And when these things begin to come to pass,
then look up, and lift up your heads;
for your redemption draweth nigh.
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March 20, 2008:Traditions | Just a few more weary days and then... I'll fly away... And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. |
| December 29, 2007:New Year's 2008 | ||
| November 3, 2007:How To Be Successful in Christian Ministry | ||
| October 23, 2007:Salmon |
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| Life After Death William H. Haller |
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This lesson was a huge disappointment to me. I'm not sure who the editors are at the publishing house of our quarterlies, but it is clear that some real garbage slipped through the cracks on this one. It is a perfect example of why we need to read and study our Bibles and know what they say so we aren't led astray by false teaching.
There is such a thing as studying too much about the world and confusing what you learn that others believe with what the Bible actually says. We all need to do most of our studying in the Bible rather than other places so we don't get in trouble.
The scripture for today's lesson comes from John 11. Here, we have the account of the death of Lazarus. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus and lived in Bethany. He got sick and was clearly going to die of his illness. Mary, his sister (and the one who anointed Christ with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair), sent to Christ to let Him know of Lazarus' situation.
Christ was teaching beyond the Jordan at the time. When Lazarus' sisters tell Christ of the problem, He tells them that the sickness is not to death, but for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. Then, even though the Bible clearly states in verse 5 that Jesus loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, He chose to stay where he was for a period of two days. Why do you think He did this?
The most obvious reason is that He didn't wish to just heal Lazarus. He wanted to allow God to demonstrate His power over death in a more spectacular way. You will remember that there were other occasions when He had raised people from the dead.
In Matthew 9:18-26 we have the account of the raising of the ruler Jairus' daughter. This man had faith that even though his daughter had just died, Christ could raise her. Jesus comes and followed him to his house. He says that the maid is not dead but sleepeth, and everyone there who were mourning her death laughed him to scorn. He went in, took her by the hand, and she arose. His fame was spread about due to this miracle.
In Luke 7, the widow of Nain's son was being carried in a funeral procession to be buried. Jesus had compassion on the widow and tells her to Weep not. He touches the bier and everybody stopped in the procession. He said to the young man, Arise, and the dead man sat up and began to speak. Jesus took him to his mother. Fear came upon everybody and they called Him a great prophet.
Now we come to the story of Lazarus. Jesus had waited for a long period of time before going to meet Lazarus. In fact, He doesn't start on the journey until the Holy Spirit tells Him that Lazarus is dead. He tells the disciples that Lazarus is sleeping and He must go to awaken Him. The disciples say that if he is sleeping then he must be getting better, not understanding His words. Jesus then tells them frankly that Lazarus is dead. The disciples aren't keen on going back to Bethany because the Jewish leaders are out to get Jesus. When they see He is determined, they say they will go with Him and die with Him, because they are sure the Jewish leaders will kill Jesus when they find Him.
When Jesus gets to Bethany, Lazarus had been in the grave for four days. Dake comments that The rabbins had an idea that the spirit wandered about the sepulchre for three days, called days of weeping, seeking an opportunity to return to the body. When decomposition set in on the 4th day, the spirit left the grave and the people beat their breasts in loud lamentations four days, making seven days of mourning (Gen. 27:41). I believe that He intentionally delayed His arrival until after this three day window had elapsed so that there would be no doubt about the person being dead. I am sure that there were some scoffers about both of the previous accounts that the person was not completely dead. This would silence those people and provide another type of His death and resurrection.
Martha comes out to greet Him while Mary stays behind with the mourners. Martha and Jesus have a discussion about what might have been. Martha declares (in what spirit we don't know) that if Jesus had been there Lazarus would not have died. She declares by faith that God would do anything Jesus asked, clearly meaning that if Jesus asked, Lazarus could live again. Jesus declares that Lazarus will, in fact, rise again. Martha declares her understanding of the Scriptures that he would indeed rise on the last day. Jesus declares that He is the resurrection and life, and that those who believe on him, even though dead, will live. Those who believe on Christ will never die. He asks if she believes this and she says she does and that she believes He is the Christ or Messiah that was promised to the Jews.
At Christ's request, Martha goes to get Mary who comes. She also declares that if Christ had been there, Lazarus would still be alive. She starts crying, and many Jews came with her. Twice, the account says he groaned in His spirit, and the shortest verse of the Bible declares that He wept with the people. Dake has an interesting account about the word groaned. Gr. embrimaomai, to snort as a horse does from fear or anger; be very angry, moved with indignation (Jn. 11:33, 38; Mt. 9:30; Mk. 1:43; 14:5). What He was moved against here was no doubt the satanic powers that had Lazarus in their grip (Heb. 2:14-15). He became troubled, (Gr. tarasso, to stir or agitate) in mind.
He went to the grave and ordered the stone rolled away. Martha warns Jesus that by this time the body was decomposing and stunk, because he had been dead for four days. He reminds her that He ha said she would see the glory of God if she believed. They took the stone away, Jesus lifted up his eyes and says, instructively, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me." A good reason to pray aloud in public if I ever heard one. He calls Lazarus out of the tomb and Lazarus comes out, bound up in grave clothes.
Predictably, the word goes to the Pharisees who start actively plotting to kill Christ, authorized by the high priest Caiaphas.
I said before that this was a type of the coming death of Christ. By a show of hands as I count backward from Sunday morning, when did the resurrection of Christ occur? We know that when Mary went to the tomb on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, the angel who met her told her, "Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here; behold the place where they laid him.". The weekly Sabbath had ended on Saturday night at sunset. The bodily resurrection took place at some point after that and probably very shortly after that.
Next question. When did He die? Again, counting backward from Saturday night by a show of hands, when was Christ crucified? One of the reasons I don't bother with going to Good Friday or Maundy Thursday services unless I have to for choir, is that they perpetuate falsehoods in the name of tradition. By tradition, Palm Sunday records Christ's entrance into Jerusalem when he was lauded with Palm branches along the way. Maundy Thursday represents the time of the Last Supper. Good Friday represents the day that Christ was crucified. That is not at all what the Bible declares, folks.
Jesus declares in Matthew 12:40, "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Eph. 4:7-11 declares that while His body was in the grave, His soul went into the bowels of the earth and took the souls of the righteous dead to heaven when He ascended. Since Christ declared that He would be in the grave for 3 days and 3 nights, counting backward from Saturday sunset, that puts his death at sometime on Wednesday and not on Friday. According to Matthew 27:45 there was darkness over the land from the sixth to the ninth hour which would be from noon to 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Shortly after 3 p.m., He gave up the ghost, and the veil of the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the rest was rent in two by God. This was a 60 foot long veil and quite thick. The rending indicated that the division between God and man was now not needed and man would have access directly to the Father through the blood of Jesus. That should have gotten some Jewish priest's attention.
A side effect of a death on Wednesday is that this pushes the Last Supper back to Tuesday or earlier.
How does this correspond to the scriptures? The scriptures say that He had to be taken down from the cross and buried quickly because the Sabbath was coming. Most in the Christian church today, think of that Sabbath as starting Friday at sunset through Saturday sunset. The Sabbath they were referring to was a special High Sabbath or High Holy Day due to the Passover celebration that was going on and was not a normal weekly Sabbath.
Passover (The Feast of Unleavened Bread) comes on the 14th day of the 1st month of the Jewish calendar. It starts at sunset and follows through to sunset of the Passover day. The Passover Sedar, which is the Last Supper that was mentioned above, would have been eaten on Tuesday. So Christ was executed on Passover. That is wholly fitting when you look at Passover as a type for Christ's death. On that day, a Passover lamb shed his blood to save those who were in the house where the blood was sprinkled from the death of all the firstborn that God was planning. Even so, Christ's blood on the cross is a sacrifice that saves all that accepts it and Him.
This Sabbath would have been the 15th day of the 1st month of their calendar. This Sabbath lasted from Wednesday sunset to Thursday sunset and was celebrated the day after Passover. It was this special High Holy Day sabbath that is referred to in scripture that was upcoming that the body had to be buried before. This interpretation also gives the women a day to shop for the spices to anoint the body on Friday before the normal Sabbath so they would be prepared to go to the tomb to anoint the body early Sunday morning. They wouldn't have had an opportunity to do this on either the mid-week High Holy Day or the normal Sabbath. For more information see Antipas.net.
If we really want to celebrate the resurrection Sunday when Christ was risen, we should celebrate on the Sunday following Passover. This Sunday frequently coincides with the traditional date of Easter. But this is not always true. About 20% of the time it is after. Next year, for example, Easter will be celebrated on March 23, but the first day of Passover is actually April 20. Likewise, Pentecost Sunday should always be 50 days after the Sunday after Passover and not whenever Easter happens to fall on a particular year. There's always risks modeling your Christian Holidays after Pagan festivals.
This would make a human life span of approximately 33 1/2 years from October 4, BC 4 (Tishri 15, 3757 in the Hebrew Calendar during the Feast of Tabernacles) to Apr 24, CE 31 (Nisan 15, 3790 in the Hebrew Calendar). That's right - he wasn't born on Christmas either!
This time of crucifixion to time of resurrection thus corresponds directly to both Jonah's time dead in the whale's belly (the Bible never says he was kept alive all that time you know), and the time that Lazarus was dead and buried. Thus we have both Old and New Testament examples of God's power to restore life as a type to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The only difference between Christ and the rest is that Christ didn't die again. All of the other people who were brought back to life died again. It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment. Some got to go through the experience twice. Even the two individuals who have not yet tasted death, Enoch (Gen. 5:22, Heb. 11:5) and Elijah (2 Kings 2), will come back to Earth in the time of the tribulation to be the two witnesses in Jerusalem after the anti-Christ takes over the temple. They will testify, prophesy, and witness of God to the people for just under 3 1/2 years. They will have power to devour their enemies with fire. When their period of testimony is finished, they will suffer death at the hands of the beast and they will lie dead in the street while everyone parties for 3 1/2 days. At that point, they will be resurrected bodily and will ascend to heaven. (There is that 3 day time period again Rev. 11:3-11).
The quarterly writers - in both the student and teacher quarterlies - then go on to make some outrageous claims and spread some really incorrect stuff. They make start out by a discussion of what they think the Jewish beliefs were at the time, contrast these with the Greek beliefs, and then finishes up with
The Christian faith rejects completely the notion of immortality. For starters, it teaches that when we die, all our constituent parts die: not just our body but also our spirit and even our soul. We truly, entirely cease to be.
It goes on to say that that is what makes the final resurrection so great. God restores all our component parts to life. The teacher's quarterly isn't any better.
Just as important, we need to distinguish between eternal life as understood in our Bible Lesson and the concept of the immortality of the soul, which Christians continue to confuse with the biblical teaching of the resurrection. Immortality, resurrection, eternal life, life after death: What does the church teach? What does the Bible teach? ... Across many centuries, the Greek idea of immortality gradually supplanted the Jewish belief in resurrection and became identified as Christian thinking. Only in the last couple of generations has the church made a concerted effort to set aside the understanding of immortality and reclaim its Jewish heritage of resurrection. For if we already are something (a soul) that cannot die, if death does not really and completely end our life, then resurrection not only ceases to be a source of good news to proclaim, but ceases to have any meaning at all. ... The Christian understanding of resurrection, which takes death very seriously, makes it clear that apart from Christ, we have no hope for life post mortem. Immortality, on the other hand, has finally no great need to celebrate Easter, for in his "resurrection" Jesus did not really overcome death; his soul (like ours) was simply set free from his body.
What a load of hooey! Scripture after scripture declares that the soul is immortal, and I will take you down a path of some of those today. It won't be an exhaustive path. But to declare as these quarterly writers did that the soul and spirit perish with the body and are no more till the time of resurrection flatly goes against scripture left and right and it is inconceivable to me how the editors published it.
Let's start right from the top. Christ was not crucified by Himself. He was crucified between two thieves who knew they deserved death. One reviled Jesus, saying that if He was Christ, He should save Himself and them. The other rebuked the first and said, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." (Luke 23:39-43). What was Christ's reply? "And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Not 2,000+ years from now when I return in the clouds and resurrect the bodies of the dead in Christ, but today! Christ was on a mission. He was going to go to the paradise compartment of Sheol and free all who were there and take them to heaven. He knew where He was going, and He was saying he was taking the penitent thief with Him.
How do we know what He was going to do there? Paul declares that to us in Ephesians 4:7-11. He ascended up on high at the time of His bodily resurrection and when he did, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. Where did He ascend from? From first descending into the lower parts of the earth to hell to rescue those who were held captive until He succeeded being the sacrifice for sin.
How do we know that there were a lot of people there? Luke 16 describes the place. Who was speaking? None other than Christ Himself was telling this account. This is not a parable. There are no explanations given. He says there was a certain rich man who was clothed well and ate sumptuously. A certain beggar with a specific name, Lazarus, but not the same as in the story for today, begged at his table. When the beggar died, he was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. Later the rich man also died and was buried. He ended up in hell and was in torment. He saw the beggar afar off being comforted by Abraham. He cries to Abraham to send Lazarus to comfort him and bring him water to cool him due to the torment of flame he was enduring. Abraham asks him to recall his life. He goes on to say that there is a fixed gulf between them so that neither can pass to the other side. The wicked man then prays that Abraham would send someone to warn his five brothers of the torment that would await them if they didn't change their ways. Abraham replies that they have the prophets and that they wouldn't be convinced to change their ways even if they were approached by a man risen from the dead.
Christ was not speaking general metaphorical nonsense here. He was relating an honest account of what happened to two specific people after death and the fate that awaited five more. There is no soul sleep. There is no death for the soul until resurrection. There is no death for the wicked and continued life in Christ because of Christ's resurrection. At the time of His speaking, your soul went immediately to paradise or hell at the point of death, depending on the decisions you had made during life. There was (and still is) no way to change your fate once you die. It is in the hands of the Judge. After Christ was resurrected, as stated above, he led the souls from paradise to heaven with Him as a conquering general might. Paradise is now empty and will be forever empty. But hell, originally created for the disobedient angels, is getting fuller by the minute.
Need more evidence. Let's look at what happened on a high mountain in Matthew 17. Jesus took Peter, James and John his brother apart from the other disciples and was transfigured before them. His face shone as the sun and his raiment was white as light. As he was standing there, who showed up? Moses and Elijah. Now Moses body had been in the grave for a long time at this point (1,700 or so years). But his soul and spirit body were right there with Jesus. Elijah had been in heaven all this time, and came down as well. Peter wanted to erect a temple for each one of them. God came down, and a voice came out of the cloud saying "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." They fall on their faces in fear, cause that's what you do when you come face to face with God unexpectedly (and perhaps when you expect to)! Jesus tells them to get up and not be afraid, but to not tell anyone about what they have seen till He is risen from the dead.
Christ declares in Mt. 22:23-33, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. The description in Luke 20:38 adds "For all live unto him." In Mt. 10:28 Christ warns "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell"
What did the Old Testament writers believe?
The Bible starts out with God forming man from the dust. After the body is formed, and presumably working properly, God breathes the breath of life into him and he becomes a living soul. It is this that sets us apart from the rest of God's creation. A man is made of body, soul the seat of his affections, emotions, appetites,desires and all feelings, and spirit intellect, will, mind, conscience, and other faculties.
At death, there were three destinations that get mentioned in the Old Testament. The first is Sheol (hell) and the second is Paradise (located at a place visible from Sheol/hell), and the third is Queber (the grave). The first two are the destinations for the spirit/soul. The last is the destination for the body.
In speaking about sheol and other death/immortality comments we see...
Well for one thing, it fulfilled another prophecy from Ps. 16:9-10. Christ's body was not to see corruption. Therefore, His body had to be resurrected. His was the first-fruits of the resurrection. There would be several more to come. First, in Mt. 27:52-53 the Bible records that at the time of Christ's resurrection, many bodies were physically resurrected from graves that were closed and were seen of many. Next is the resurrection those who have died before the rapture and were in Christ and are Christ's will be reunited with their bodies. Next will be the 144,000 Jews or the manchild which are sealed. Next will be the tribulation saints who give up their lives in Christ during the tribulation and the two witnesses (Enoch and Elijah). The wicked dead will be reunited with their resurrected bodies after the Millennium to be judged and sent to the lake of fire.
It is only fitting that bodies receive the same blessings and rewards that the soul and spirit receive. All played a part in the good or evil that a person performed, and so all parts should be judged together.
I wish that I could say with absolute certainty that I have never taught or written anything that was false. I do try my best to always back up with scripture anything I say that I think might be viewed as questionable. I also try to clearly say things that I feel are my opinions as opposed to scriptural fact. If you ever have questions about something I teach, see me and I will try to give you more information or scripture about why I believe or say what I do.
In the meantime, pray for the infusion of the Holy Spirit so that you have an advocate to prompt you clearly when you hear something that is wrong so that you will never be led astray by false teaching. Pray for those who write and edit the material that is presented as Sunday School studies and for your Pastor as well so that you will only hear truth in the church.
