Rev.
6.9-11; cp. Rev 20.4-5:
Murdered People Crying out
·
Figure
of speech[12] known as personification:
headless people/souls crying out:
Cp. Abel’s blood crying out: Gen 4:8-10. Also the word translated
“souls” [psychas] can also mean
“life” [psychen]. NOTE: LXX Lev. 17.11, “life [psyche] of the body
is in its blood”; cp. Gen 4.10. In other words, “Their life/person is crying out for blood/vengeance.”
·
Rev 20 shows that these people “lived again,” meaning they were dead!
“The
word psyche [soul] has no such fixed meaning as is put upon it by theology and
tradition. [It] is often put for person. When we say that the population
consists of so many souls, we do not mean ‘soul’ as distinct from body, but we
mean so many persons …So there is no reason whatever for adhering to the traditional
meaning rendering, ‘soul,’ in this passage as denoting a part of a man. The
words simply mean ‘I saw those who had been slain [killed].’ John also hears
what they say. Speaking requires the organs of speech…These were the martyred
saints personified and represented as waiting. They themselves were dead; for
in Rev. 20.4, John sees them again, and it says ‘they lived again’ in the first
resurrection. ‘The rest of the dead
lived not again until 1000 years ended’ (Rev 20.5). Why say ‘lived not again’
if, all the time, they were alive in some other place?” Bullinger[13]
TEST ALL THINGS!
“The
assumption that John
dispenses with the future resurrection would mean that he has significantly altered the
view of ‘resurrection’ found elsewhere in the documents of the NT or in
the Judaism of the period…The dead are raised, not ‘spiritually’ or
metaphorically, but bodily. It is of course possible that John has done just
that: radically reinterpreted the
meaning of “the resurrection”, but the data of the Gospel do not bear out the assumption that John has collapsed the future
resurrection into a present quality of life...Language of being raised
up remains resolutely attached to the
future, to the ‘last day’. Resurrection overcomes death…It is that life, construed as fellowship and union with God, that is present for those who believe…The
implication is clearly that the “life” one has in the present is as much promise as possession. The
full possession of life awaits the promise of the
resurrection… [Bringing to] fruition what the Father offers through the Son,
the gift of life [in the age to come].” M.M. Thompson[14]
Reference/Recommended
Readings:
·
E.W.
Bullinger, Commentary on Revelation; Figures of Speech Used in the Bible; The Companion Bible.
·
T.S.
Warren II, Dead Men Talking.
·
M.M.
Thomson, The God of the Gospel of John.
·
J.D.
Levenson, Resurrection and the
Restoration of Israel.
[1] Mat 9.24; 27.52; Mar 5.39; Lu 8.52; Jn
11.11-13; Acts 7.60; 13.36; 1Cor 11.30; 15.6, 18, 20; 1Thess 4.13-15; 5.6, 10;
2Pe 3.4.
[2] 1 K 11.21; 14.20; 15.8; 16.6; 22.40; 2K
8.24; 10.35; 13.9; 14.16; 13.7; 16.20; 20.21; 21.18; 24.6; cp. 2Chro 9.31;
12.16; 14.1; 16.13.
[7] Martyrdom and Noble Death, ‘The Story of
Miriam and her Seven Martyred Sons’, Lamentations
Rabbah, pp 146-150.
[10] Eternal Torment or the Second Death, the
indictment of eternal torment. The self-negation of a monstrous doctrine,
tried, judged and condemned out of its own mouth by the arguments and
admissions of its staunchest advocated, 1914.
[12] “A figure by which
things are represented or spoken of as persons; or, by which we attribute
intelligence, by words or actions, to inanimate objects or abstract ideas.”
Bullinger, Figures of Speech In The Bible,
p. 861.
[14] The God of the Gospel of John, p. 82-83,
2001.
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