by sabastious 54 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
According to fundi Christians, where did people go when they died pre-ransom?
To heaven Hebrews 11
Notice that with the "cloud of witnesses" mentioned in chapter 11 are both those before and after Christ.
So how did they get there, pre Jesus' sacrifice?
By faith.
Blessings,
Stephen
Chalam, I've read the passage, it does not say they got to heaven pre-sacrifice. In fact, you could take it the other way.
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Jesus is the first fruits of the dead to go to heaven. The texts I cited earlier show this.
BTS
Again, the bible makes it clear and quite a few places that the Spirit goes to heaven ( returns to God).
The issue seems to be the soul, where does it go?
The body dies and decomposes and while the soul can be killed, that is not what happens on the typical death of a person.
Like I mentioned before, it seems to imply ( and notice that even Orgine said " I think"..) that the soul goes to Sheol/hades and that the spirit goes to God, waiting to be reunited in the ressurection. But for some special ones, it may be the case that both soul and spirit go to a "place" in heaven.
Actually, "heaven" will be the celestialized Earth, which will be changed to be a glory rivaling the sun. The WT idea that the Earth goes back to being a garden is absurd. What is everyone supposed to do, have an eternity of picnics and playing musical instruments, and reading Watchtower and Awake! magazines? The idea that God wanted Adam and Eve to live in a garden forever is absurd. He knew they were going to sin and He set them up for it. As one ancient writer stated, "before thou didst create them [man], thou didst know all their doings from eternity to eternity." (DST, Thanksgiving Hymn I: 7-13). That includes all of us.
This isn't the first populated world God created and it won't be the last. If anyone actually looks forward to spending a trillion years living in a stupid garden, they're welcome to it. (I imagine the second trillion years will be a bit boring.)
There are billions of worlds and billions of heavens, and veils. As one scholar of ancient scripture and history puts it:
Not only is God rendered invisible by the impenetrable veil of light that surrounds him, but he has purposely "placed veils between the worlds," that all treasures may be hid from those who do not seek them in the proper way. On the other side of the veil of the temple lay "the secrets of heaven," the celestial spaces which know no bounds, and all that they contain. The wilon (veil) quarantines this polluted world mercifully from the rest. "Beyond the veil are the heavens," and that goes for other worlds as well as this one....
We cannot even conceive of the worlds that lie beyond our own, or what this Earth will be like following its resurrection. The Earth, like us, was baptized by water during the flood and it will be baptized by fire when Christ returns. It will thus die and be resurrected and, like us, it will be resurrected to glory. It will, of course, be beautiful with lush vegetation, resurrected animals and buildings that will be beyond our ability to conceive, but it will radiate its own light. ""Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared. ..." (I Corintians 2:9)
What most thrills the psalmist of Qumran as he sings of the bounteous fountain of God's hidden treasures is the thought that he is not only a beneficiary of God's plan, but was actually taken into his confidence in the making of it -- he was there! When Clement of Alexandria recalls that "God knew us before the foundation of the world, and chose us for our faithfulness," he is attesting a well-known teaching of the early Church [premortality]. The recurring phrase, "Blessed is he who was before he came into being," is not a paradox but refers to two states of being...."
We will be able to visit other worlds and other kingdoms throughout the Universe with instantaneous speeds, and no secrets will be withheld from us. Those who gain eternal life will be able to convert their bodies to pure energy, just as Christ did when He entered the buildings where the apostles were staying. And He ate fish and let them handle His body to show them that He was not an ethereal being, but that He was a physical being made up of pure matter. As the apostle Peter told Clement, "we say unequivocally that there is nothing bad about material substance."(Clem. Recog., IV, 23)
Concerning premortality, Jesus was asked of His disciples, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?" They knew that people existed before they were born, and they will exist after. Jeremiah was told that he was called and ordained before he came to this Earth (Jeremiah 1:5).
The entire JW eschatology makes me wonder why people would want to spend the next gazillion years on a lush green planet doing nothing but having family reunions. Nothing in ancient non-canonical Christian writings indicates soul sleeping or two classes of beings following the resurrection. All will be resurrected, but to varying degrees. None will be resurrected as spirits, because everyone already is a spirit, and they were spirits before coming to the Earth. The 144,000 are to be temporal judges, but they will gain eternal life and will be resurrected just as Jesus Christ was -- as physical beings of flesh and bone.
Chalam, I've read the passage, it does not say they got to heaven pre-sacrifice.
Agreed but neither does it say they didn't!
Where else does the bible say they went? (Those who answer "Sheol" or "the grave" deduct one point!)
In fact, you could take it the other way.
Understood.
However, Paul says to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord 2 Corinthians 5:8
Who is "the Lord"? Romans 10:9
Where is He? Hebrews 1:3, Hebrews 8:1, Hebrews 10:12, Hebrews 12:2
Where is the thief? Luke 23:43
Where is paradise? 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 , Revelation 2:7
For New Testament believers who die, the bible is clear. For the OT believers, we have the issue of Christ entering heaven first as you pointed out. Maybe they went someone to wait for Christ to die first or maybe in eternity, outside of time it doesn't matter as time has no meaning and Christ had already been humbled, born, died, resurrected and glorified?! Either way, we who believe end up in the same place in the same glorified type of body.
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Did they not receive what was promised before their deaths or directly after?
For sure, they need to receive the (perfect) resurrection body, as we all do. Also, together with us we will be the perfect bride of Christ, the perfect living temple 1 Corinthians 13:10
Jesus is the first fruits of the dead to go to heaven. The texts I cited earlier show this.
Understood. We are back to the issue of where did the OT "heroes of faith" go? Where were the "cloud of witnesses" before Christ's resurrection? Where are they now I think it far clearer.
Blessings,
Stephen
