Soul sleep

StanJ said:

The meaning of soul in Elizabethan English was 'life', not a metaphysical/spiritual being, and even today airline companies use the terminology 'souls on board' to determine how many living people are on the aircraft.
They are not referring to spiritual/metaphysical beings, they are referring to actual living human beings.
Soul is an English word that did not exist when the Bible was written and was greatly misused when the King James version was written as it had and ambiguity even then but made for this very misconception. The NIV is much more accurate than the KJV is in that and many other regards and your insistence on using the KJV just shows how little you understand of modern-day English and vernacular. Judaism teaches that the body and soul are separate yet indivisible partners in human life. This animating element is not, in early biblical tradition, separate from the body in life, nor does it possess any personality. As tripartite human beings made in the image of God we are Body Soul and Spirit. The soul is separated from the body at death and the spirit moves on to a special place whether it be paradise or hell. When Jesus returns at the resurrection our bodies will be reanimated with a life-giving soul and our bodies will be made immortal. The living soul is not a metonym or substitute word, it is an actual translation of the original Hebrew that describes our lives.
An English word cannot be a synonym of a Jewish word and this only shows not only your inability to understand English but your inability to understand any grammatical principles of any language.

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n2thelight said:

I believe the resurrection happens at death

In ancient Egypt, Pharaohs drove their slaves to build huge pyramids to house their dead bodies. They filled these tombs with immense treasures of gold and all kinds of utensils that might be of service in their coming life. They cultivated the art of embalming, so that their bodies could be preserved for thousands of years with the least possible amount of decay. It's as if they thought that by taking such elaborate precautions, they could be prepared for the life to come. Apparently, they believed that their souls would one day return into those mummified bodies, and they wanted everything to be ready.

This is a stark contrast with the attitude expressed by Jesus. One of His disciples asked him, "Let me first go bury my father." Jesus said, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead" (Matthew 8:21-22, Luke 9:59-60). For Jesus, the dead body was of no consequence.

For Christians, the focus is not meant to be on the body that has died, but on the spirit that rises into the coming life. For two thousand years, Christians have been nourished by the hope that their loved ones who have died are happy in heaven with the Lord, not lying cold and dead in the ground. Nevertheless, some people believe that the resurrection will be a resurrection of the physical body that lies in the grave, and that when a person dies the soul remains unconscious for years or centuries until Christ comes again and brings all the bodies out of the grave and reawakens the souls that are sleeping within those bodies. Yet it is not only more comforting to picture a person rising immediately into the next life after death, but it is also more in keeping with the teachings of the Bible.

We Rise Soon after Death
Jesus tells of a poor man Lazarus and his rich neighbor who both died. The rich man ended up in hell, while Lazarus went up to heaven. (Luke 16: 22-24) Both of them came into the next life immediately after death. There was no hint here of a long wait to come back into their bodies, for the rich man's brothers were still alive on earth.
When Jesus was on the cross He promised one of the thieves, "Today you will be with Me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Jesus did not say, "Just wait twenty centuries or more, and I will fix up your body again."

Since we rise immediately after death, people who have died are in the spiritual world, and they can be seen by those whose spiritual sight is open. For example, when Peter, James and John had their eyes opened to see Jesus in His glory, they also saw Moses and Elijah, who were clearly not in their graves. When Saul went to the witch of En Dor, he spoke with the spirit of Samuel who appeared as an old man (1 Samuel 28: 3-19), and Lazarus found himself in the bosom of Abraham in heaven (Luke 16:22-24). In fact, when Jesus said to the Sadducees that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of the living, not the dead, the clear implication is that Abramam, Isaac and Jacob had already risen from death into life (Matthew 22:31-32; Mark 12:26-27; Luke 20:37-38). He is "the God of the Living," not "the God of the dead who will centuries later come back to life."

Angels have sometimes appeared to people whose eyes were opened to see them. Very often, the Bible says that these angels are people. For example, we read that three men appeared to Abraham (Genesis 18: 2), and that when Jacob wrestled with an angel he wrestled with a man (Genesis 32: 24). Likewise, the angels werepeople who appeared to Joshua (Joshua 5: 13-14), Manoah and his wife (Judges 13: 6-11), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 9: 2-3,11; 10: 2-3,6), Daniel (Daniel 9: 21; 10: 5; 12: 6-7), Zechariah (Zechariah 1:8,11), and the women at the sepulcher (Mark 16: 5; Luke 24: 4). The Bible says these angels were people, and clearly none of them were still in the grave.

There Is a Spiritual Body
The Bible teaches that we rise with a different body than the one that is placed in the grave. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15: 44). The natural body is what is "sown" in the grave, and the spiritual body is what is raised up (1 Corinthians 15: 37, 42-44). People on earth have an earthly body, while people in heaven have a spiritual, heavenly body (1 Corinthians 15: 46-49). The fact that people in the spiritual world have a spiritual body is evident from the appearance of angels mentioned above. For example, Saul recognized Samuel after his death because he had a body similar to the body he had on earth. Clearly it was Samuel's spiritual body, since his physical body was still in grave, and it was his spirit (1 Samuel 28:13) that had risen and was conversing with Saul.

The fact that there is a spiritual body is also clear from the story of Lazarus and the rich man. After death Lazarus was in the bosom of Abraham; the rich man lifted his eyes, and asked that Lazarus might dip his fingerin water to cool his tongue (Luke 16: 22-24).
The body we have in the spiritual world is not the body that we put into the grave. The Bible says that our physical body is corruptible and mortal, which means that it does not last, but rots and dies. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption" (1 Corinthians 15: 50). "We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out" (1 Timothy 6:7). When we go to our eternal home "then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:5, 7; compare Genesis 3:19). So our earthly body cannot go to heaven, but when we put off our physical body, our corruptible and mortal life is changed into an incorruptible and immortal life (1 Corinthians 15: 53-54). Evidently when Paul said this, some people were wondering if everyone would sleep a long time in the grave before the resurrection, for Paul reassures people that we will not all sleep, and that it will not take ages but will happen immediately, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, that is, when we die.

The Grain of Wheat
One of the ways that Jesus teaches us about the life after death is by saying, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain" (John 12: 24; compare Matthew 13:31; Mark 4:31; Luke 13:19). This is very similar to the analogy that Paul uses: "Someone will say, 'How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?' Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he pleases, and to each seed its own body." (1 Corinthians 15: 35-38)

When a seed is put into the ground, the outer husk of this seed simply rots away. But within that seed is a germ of life that is raised up with a completely new plant or body around it. Paul says very clearly here that the body which is raised is not the body which is put into the ground. Furthermore, when the farmer plants his seed, it immediately begins growing. It does not remain dormant in the ground for centuries before a new life begins. Likewise, when our bodies are buried in the ground, the germ of life within each of us is immediately raised up clothed with a new body appropriate for the spiritual world.

Objections
Those who believe in a resurrection of the physical body may quote passages to support that belief, but an examination of those passages will show that this is not the teaching of the passages themselves, but is an assumption that is read into them.

What about Job's Prophecy?
Job says, "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin [worms] destroy this [body], yet in my flesh shall I see God" (Job 19:25,26, King James Version). Some people have assumed that the "latter day" means the end of the world, and that "worms destroying this body" means the body rotting in the grave. In fact, the original Hebrew does not mention either "worms" or "body". A more accurate translation is: "And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh shall I see God…" (New King James Version).

Job was not talking about his body rotting in the grave, but about the fact that his skin was already virtually destroyed by the boils that covered him from head to foot (Job 2:7, 19:20). When he said, "in my flesh I shall see God," he was not talking about some future time when his body would be resurrected, but he was saying that he would see God before he died, while he was still alive in the body he had. At the end of the book of Job God did appear to Job, and Job said, " I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You" (Job 42:5). And so the prophecy was fulfilled, that in his flesh he would see God. We can also see that God redeemed him at that time, for we are told, "The Lord accepted Job. And the Lord restored Job's losses…. Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before" (Job 42:9-10). The same chapter shows us what Job meant by "the latter day," for we read, "Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning" (Job 42:12).

Taken in context, this passage says nothing at all about the resurrection of the physical body centuries later, yet it has been taken as a primary passage supporting that concept.

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OzSpen said:

n2thelight,

You have taken most of this material word for word from this website: http://www.newchurch.org/societies/dawsonCreek/about/beliefs/God/articles/resurrection

Is this your website or have you plagiarised it?

This material that you have quoted is from an heretical Swedenborgian church that is Preterist in its eschatology - the Second Coming has taken place and is now taking place. It has other heretical doctrines, some of which are articulated HERE.

Do you support Swedenborg theology?

Oz

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kerwin said:

That is a metonym; which is to say referring to the whole (human) by using a part of the whole (soul).
Adam was created a human being with both a tangible and an intangible side and therefore living soul does not mean and did not mean spiritual being.
Metaphysical is not the correct word for the intangible part of a human being.

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kerwin said:

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary credits soul with the same, or at at least equivalent, meanings to those of the Blue Letter Bible site's cited source attributes to naphesh
Soul has addition meanings as does naphesh but in the case of the later they are dubious and for earlier they are not used in Scripture.
The meanings of soul may have changed over the last few centuries but I see nowhere in Scripture where that effected the message in which it is used.
Most of the difficulty in reading AV of the KJV comes from the fact it uses more formal equivalency than the NIV and not necessary the change in English.

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Born_Again said:

Kerwin, LOL That is not what metonymy means.

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Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Definition of metonymy
plural metonymies
: a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”)

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StanJ said:

Not a matter of what dictionary say a word means it's a matter of what the Hebrew conveys. In that sense it words Soul wasn't properly used when the KJV was written in 1611. So as not to be confused with our spirit because it isn't our spirit it is our life force which God originally breathed into Adam and which was propagated through procreation. As far as whether or not the Bible is translated using formal equivalency or functional equivalency most Greek Scholars preferred functional equivalency. Formal equivalency is good for studying purposes but does not always convey the actual thought it was intended in the scriptures going back five thousand years. The difficulty with the KJV is that it does not use the vernacular of our day, nor do the thoughts it uses relate to our day. The word soul in 1611 did not mean the same as it does today but even then it was not suitable in describing what the Hebrew conveys.

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kerwin said:

Good job at researching?

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OzSpen said:

Now he has to own up to what he did with plagiarism and promotion of Swedenborgian theology.

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kerwin said:

Are you confusing the first death with the second death because it sounds like it.

You do realize that you credit human beings with the ability to destroy both the body and soul in the first death because if the soul is destroyed then both the body and soul is destroyed when homicide is committed.

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kerwin said:

Evidence?

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StanJ said:

Not a matter of what dictionary say a word means it's a matter of what the Hebrew conveys. In that sense it words Soul wasn't properly used when the KJV was written in 1611. So as not to be confused with our spirit because it isn't our spirit it is our life force which God originally breathed into Adam and which was propagated through procreation. As far as whether or not the Bible is translated using formal equivalency or functional equivalency most Greek Scholars preferred functional equivalency. Formal equivalency is good for studying purposes but does not always convey the actual thought it was intended in the scriptures going back five thousand years. The difficulty with the KJV is that it does not use the vernacular of our day, nor do the thoughts it uses relate to our day. The word soul in 1611 did not mean the same as it does today but even then it was not suitable in describing what the Hebrew conveys.

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kerwin said:

I looked it up.
In what way do I have it wrong?

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Phoneman777 said:

I'm interested in what evidence you have to prove that "soul" wasn't properly used in 1611. IDK, but it seems to me at this point you're splitting hairs. I really don't see the diff between the words "living soul" or "living being" as a reference to the whole person, especially in Genesis 2:7. Also, do you think "soul" in "the soul of thy turtledove" was misused?

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StanJ said:

You've already been given it and refused to accept it...enough said.

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kerwin said:

So it seems you have no evidence.

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StanJ said:

Only to you.... those who understand English and know how to read it have already seen it.

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