Saints in Matthew 27:52

Hi frako, Who are you saying the RCC don't recognize as a saint?God Bless,

Thanks for the welcome. I am a long time "lurker" who has finally joined.
The text says the earth shook and the rocks rent. Sounds like an earthquake to me, and another quake was said by Matthew to occur at the resurrection.
I say supernatural darkness because we do not have natural causes of darkness for three hours, save for obvious things like dust storms or heavy smoke, which one would expect to be mentioned.
If these resurrected ones were taken up to Heaven, it would seem superfluous to say the angels saw them. It is much more likely Matthew was adding verisimilitude to his story by saying there were human eyewitnesses for these resurrected ones.

Hi Pollux, I don't know where you live but where I live I have seen times when we would not see the sun for days at a time. I have heard many preachers preach it that way.The problem is the text does not say they were seen by humans.The text says they were seen by many.God Bless,

Hi Icant,
Yes, "people " is supplied, but Matthew does not even mention Jesus going to Heaven, so why should we go beyond a straightforward understanding that Jerusalem residents were meant?
With regard to the darkness, three hours of it in the middle of the day in Jerusalem would be unusual.

There's a big difference between what is described in the Bible and overcast with a chance of showers! Why are you so keen to remove supernatural causes from the account? How else are you going to account for the appearance of the saints, whoever the were?

Well first off what do you mean by literal? As I said, I might say that because it is raining heavily today that it is raining cats and dogs. I wonder what someone would make of that in another culture 2000 years from now.It is crucial that we realize that Matthew was writing for first century Jews. I have already written what I believe a first century Jew would understand by what he wrote in an earlier post in this thread. The Bible was never meant to be understood as a text book or newspaper. The Bible itself says that Jesus is the word of God and that it is in Jesus we are to trust, not a book about Him.Sure we are guided by the Holy Spirit but what has that got to do with what we are discussing. We are both Christians and yet we disagree about how we are to understand the scriptures. I think it is clear that it is me that is being guided to all truth so you should probably pay attention. I have never suggested that anyone can work their way to heaven, or more accurately I have never suggested that anyone can work their way into becoming a part of the new creation. It is about the condition of our heart which isn’t changed by what we do. What we do flows from the condition of our hearts.Micah tells us to humbly love mercy and justice. Jesus tells us to love God and neighbour, that he desires mercy not sacrifice, and that he came for sinners and not the righteous. He said, that we are to believe in Him, not a collection of books about Him. . It is certainly not about giving intellectual ascent to any particular doctrine. Being Christian doesn’t mean that we are specially chosen to have eternal life, it means that he has chosen those that choose to follow Him, in order to infect the world with His truth, love, forgiveness, mercy, justice etc If you read Matthew 7:21 it is clear that it isn’t being a Christian that makes you right with God. Matthew 25 for not feeding the hungry etc. is one exampleMatthew 6:15

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"But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

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There are examples throughout scripture. Here is a quote from Ephesians:

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Ephesians 1: 9-10 9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment--to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

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Paul and Peter weren’t always in agreement. Also, there is considerable disagreement over the translation from the early manuscripts of 2 Peter 3:10 Making All things NewThe whole message of the Bible is that we are to care for this creation in preparation for the renewal of all things. You have to look at this in the total context and not just pick out one verse. We are even told to pray for His Kingdom to come on Earth as in Heaven. Exactly, it is to be restored not destroyed. Using Genesis and Revelation is probably a good way to picture it.

Hi Pollux, Since it is not in the text and is supplied that means it is someone's opinion.To add people is adding to the text. Jerusalem has from 5.7 hours of sunshine too 13.6 hours per day during the year.Why would a 3 hour period of darkness during a day be unusual?God Bless,

Hi Trixie, Just because an event does not require a supernatural cause does not rule out said event being supernatural. Where did these saints appear? The Holy City.Who did they appear too? The text does not say.But why was the saints coming forth in a resurrection a supernatural event.That is an event that is going to happen for every person that has ever been conceived.God Bless,

Hi GDR, You can say anything you want to say. But would that be God's message to the people?Do you think the writers of the Bible just wrote what they desired to write?If the Bible is a message of God to mankind He had to inspire it or it is nothing more than the musings of mankind. Why do we have to realize that Matthew was writing for first century Jews?Most of them never saw a word Matthew wrote. They did not have copy machines and printing presses so somebody had to copy what Matthew wrote for there to be 2 copies available.Most of the Apostles never saw what Matthew wrote.Matthew was a tax collector and wrote from the viewpoint of a kingdom. That is the reason his writings deal so much with the kingdom of God, and many historical events in Jesus life. John tells us: You might think the Bible is just a book but had it not been for that book you would never have known that Jesus existed. You may be a Christian but I don't claim to be one.A Christian is Christ like and I am far from that.I am a born again child of the King struggling to be the best I can be.
But the best I can be is as filthly rags in the eyes of God. If you really think you are a Christian you are the one being misguided. In Acts 28:8 Agrippa tells Pauls he has almost presuaded him to be a christian.1 Peter 4:16 says if any one dies as a christian to not be ashamed.That is the only 2 times the word christian is used in the Bible.Acts 11:26 says the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.The Greek word translated Christians comes from the root word meaning Christos. So the disciples were literally called little Christos.
IOW they were living a life like Christ lived. I have not arrived at that point yet. How do you reconcile this statement with: Mixing grace with works is like trying to mix oil and water. They don't mix.Mankinds righteousness is as filthly rags as far as God is concerned. Mankind can spend 18 hours a day helping the poor doing everything a person can to help man with his relationships and if you do not come to grips with John 3:18 and trust Jesus to give them eternal life they will perish in the lake of fire.Hebrews 9:22 "without shedding of blood is no remission".... Christ supplied the blood for our remission.Romans 3:20 "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight"...: If you do a little checking you will find Jesus was speaking to His disciples. He was not speaking to condemned people but those who were following Him daily such as Peter, James, John among many others. These people had already conformed to John 3:18 even though it did not exist at that time.Now either God lied and their 'eternal' life could be taken away making it 'not eternal life'. OR they would suffer loss for not forgiving other, as they would have to pay for their transgressions.So do you believe you can be born into God's family and then unborn out of God's family?If you would like to pursue the examples you are refering too why not start a thread and we can discuss them in detail. The theme of the Bible is God's love for His creation. His providing a sacrifice to restore mankind to a perfect relationship with Himself. Then the announcing of that message to a world of condemned sinners.I thought we were to have dominin over the Earth. It will last until Jesus is ready to come back regardless of what mankind does.And yes He will set up His kingdom and it will last for 1000 years and then satan will be loosed out of the lake of fire and go out to decieve the nations how ever long that takes then he will try to destroy Jerusalem at which time the end will be. Who said anything about destroy.You can not destroy matter or energy, you can only change their form.We have strayed far from the topic but if you would like to follow this line of debate start a thread where we could discuss these things and I will participate.The link you gave 'Making All Things New' does not work. This one does.WordPress.comGod Bless,

Hi ICANT Yes I think that the writers of the scriptures were inspired by God but that doesn’t mean that it is dictated by God. We talk about Beethoven being inspired to write Ode to Joy but that doesn’t mean that God directly gave him each note to play. God inspired the writers of scripture to record their history and the history of God with their people. With that we get all the cultural and personal conditioning that we would expect with that.In Genesis we can see that God has given mankind dominion over His creation. God has chosen, (I am often driven to ask, what was He thinking?), to use mankind, His image bearing creatures to be His imperfect agents. To try and read the Bible literally requires all sorts of twisting of words in order to justify obvious contradictions. It requires you to believe in a God that came to His people through the man Jesus and told us to love our enemies, and at the same time had earlier told His people to commit genocide and the participatory public stoning of those broke Sabbath laws, of prostitutes and youth who had been determined to be difficult.Trying to read it literally, which no one actually does anyway, distorts its meaning IMHO. It has to be read in the context of the meta-narrative, within the context of the culture and within the context of the Word of God, as seen in Jesus.The Bible in and of itself has no authority. All authority is God’s authority which is very often reflected in and through the scriptures. Who else would Matthew have been writing for? In the first place there is no doubt that there had been earlier writings, whether it be Q or not that Matthew drew from. Also as Matthew was written a number of years later it may have been written by someone else who based it on what Matthew had written or spoken of earlier. (Sorta like Shakespeare writing Julius Caesar.) It is a recording of the story of Jesus the Messiah, the one who embodied Yahweh’s return to Zion. One indication that Matthew in particular was writing for a Jewish audience was that He used the reverential term Kingdom of Heaven as opposed to the other Gospel writers who talked about The Kingdom of God to refer to the kingdom that Christ was establishing. Well I don’t think of the Bible as just a book. I agree it is much more than that. I assume those filthy rags are metaphorical. I am a Christian as I am a follower, no matter how imperfectly, of Jesus Christ. That does not make me Christ-like. It does not make me anything special, anything better or any more Christ-like than anybody else, Christian or non-Christian. I think the disciples would be horrified that anyone would think that they were living a life like Christ lived. I agree that the term Christian came later. Originally they were people of The Way, but so what. It was Paul who lamented that he did the things he didn’t want to do and didn’t do the things that he wanted to do. IMHO it’s yes and no. It is by God’s grace that we are given life and then given a redeemed life and that it isn’t based on what we do. Back to my favourite verse which is Micah 6:8.

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He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God

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He doesn’t want our works, He wants our hearts. If He has our hearts then the works are just a symptom of the fact that our hearts desire humble justice and kindness. The quote on being forgiven as we forgive was from the Sermon on the Mount where he was speaking to a large crowd. I think there would be all sorts of people in that crowd. We have the free will to accept or reject Christ. For that matter we might never hear of Him or we might just never actually think about it. This is the thinking that wants to put God in a box that we control. It is again that form of evangelical Christianity that wants certainty and focuses on personal salvation when the whole Christian message is that we are to not be self focused but are to focus on the serving of all of God’s creation. I’m not completely clear on what you think the subject would be so I’ll wait for you. IMHO that is a complete misreading of the meaning of the scriptures.blockcolor=black][/blockcolor]Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

Hi Icant,
I may have missed it but I cannot recall Matthew mentioning any city in Heaven. If I am right, then why would anyone reading him think he suddenly referred to a Heavenly city among all his reporting of things on Earth?
Matt, Mark, and Luke all make a point of mentioning the darkness, and it was over all the land. It sounds to me like more than a few clouds is meant.

This topic is very straight forward and simple. Very narrow topic.Please read the OP and [mag=-3].Who do saints refer to in the verse presented?Please stick to the topic.As usual do not respond to this msg.Thanks AdminPD