<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Where is the sign in the three days argument you presented? How can the burial be a sign? If you bury someone for one day, or two days, or a million days then this is no sign, Eric. The sign (miracle) is that if you do something as was done to Jonah you expect him to die. Now, if he stays alive, then it is a miracle! When you throw someone into a raging sea, you expect him to die. If he stays alive, then it is a miracle! If a whale bites (the man left and right) and begins to swallow the man in that same raging sea, you expect him to drawn, be crushed and get killed. If he stays alive, it is yet another miracle! If he stays for three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, you expect him to suffocate and die. If he lives and cries to his God and prays IN SIDE the belly of the whale it is yet another miracle! It is a miracle of miracles! Many times over! And so staying ALIVE against all odds is the SIGN, Eric. If you hang someone and he dies, then there is no miracle! If you bury him and he dies, it is no miracle! Whether the time is one day or a million days. If he dies (for any number of days) then it is no miracle! However, if he stays ALIVE against all odds, then and only then it becomes a miracle. One like that of prophet Jonah PBUH.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
OK, what I should have said is that his being
risen is the real sign, and the number 3 added to that. The issue is not remaining alive
while entombed, but rather
coming out alive. It's the end result that is being emphasized. Being alive or dead during the three days has no significance. All the observers in the examples you mentioned will see is how the person comes out. Once again, if you insist it has to match perfectly, then Christ would have had to have been inside a whale. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>"So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption." (1 Corinthians: 15:42).
He continues: "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." (1 Corinthians: 15:44).
And so indeed, even Paul admits that the resurrected are SPIRITS! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
As I say on another of my pages:
1 Cor.15 does go on to mention a "spiritual body" (v.40,44), but this is nothing other than the resurrection body, being "RAISED" after having been "sown" natural (death of the physical body). 2 Cor.5:1-8 and Phil.1:20-23 mention being "absent from the body and present with the Lord", and vice versa. But the Corinthians passage shows that this is actually another term for the resurrection; v.2: "we are CLOTHED with our HABITATION [margin: "dwelling"] which is from Heaven", when this earthly "house" (dwelling), or "tent", is destroyed. This is of course, the resurrection body. Paul further says that the hope is ,
"not...to be UNclothed (disembodied), but to be FURTHER clothed (restored body) so that mortality (death) may be swallowed up by life". (v.4) It will be the same body, but being incorruptible, will be different. So Paul can describe it in these scriptures as being "out of the [present, corruptible] body".
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
---------------------------------
2 Chronicles 007:014 <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
But note one crucial part of this:
"Turn from your wicked ways" Do you know what this entails? Do you think just keeping some religious ovservances and trying to be good fulfils this? The Bible tells us "He who keeps the
whole Law and offends in
one point is guilty of all." (2:10) "Cursed is everyone who does not continue in
all things written in the Book of the Law" (Deut. 27:26). You say "oh, God is merciful and gracious and knows we will sin", but that is not how the Bible says we shall be
justified. Instead, that's what every liberal or lukewarm/backslidden person says when called to repentance. We want to do what we want, and some will even offer God a bunch of works (some of which God commanded, and many He didn't) to further try to buy their way into Heaven. But as Paul says, this is not attaining to the
righteousness God had always demanded. In all of this, beginning with the Fall of Adam, the Bible is showing that what we have is more than just sinful
acts, but a
condition that prevents us from being able to fulfil God's Law.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Please note how the Bible reports Almighty God in the first person declaring that He SPAKE NOT, and COMMANDED NOT the fathers of the sons of Israel concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices! Emphasis on the verb “spake not.” Which means that anything that begins to constitute what we call speech is hereby denied!
According to Almighty God's first person words as reported in the Bible, what He asked them is clear and explicit: to obey His voice, His Law, and all His commandments-- a message repeated throughout the Bible <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Yes, God did not immediately give the Law, but it soon became clear that man (as a whole)
would not "obey His voice", and the Laws/commandments He had given so far. So then the whole Law was added. But that too did not cure man's condition of sin, and through this, God was showing us that we neede more than just laws or tempioral sacrifices. (BTW, though not commanded as periodic ceremony, God did require sacrifices, and of a specific type, before then. Just look at Cain and Abel.) Paul elaborates on al of this in various places. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>
As to the general question of why, then kindly allow me to say that you are approaching your search the wrong way. One must not question the reason why, no. Rather one must question whether or not this is Almighty God that is giving the commandment or not. Otherwise, one would be questioning the wisdom of God, Eric. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
My question of "why" is to address "whether" it is of God. People say all kinds of things in the name of God, and the Bible says we had
better question it, from the scriptures.
And still, if people name themselves "servant of God", fine, but still, why must it be in Arabic?
"shirk":
Once again, if you understand what it means for Christ to be of the same "substance" as the Father, and be God and man at the same time, you will see He is in no way a "partner" with God. (But Islam does in several ways make man as a whole a partner with God.)
There are alot of misunderstanding in this issue. I have written a detailed treatise on it at:
[Triune.html]
70 weeks issue:
It does not appear to me that there are two sets of weeks. That is just someone's interpretation. The OT often uses "parallelism" as a type of poetic languge (the Psalms are full of this), so there are often doubles, describing the same thing. An English professor can tell you what he would think it implies in English, but you would need a Hebrew professor.
Most other versions say "to seal visions and
prophecy" You can't build an interpretation off of one translation. "to anoint a holy place" or "the holy of holies" is talking about the temple of God in His future Kingdom, not some new "holy city" in this same fallen world.
