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Eternal_joy
Registered user
Username: Eternal_joy
Post Number: 33
Registered: 9-2012
| | Posted on Monday, February 25, 2013 - 12:38 pm: |     |
As an SDA, I never heard the term "soul sleep." The doctrine on what happens at death was always referred to as "the state of the dead." What Adventists believe about death isn't really "soul sleep" because there is no soul to sleep at death, because a "soul" in Adventist theology requires a body plus breath. Since there is no more breath, the soul has ceased to exist. Now, we described death as a sleep as Adventists, but I always understood that to mean that death was like a sleep in that we were unconscious and our bodies were "sleeping," but I knew that, in reality, we had ceased to exist except in the memory of God. I never heard the SDA state of the dead doctrine described as "soul sleep" until I left Adventism. Why do we call it soul sleep when that really isn't what Adventists believe? When we call it soul sleep, it seems that we are not making it as bad as it really is, because at least soul sleep allows for the existence of the soul at death, even if it is sleeping (I'm not saying this is biblical, but it is on a different level than saying that we cease to exist at death). The SDA state of the dead doctrine is MONUMENTAL in how SDAs understand the nature of man and the New Birth, and its idea that man is only physical extends into all areas of Adventist theology. Should we really be calling it "soul sleep" when the SDA doctrine on this matter is even worse than soul sleep? |
Asurprise
Registered user
Username: Asurprise
Post Number: 2975
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Monday, February 25, 2013 - 3:07 pm: | |
I never heard it called "soul sleep" by an Adventist, just by Christians trying to describe that Adventist doctrine. I agree, it doesn't really describe the doctrine.
I remember hearing an Adventist evangelist going to great lengths to explain that the Greek word for spirit is pneuma and that pneuma means air. He used examples such as "pneumatic" and "pneumonia" to make his point. The trouble is, the Bible uses the same word for the Holy Spirit. (I took a beginning Greek class.) For example:
"For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." 1st Corinthians 2:11
Even Ellen White admitted that the Holy Spirit is a Person, so it looks like the evangelist was even contradicting Ellen White!
If one follows his reasoning, they'd have to conclude that there is an air pocket inside a person and that the air in that pocket knows the person's thoughts! |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 14299
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 25, 2013 - 10:02 pm: | |
That's so interesting, Eternal Joy. I believe I did hear "soul sleep" as an Adventist, but not, I think, in school or any official documents. "State of the dead" really was the term most used.
I cannot remember where I first encountered "soul sleep", but I've had the same reaction to it for years: it is a deception. I think Adventists use the term when talking to "outsiders" because they can skate by underneath it without being detected easily. It really does NOT describe Adventist belief.
Asurprise, you're right about the word pneuma underlying both the term for the Holy Spirit and for the human spirit. I remember when I realized with a shock that the Holy Spirit was not communicating with me in my respiratory system.
Colleen |
Asurprise
Registered user
Username: Asurprise
Post Number: 2976
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - 12:52 pm: | |
That's so funny Colleen!  I have this mental picture of EMTs recoiling from giving an accident victim CPR for fear they will transfer their thoughts to the victime! |
Ric_b
Registered user
Username: Ric_b
Post Number: 1979
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Monday, March 04, 2013 - 7:12 am: | |
/quote{I cannot remember where I first encountered "soul sleep", but I've had the same reaction to it for years: it is a deception. I think Adventists use the term when talking to "outsiders" because they can skate by underneath it without being detected easily. It really does NOT describe Adventist belief.}
SDA apologists do use the term soul sleep when discussing the doctrine with outsiders. It is another misrepresentation of their beliefs.
Here are quotes from Luther that would likely reflect the soul sleep of Wycliffe, Tyndale and Luther (who SDAs try to paint as believing the very same thing they teach):
"It is certain that to this day Abraham is serving God, just as Abel, Noah are serving God. And this we should carefully note; for it is divine truth that Abraham is living, serving God, and ruling with Him. But what sort of life that may be, whether he is asleep or awake, is another question. How the soul is resting we are not to know, but it is certain that it is living."
"A man tired with his daily labour...sleeps. But his soul does not sleep but is awake. It experiences visions and the discourses of the angels and of God. Therefore the sleep in the future life is deeper than it is in this life. Nevertheless, the soul lives to God. This is the likeness to the sleep of life."
This is VERY different from the idea that there is no soul or that the soul, like the body, ceases to exist at death.
This is part of a Systematic Deception. |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 14310
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 04, 2013 - 11:30 pm: | |
Rick, thank you for that quote. You're totally right; Adventists' "soul sleep" belief is systematic deception.
Colleen |
Sheilaaallen
Registered user
Username: Sheilaaallen
Post Number: 15
Registered: 10-2012
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 06, 2013 - 2:12 pm: | |
I have been skipping over the differences between adventists and other christians belief about what happens when you die because thats just one of those things that is so ingrained and I feel like I should be careful about being deceived about it. When I read this discussion I realize once again I have already been deceived. I had been filing it under one of those things God will make clear to me when its important. I can see that I will have to pray and study about this, especially that I can see past my long held belief and be willing to recieve the truth. |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 14313
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 06, 2013 - 4:41 pm: | |
Sheila, yes. The soul-sleep heresy is the doctrine that most warps all the rest of reality. With an unbiblical view of man, we have an unbiblical view of Jesus (who took on flesh), and also an unbiblical understanding of sin and of salvation.
Without a belief in the human spirit, there is no way to understand the new birth.
Colleen |
Lyrical
Registered user
Username: Lyrical
Post Number: 160
Registered: 4-2012
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2013 - 6:45 am: | |
As an SDA I always struggled with this... If He was truly God, how could Jesus die and be without consciousness in the grave - cold dead for 3 days? Wouldn't God, Himself, then be dead? I KNEW God couldn't cease to exist from the universe for 3 days, but I couldn't explain this. As usual, I'd just stop thinking about it and say, "Well, there are just some things we can't understand." This is just one of many areas where this doctrine messed me up and taught heresy. It forces Jesus to be just a man. He can't be God if He ceases to exist in death, resting in the tomb on the Sabbath, "as He should." Shudder... If God ceased to exist for any moment, the universe would be immediately occupied by Satan and would destruct.
God is spirit. Jesus was spirit. We are also spirit. That's the living part of us. Jesus never ceased to exist because the spirit within Him is God and God is eternal. Our spirits also become alive in Christ and are given immortality, which has nothing to do with the body. Christ showed this through his bodily death - that He conquered death because his spirit never died! He showed that we are really alive in Him forever, the moment we believe.
"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" 1 Cor. 15:55
In Christ the sting of death is gone forever! That's the beauty of the spirit. Even Paul was torn about what he wanted to do, as he desired to "depart and be with Christ, which is better by far." (Phil. 1:23)
"I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." John 6:51
From the story of Lazarus... "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will NEVER die. Do you believe this?'" John 11:25,26
I finally believe this... Hallelujah!! |
Mjcmcook
Registered user
Username: Mjcmcook
Post Number: 1000
Registered: 2-2011
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2013 - 7:49 am: | |
Lyrical~
When I was an adventist I did not struggle with JESUS being in the grave,
dead for 3 days~ Because, He was Jesus, not GOD!
This is how much adventist heresy had deceived me and everyone I knew in the church! 
The Scripture that finally broke through for me, after a great amount of study,
was John 4:24~ "God is Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
I never will forget that day~ "Everything" changed! Hallelujah!!! (^_^) ~
~mj~ |
Punababe808
Registered user
Username: Punababe808
Post Number: 323
Registered: 4-2012
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2013 - 5:38 pm: | |
I would assume SDA 's call it soul sleep because in their understanding the words soul and body are synonyms. Soul = body, body =soul. Two different words for the exact same thing. Therefore, if the body dies and goes dust to dust or ashes to ashes the soul likewise dies. |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 14318
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, March 07, 2013 - 11:29 pm: | |
Good point, Punababe!
MJ, that text drove home the point for me, too! That was the Scriptural "nail" that held the new belief together.
Colleen |
Ric_b
Registered user
Username: Ric_b
Post Number: 1980
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Friday, March 08, 2013 - 9:48 am: | |
Jesus' death and state in the grave has come up in discussions I have been involved with several different times. Those promoting the "holistic" human (and ultimately denying the Divine Christ) want to quickly claim that if Jesus wasn't truly dead then He didn't pay the price for our sins.
This fails to understand that we (and Christ incarnate) are both flesh and spirit. The flesh can die and the spirit live. As such Christ both truly died but continued to live.
This is linked to another heresy, that Christ the man died but Christ as God lived. This falsely teaches that Jesus was never God in the flesh, but only God dwelling within a man. It makes the flesh the man part of Jesus and the spirit the God part of Jesus. This is quite similar to the gnostic errors of flesh vs spirit. Jesus was God and man in flesh and God and man in spirit. He became man, flesh and spirit. |
Ric_b
Registered user
Username: Ric_b
Post Number: 1981
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Friday, March 08, 2013 - 10:12 am: | |
Colleen,
When I used the term Systematic Deception I wasn't referring to the doctrine itself (as you implied) but to the process of defending the doctrines of SDAism by intentionally misrepresenting the teachings and writings of others.
There is the deceptive nature of the Revelation Seminars, which I think a growing number of SDAs have really begun to question that deception-but they will still defend why it is OK when pressed on it.
There is the deceptive use of terms, like Trinity, Righteousness by Faith, and even Assurance of Salvation (plus plenty of others) that makes SDAism sound more mainstream than it actually is.
There is the deceptive double speak, like saying they believe in following only the Bible, while also insisting that EGW is an ongoing source of authority. Or the claim that they don't believe they are the only true church, while simultaneously saying that are specially ordained to call people out of all the false churches (every other church).
And there is the deceptive practice of actively distorting and misquoting the teachings of historical Christian figures to make it sound like SDAism is merely following in the footsteps of respected Christians, footsteps that have since been abandoned by others.I have seen SDAs quote from the Augsburg Confession about the Sabbath to "prove" that Luther (or more rightly early Lutherans) believed that the Pope changed the Sabbath. By taking a partial quote out of context they miss that the AC acknowledges that RCC claims this but plainly states that Sabbath was never changed it was fulfilled and there is no Sabbath day requirement. Here is a detailed discussion of another case of SDA distortions of Luther on the Sabbath, more systematic deception. http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2013/01/sdas-using-karlstadt-and-luther-to.html
I'm more familiar with the distortions of Luther and Lutheran writings to support SDAism, but it happens with other belief systems as well.
SDAism will use whatever deception necessary to advance their cause. Deception isn't an accident, it is a planned strategy. And it reveals who their Father really is. |
Butterfly_poette
Registered user
Username: Butterfly_poette
Post Number: 300
Registered: 5-2011
| | Posted on Monday, March 11, 2013 - 4:02 pm: | |
I have struggled with this issue. I was always taught that we are in an unconscious state when we are dead. All the Bible texts SDAs use to point to that had me grounded in that idea.
Now I don't know.
What do we do with those texts that SDAs use like "the dead know nothing" and "there is no knowledge or wisdom in the grave"?
I also kept hearing stories of Adventists who were visited by "dead loved ones" who were really demons in disguise. I even have come across a few SDAs who claim that happened to them. What do those stories mean? I do think that some people must have made a lot of those stories up. Yet do demons really masquerade as our dead loved ones? |
Punababe808
Registered user
Username: Punababe808
Post Number: 330
Registered: 4-2012
| | Posted on Monday, March 11, 2013 - 4:37 pm: | |
Yeah, the SDA teaching is just too weird for me. When i was a little kid I'd be told to read the Bible and believe the Bible first. So i announced around age 10 i did not believe the SDA understanding of soul sleep /death, etc. The response from my grownups was i was a kid so i thought like a kid but when i grew up I'd realize the SDA 's got it right. Didnt happen. The older i got the more wrong i realized the SDA was about most everything. |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 14325
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 11, 2013 - 11:01 pm: | |
Rick, sorry! I understand what you are saying; you are right.
Butterfly, the quotes about the dead knowing nothing from the book of Ecclesiastes are lifted out of context. The passages refer to the worldview of an unbeliever. They demonstrate the hopelessness of natural man, and they are not describing the viewpoint of a believer.
As to the stories you have heard: I cannot vouch either for their authenticity nor falseness. I do know this: the dead do not interact with the living. Demons do deceive, however.
Adventism has roots in the occult. EGW received visions/dreams from a handsome young man who attended her and showed her things. The Adventist doctrines center on the core belief that Satan is the scapegoat, the final bearer of sin. One cannot have this belief and be spiritually "neutral". Think about it!
Adventism has a spiritual claim on its members, and it is not God's Spirit. Adventism teaches a false gospel, an unbiblical Jesus, a triethism instead of the Trinity. It has an unbiblical nature of man which falsely defines Jesus, sin, and salvation.
It is not surprising that some Adventists have experiences with spirits. This false spirituality is embedded in the religion.
Colleen |
Asurprise
Registered user
Username: Asurprise
Post Number: 3002
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 12, 2013 - 1:09 pm: | |
Butterfly; notice how that verse in Eccl. 9:5 also ends with the words: "and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten." Even Adventists believe that the dead will get a reward eventually. Notice also that the chapter says over and over again that all the things mentioned in it happen "under the sun," such as the last part of verse 6 which says: "and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun."
I believe that's referring to this life. |
Butterfly_poette
Registered user
Username: Butterfly_poette
Post Number: 301
Registered: 5-2011
| | Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 4:15 pm: | |
Thank you. I will do some more reading of Ecclesiastes soon.
I lost my aunt last September. She lived with my mother and I and died of a sudden heart attack. I have wondered if a demon would come by and try to impersonate my aunt. It was something I was taught to expect as a SDA. On Dec. 30 I was sure I heard my aunt's voice, when I was half asleep. Yet I didn't hear it anymore when I fully awoke. I think it could have been my imagination, but I said a quick prayer just in case it wasn't. |
Nowisee
Registered user
Username: Nowisee
Post Number: 1293
Registered: 5-2009
| | Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 7:45 pm: | |
Butterfly...think about it like this...when someone's "unconscious", they are not dead. An unconscious person still has a beating heart, so that really doesn't make sense.
If mortuaries went around burying people that are unconscious, they'd be burying living beings that happen not to be conscious at the time. People in comas, etc, are still alive, just not (probably) aware. |
Punababe808
Registered user
Username: Punababe808
Post Number: 337
Registered: 4-2012
| | Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 8:02 pm: | |
When i was a kid growing up in multiple cults with SDA bring the main one i was taught death was the same as being asleep. It terrified me! I have always been prone to nightmares and it actually caused me anxiety attacks thinking I'd be trapped in a coffin for zillions of years with nightmares. The SDA teaching of death was /is very frightening to me. True Christian teaching of death is comforting. |
Hec
Registered user
Username: Hec
Post Number: 1895
Registered: 3-2009
| | Posted on Monday, April 15, 2013 - 12:24 am: | |
I know that humans are made of body and spirit/soul. At death the body returns to dust where it came from and the spirit returns to God where it came from. Jesus Himself calls Lazaro as sleeping and many places in the Bible refer to the dead as sleeping. I know the explanation given is that the body looks like sleeping. Could I get some Bible references where it is stated that only the body is sleeping but the spirit is not? I am not sayng that the spirit cease to exist, I'm asking if there is Bible evidence that, while existing, it is not sleeping. Really, the body is not sleeping, it is decomposed. So, it seems, that the only thing left to sleep would be the spirit. Well, maybe ghe body althoug decomposed could be sleeping too, since the Bbible refers to those who sleep in the dust of the earth.
Some references. Please? This is important to me. |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 14374
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 15, 2013 - 10:40 pm: | |
Hec, Phil. 1:22-23 says that to depart and be with the Lord is very much better than to remain. "Very much better" is BETTER. Being unconscious is not better than being alive here.
2 Cor 5:1-10 explains that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That is a present-tense state of existence. Moreover, verses 10-11 say that therefore we make it our aim to please Him, whether we are absent from the body or at home in it. We cannot please God if our bodies are decaying and our spirits are unconscious.
If you read the literal meaning of the words, you have to conclude that the spirit is conscious of being with the Lord.
Colleen |
Doc
Registered user
Username: Doc
Post Number: 743
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - 1:23 pm: | |
Hi Hec,
Look at it the other way round. Where does the Bible even hint that a spirit, any kind of spirit, is even capable of sleeping at all? Why would a spirit, in contrast to a physical being, even be in need of sleep? It doesn't make sense.
:-)
Adrian |
Hec
Registered user
Username: Hec
Post Number: 1897
Registered: 3-2009
| | Posted on Saturday, April 27, 2013 - 11:46 pm: | |
Anyone else? |
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