| Author |
Message |
Setufree314
Registered user
Username: Setufree314
Post Number: 13
Registered: 10-2016
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - 6:33 pm: |     |
Taluur stated: "Christians from apostolic times did not hold doctrines like "soul sleep" or annihilationism to be true."
Can you provide absolute evidence or are you being dramatic?
It is true that the Bible doesn't use the phrase "soul sleep". What Jesus said is our friend Lazarus sleeps. This confused the disciples; so Christ said "Lazarus is dead".
The question is why did Jesus use the metaphor sleep? Answer: Because the believer, even though he has died, will be resurrected at the 2nd coming. Hence his death is not permanent. His death is like a sleep because he will rise again when the trumpet sounds. See 1 Cor 15:52 |
Setufree314
Registered user
Username: Setufree314
Post Number: 15
Registered: 10-2016
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - 6:51 pm: | |
BTW, no one has yet answered the following question:
Since I already have a glorified life "in Christ"* why does some component of my fallen life need to go to heaven upon my death?
Note *
God "raised us up with Him (Christ), and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus..." NASB
"For He (God that Father) rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." Col 1:13,14 NASB
Note that according to Paul, God has already transferred "us" (our "new creation") into heaven itself.
(Message edited by setufree314 on October 12, 2016) |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 15436
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - 8:40 pm: | |
Setufree, Taluur and Phil are actually telling the truth. The Christian church includes everybody since the Day of Pentecost who has trusted in Jesus alone as their Savior and Lord and has been born of the Spirit. Denominations are not, technically, "churches". They house congregations, but the church is over 2,000 years old.
There is no such thing as a lone-ranger Christian. The epistles are very clear that we operate as a body, that when one member suffers, we all suffer, and when one member is missing, the whole body is hurt.
We really must worship with others in a Bible-teaching church. We cannot unpack our Adventist worldview without being taught by people who honor Scripture as God's inerrant word and who do not have the Adventist skew informing them. Our own minds are not the "last word" in biblical interpretation.
By the way, spiritual death does not mean our spirits ceased to exist. We are born with spirits, but they are dead, as Eph. 2:3 makes clear. "Death" does not mean non-existence, as we were taught in Adventism. Spiritual death means we are separated from the life of God. That is why we must be born again of the Spirit when we believe in the Lord Jesus and accept His sacrifice for our sins.
Adventist definitions are material and not biblical. They do not describe what Scripture teaches. You are correct that God has already transferred us into heaven itself. But He has not taken our minds there. He has taken "us" there. "We" are still tied to our mortal tents, which include our brains. When we die, "we" do not leave the the Lord Jesus. We are still with Him, but we are no longer on earth. Paul describes this mystery as "very much better" than staying on in the body.
Setufree, we have to believe Scripture, and when things don't quite make sense, we have to hold them in tension instead of explaining them away. The Holy Spirit will bring clarity as we submit to Him and His word.
Colleen |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 15437
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - 8:44 pm: | |
And one more thing: when we hold to a belief because we "like to think of God as..." or "the God I worship wouldn't...", we are creating a graven image in our own minds. God tells us what He wants us to know, and if we recoil against what His word tells us, that recoiling does not make the words untrue.
We have to take God at His word. His word means what it says, and the words mean what they say. God reveals Himself as He is and as He wants us to know Him. Our discomfort with what He tells us is not an invitation for us to reconstruct the arguments to fit our preferred worldview.
Colleen |
Setufree314
Registered user
Username: Setufree314
Post Number: 16
Registered: 10-2016
| | Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2016 - 3:05 am: | |
Colleen: "We are born with spirits, but they are dead, as Eph. 2:3 makes clear."
When Adam and Eve sinned, the Holy Spirit left them, leaving their spirits vacant for Satan to occupy. Selfishness replaced unselfish love, and their lives were darkened spiritually [see 2 Peter 2:19]. This is the nature with which all their children have been born; we come into the world without the indwelling Spirit of God, slaves to the devil and sin. Everyone is born into this world uninhabited by God’s Spirit, and can, therefore, walk only “follow[ing] the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” [Ephesians 2:2]. |
Setufree314
Registered user
Username: Setufree314
Post Number: 17
Registered: 10-2016
| | Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2016 - 3:20 am: | |
Colleen: "You are correct that God has already transferred us into heaven itself. But He has not taken our minds there. He has taken "us" there. "We" are still tied to our mortal tents, which include our brains."
You need back up your statement with Scripture, Colleen. Here's what Paul states:
"...When we were dead in our transgressions (compare to verse 1), God made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Eph 2:5-6
Note that God saved us "in Christ" when we were spiritually dead in transgressions and sins. Sunday morning God raised us up "in Christ" and took us to heaven. Paul does not say that God took everything but our minds. That makes no sense at all.
We are born spiritually dead "in Adam", but in Christ were made spiritually alive [Eph. 2:5]
We are sinners "in Adam", but in Christ were made righteous [2 Cor. 5:21]
We are sinful "in Adam", but in Christ were made holy and blameless [Eph. 1:4]
We stand condemned "in Adam", but in Christ were justified [Rom. 5:18]
We are mortal "in Adam", but in Christ were made immortal [2 Tim. 1:8-10]
We are lower than the angels "in Adam", but in Christ were made joint heirs [Rom.8:17; Heb.2:5-12] |
Setufree314
Registered user
Username: Setufree314
Post Number: 18
Registered: 10-2016
| | Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2016 - 6:16 am: | |
Previously, I stated that, "God raised us up "in Christ" and took us to heaven. Paul does not say that God took everything but our minds. That makes no sense at all."
Here's evidence to back up my above statement:
2 Cor 5:14 "For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died..."
Please note that our Adamic life died "in Christ Jesus" (see Rom 6:6/7:4)
verse 16 "Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh (Greek: Sarx)."
Why did Paul and the Apostles regard no one according to their fallen humanity? Answer: Because they looked at sinners not as Adam's offspring, but as they are "in Christ" in the heavenly places.
"Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer."
Here Paul is speaking of Christ after the resurrection. Christ, as the Son of Man, left our fallen, Adamic life in the grave. Christ was raised with a glorified humanity. According to Paul when God raised up Christ He raised us up too! (Eph 2:6)
17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new."
If anyone has accepted, by faith, his new position "in Christ" he/she is "a new creation "in Him". Some versions say "new creature". But the point is "in Christ" we have, by faith, a sinless, corporate life in heaven itself. "In Christ" Paul states that "all things have become new". That has to include our minds too....
When do we, as Adam's offspring, receive our "new creation" residing "in Christ"?
Answer: At the 2nd coming of Christ. See 1 Cor 15:22,23, |
Setufree314
Registered user
Username: Setufree314
Post Number: 20
Registered: 10-2016
| | Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2016 - 9:11 am: | |
"For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing..." Ecc 9:5
"The dead cannot sing praises to the LORD, for they have gone into the silence of the grave." Ps 115:17
The dead know nothing. They cannot sing praises to the Lord for they are dead. It's very plain.
Turn to Romans 5:12 "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned (in Adam)...."
Adam passed on to his posterity a fallen, mortal life indwelt with sin. "In Adam all die". 1 Cor 15:22 We die because we are sinners, body, soul & spirit. There's nothing good in our fallen humanity.
To say that there is something good is us is a self-righteous statement. How so? Because Paul states, in Romans 3:10, "There is no one righteous, not even one." Given the fact we are not righteous then we can't be immortal. Only God is immortal (see 1 Tim 6:16).
Now, some of you resent that I agree with SDA on this doctrine. But Adventist stop short of telling you the reason we are mortal because it goes against their doctrine of perfectionism. We are mortal because we are imperfect and can never, through our law keeping, gain heaven. We are righteous "in Christ" alone + nothing!
This is where I disagree with traditional, historic Adventism. They are guilty of teaching subtle legalism. |
Chris
Registered user
Username: Chris
Post Number: 1876
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2016 - 9:18 am: | |
Setufree,
I truly want to say this in the kindest way possible, which I realize can be tough to do in writing, but please imagine me saying this with some humility and gentleness even though it’s going to be a bit tough. Hopefully it’s tough but loving.
When I was an Adventist, somehow my mind was wired in such a way to be able to engage in some really convoluted rationales for SDA distinctives. I’m sure I made arguments similar to the ones you’ve made in this thread and I no doubt thought they made some sort of sense and couldn’t understand the blank stares I received from Christians. I’m guilty of that so I certainly don’t hold myself up as a model of rationale thought, but God has been working on me and helping me understand how to rightly approach the Word in its own context.
I can tell you that as the Spirit begins to renew our minds in Christ, it becomes harder and harder to get back into a mindset that can even make sense of some the convoluted lines of non-logic that form the basis of SDA distinctives. Again, I am saying this honestly, but I hope kindly: I am bewildered by some of the definitions, leaps of logic, and non-sequiturs put forth in this thread and don’t even know where I would start to unravel all of it.
The further I get from Adventism, the less I am able to even engage with some of the misguided confusing logic and random proof texting that we learned back then. If you’ll allow me a tiny bit of humor, it’s like trying to engage with a treatise on “25 Reasons Why the Martians will Invade Before the Illumanti Can Rule Earth”. It’s nearly impossible to engage with something that is so dependent on false assumptions, conjecture, false facts, faulty logic, and more false assumptions.
So here’s what I would propose: Why don’t we do actual *CONTEXTUAL*, line-by-line exegesis of a whole biblical passage that is specifically intended to teach the Church about this particular subject? I tell you what, I’m going to start a new thread with a line-by-line examination of Paul’s teaching to the Church in I Cor. 5:1-9. We’ll look at this passage in its own context without leaping all over the place to link together various fragmented versus. That’s really the best way to understand what the Bible has to say about something like this. Context is everything. |
Mjcmcook
Registered user
Username: Mjcmcook
Post Number: 2006
Registered: 2-2011
| | Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2016 - 4:54 pm: | |
Chris~
Thank-you for your post #1876
And Yes, IMO, you were more than humble and kind in your post~
~mj~ |
|
