Resurrection to Spirit Form, Your Opinion would be Appreciated,

by jeanniebeanz 21 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  jeanniebeanz

  2 Corinthians 5:6-8 seems to indicate that, according to traditional Christian thinking, once a Christian dies they are immediately present with the Christ.
  

  2 Corinthians 5:6-8 (KJV)

  6

  Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

  2 Corinthians 5:6-8 (Darby)

  6. Therefore [we are] always confident, and know that while present in the body we are absent from the Lord, 7 (for we walk by faith, not by sight;) 8 we are confident, I say, and pleased rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.

  2 Corinthians 5:6-8 (Revised Standard Ver)

  6 So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

  Since Paul stated this in the first century, it seems to refute the teaching of the WTBTS that states that there would be a period of waiting in death before a resurrection to heaven that would last until after Christ?s return. Paul does not infer any period of sleep but rather states ?absent from the body and present with the Lord? or ?and at home with the Lord? which seems to indicate an instantaneous change into spirit form.
  

  Not surprisingly, this scripture is somewhat more vague the NWT, which says:

  2 Corinthians 5:6-8 (NWT)

  6. We are therefore always of good courage and know that, while we have our home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, 7. For we are walking by faith, not by sight. 8. But we are of good courage and are well pleased rather to become absent from the body and to make our home with the Lord.

  Apparently they did not like the inference that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Therefore they inserted the ?making your home with? rather than ?at home with? line of reasoning. Going somewhere and being there are two separate things.

  I would be very interested in your thoughts on this since I will be having a discussion with my daughter this weekend on this topic and would like a few opinions from those who have studied this teaching more deeply.

  Thanks!

  Jeannie
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  Satanus

  I'm fairly sure that the spirit continues on after the body dies. That idea seems to be there as well.

  S
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  Valis

  Eheh watch Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with her..
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  Leolaia

  jeaniebeanz....I've been planning for some time to write a very detailed post about these verses and other NT passages about the afterlife and resurrection, but I haven't had the time to distill it all the way I want. In the meantime, here is something I wrote on this a little while back that might be helpful:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/80742/1319806/post.ashx#1319806

  Note that other important passages in Paul is 2 Corinthians 12:3 (about possibly visiting heaven "out of the body") and Philippians 1:21-24 (which refers to "departing" to be with Christ....what part of a person "departs" at death?). Another important point I didn't yet go into is the use of the word "tent" in 2 Corinthians 5:10 which is a technical word from Greek philosophy and medicine which refers to the body as the temporary "tent" of the soul. The same expression occurs in 2 Peter 1:13. As for Paul's teaching on the resurrection, it depends on the common intertestamental Jewish belief of the resurrection involving a transformation of the physical body into a spiritual one (cf. 2 Baruch 50-54, in which the pious are changed "in the splendor of angels"). The idea is not of being a disembodied spirit, but having a body that transcends mere flesh. Hence the metaphor of clothing for the body which appears in 1 Corinthians 15:53-54, 2 Corinthians 5:2-4, and 2 Peter 1:14, as well as in intertestamental sources describing those who go to heaven (Ascension of Isaiah 8:1-16; 2 Enoch 22:1-10; 3 Baruch 17:3).
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  jeanniebeanz

  Satanus,

  Yes, I agree. The scriptures do seem to support a continuing consciousness at the time of death.

  Valis,

  LOL

  Leolaia,

  Thank you. I especially find the ;tent as a temporary house for the soul' line of reasoning intriguing. When you get your work completed on this subject, I'm sure it'll be great and I'm looking forward to reading it!

  Jeannie
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  JosephMalik

  Nowhere in scripture does it teach that human beings will be resurrected to be a spirit being as Christ was. The dual seed of Christ is unique. The seed that is sown by us is human, therefore the body that results will also be human albeit immortal.

  The Apostle Paul considered the various Corinthian [and somewhat pagan] views regarding resurrection and reduced them to this simple fact.

  The word spirit, while it can refer to a non-human being can also refer to a God given body or even a mortal human being uttering prophecy or an assembly of Christians doing such along with many other uses too numerous to relate here.

  Likewise the word heaven(s) is not only an alternate word for God but it is also a way to describe human governments as such human governments exist by God permission to maintain order until Christ's kingdom replaces them.

  Thus the heavens and the earth that are now (human governments and their populations) will at the appropriate time be replace with a new heaven and a new earth in this kingdom (a human government with a new human population consisting of immortal human beings).

  The passage of time is not always considered when such prophecies are uttered and such time is not a factor at death. Association with our Lord is not considered to be interrupted during such a time. So it takes a bit of contemplation when such texts are interpreted and we must understand clearly what this kingdom is, where it will be, how it will function and why before we can understand such texts properly. Unfortunately present Christian doctrine is so inaccurate or distorted that few will ever grasp what is really taught in such texts this side of this kingdom.

  Joseph
  
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  Bas

  Well, I don't believe in the bible, being an atheist. What I do think is that your spirit will never die. When your body dies however, all memories carried by that body die with it. Only you inner eye is what is left and that is blind until it finds a new body. My main reason for believing this is that when you have lived once, according to mathematical principles you must be born again, however long a time is in between your two lives (maybe billions of billions of years). Vice versa this principle proves to me that everyone has lived before however long ago this maybe(perhaps in a universe existent before our present one; a paralel universe) I don't think you're reborn within 1000's of years or on this planet because the circumstances might be only right for a life once every universe or so. Anyway, in between lives i think you're in a state of rest, not conscious of time. So it in fact it when you die it might feel like you're immediately born somewhere else while this "someplace else" might in fact be billions of years later or in the next universe.

  Well, that's my thoughts on it and I'm sticking with it

  Bas
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  Rod P

  Will get back on the topic of 2 Corinthians 5:6-8.

  In the meantime, some thoughts on life after death.

  JW's teach that when you die, you are dead, or you go out of existence. Your body, which is of the "dust of the earth" goes back to the earth from whence it came. The "spirit" or "breath of life" or "life force" goes back to the God who gave it. The WTBS teaches that what also goes back to Jehovah is His Perfect Memory of YOU, all that was you, all that you lived, everything that you did while alive. Then, in the resurrection, a new body is raied up, and Jehovah God implants that perfect "Memory" that was You into that new body. Then, for all intents and purposes, they say that this is YOU like when you were alive.

  This is not logical. The JW version of life after death thru the resurrection has some fatal flaws. If YOU go out of existence at the time of death, and all there is left is God's memory of you, and then that memory is put back into a new body at the time of resurrection, then what God would have done is made a duplicate of YOU, a clone of YOU. This is NOT YOU, just an imitation of the real thing, albeit a pretty good one, since God is perfect, right? So now, if when you die you go out of existence, and God later makes a duplicate of you, then why should you care if that CLONE of YOU makes it into the New World?

  There are over 6,000 passages in the Bible which use the words "Soul" and "Spirit" (psyche, ruah, pneuma, nephesh). The WBTS teaches that these references have doctrinal implications as to the nature of the soul, and that is the source of the problem. The simple truth is, these passages have nothing to do with a true definition of the soul or spirit, and do not tell us as to what happens after we die. They are not doctrinal passages, but rather simple statements that man, the living soul, dies, sins, gets hungry, can be captured, and myriads of other human circumstances, many of which also befall the beasts. "Man has no preeminence over the beast; as one dies, so dies the other." etc. "The soul that sins shall die". This is all a "red herring" and leads us down a false trail as to what the Bible really teaches about death and life after death. Bible scholars are very aware of all this, and is why they do not accept the JW version of their doctrine of the Soul. Therefore, we need to get on with the business of finding out what the Bible really teaches about death and dieing and life after death, and forget about the 6,000+ irrelevant passages.

  Having said this, I will get back to you on 2 Cor.5:6-8 and a few other thoughts on this whole subject of life after death.

  Rod P.
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  hmike

  What about what Jesus said about the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16)? Or when Jesus told the criminal crucified with him, "today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43)? Or when Jesus said God was not the God of the dead, but God of the living, referring to the Patriarchs (Matt. 22:31-32)? Or the souls of those who had been killed because of the word of God and their testimony in Rev. 6:9-11? What does the WT say about these?
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  Leolaia

  In the OT, nephesh "soul" does not presume corporeality as an essential criterion, as one would think from the Watchtower teaching of body + spirit = nephesh. The word simply means "life" (the etymological meaning is "throat"), and by extension "person", or "creature". Since living creatures have bodies, their bodies have life in them; the nephesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11). Note that God, as the source of life, refers to having his own nephesh (Isaiah 42:1; Amos 6:8; Jeremiah 6:8), tho God does not have a fleshly or corporeal body of any sort. But when the body dies, what happens to the nephesh? The Torah suggests that death releases a person's vital force into the air which can hover around until the body is buried (compare Shabbat 152b-153a, which also refers to the hovering of the nephesh over a person's grave until the body is consumed). Numbers 6:6 refers to the "nephesh of a dead body" (compare Leviticus 19:28, 21:1, 22:4; Numbers 5:2, 6:11, 9:6-13) which a person should not go near, and Numbers 19:11-15 indicates that the nephesh can contaminate open vessels, as well as people who enter tents containing it or those who touch the corpse. (The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament gives a detailed discussion of this.) The nephesh is also described as going to Sheol (the netherworld) or existing in Sheol (Psalm 16:10, 30:3, 89:48, 86:13; Proverbs 23:14). Or, in the case of resuscitation, the nephesh "life" can return to a dead body (1 Kings 17:21-23). However a different word, rephaim, is used to refer to the shades of the dead. It is quite remarkable that in every discussion of the soul and the afterlife, the Watchtower Society never discusses the implications of this term -- which clearly refers to the continued semi-conscious existence of the dead in Sheol.