by PSacramento 39 Replies latest watchtower bible
However, I have never seen a Christian that didn't die, so that wouldn't make much sense.
Well, I think everyone who belongs to Him at once is resurrected or changed (to spirit) when He returns. So if you belong to Him, and have the Holy Spirit, then you have life.
Since He hasn't returned yet, we don't have Christians who have never died, in the flesh. Yet.
Tammy
Actually, the views that for God 1 day is like 1000 years and vice -versa, show that God is NOT subject to time as we know it, that is the point of those verses.
That clearly shows that god is NOT outside of time. It may, at best, run at a different scale, but he defintely is inside time.
God's "timelines" being applied in a human way is something that the writers did and not correctly as it kept getting pointed out:
God is not subject to time as we know it.
No biblical support. At BEST, as shown above by you example, he is inside time, but perhaps it's flowing at a different rate.
It is not for us or anyoen to put a timeline on God.
He did it himself if indeed the Bible is his inspired word. If he is the begining and the end, that implies a timeline. If a day is equivalent to a thousand years, being part of time is required.
Well, I think everyone who belongs to Him at once is resurrected or changed (to spirit) when He returns. So if you belong to Him, and have the Holy Spirit, then you have life.
So you don't get life until you die? I guess if I want the cure I have get sick first? Why not just give me the immunization to start with?
Did Jesus never hear that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?
Since He hasn't returned yet, we don't have Christians who have never died, in the flesh. Yet.
Even Jesus died. He wasn't setting a very good example.
It seems to me that Adam was dead in God's eyes on the day that he disobeyed and ate the fruit. From then on nothing Adam did would change the fact that he had no future- he threw it away. He was already as good as dead to Jehovah no matter how many more literal years he lived on for.
And he died within that 1000 year day. But again it did not matter to Jehovah for Jehovah knew that now Adam would definatly die, whereas before he sinned God intended to have Adam live on forever.
Also since the animals died Adam knew what death was.
It seems to me that Adam was dead in God's eyes on the day that he disobeyed and ate the fruit
But he didn't die.
He was already as good as dead to Jehovah no matter how many more literal years he lived on for.
Except that he didn't die that very day like God said he would.
And he died within that 1000 year day.
Except that a day isn't a thousand years.
But again it did not matter to Jehovah for Jehovah knew that now Adam would definatly die, whereas before he sinned God intended to have Adam live on forever.
Except that nowhere does the account say he was supposed to live forever.
Also since the animals died Adam knew what death was.
Except there is no account of an animal dying so Adam would know what it was.
@notverylikely- regarding Adam's living forever: it is implied that Adam was intended to live forever in that Jehovah warned him he would absolutly die IF he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. Would not the warning he would die IF he ate from that tree indicate that he would only die if he did so?
It seems the warning would be meaningless if Adam was going to die anyway.
Since animals always die, Adam was very well aware of this. He saw it.
What if Adam had not sinned? He would not have died since death was the punishment for sin. Thus he would have lived forever.
@notverylikely- regarding Adam's living forever: it is implied that Adam was intended to live forever in that Jehovah warned him he would absolutly die IF he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.
Oh, sorry. You are assuming it's implied. There are all other sorts of days he could have died. There is nothing that says "this day or forever". Assumed does not equal implied.
Would not the warning he would die IF he ate from that tree indicate that he would only die if he did so?
It said "in that day" he would die. The converse of "that day" is NOT forever. Pure assumption.
Since animals always die, Adam was very well aware of this. He saw it.
Then please show me a record in the Bible of Adam seeing an animal die before he ate from the tree. Take all the time you need.
What if Adam had not sinned? He would not have died since death was the punishment for sin. Thus he would have lived forever.
What if? There is nothing that says he would have lived forever. Assuming so is fallacious.
There are so many problems with this view that I prefer the most ancient of Christianity’s take on this account, namely that neither God nor the Bible writers involved ever expected us to take the account literally.
For example, Gregory Nazianzen (329-390 A.D.) theorized as to the meaning of this story, on this basis of the Church considering it a parable,. Even today Christendom believed the story is explaining not how sin came into the world, but that life in the world is the way it is because of sin. Because of it viewed this way, Nazianzen went into some depth regarding what each element in the narrative meants, something he would not have done if the Christians had believed it was literal—which they did not.
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he stated, was “contemplation,” being able to use a well-trained conscience to see if one's own judgment regarding their actions was right morally virtuous and beneficial or not. Was the narrative teaching people that God was forbidding humans from this “Tree”? No, he taught: “God did not forbid it because it was evil from the beginning when planted. Nor did God grudge it to men…But it would have been good if partaken of at the proper time.”
In other words, instead of an “origins of sin” story, Christianity has seen this narrative as exposing a central truth in life: we can’t live our lives without sin's interference because it has been this way with humankind since the beginning. They did not then nor does modern scholarship (especially that governed by the critical sciences) believe it to be a historical account. The point of the narrative is not how sin came into our lives, but how we let it into our lives now which is no different from the way Adam and Eve did then, namely we jump to our own conclusions as to what is right and wrong without training our conscience with God's help. We let how we personally feel on matters be our judge instead of using a God-trained conscience to consider the validity of our judgments.
And while Adam and Eve are considered to be real people, the reason for the type of narrative or genre chosen for this story (namely “fable” or “parable,” i.e., a story with a moral lesson to be learned and carried away) was so that people would not make the same mistake Adam and Eve did. (If we see it as literal, does a moral stand out that is clear to all? As noted by this discussion and others like it, it does not.) Instead we should let God train us until our conscience is ready for “contemplation.” Unless we learn from a more intelligent Source, our decisions can be fatal.
Also, the long years are not literal either. If you notice, this way of counting drops off sharply by the time Abraham* comes on the scene. Critical Biblical analysis teaches that this is a literary device to tell the reader that “fable ends here.” It is used in other types of ancient mythology as in Babylonian tales of ten kings with fantastically high ages who ruled prior to the flood of Gilgamesh.
The idea that these stories are literal is a modern invention that exploded especially with Adventism which sees “time” as the constant for everyone, even God (which is where the Jehovah's Witnesses got it). This is contrary to both Judeo-Christian theology and science which teaches that time is relative.
*-While the stories of Abraham are not history in the strict modern sense, they are also not retelling his life through this same type of fable-enclosed literary garb.
Marcus,
Agreed, it is not and I doubt it ever was to be taken literally.
We have an entire endocrine system which includes our chakras and many organs and glands like the thymus, pituitary and pineal that act as an antenna to our higher self or the higher realms in varying degrees depending on how open they are. They are like spinning vortices that transmit and receive energies. The average person today is about 3 percent open and 97 percent closed. This is what it means when the harlot (egos) sits on the seven mountains, they are your chakras! These higher realms are not physical, they are mental, emotional, astral, solar, ethereal, etc. The tree of knowledge represents the mistaken idea that all knowledge comes from one source. In the case of the Bible, that source would be God, some tyrant up in the sky who is apart from you and examining you like a bug under a microscope. This is the deception of the story and what every priest in the sin business doesn't want you to know.... that YOU have a direct connection to the source of all knowledge within yourself. You don't have to look anywhere. The illlusion that you are cut off is spiritual death, and there's no hope of waking up until you know you're dead!
~PS
