Death

[Sorn]

When one gets into the technicalities of the resurrection it is better to be silent. The truth is that we do not know what it will be like or what it all means or how it will all happen. But we do know a few things:

1. that we shall rise
2. that we shall be like Christ in his resurrection
3. that we shall see God

Saint Paul gives information, hints more than details, that lead many to believe that between earthly death and the resurrection human beings are with Christ, but the exact state and nature of their companionship with Christ in that state are not spelled out. Perhaps it is good to be content with the knowns and the hints and leave it at that.

Yes, of course we don't know exactly what happens, but my approach is one to challenge those that think we die and cease to exist, also known as the 'soul sleep' people. If the only thing that remains of us when we die is information ABOUT us that God has then all He does is create a copy of us. Its our clone that gets eternal life not us, thats one reason why I do think we have souls/spirits etc that survive our physical death. So it really is us that get resurrected, not a clone.

 

[Sorn]

no contradiction ... our memories will be restored into new bodies. Our physical bodies do turn to dust .... we get new bodies and our memories restored to it. A clone is relating to the physical .... not our thinking ... of which is immaterial and unique to each of us.

Example .... one can make a copy of everything on their computer on a brand new device of some kind and then restore that information on a
brand new computer ..... the "bodies" (so to speak} are brand new .... but the information on it is not ... whatever information was saved gets restored to the new "body".

Yes, but the new computer is not the same as the old one, it IS a different computer, you may not care as you are the user of the computer, you are not the computer.

The you in heaven WILL be a clone, one which has had your memories uploaded to it before waking up.
It won't be your mother or father in heaven, but their clones. It won't be the woman that gave birth to you, fed you, & raised you, but a clone getting a freebie entry into eternal life, with her features & memories, but a clone.
Your thought processes are not eternal in and of themselves. If God is recording everything that you think and storing it in some file in heaven somewhere then He has information about you, but not you as such. With that information He can make 1 copy of you or a hundred copies of you but none of them are you, by definition If God can make 100 of you then they can not all be you. None of them will be actually.

 

[Dan Perez]

I never have been convinced by soul sleep arguments.

We see from Luke 16:22-31 tell all where the rich man ended in HELL , that is where this SOUL ends up .

ECCL 12:7 says the SPIRIT of man goes back to God that gave it .

But where do Grace believers go and at death , and I believe they go where Paul was taken to the THIRD HEAVEN , written in 2 Cor 12:1-4 .

And there is no Greek word for PURGATORY or for LIMBO .

dan p

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

We see from Luke 16:22-31 tell all where the rich man ended in HELL , that is where this SOUL ends up .

ECCL 12:7 says the SPIRIT of man goes back to God that gave it .

But where do Grace believers go and at death , and I believe they go where Paul was taken to the THIRD HEAVEN , written in 2 Cor 12:1-4 .

And there is no Greek word for PURGATORY or for LIMBO .

dan p

Is this, your post, a soul sleep argument?

 

[Jonathan_Gale]

Day folds into day, week into week, and year into year until out tale of years ends and we die. But what does it mean to die?

Do we just stop, cease being, become non-existent? Or is there something that remains - persists despite the dissolution of our integrated physical and mental being? If so, what is it and how does it subsist?

We'll be reunited with our ancestors in the underworld. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

"Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people." Gen. 25:8. Same as Isaac (Gen. 35:29), Jacob (Gen. 49:33), Aaron (Num. 20:24), and Moses (Num. 27:13).

 

[Diamond72]

our memories will be restored into new bodies. Our physical bodies do turn to dust .... we get new bodies and our memories restored to it.

John Wesley preached a sermon that the elements that make up our physical body will be restored and resurrected. Even if our body is scattered, God will bring it all back together again. The atoms that make up our body are able to record our memories. An atom may have a lot more storage than we think with Quantum physics.

 

[Sorn]

John Wesley preached a sermon that the elements that make up our physical body will be restored and resurrected. Even if our body is scattered, God will bring it all back together again. The atoms that make up our body are able to record our memories. An atom may have a lot more storage than we think with Quantum physics.

except its entirely possible that some of the atoms that make up your body now were atoms in another person that has since died many years ago, so no not really. Also science has shown that by and large we replace all our atoms every 8 to 10 years

 

[eleos1954]

John Wesley preached a sermon that the elements that make up our physical body will be restored and resurrected. Even if our body is scattered, God will bring it all back together again. The atoms that make up our body are able to record our memories. An atom may have a lot more storage than we think with Quantum physics.

Hard to say how the Lord will provide us with a body (but we will have one) .... whether restored from dust ... or given a new body ... the point is we will have a body that is not corruptible because we will be in a sinless state .... it is sin that corrupts everything leading to death.

 

[Diamond72]

the point is we will have a body that is not corruptible because we will be in a sinless state

All of creation will be restored after the 1,000 year reign of Christ.

Romans 8:18-22 (NIV):

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."

 

[Diamond72]

except its entirely possible that some of the atoms that make up your body now were atoms in another person

They cover that. They say that if you are eaten by a shark, the shark can use your fat and stored energy. But the rest will pass through and return to the environment to be gathered back together at the resurrection.

This is an interesting idea and a possibility, but we do not know for sure. I have done a lot of research on memory being stored in atoms. There is a lot research now with molecular computers. Quantum physics introduces fascinating possibilities for information storage and processing,

Quantum mechanics allows for certain phenomena like superposition and entanglement, which can potentially be leveraged for more efficient information storage and computation compared to classical methods. Quantum bits (qubits), the basic units of quantum information, can represent multiple states simultaneously due to superposition. This property can allow for more compact representations of certain types of information.

 

[Sorn]

They cover that. They say that if you are eaten by a shark, the shark can use your fat and stored energy. But the rest will pass through and return to the environment to be gathered back together at the resurrection.

If a shark eats you a fair bit of you will contribute to its body, your muscles will become protein for its muscles, your bone will become calcium for its bones etc. Yes, some will pass, but the bits that pass will become part of the bodies of bacteria will it not??

Eventually a fisherman might catch that shark & many people will eat bits of it so its atoms, which were your atoms now become the protein & bones of the people that ate it.

The bacteria in the sharks gut that ate what the shark did not use will pass out of the shark, some will then in turn be eaten by small filter feeders etc till eventually it reaches some fish which then also gets caught by a fisherman etc

None of the atoms that make up our bodies will be in the new bodies, except possibly the lucky few that are alive at the time of the rapture but even then those atoms will be transformed in some way.

 

[Diamond72]

will it not??

I am going by what Wesley said. The sermon is online if you want to read it. From my perspective, it could be every atom in our body contains all of our memories and all of the information needed to resurrect us. Of course we know a lot more today than they knew back in Wesley's day.

 

[Diamond72]

Eventually a fisherman might catch that shark & many people will eat bits of it so its atoms, which were your atoms now become the protein & bones of the people that ate it.

I do not eat a lot of meat, but I think we do them a favor by eating them because they become a part of us and move up the food chain.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Hmmm. Imagine this scenario. A sailor dies at sea and his body is given a proper send off into the ocean. Some passing sharks dine on it. They die in due time and are eaten by others. Eventually the atoms of the sailor get distributed and some of them end of in the tuna salad sandwich you ate last week. You are, therefore, a cannibal (of sorts).

 

[ViaCrucis]

When our hardware fails, God downloads our software and keeps it and stores it in the cloud until He fixes the hardware and re-uploads our software.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Sorn]

When our hardware fails, God downloads our software and keeps it and stores it in the cloud until He fixes the hardware and re-uploads our software.

-CryptoLutheran

If our 'software' is just a file of info about us in some heavenly computer (or even in Gods memory), then when He uses that stored info after He has 'fixed' the hardware then what He is doing is making another 'you', ie a copy, the 1st copy or clone of you, but its not you.

He could use the info in the file He has that's marked 'ViaCrucis' to make 100 copies and have 100 ViaCrucis running around in heaven if He chose, clearly they could not all be you, in fact none of them would be, all just copies.
For it to really be you something that is you needs to survive your physical death, something that is necessary to have in a 'fixed' body and that can only be used once for it to be you

 

[Jonathan_Gale]

Day folds into day, week into week, and year into year until out tale of years ends and we die. But what does it mean to die?

Do we just stop, cease being, become non-existent? Or is there something that remains - persists despite the dissolution of our integrated physical and mental being? If so, what is it and how does it subsist?

I think these three key verses are sufficient to shed a light on the nature of life and death:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Gen. 2:9)
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”(Gen. 3:19)
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Dan. 12:2)

 

[Sorn]

I think these three key verses are sufficient to shed a light on the nature of life and death:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Gen. 2:9)
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”(Gen. 3:19)
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Dan. 12:2)

Well if I don't make it it will be my clone that carries the can & cops the punishment for I will long since have ceased to exist, so there's that i suppose.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

I think these three key verses are sufficient to shed a light on the nature of life and death:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Gen. 2:9)
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”(Gen. 3:19)
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Dan. 12:2)

Many Protestant people and some from Messianic backgrounds adhere to "soul sleep" but for me soul sleep is heresy. I am aware that verses may be plucked from scripture to "prove" the heresy but a careful reading of holy scripture in the light of the teaching of Christ cannot help but refute it; after all, our Lord said to the Sadducees, who denied the existence of spirits (of men) and angels, God is a God of the living and not of the dead, and he said that with reference to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob whom he maintained were alive and not asleep or non-existent as the Sadducees believed.

 

[Jonathan_Gale]

Many in Protestant churches and some from Messianic backgrounds adhere to "soul sleep" but for me soul sleep is heresy. I am aware that verses may be plucked from scripture to "prove" the heresy but a careful reading of holy scripture in the light of the teaching of Christ cannot help but refute it; after all, our Lord said to the Sadducees, who denied the existence of spirits (of men) and angels, God is a God of the living and not of the dead, and he said that with reference to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob whom he maintained were alive and not asleep or non-existent as the Sadducees believed.

Yes, the soul is active during sleep, especially during the REM phase (rapid eye movement), that's when you dream, "soul sleep" is unscienfitic. And there're verses about the dead martyrs crying out for justice and the dead rich man being rejected by father Abraham, surely that's not sleep. Sudducees were the liberal progressives in ancient time, they didn't believe any supernatural miracles jsut like their modern counterparts.