Dear Purpledawn;
IMO, the Bible is written by inspired people as most written works are. They write creatively about their culture and religion. The only part that could truly be considered the word of God, IMO, is what was supposedly imparted by God to the prophets and they were told to tell the people. Telling people what to say and inspiring them to write are two different things.
You are of course in conflict with Paul. (2 Timothy 3:16) "
All Scripture is inspired of God." and according to Peter, what Paul wrote was inspired scripture. (2 Peter 3:15-16) "Paul according to the wisdom given him also wrote YOU, speaking about these things as he does also in all [his] letters. In them, however, are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unsteady are twisting, as [they do] also the rest of the Scriptures,"
So you are in conflict with both Paul and Peter on this point. I have talked to people who only accept the 'red' parts in the Bible were Jesus is being quoted, which of course is ridiculous as we both know since the person who recorded what Jesus said, also recorded what he taught and did, that make up the non 'red' part of the book. I think you want to be careful about slipping into the same sort of extreme position of only accepting parts of the Bible, since the same authors that wrote down the prophecies, wrote the books in which they are contained. Paul wrote under the influence of the holy spirit, which means what he said was God's opinion on the matter, that the whole books are inspired by God, not just parts.
All people who are dead and buried, who were buried or died at sea, returned to dust, eaten by animals, etc. They have no body. You have shown no example of those without bodies being resurrected. These are the people who truly don't exist anymore.
I am not sure what you are saying here, do you mean that they don't come back at all, or they come back in another way? If you are saying that a body is needed for a resurrection, you would be saying that no one in the OT would be coming back. By your reasoning, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would have no hope of a resurrection, which would put you in conflict with Jesus.
(Matthew 22:31-32) " As regards the resurrection of the dead, did YOU not read what was spoken to YOU by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob'? He is the God, not of the dead, but of the living."
Are you saying Sadducees were right and Jesus was wrong? I think you need to clarity your position. Do you think that God and Jesus are limited in their ability to resurrect, and are only able to resurrect the recently dead who still have a fairly intact body? God had no problem creating Adam out of dust, why would he need anything more for a resurrection.
The people brought back to life in the NT, including Jesus, also still had bodies intact to reanimate.
Jesus' body was not brought back to life, but was disposed of just as Moses' body was. Jesus was not resurrected as a human with a fleshly body, but was resurrected as a spirit with a spiritual body. (1 Peter 3:18) "he being put to death in the flesh, but being made alive in the spirit."
Just as Jesus died as a man and was three days later raised up in a spirit body, so will those of his followers who receive the first resurrection. (1 Corinthians 15:42-45) "the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised up in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised up in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised up in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised up a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one. It is even so written: "The first man Adam became a living soul." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit."
Referring to a dead person as asleep is an idiom. Once they have decayed, they cease to exist. There is nothing to resurrect.
No not an idiom, it is a simile or figure of speech. Comparing sleep to death is a figure of speech, for death is like a deep dreamless sleep, but the two are of course different things. someone who is in a state of non existence, is not merely sleeping nor will they 'wake up' on their own. (another simile) The reason for the using the simile of sleeping, is as an illustration, that the person is unconscious and can be awakened by someone with the ability to resurrect the dead.
As for there being nothing to resurrect, a body isn't needed. For that matter, the matter in your body is completely replaced on an average of every seven years they tell us. Which electrons or molecules make up your body is unimportant, you are not changed in who you are by the continuous replacement of the matter in your body. When angels come to earth and appear, they materialize a human body out of thin air, and then dematerialize it when they leave. So for God or Jesus to create a new body to resurrect someone is easy. What makes making a copy of a dead person's body a resurrection, is the putting of that person's mind or consciousness into the mind of that body. Somehow God can do this, so that the resurrected person is not merely a perfect copy, but the original person brought back to life, that is a resurrection. From the viewpoint of the person involved, they will one moment be closing their eyes in death and the next moment they will be opening them in the resurrection. to them it will seem as if no time has pasted since they were not in existence to experience the passing of time or anything else.
The fact that those who have died in the past, will be raised in the coming future is shown in the Bible.
(1 Thessalonians 4:15-17) "For this is what we tell YOU by Jehovah's word, that we the living who survive to the presence of the Lord shall in no way precede those who have fallen asleep [in death]; because the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding call, with an archangel's voice and with God's trumpet, and those who are dead in union with Christ will rise first. Afterward we the living who are surviving will, together with them, be caught away in clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we shall always be with [the] Lord."
This verse is frequently misunderstood, on the part where Paul is talking about the living being caught away in the clouds, he means when they die they will go straight to heaven, whereas those who have died before the presence of the Lord will have to wait in the sleep of death until they are resurrected in spirit bodies to heaven at that time. His point here is that even though those who have died earlier are not resurrected until the start of Christ's presence, they are still raised before those who die and are resurrected durning Christ's presence. That is how Paul means the living do not precede the dead.
Now for why I cited this verse, the dead here that are raised (the first resurrection), are not raised until the presence of the Lord, (called the 'second coming' by many) which is a great span of time from when they died, so by then their dead human bodies are long gone. Yet they are still raised. At the time when the earth is made into a paradise, there will the general resurrection (the second resurrection) of the dead to life on earth. They will be raised in physical human bodies, materialized, looking as they did in their prime. There is no need for the same matter that made up their old body, matter is matter.
Concerning Hosea 13:14. Just because Paul pulled three lines from Hosea, doesn't change the meaning of those lines when read within Hosea. It doesn't mean that Hosea supports Paul's purpose.
If Hosea doesn't support what Paul used it for, then Paul would be guilty of mis quoting and twisting the meaning of scripture. Considering the fact that he wrote under inspiration, and his words are included as part of the word of God, and are attested to by Peter as being inspired scripture, it would be impossible for him to have twisted the meaning of Hosea. Hosea had to have a application to the resurrection, (Hosea 13:14) "From the hand of Sheol I shall redeem them; from death I shall recover them. Where are your stings, O Death? Where is your destructiveness, O Sheol?" as the wording clearly indicates that it does.
Sincerely Yours; Wm Scott Anderson
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