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Message |
Patriar
Registered user
Username: Patriar
Post Number: 290
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 6:57 am: |     |
HI ALL!
It's been a while since I posted and I see lots of new members. What a joy to see God working in miraculous ways in so many people's lives. I am SO excited!
Colleen:
I have been studying the State of the Dead doctrine with my husband in order to respond to an SDA friend's analysis. Boy, there is nothing like being challenged to force myself to dig in and really defend my position. 
I found your article from 2004 on that subject and I am left with one question. If our spirits are only able to be brought to life by accepting Christ's atonement, then what WAS he talking to the disciples about at the Garden of Gethsemane? He said the body is weak, but the spirit is willing. Since He hadn't yet died and since the intimate, personal connection to God hadn't been re-made at Pentecost, how could they have made the choice to worship in the spirit?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Lots of Love,
Patria |
Raven
Registered user
Username: Raven
Post Number: 730
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 8:40 am: | |
That's a good question that I will be interested in seeing other responses to. My first thought is that maybe that has nothing to do with the state of the dead issue. There were believers in the Old Testament who desired to do the will of God, and the Bible says David was a man after God's own heart (who also certainly had very weak flesh!). So I'm not really sure how that works - clearly there were people chosen before Jesus' sacrifice who indicated a willing spirit. So is it possible to have a willing spirit that is still dead? Maybe it was possible for them to have a willing spirit because their names were already written in the Book of Life and Jesus' sacrifice was a sure thing - both of these were since the foundation of the world. Could people's spirits have been brought to life before the atonement because they accepted Jesus' future atonement? Is there a difference from having one's spirit brought to life and having the indwelling Holy Spirit? Maybe before the cross and before Pentecost it was not possible to have the indwelling Holy Spirit that all believers are now sealed with at the moment of belief. The indwelling Holy Spirit is our gurantee, not necessarily our spirit brought to life--although post-cross they should happen simultaneously.
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Patriar
Registered user
Username: Patriar
Post Number: 291
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 8:58 am: | |
Yes, that's right! The disciples in the garden aren't the only examples of this. In fact, I've heard about a debate within the church regarding whether the Spirit indwelt the God-believer pre-Cross. David is a good example, as well as the prophets and the godly kings. Of course, there's Enoch and Joseph and Abraham and Moses, etc.
Patria
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Patriar
Registered user
Username: Patriar
Post Number: 292
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 9:02 am: | |
BTW: I guess I was tying the "state of the spirit" to the state of the dead. Theologically their explicitly tied, but perhaps you're right, that for discussion, it'd be better labeled something else. Sorry about that.
Patria |
Brian3
Registered user
Username: Brian3
Post Number: 85
Registered: 8-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 10:07 am: | |
This is not really an anwser but some interesting dialogue going on about "The indwelling of the Spirit of God" at http://idsblog.org/
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Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 5392
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 10:07 am: | |
Patria, I don't fully have the answer, either, but I do know that the OT repeatedly mentions the Holy Spirit coming upon people. David himself prayed and asked God, "Do not remove your Spirit from me."
When we are indwelt and born again, the Holy Spirit will not leave us. We are sealed and our eternity is secure.
There is clearly mystery here, but God's Spirit has always been at work making it possible for people to trust God. The Reformed position is that "regeneration" has always happened to the elect, both before and after the cross. I totally agree that the Holy Spirit in some way brought people pre-cross to a place of spiritual responsibility and trust in God. They couldn't have believed on their own.
Yet something new happened at Pentecost, and even the curse of Babel, the disunity among nations and people groups symbolized by broken languages, was reversed by the indwelling Spirit. Further, Jesus told the disciples In John 14:16-17 that He was sending them "another Counselor to be with you foreveróthe Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither see him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you."
I believe that pre-cross, those who believed in God were definitely brought to belief by the Holy Spirit. Without Him, they could not have believed. But the Bible does indicate that the permanently indwelling Holy Spirit is a post-cross phenomenon. Further, it couldn't happen until Jesus ascended to the Father and sat down, His work done. (Pentecost didn't happen until 50 days after PassoveróAFTER Jesus ascended and told the disciples to wait until the Holy Spirit came.)
Undoubtedly the Holy Spirit has always been at work. But the "new birth", the "heart of flesh", the "new creation" phenomena are distinctly NT developments. The church is not an extension of Israelóalthough Romans 11 is clear that Gentile believers and Jewish Christ-followers are all grafted into the same olive tree. The church is IN CHRIST. Before the cross, humans were not "in God". They were taught by God and equipped by His Spirit, but that Spirit was not permanently indwelling, eternally connecting man with God.
OT believers were saved by faith, and God preserved them because of the promise of Jesus and His sacrifice. The actual fact of Jesus' shed blood ushered in something completely newóborn again people with new hearts of flesh, born of the Spirit, connected to God by the new, living way opened to the Father by the body of Jesus (Hebrews 10:20).
Colleen |
Patriar
Registered user
Username: Patriar
Post Number: 293
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 1:27 pm: | |
Alright. Thanks for working through that with me. We're hoping to reach some friends through the unbiblical SDA state of the dead doctrine and I wanted to be intellectually prepared from all angles (as much as I can).
Brian3: thanks for the link.
Patria |
Jeremiah
Registered user
Username: Jeremiah
Post Number: 196
Registered: 1-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 1:46 pm: | |
Before the Incarnation there was no example of a complete union of man and God.
And we as Christians are saved as we become one with God by becoming one with Christ. I guess that's why the Church is called the Body of Christ... And why both the statements "apart from Christ there is no salvation" and "apart from the Church there is no salvation" would be true. Not to say God doesn't have a way to save those who simply haven't heard.
The difference I see between what it was like before the Incarnation and after is the Incarnation itself. Now there is actual union of humanity with Divinity. Before, there were predictions of it and preparations for it.
Jeremiah |
Honestwitness
Registered user
Username: Honestwitness
Post Number: 224
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 3:08 pm: | |
Jesus imparted the Holy Spirit to His disciples two different times and in two different ways.
1. John 20:22, "And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost..."
2. John the Baptist said in Matthew 3:11, "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. But he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire..." This happened in Acts 2.
In #1, Jesus BREATHED on his disciples and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." In #2, which took place after He had risen to the Father, He BAPTIZED them in the Holy Ghost.
#1 is an infilling by breath. Jesus filled the human with the Holy Spirit. The individual's outer casing, container, shell, remain the same. But it contains something new.
#2 is an immersion into the Holy Spirit that permeates the entire being and changes every part of the individual, in the same way a skein of yarn is plunged into a vat of dye and comes up a new color. #2 couldn't happen until after Jesus had risen, as Colleen indicated.
Even though I don't know the proper way to explain the topic of the human spirit versus the divine spirit, I do know I want ALL of what God has for me. Therefore, even though I am yet in a state of intellectual fog about it, I can still ask for and "tarry" for His Holy Spirit to permeate every part of me.
Thank the Lord, receiving and being baptized in the Holy Spirit is not an intellectual excersise. It's a spiritual experience.
Honestwitness
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Dennis
Registered user
Username: Dennis
Post Number: 977
Registered: 4-2000
| | Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 5:30 pm: | |
POST-PENTECOST
In Old Testament times, only certain selected "anointed ones" such as kings, prophets, and judges were filled with the Holy Spirit. Moses was the mediator of the Old Covenant. Moses truly stood between the people and God. That is no longer the case under the New Covenant. We no longer need prophets to stand between the people and God to dispense truth to us.
That role is now filled by the Holy Spirit Himself in the life of each believer. Therefore, the prophecy in Joel 2:28 is fulfilled that "It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions" (NASB). In 1 Chronicles 25:1-7, we learn that to "prophesy" includes singing praises, playing musical instruments, and giving thanks to God in public. In the truest sense, New Covenant believers are all priests and prophets.
Dennis Fischer |
Agapetos
Registered user
Username: Agapetos
Post Number: 689
Registered: 10-2002
| | Posted on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 6:28 am: | |
HW-- thank you for explaining that! It really clarifies a lot, especially a lot of argument about the receiving of the Spirit. I will remember this.
"Your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions"... truly, God is awesome. We no longer need prophets as go-betweens, yet God promised that we would prophesy, and His apostle told people to earnestly desire it. "A prophecy" in Hebrew can also mean "a burden" -- God has promised that He would pour the burden of His heart into us. And in 1st Corinthians 14, the Spirit instructs us to seek this gift---because He wants us to seek His heart on behalf of one another, to be filled with His agape love for our brothers, sisters, neighbors, and people we haven't even met. His injunction to seek the word of the Lord for others---to seek His burden, His heart for them---is still more wonderful because He has not told us to seek what may not be received: His desire for us to seek reveals His own desire and promise to give. (Of course, a lot of confusion about this exists because of lack of understanding NC/OC prophecy & testing the spirits, but I digress...) |
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