Is this a serious question? How else can people have immortal bodily life on the new earth, which is what God promises for those who belong to Christ, without being bodily resurrected first?
You do understand that there are
two different resurrections spoken about in the Scriptures?
Both Jesus and Paul refer to those who are resurrected “first”……if there is a “first resurrection”, then logically another will follow. (1 Thess 4:16; Rev 20:6)
The “chosen ones” (“firstfruits to God and to the Lamb” Rev 14:1, 4) who are ”bought from the earth” are “resurrected first” and will be reigning with Christ in his Kingdom.….their subjects will be on earth (Rev 21:2-4)…so what is the purpose of the kingdom and his rule over redeemed mankind for 1000 years?
What will the kingdom do for the redeemed humans?
Tell me what the the end result will be for humanity? How can we get back what we lost if we have no idea what we lost in the first place?
They were in hell. The are brought back to appear before the throne for judgment in order to give an account of themselves and have it explained to them why they will spend eternity in the lake of fire.
What is “hell” here? Please tell me what words are translated as “hell” in the Bible, and what Jewish writer would ever translate a word that was not even in their vocabulary?….never even hinted about in their scripture.
What did Jews understand (Hebrew) “Sheol” to mean?
What about (Greek) “hades”…. is that hell?
How about (Greek) “Gehenna”….or “the lake of fire”? What would these words have meant to a scripture-educated Jew of the day?
Certainly nothing like what came out of Roman Catholicism.
What did Jesus teach, since he was also a Jew…..as all the Bible writers were Jewish….and he only used Jewish Scripture.
As some believe? Scripture repeatedly teaches that is where unbelievers go when they die. Jesus refers to the dead rich man as being in hell in Luke 16:19-31. Why would you not believe that?
No, not “hell”….. he was said to be in “hades”…so what did that word mean to a first century Jew as opposed to a Roman Catholic centuries later? It is the Greek equivalent of “Sheol” in the OT….so “hades” has the same meaning as “Sheol”. According to the Jewish Tanakh, Sheol is translated as “the grave”….nothing more sinister than that. No one is conscious in Sheol. (Eccl 9:5, 10)
There is no “hell” in that parable either, because it is an illustration of something that the players in that parable experienced. The rich man pictured the Pharisees, and the beggar pictured the spiritually malnourished common people whom the Pharisees despised and treated like dirt. Their deaths were a change of circumstance….they traded places….what once belonged to the Jewish leaders (a position of favor with God which was suggested by the fact that they were in Abraham’s bosom), the beggar who represented the lowly sinners to whom Jesus preached, (as he said he was sent only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”.) As these “lost sheep” responded to Jesus as Messiah, they now attained a position of favor with God…..and the rich man who lost it was in torment over it.
Taken literally this parable makes no sense.
See above where I already answered this question. Also, the whole of human beings is their body, soul and spirit (1 Thess 5:23), so God intends for human beings to be made whole again in that sense and then spend eternity wherever He has determined for them.
Again you are giving scripture a meaning it never had….
Paul’s address in 1 Thess 5:23 was to the congregation as a whole, not to any individuals…..therefore their collective “body, soul and spirit” meant something very different to the idea of a triune composition in man.
God intends human beings to return to the sinless perfection that Adam lost for them. Humans had one home that they were given….planet Earth. Adam’s sin called for measures to be taken to ensure the safe return of the human race to God’s original purpose for them.
What were Adam and his wife told to do before they defected?
NASB? I thought Jehovah's Witnesses only used their own Bible translation (New World Translation). No? You believe the NASB is a trustworthy translation then? What others do you use? Just curious.
I personally use a variety of Bible translations especially when speaking to those who believe that our Bible is mistranslated…..I have studied many Bibles to check their integrity against the original languages and found the NWT to convey the truth, where others inject their own ideas into the translation to support a favored doctrine.
I am happy to use any translation as long as I have a reliable Concordance that shows the original use of the words and how they are translated in other Scripture. I don’t just read Scripture, I study it carefully. Original language word studies open up a whole new understanding of God’s word.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and read what you said about this passage now...
Are you reading everything that I'm saying? It seems not. I said that they will be judged by the standards that are given in Romans 1:18-2:16. Which means that no one has any excuse for not at least glorifying God as God and being thankful to Him while repenting of their sins, including the ones listed in Romans 1:18-32, instead of rebelling against Him. And, the reason no one has an excuse for that is because God makes Himself plain to everyone by what He has made (Romans 1:18-21). Why are you trying to give people an excuse for not having glorified God as God and being thankful to Him and for not repenting of their sins while they had the chance? Why do they need even more chances to do what they should have already done with the chances they already had?
You are leaving out the majority of those who have lived and died in past ages….none of whom knew the true God or his son. God allows for personal decisions and responds to them….just as he did in the garden.
He did that in Noah’s day as well…..as Noah preached righteousness to the people he gave them ample opportunity to respond to his warning and they chose to ignore him and to ridicule him…they paid dearly for that but at least they made their own decisions. That was how God judged them. It is how he will judge them again.
All who have lived in judgment periods like in the first century when Jesus preached to his fellow countrymen, these were not ignorant….the wicked Jewish leaders were without excuse to reject their Messiah, but took the majority of the Jewish nation down with them. Jesus sentenced them to “Gehenna”…..which meant eternal death, not eternal suffering in a fiery place of torture.
In these “last days”, we too are in a judgment period, and the “goats” will be judged when Christ makes his appearance…..the “sheep” will have shown by their conduct during this period that they are worthy of salvation in taking care of Christ’s “brothers”…..the “goats”, out of their neglect, will not.
You don't need to worry about injustice. We're talking about God here. He knows everyone's hearts intimately. He doesn't need to give people more chances for a thousand years in order to know what is in their hearts.
Like in the garden, he allows us the privilege of choice…..God acted only once in Creation…..since then he has
reacted to what we have chosen to do…..he allows us that choice.
God does not sign our death warrant…we do….simply by the choices we make.
LOL. Please be serious if you want to be taken seriously. Do you or not? How can you not know that Revelation 20 is highly debatable when it has been hotly debated for many, many years? It's not exactly the most clear, straightforward text in scripture. It's contained within the most highly symbolic book in all of scripture, also.
Highly debatable by whom? It is not unclear at all for those who know the truth…..the Bible is only complicated for people who want it to say what it doesn’t….