Originally posted by riverm:
Uhhh, I’ve read the Bible, but who says your Cultic interpretation is better than mine?
It’s 100% obvious that the Bible teaches that the soul lives on after death. The New Testament shows various places that the dead are ALIVE in Christ, not in some state of unconsciousness and that the Scripture you quote refers to those Corinthians that are sick and do you sleep when you are ill? The sleep Paul is referring to is a physical sleep brought on by illness, not a spiritual sleep brought on by death.
As a matter of fact Jesus Christ Himself corrected the Sadducees OT belief of the state of the dead, by stating that God is the God of the living not of the dead... [/QB]
You don't distinguish between Sleep and Death, and Resurrection issue.
I didn't say that the dead people died completly and doesn't resurrect again.
The Dead people are ALIVE in Gods' eyes and will resurrect again, but in the meantime until they resurrect, they are sleeping. That is the expression used by Jesus when He mentioned about Lazarus " Our
friend Lazarus sleepeth " ( John 11:11)
"
I may awake him out of sleep " ( John 11:11)
Is Jesus Cultic?
Read the Bible again,
1 Cor 11:30, many are weak and sickly among you, and many asleep. What does it mean by asleep ?
1 Cor 15:20
Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.
( What does it mean by slept?)
1 Thessalonians 4: 14
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.
( What is sleep here?)
1 Thessalonians 4: 15
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
(Who are alive and who are asleep? )
After death they take the rest, and therefore praying to the dead person is a nonsense.
Ecclesiastes 9:5
For the living know that they shall die: but
the dead know not any thing , neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
This means that Dead people are still alive in God's view and wait for the resurrection either of Damnation or of Life as we read John 5:29
John 5:29
And (the hour) shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
I never deny the resurrection and the dead will rise again.
As for me, I was born again when I read Galatian 2:20 and had the same experience as John Wesley had on May 24, 1738. Do you have such experience of change in your life, and have established the personal relationship with God?
Before I was born again, I was one of the members at a church like Methodists and was baptized by sprinkling the water and defended for the existence of God quite well but there was no change of my life.
If you don't have such experience of conversion, you may have not been born again in Jesus by Holy Spirit. Please note that Wesley was already a Priest of Anglican Church and went to Georgia as a missionary, but he didn't have such experience and was very much challenged by Moravian Brethren and later on he was converted when he heard the message from Peter Boeler, the Moravian Missionary. The most of the Methodist doctrines were learned from Moravian Brethren.
Galatian asks me about whether I am JW. I am so-called Plymouth Brethren. The reason why I say so-called is because they deny any name of denomination but the outsiders call us as PB.
We deny denomination as 1 Cor 1:11-17 disapproves any denomination. As there was no Presbytarian Church of Rome or Methodist Church of Ephesus, or Corinthian Catholic Church at all in the Bible, we deny any denomination name but gather together in the name of Jesus Christ as Matt 18:20 mentions.
PB's share the same doctrines in most of the doctrinal issues, but the difference exist in the practices such as Baptism by immersion, Lord's Supper every week as per 1 Cor 11:23-30 and Acts 20:7, No Pastor except Elders and Deacons, Head Covering for the women as 1 Cor 11:1-16, calling each other Brothers and Sisters as Matt 23:8-11, etc.
If you read carefully the literatures by John Wesley, you can confirm that Dead people are expressed as sleeping.
Isaiah 8:19
should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead ?
If you check any faithful Methodist scholars, they will say that the prayer to the dead is ridiculous and is against their faith.
[ April 20, 2006, 12:54 AM: Message edited by: Eliyahu ]