Soul Sleep (the unconscious dead)

[HankD]

if I may quote a segment of an essay --

Sure, why not?

wopik, did you mean to relate this to 1 Samuel 28?

HankD

 

[wopik]

did you mean to relate this to 1 Samuel 28?

to some degree.


also, just wanted a real life example of.....

"even the memory of them is forgotten" (Eccl 9:5).

 

[HankD]

OK, so your daughter doesn't know who George Harrison was.

Yes it is true that one generation perishes and is replaced by the next who don't remember (by and large) those of the preceding generations.

That says nothing about the human spirit which survives the death of the body and returns to all-knowing God who created it.

HankD

 

[GODzThunder]

I agree with Hank. That scripture talks more about the foolishness of trying to build a name for yourself rather than focusing on what is really important, God's will. In fact the entire book of Ecc. concerns the foolishness of Solomon living his life in the wrong way, accomplishing much good but focusing on much vanity and pride. This has nothing to do with life after death.

Many a men have spent their entire lives bettering ours but few can actually name these individuals and even fewer can give testimony of their efforts. In fifty years I will be suprised if anyone even remembers the name Bill Gates.

 

[wopik]

That says nothing about the human spirit which survives the death of the body and returns to all-knowing God who created it.

Using modern terminology, I have heard the "spirit of man" likened to a commuter's hard-drive: a place where man's memory is stored; the memory of who we are and the memory of our life's experiences. And we will get "our spirit" back in our new resurrected bodies.

 

[Trotter]

Same song, different tune. Still wrong.

In Christ,
Trotter

 

[GODzThunder]

you heard that the spirit of man is likened to a computer's hard drive? I would stop listening to whoever said such things as that analogy. Just because it sounds good does not mean that it has biblical context.

 

[wopik]

some excerpts from Holman Bible Dictionary, article: soul -----

In the Bible, a person is a unity. Body and soul or spirit are not opposite terms, but rather terms which supplement one another to describe aspects of the inseparable whole person.

Such a holistic image of a person is maintained also in the New Testament even over against the Greek culture which, since Plato, sharply separated body and soul with an analytic exactness and which saw the soul as the valuable, immortal, undying part of human beings.

According to the Bible, a human being exists as a whole unit and remains also as a whole person in the hand of God after death. A person is not at any time viewed as a bodiless soul.


http://www.studylight.org/dic/hbd/view.cgi?number=T5974

 

[GODzThunder]

so what you are saying is that at all times we are viewed as a complete person? Even after death in the presence of God we are still seen as persons in entirity?

 

[wopik]

I believe that is the gist of the dictionary article, yes.

 

[GODzThunder]

If we are always to be a complete person and cannot be separated, then how does the spirit leave and go back to God as I believe you said in an earliar posting? Would that not destroy us since we are human in totality of the three? Are you stating that the inseparapable is separated or are you starting that we can never be separated and our spirit does not go back to God but stays with us in the grave?

 

[wopik]

I think the author is talking more about the soul than the spirit.

At times, soul simply replaces a preposition such as the expression “let my soul live,” which means “let me live” (1 Kings 20:32).

The Bible definietly talks about man's spirit, upon death, going back to God. -- perhaps in Job.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here is Holman Bible Dictionary's article on "spirit ---

http://www.studylight.org/dic/hbd/view.cgi?number=T5991

[ August 12, 2004, 09:36 PM: Message edited by: wopik ]

 

[wopik]

"For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him" (1 Thess. 5:9-10).

Here Paul contrasts those who are alive [awake] and those who are dead [asleep] in the Lord.

 

[wopik]

When we die, we immediately go to be with Him. If not, why did Jesus tell the thief on the cross that he would be with Him in paradise THAT VERY DAY?

THAT VERY DAY Jesus told the thief he would be in Paradise.

"Today" was the day Christ made the promise, not the day they would be in paradise.


Jesus emphasized "today" because the thief repented and believed in Jesus that day. The previous day he was lost.

Moses uses the word "today" similarly in Deuteronomy 30:16-18. In verse 16, he commands them "today" to follow the Lord. He was not saying they only had to follow the Lord that day. Just as Moses gave the command that day, Jesus gave the promise that day.


Then Moses says, "But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish . . ." (Dt. 30: 17-18).

They did not perish that day. In fact, they did not even perish the first day they turned away, because of God's patience and mercy.

 

[GODzThunder]

this argument is a carousel, arguments are refuted but still are constantly being brought up. Soul sleep is not biblical we were created to live forever. We are eternal beings created in the image of an eternal God.

 

[wopik]

Soul sleep is not biblical we were created to live forever.

GODzThunder,
When the Bible says people are asleep [dead], it never says that the body or the soul is asleep; it says the person himself is asleep.

An example of this is 1Thess. 5:10 - "...who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep...."

(It never says Joe's soul is sleeping; it says Joe is sleeping.)

Where does this idea of "soul sleep" come from?

 

[Cix]

Originally posted by wopik:

Jesus emphasized "today" because the thief repented and believed in Jesus that day. The previous day he was lost.

How do you know that the previous day he was lost? Is that written in scripture or are you assuming. We cannot know for sure if the previous day he was lost. Perhaps the thief was re-iterating his belief in Christ at that time.

 

[GODzThunder]

Where does the idea of non-existence until resurrection come from?

 

[GODzThunder]

What does "For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God" (1 Peter 4:6)mean? Does it say that Jesus in his death went to hell, a place where the dead were, not asleep or sending a spirit back to the presence of God putting people in suspended animaiton, and preached the kindom to the righteous of paradise, those who looked forward to the cross as we look back?

 

[wopik]

What does "For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God" (1 Peter 4:6)mean?

GODzThunder -- about 1 Peter 4:6, IMO, this is the best explaination I have heard.

I Peter 3:19,20 and I Peter 4:6 ---

It seems to me that the most natural and obvious interpretation is to refer it to those who were then dead (in Peter's time), to whom the gospel had been preached when living, and who had become true Christians.

Were they spirits then, or were they people like others?

Peter speaks of them as they were when he wrote; not as they had been, or were at the time when the message was preached to them.

The idea is, that to those spirits who were then in prison who had formerly lived in the days of Noah, the message had been in fact delivered. It was not necessary to speak of them precisely as they were at the time when it was delivered, but only in such a way as to identify them.