Did Stephen believe he would have to wait 2000 years for a resurrection?

by Socrateswannabe 47 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  humbled

  The bible has been through a few beard trimmings, rattigan. The writings of the prophets had ragged edges when they were fresh off the parchment. Translators and theologians have been able to "refine" any roughness the curious faithful might feel as they are told to jump through the theological hoops of their spiritual leaders.

  I just have one question about Stephen dying "without the benefit of clergy" so to speak.

  If some stupid sod dies for the Lord's sake with no earthly idea whether or not the streets of heaven are paved with gold or if Jesus is standing or sitting at this moment by God's side(right or left side, facing you or on the same side as), is he as good a Christian as Jerome, Origen, St. Peter, the Virgin Mary (ooops! not her), the Pope, Thomas Aquinas or Martin Luther--who ever you think has got the real Truth.

  If Stephen had it then...

  Maybe you have it rattigan.

  Maybe I do.

  O, the Horror!

  O, the Beauty!
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  DATA-DOG

  At 2 Timothy 4:6, Paul speaks of his release by death. The WTBTS says that Paul did NOT mean that he would be with Christ immediately after his death. He would have to wait until " that day." What day? The Lord's day, I guess. So they could be right on this one. I think it is their concept of death and what a soul is, along with their 144,000 literal ( little flock ) teaching that messes things up.

  Remember the criminal executed with Christ? The WTBTS like to make a huge deal out of the comma thing, " Truly I tell you, today " or the other version, " Truly I tell you today,.." So what if that theif had to wait in a sleep-like state for a while to be with Christ, it doesn't matter. The bigger issue is the 2 class Christian system, and the trouble it causes, IMO.
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  Bobcat

  Socrates:

  Part of the problem may be the premise you are working under. You are equating:

  "when [Stephen] cried out for Jesus to accept his spirit"

  with

  "an obvious reference to an instant resurrection to Jesus in heaven."

  Consider another possibility. When Jesus was about to die, here is what he said (or was said about him):

  (Matthew 27:50 NWT) . . .Again Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and yielded up [his] spirit.

  (Mark 15:37 NWT) But Jesus let out a loud cry and expired. ("Expired" is ekpneo; Strong's #1606; literally "breathed out")

  (Luke 23:46 NWT) And Jesus called with a loud voice and said: "Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit." When he had said this, he expired. (Expired = same as Mark 15:37)

  (John 19:30 NWT) When, now, he had received the sour wine, Jesus said: "It has been accomplished!" and, bowing his head, he delivered up [his] spirit.

  (Alternate renderings are linked to the citations.)

  Compare these words with Stephen's:

  (Acts 7:59, 60 NWT) . . .And they went on casting stones at Stephen as he made appeal and said: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 60 Then, bending his knees, he cried out with a strong voice: "Jehovah, do not charge this sin against them." And after saying this he fell asleep [in death].

  Acts 7:59, 60 ESV) And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 60 And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

  Some time before Jesus died, he said:

  (Matthew 17:23 NWT) and they will kill him, and the third day he will be raised up." Consequently they were very much grieved.

  (Matthew 20:19 NWT) . . .and will deliver him up to [men of] the nations to make fun of and to scourge and to impale, and the third day he will be raised up.. . .

  (Mark 8:31 NWT) Also, he started teaching them that the Son of man must undergo many sufferings and be rejected by the older men and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and rise three days later.

  (Luke 9:22 NWT) but said: "The Son of man must undergo many sufferings and be rejected by the older men and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised up."

  (Jesus maintained that he would be 'raised up' on or after the third day.)

  And after Jesus returned to life, but before going up to heaven, he said:

  (Luke 24:46 NWT) and he said to them: "In this way it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from among the dead on the third day,

  (Jesus is still holding to the idea that he was raised on the third day.)

  And some years after his death Paul said:

  (1 Corinthians 15:4 NWT) and that he was buried, yes, that he has been raised up the third day according to the Scriptures;

  (Paul is holding also to a third day resurrection.)

  Take Care
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  Cold Steel

  Cantleave: And join another wacky delusional cult called the Church of the Latter Day Saints!!! Mormon nutter!

  People who resort to name calling in lieu of making a point really have no point. But I'll take your statement, such as it is, as a compliment.

  Until Pentecost, they don't seem to understand any thing. Acts is the Holy Spirit's time to shine. Stephen is willing to die for something he firmly believes. What he said to the Temple authorities was very provocative and outrageous.

  Absolutely. In fact, the apostles were told they could not begin their missions until they had received the Spirit. But I also think the apostles became more cognizant about things after Jesus' 40-day instruction following his resurrection. During that time, they learned the so-called "mysteries" of the Kingdom, which were not written in any of the gospels or other writings. There are numerous writings pertaining to these teachings that were completely unknown until about a century ago when apocraphal writings began to be discovered in Egypt and the Holy Land.

  Whether Stephen was provocative and outrageous remains to be seen. Luke states that Stephen simply reminded the Jews of their track record in choosing evil over good, and this culminated with their murder of the Messiah. He recounted how their fathers in every instance killed and persecuted the prophets and were unfaithful to their God. Luke states regarding Stephen: " But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God; and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God! Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord" and stoned him.

  The truth is often difficult to take, and Stephen quickly passed from mortality to the spirit world simply because he enraged the Jews. Keep also in mind that the Jews of Stephen's time were some of the most wicked in history. That's why they were destroyed just a few years later during the Roman conquest. That their fathers killed the prophets so angered them that they repeated the deed, going so far as to stop their ears to keep from hearing the truth. Jesus, in fact, had preached the same message in his lifetime.

  Luke was quite clear that Stephen's spirit was taken by the Lord at that moment. Not in a resurrection, but just in death. The Jehovah's Witnesses may believe as they wish; however, even though they blame the doctrine of man having a spirit on the Greeks, an idea that later Christians adopted when they debauched the religion, it was something that the ancient Essenes believed. Josephus marvels that this fundamental Jewish sect believed what the Greeks believed: " ...their doctrine is this, that bodies are corruptible...but that the souls are immortal and continue forever: and that they came out of the most subtle air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons...but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward." (Wars of the Jews, ed. E. H. Warmington (London: William Heinemann, 1921), II.8.11)

  The Greeks, in fact, shared many eschatological concepts with both Christians and Jews. In the above case, Josephus tells us that the Essenes not only believed that the spirit left man's body at death, but that all men existed as spirits before they came to Earth. The doctrine of premortality also was a first century Christian doctrine. Even Jeremiah, when called by the Lord to be a prophet, was told: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5) Thus we see that the Lord knew Jeremiah before Jeremiah was born; that he sanctified Jeremiah and ordained him to be a prophet. This does not reflect simply a foreknowledge, but the facts that the Lord knew Jeremiah, sanctified him and ordained him, all before he was born. And the apostles asked Jesus, "Master, who did sin? This man or his parents that he was born blind?" How could the man have sinned before birth if he hadn't existed?

  The notion that men are resurrected as spirits presuppose that man has no spirit. When he does in scripture, they believe it's a resurrection. But if Jesus' resurrection was a physical resurrection, and he made it perfectly clear that it was, then why won't our resurrections be physical? This is a question the Adventists fail to adequately answer. Jesus died. During the three days of his death, he visited Paradise and preached to the spirits, later referred to by Peter as "the dead."

  And finally, what of all the near death experiences where a wide range of people from nurses, to plumbers to neurosurgeons have had amazingly consistent stories of life after death? In a number of these experiences, people report meeting people they knew before they came to the earth.
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  never a jw

  Socrateswannabe,

  If you live in a big city you may check with your library. There are several videos and audios from The Teaching Company. The lectures are given by Bart D Ehrman and others. For me that has been a great resource to understand the scholarly view of the New Testament. Also, a while ago I got "the Skeptics Bible". It is certainly bias in the sense that there is nothing good to say regarding the Bible, but the author offers clear evidence of contradictions all over the place and makes notes about justice, ethical and moral problems in the Bible from the point of view of someone living in modern times. It also makes notes regarding the God of destruction and hate of the Old Testament. The same autor of this annotated Bible has a book, I forgot the title, but it documents all the killings commited by God versus those commited by Satan (millions by God versus only Job's family by Satan, countenanced by God of course)
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  stillin

  What is the official WT spin on Stephan's words "lord Jesus...etc?"

  This question came up in this week's TMS review and nobody had anything to offer.

  the TMS overseer indicated that there is some tricky new understanding of how Stephan was not actually praying to Jesus, but somebody else...who? Od course any 3year old knew to raise their hand and say Jehovah...tada! You win the prize, Johnny!

  All I have found on the subject is in a 1994 12/15 pg 24 statement to the effect that Stephan was actually SeEEING Jesus in a vision. Therefore, he wasn't praying to him, he was speaking to him. And somehow, there's a difference.

  I knew it was going to be tricky.
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  Socrateswannabe

  Thanks to all for your observations and clarifications.

  Bobcat, that is an interesting take on this and I will try to absorb it.

  Stillin, this verse was in our bible highlights for this week and no one ventured a comment on it. We have no one in our congregation who could or would do the kind of research that has been exhibited by those who have responded to this topic on this forum.

  Never A JW, Yes, I have a bookmark to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible online and it is of great help. It seems to me as though the author of this publication has done his research. Maybe he's not 100% accurate, but he has helped me to see the absurdity of much of the bible and a lot of the humor in it that the all-too-serious JWs have missed. Of the limited resources that I have yet found, this is one of my favorites. I realize it is rudimentary compared to the scholarly works that others have recommended here, but hey, you gotta start somewhere!
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  Cold Steel

  ...the author offers clear evidence of contradictions all over the place and makes notes about justice, ethical and moral problems in the Bible from the point of view of someone living in modern times.

  The myth of an inerrent Bible is finally, and thankfully, biting the dust. Any time you have humans involved in the transmission of records, there are going to be errors. In another thread, we discussed the fact that a scribe intentionally exchanged the name of Nabonidus with the more famous name of Nebuchadnezzar. Nabonidus was the king that was driven mad for seven years, and thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Bible book of Daniel has now been reconciled with history.

  As for justice, ethical and moral problems in the Bible from the point of view of someone living in modern times, we should not be surprised. The Bible itself predicts that the world will become increasingly wicked as the second coming of Christ approaches. "As it was in the days of Noah," the Lord said, "so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man." As Stephen noted before being murdered, the ancient Jews, because of their wickedness, could not see that wickedness because of the twisted mores of their own times. Today, people getting sex change operations, having partial birth abortions and partying to entertainment that our own fathers a hundred years ago would have found filthy and abhorrent. People living in Jerusalem in 600 BC thought they were righteous, and they persecuted Jeremiah and other prophets that were sent to them. And in the days when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, again, the people saw nothing wrong with their moral behavior.

  All I have found on the subject is in a 1994 12/15 pg 24 statement to the effect that Stephan was actually SeEEING Jesus in a vision. Therefore, he wasn't praying to him, he was speaking to him. And somehow, there's a difference.

  Actually, there is a difference. Jesus taught his followers to pray to the Father in his name. But as you say, Stephen was reacting to what he was seeing. There are thousands, if not millions, of times when dying people see their friends or relatives before passing. My father saw his mother, and my maternal grandfather saw and spoke to, by name, family members he hadn't thought of in years. I believe that when righteous people pass into the spirit world, that they are met by family members and friends who had passed on. It's like being met at an airport.

  It also makes notes regarding the God of destruction and hate of the Old Testament. The same autor of this annotated Bible has a book, I forgot the title, but it documents all the killings commited by God versus those commited by Satan (millions by God versus only Job's family by Satan, countenanced by God of course)
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  [email protected]

  Hi - I am an exJW, elder, Behelite, congregation servant, etc. etc. We as JW's believed that the soul has no separate existence after death. Call this "soul sleep". (Some Christians also believe this) We had no idea of what is resurrected or what is sleeping. Resurrection is always about the body, not the soul. And it is this body that 'sleeps' in the grave until Christ returns. At death, our soul goes immediatley to be 'witn the Lord' as Stephen's sould did, as he understood when he said, "Lord Jesus, recieve my SPIRIT" in Acts 7:59. So, when we understand that resurrection is speaking about the body, yes, we all will wait until Christ returns for Him to raise our courruptable bodies into incorruptable bodies as 1 Corinthians 15 teaches. But our soul does not wait! At death Christians immediatley go to be with the Lord. As Jesus said to the thief on the cross: "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paraduse" (Luke 23:43) Actually, this idea of 'soul sleep' is very pagan! The Greek ideas affected some Christians even in the days of the apostles! As Paul asked the Corinthianss: "how say some of you that there is no resurrection of the dead" -1 Corinthians 15:13. Amazing isn't it? We as JW's were appaled at anything that was pagan, and here JW's believe a most pagan idea about the body!! So, can I make any boast here? No, I would still be blind and believing in all this junk as a JW, unless my Lord Jesus saved me and opened my eyes to know Him and believe the Scriptures. No pride. Only thanfulness and prayers always that the Lord would show the same mercy He showed to me for JW's! I pray for their salvation always. This is our starting point! PRAY FOR THE SALVATION OF JW'S! Amen!
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  Cold Steel

  The term "soul" is viewed by many as being both body and spirit together. When God breathed the breath of life into man, man became a living soul. When the spirit departs and "returns" to God, if it is righteous, it goes to Paradise which, again citing Origen, a place of learning or school of the spirits in which everything they experienced on Earth would be made clear to them. It's not the presence of God, neither is it Heaven. After all, Jesus went to Paradise the day he died, but he clearly stated later that he had not yet ascended to Heaven. If Heaven and Paradise are the same, this would be a problem.

  I've really tried to understand how the JWs view things, and I have an old ragged copy of a Watchtower magazine with flames on the cover and the word "Armageddon" stretched across the top. I've read the article a number of times hoping I could somehow see a justification between what it said and what the scriptures say about Armageddon. I've yet to find any. The JWs are the Armageddon people, after all. They talk about it, preach it, dread it some days and look forward to it on other days; they see it as a worldwide event between good and evil. But this is, in their own terminology, a "worldly" view closer to the things movies are made of. Tribulation followed by cataclysmic events culminating in the destruction of much of the world. In reality, Armageddon is the battle that takes place in far away Jerusalem. If you live in Brooklyn, you might not even be aware of when it happens unless there's news coverage.

  But the problem is, if the WTS says it, they believe it, and that settles it.