...will the seal have a ball on its nose?...
Curious minds want to know....
carm
144,000 doctrine may prove WT is a false religion!
by badboy 16 Replies latest jw friends
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Leolaia
Most of these "revelation" books including ours are really silly. Most christians forget that the bible was writen by Jews. The idea of the afterlife and the concept of judement day did not mature until the time of Jesus. So a big thing for them was the concept of dead actually raising and becoming mortal again. The concept of a spirit world and heaven was a novelty. Look at how heaven is a physical place. How the kindom of God comes down to earth to reside with man. This is too far from the modern concept of heaven to try to reconcile. I mean do you really think most christians think that when they die they will go to live with God on a mountain in the middle east?
The idea of an afterlife goes back to the Israelites and Canaanites. See for instance what Proverbs and Isaiah say about the Rephaim residing in Sheol. The idea of a resurrection goes back at least to the third century BC if not earlier (if Ezekiel is to be treated as referring to resurrection). The idea of a Judgment Day certainly matured prior to the first century AD; see what was written in 1 Enoch in the first century BC that goes into far more detail about it than anything in the NT. The concept of the "divine assembly" in heaven goes back to Canaanite mythology (where heaven was viewed like Mt. Olympus as the top of a cosmic mountain at the junction of the Double-Deeps, the ocean above heaven and the ocean on earth below), and the notion is also frequently mentioned in the OT as well. The idea of ascensions to heaven appears in such pre-Christian works as 2 Kings, Ascension of Isaiah, Assumption of Moses, Testament of Abraham, Life of Adam and Eve, 1 Enoch, etc. These works share with the NT the notion that Paradise (that is, the Garden of Eden) was really in heaven or was preserved in heaven, and the apocalyptic idea was that Paradise would descend from heaven before eternity. Jewish merkebah mysticism (found in Daniel and 1 Enoch), greatly expanded the concept of the highest heaven and ideas drawn from Persian thought designated four or seven levels to heaven, an idea explored most thoroughly in 2 Enoch (from the first century AD). So a lot of it was fairly new, but not all that you describe, and much of the development leading to the Christian notion of heaven can be found in the intertestamental works spanning between the OT and NT.
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XQsThaiPoes
You are correct I was inaccurate and inarticulate. I may be wrong becaue I have not read any of those other books and only know tid bits of the other cultures except for bits of enoch. I want to clearify I was not trying to say John invented this alone. I was trying to say in historical context what he was saying does not sound logical. Also I was not saying that people did not believe in heaven. But there are biblical text that make you wonder did they have an afterlife. Becaue they rearly mentioned runiting with anyone or the dead going to the afterlife. Were as the egyptians it almost looks like they spent more time writing about the afterlife than every day life. I truly believe for example Abraham expected Isaac to die forever. Or when the plauge angle came and killed 70k people I don't think David though they existed in heaven once they died here. I think you get my point. My "problem" Is I think I have not read enough apocrapha.
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jwsons
The only place in Ezek. about TAU is Ezk.8:14, but it is a "disgusting" in the eyes of Jehovah. Nothing relates to the seal of God in Rev. jwsons
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Corvin
Badboy, the seal on their foreheads can only be taken symbolically, figuratively . . . sort of like this:
JK
Corvin
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badboy
I have just read on a website that the 144,000 mentioned in one part of Revelation may not be the same as the 144,000 mentioned in another part of revelation(on a Christian website)type in 144,000 on Google and the third site down gives you all the information you need to know.
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