Can the dead hear? (page 2)

Simon

Can the dead solve Sudoku problems?

You can come up with all manner of idiotic questions, the bible will help with none of them for the reasons scratchme1010 explained.

Half banana

It is only in myths that the dead can hear.

I await with interest Amy starting a new thread asking some question about whether she should ask JWs. In the meantime, silence from the one who started the topic - like all other topics she started before. Perhaps she has yet to find out how to navigate around this website to reply?

Cold Steel

Whether the dead can hear is more a matter of faith. According to the scriptures and some creeds, yes. The so-called Apostles Creed states that after Jesus died, "he descended into Hell." Actually, Jesus told the malefactor on the cross, "thou shalt be with me in Paradise." But what is Paradise? According to Origen, one of the greatest scholars of Christianity, it is not Heaven, but the place of departed spirits.

"After death," he said, "I think the saints go to Paradise, a place of learning or school of the spirits, in which everything they did on Earth would be made clear to them."

Peter writes:

"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water." (1 Peter 3:18-21 KJV)

A few verses later he continues:

"Wherein [the ungodly] think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." (1 Peter 4:4-6 KJV)

How the JWs miss this in their soul sleeping beliefs is beyond me. If the dead "sleep" at death, how can they be preached to? Peter also states that this preaching occurred between the time Jesus died and the time of his resurrection, and that the preaching was to "the dead." Somehow this ended up in the creed as "Hell."

This also correlates to many life after life stories that tend to be remarkably consistent from different times and cultures, and the life reviews they undergo.

cofty

Whether the dead can hear is more a matter of faith

Which is code for make-believe.

steve2

Cofty, I have faith that I hear what you say.

wozza

I don't want to sidetrack this but I would like to give a personal experience in relation to this topic. But if the dead can hear then it seems they have already been brought back in some other form it appears.

Here it is : I was about twelve at home with my brother , mother and 2 or 3 friends and we were bored because the weather I think kept us inside from kicking the football in the street. Well my mother cleared the kitchen table and proceeded to make a oija board of bits of paper and an upturned glass ,and said let's have some fun. i guess it was a simple parlour game to her as she was born in the early 1920's.

The other kids were keen and mystified ,I felt uncomfortable for by my age I'd worked out my mother was a bit loopy and different to other mothers. But she called me closer and when I put my hand over the glass it started moving (yes that's over not on) and in time began quickly sliding and pointing to the letters etc .

Mother excitedly wrote down the whole session while we all freaked out but were terrified to move. She gave an explanation that we were actually talking to a dead person (hows that for irresponsible parenting,especially to other peoples kids ,but that was not even half of what I endured with her).

Well the kids left and it was then I asked what was the message she wrote down as I'd missed some of the words and we proceeded to read it in it's entirety ,it was supposed to be from a friend of my mothers dead husband telling his wife how he was and enquiries about their children ,very specific things.

How do explain this ?,over the years I tried to find explanations which lead me to the JW's who said it was demons and that seemed to cover alot of other things I'd experienced . This was one of the things that kept me in the org for so long they seemed to have an explanation ,but over the years the org revealed itself to be man made to me and I left .

So what am I left with now as an explanation for the condition of the dead or the many other wierd things in life that can't be easily explained even by science? I find myself at the blunt end of life retired ,godless but not searching as hard for answers as I did in my youth ,but at least I'm not tormented by the quest and have learnt to be more chilled about the things in life that I can't possibly get the truthful story on ,I spent decades believing in an org that said it taught truth and yet that truth is not truth today led by a body of chiefly American people who are just people despite what they think they are ,and the Bible ? well it gives conflicting answers standing on it's own , let alone when any bunch of people give their personal opinion on what it says especially on the condition of the dead. Whwew glad I got that of my chest

Cold Steel

Cofty » Which is code for make-believe.

There's actually evidence (not proof) that an afterlife exists, and there are quite a few atheists and agnostics that are now believers. You can talk to many Emergency Room staffers in almost any part of the world and there will be stories of those who died and had "after death" experiences.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PwyYUFzkf2w

The thing about dream (or hallucinogenic) states is that they tend to be vague; they make no sense. You may see colors, or sensations of color, but to clearly see people, have intelligent conversations and actually convey knowledge -- are you going to reject one hundred percent of these experiences just because of your belief system?

AmyWatson916

Thank you all for your kind replies.

I am not a Jehovah's Witness and never have been.

I appreciate the diverse replies from so many sincere people. I was hoping to tap the wisdom of a large group of people who have "been there, done that".

I asked, "How do Jehovah's Witnesses explain to people that they teach one thing and then give examples of just the opposite?" I gave an example from the "What Does the Bible Really Teach?" book. I found that example in a book called "What To Do When They Knock".

I appreciate the replies (the thoughtful, the silly, and the caustic) and the time and effort the repliers gave.

I was hoping to read examples of how Jehovah's Witnesses respond when shown teachings in the "What Does the Bible Really Teach?" book and then examples in that same book that demonstrate just the opposite of those teachings.

I'm hoping people that read this forum will help me understand how Jehovah's Witnesses harmonize their contrasting views.

Amy

Half banana

Thank you for replying Amy, I thought your quotations from the WT literature were excellent examples of the abounding contradictions you find in JW belief, well spotted!

When confronted with these problems, everything to a JW is subsumed under two irrational but foundational anchor points. The first is that the Bible is inerrant and secondly that the governing body of their religion is divinely guided in doctrinal interpretation of scripture.

When contradictions arise the response is not to see them as contradictory but awaiting further "light" to be shed in explanation. However bizarre or paranoid the beliefs, JWs are emotionally committed to them for fear of losing their approval within the their chosen religious community and for the prospect of reward in a future earthly paradise.

Can the dead hear?

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