by TheListener 3 Replies latest watchtower bible
Touchstone Forum is having an interesting discussion on immortality of the soul. I've pasted two separate thread links. Both are very interesting.
Wrench, the moderator, is discussing the issue with a poster named LetsObeyChrist.
It's lengthy but I would be interested in any comments or new lines of thought that LetsObeyChrist missed.
I'm not LetsObeyChrist.
http://www.touchstoneforum.com/htdocs/dcforum/DCForumID2/1643.html
http://www.touchstoneforum.com/htdocs/dcforum/DCForumID2/1628.html
My initial response is that this is a debate revolving around the WTS position of the "resurrection"
Since the WTS insists that at death, a person passes into non-existence, then at the "resurrection" God does not in fact "resurrect" that unique person, since he/she not longer exists in any matrix of reality. The only obvious conclusion, then, must be that the WTS teaches that God "clones" ANOTHER person, a "copy" if you like, of the original, based on the memory pattern that God has of the original.
The WTS apologist is trying to insist that since the "cloning" is perfect, it is not in fact a ''copy'' but the real McCoy. Allusions are drawn to "hard drives" ''floppy disks" and ''computer programs'' to prove one side or the other.
The debate will continue. Each one of us has to face the question: When I die WHO is it that God will resurrect, not WHAT is it that will be resurrected.
If that person who is resurrected is to be REALLY you, then in some way, in some amorphous form, you must survive, to be reclothed with a phisical reality.
The issue to be resolved is: Does "resurrection" mean merely "coming back to life" as the WTS contends, or does it mean "coming back to life OF THE BODY'' as the Bible seems to suggest
Cheers
Since the WTS insists that at death, ;a person passes into non-existence, then at the "resurrection" God does not in fact "resurrect" that unique person, since he/she not longer exists in any ;matrix of reality
Ressurection Jw style turns Jehovah into the greatest cloner in the history of the universe.
"You will readily recognize that the terms sovereignty, wealth, life, death, judgment and resurrection, spoken of by the scriptures of old, are not what this generation hath conceived and vainly imagined."
(Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 107)
Such things have come to pass in the days of every Manifestation of God. Even as Jesus said: "Ye must be born again." Again He saith: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." The purport of these words is that whosoever in every dispensation is born of the Spirit and is quickened by the breath of the Manifestation of Holiness, he verily is of those that have attained unto "life" and "resurrection" and have entered into the "paradise" of the love of God. And whosoever is not of them, is condemned to "death" and "deprivation," to the "fire" of unbelief, and to the "wrath" of God. In all the scriptures, the books and chronicles, the sentence of death, of fire, of blindness, of want of understanding and hearing, hath been pronounced against those whose lips have tasted not the ethereal cup of true knowledge, and whose hearts have been deprived of the grace of the holy Spirit in their day. Even as it hath been previously recorded: "Hearts have they with which they understand not."
(Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 117)
