I have a more pressing issue. I've been thrown for a loop with a patch of scritpure. Luke 20:38. I have it below in five translations. The context is the Sadducees trying to trap Jesus in a question of the resurrection - the old seven brothers married the same women after each next brother died and none of them had children trick.
Can anyone tell me what it means that all are alive to God?
38He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” NIV
38"(A)Now He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for (B)all live to Him." NASB
38For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. KJV
38So he is the God of the living, not the dead. They are all alive to him." NLT
38So the Lord isn't the God of the dead, but of the living. This means that everyone is alive as far as God is concerned. CEV
And whatever it does mean, what are the implications for Tsunami and mudslide victims?
10 comments:
Hey man, consider the two translations that you have listen below that are undoubtedly the most accurate, KJV and NASB. They say that "all live to Him" and "all live unto Him". This is simply my personal opinion, but the point is - everything and everyone lives to His glory and His alone. As long as we are alive we are called to glorify Him with our lives. Now, we are alive on earth, and we SHOULD live our lives according to that. Also, we are alive once we reach heaven and there we will do nothing BUT glorify Him. I believe this is the point Jesus is making. I'm not sure how you would apply that to the Tsunami except to say this: why in the world would we be angry or disturbed by God's example of His sovereign power over nature and His display of justice, when we never thank Him enough for a thousand days of grace and mercy with no catastrophe?
A, thanks for the feedback. Your idea would certainly take the mystery out of it, which I guess is what I am asking for. At the same time, I wonder if everyone is alive, whether in human body or not. I mean, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are mentioned as being alive. Now, I get the feeling they entered Heaven upon their deaths, but what about people who do not enter Heaven upon their deaths? Are they not only no longer with a physical body, but also no longer alive, in any sense of the word? Are they dead and released to the god of the dead? Are they gone, as in eliminated from all existance?
I wonder if our human concept of life is too intricately entwined with our human bodies.
A, your feedback is good. Keep helping me think on this one.
The bottom part of a passage I quoted earlier this week in my blog (Matthew 25:46) reminds me: "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." Whatever you call eternal punishment, it ain't life.
If "no one comes to the Father except through me," (John 14:6) yet Jesus was transfigured with Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:3-4), then He must have fetched the lawgiver and the prophet from Death at some point, chronologically to us, before He died and was resurrected.
So, in this world or the next, "all live to God" that way, right?
In the context of the passage you quote, Jesus instructs that there's no marriage or giving in marriage in heaven. How could that kind of relationship exist in eternity?
Jesus' story (Luke 16:19-27) about the rich man and Lazarus - if it's meant to convey that timelessness in eternity - portrays the tormented rich man believing it possible for the Lord to reach his five brothers, who are still living.
I think there's enough evidence to say that resurrection is an ongoing as well as retroactive thing, and that eternity is somewhere outside the flow of time as we perceive it.
Doggone it, where's Einstein when you need him?
Chris, why did you have to go and get out in some of that DEEP water? I likes it in here where it is shallow, about ankle deep. :)
My response is this: What Keith said!
IMO, you and Keith B. both hit on it with the thought that our concept of "life" is simply different than God's. He sees (acts, exists) outside the constraints of time, while we see (act, extist) only through that lens. What we call "death" is only a temporary state to us, and to God is not even that, since temporary is by definition in regards to time, which God is not in regards to... or something like that. That sums it up.
On another subject, are you sure you want to live in Duluth? 54 degrees below zero is pretty cold.
First things first, I most certainly do want to live in Duluth. I am a native Minnesotan and take a great pride in enduring the bitterest of cold weather. My allegiance to Minnesota is greater than any Texan's allegiance to Texas. Why God has placed me in Arkansas remains an incurable curiosity for me.
Now, on to more trivial matters. So, if there is timelessness about life and death that is disconnected from our bodies, then what if people die never having heard of Jesus? What if they die with a heart of evil? Is their eternity locked in? Didn't Jesus go and preach to the people in Noah's day? What's that about? I mean, they were evil, aren't they in Hell or determined to go there upon their death?
I really want that not to be the answer. I guess Iwant there to be hope beyond death for people.
First things first, again. Your allegiance to Minnesota cannot be stronger than the mindless allegiance to Texas I encountered during my 14 year sojourn in that strange land. You are too much of a thinker, and a Texan's allegiance requires no thought, nay, it prohibits thought. There is nothing there to be so proud of. The people who settled the panhandle, where I was a wanderer, came there running from something else. There was no water, no shade, and the only Indians in the area were those who couldn't make a living elsewhere, so they were pretty ticked off to start with. Then, those who stuck it out struck oil, and the rest is marketing.
And the only mosquitoes I have ever seen larger than the panhandle mosquitoes were in Minnesota, for what that's worth.
Now, on to the other question, I simply don't know the answer. I assume you are speaking of Jesus going and speaking to those "in prison" during the three days he was in the grave, and I think that shows that God does make allowances for those souls. However, I don't know, and I wasn't in on all that, so I just have to trust that His love will take care of those who really had no chance to make the decision here. I do believe those who had the chance and rejected it during this life will not have another chance, per scripture.
I hope you get to move to Duluth. We need your writing down here on earth.
Don,
You nailed it! The difference between my allegiance to MN and a Texan's allegiance to Texas is that an allegiance to Texas requires mindlessness. Ha! Actually, I spent 6 years in TX (3 in Houston - 3 in Abilene) and found that nearly all of my biases against Texans were false, but all of my geographical biases were true. So, I love, love, love Texans, but not the ground they walk on.
I lean toward the perspective of people having a choice in this body, but then after they leave this body, it is fixed. Now, I'm no Bible scholar (trained in marriage and family therapy, systems theory), refresh me if you will about the scriptures referncing this. I know they are in there. I'm drawing a blank at this moment.
1 Peter 3:18-20 NIV "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body, but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water,"
This seems to indicate that he went and preached to those who had disobeyed during Noah's day, but were now spirits in prison. This helps with one question (those who had not heard) but seems to muddy the water on the timelessness issue. If it is all timeless when it comes to the spirit, why were they "in prison" apparently from the time of Noah until Jesus's death, a period of many years as we know them?
As for me, I'm out the door to Paducah, got to run. I will be back in late Thursday, won't have access to this until then, but will wait with baited breath to see how this plays out in your fertile brain.
Hasta lasagna--
don
First things first, again. Your allegiance to Minnesota cannot be stronger than the mindless allegiance to Texas I encountered during my 14 year sojourn in that strange land. You are too much of a thinker, and a Texan's allegiance requires no thought, nay, it prohibits thought. There is nothing there to be so proud of. The people who settled the panhandle, where I was a wanderer, came there running from something else. There was no water, no shade, and the only Indians in the area were those who couldn't make a living elsewhere, so they were pretty ticked off to start with. Then, those who stuck it out struck oil, and the rest is marketing.
And the only mosquitoes I have ever seen larger than the panhandle mosquitoes were in Minnesota, for what that's worth.
Now, on to the other question, I simply don't know the answer. I assume you are speaking of Jesus going and speaking to those "in prison" during the three days he was in the grave, and I think that shows that God does make allowances for those souls. However, I don't know, and I wasn't in on all that, so I just have to trust that His love will take care of those who really had no chance to make the decision here. I do believe those who had the chance and rejected it during this life will not have another chance, per scripture.
I hope you get to move to Duluth. We need your writing down here on earth.
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