Tonight an Open Forum caller tried to help Harold Camping understand the truth of soul sleep, but true to form, Camping stuck to his traditional church guns.
Lets's review for Mr. Camping and perhaps one day he will learn.
1Th 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
Excuuuuse me, Mr. Camping. Two names are recorded here: "Jesus" and "God". Of course, Jesus is God, but there is a good reason both names are used in this verse. At the resurrection, God will bring them which sleep in Jesus with him (Jesus). It's just plain foolishness to suggest that that souls of deceased believers have this kind of itinerary:
1. earth;
2. heaven;
3. earth;
4. heaven.
Come on! Think, Mr. Camping. Put down your calculator and think about what you are teaching for a change. The "bringing" is not from heaven to earth. The "bringing" is from the grave to heaven.
Jesus, the firstfruits of them that slept (1st Cor. 15:20) died and God raised Him from the dead.
Ga 1:1 Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)
Ac 4:10 Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.
One can only wonder what all the church pastors and teachers think "firstfruits of them that slept" means.
1Co 15:20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
A follow-up caller added his ignorance to Harold's by suggesting that the repentant thief went "that same day" to Paradise with Jesus. My Bible and most Bibles translate Luke 23:43 this way:
Lu 23:43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
However, the problem is, Jesus was not asked when He would be in Paradise, either alone or with the repentant thief. This is the request Jesus was replying to:
Lu 23:42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
Being with the thief in Paradise is not "remembering" him. Jesus was correcting the thief by letting him know that He was remembering him that very day.
The false teaching of souls in heaven started a very long time ago. When the entire Bible is studied for truth, there is no doubt whatsover that there is a punctuation flaw in our Bibles in Luke 23:42. How ridiculous to think that Jesus walked this earth before His ascension in just His bodily form. And if He was not only in bodily form when He was resurrected, then, like Lazarus before Him, His soul must have made a trip to heaven, back to earth and then back to heaven again.
Let us assume for argument's sake that Lazarus' soul separated from his body and went to heaven. Just imagine how Lazarus must have felt in his separated soul essence, hearing the shocking news after four whole days of unmitigated joy and bliss in the Father's presence: "Back to earth, you go, Lazarus! Back to more sin, tears, sickness and death!" If my soul essence was in heaven and heard that order, I would simply refuse to return.
The teaching of the separation of the body and soul is not sensible, logical or biblical. Nice work by the Open Forum caller. Harold continued to promote the biggest hoax perpetrated against the church, but the caller's good argument was heard, too.
"Being with the thief in Paradise is not "remembering" him. Jesus was correcting the thief by letting him know that He was remembering him that very day."
ReplyDeleteThank you for this point :-)
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The blog author wrote: "The false teaching of souls in heaven started a very long time ago. When the entire Bible is studied for truth, there is no doubt whatsover that there is a punctuation flaw in our Bibles in Luke 23:42."
ReplyDeleteLuke 23:42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
Luke 23:43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
You quoted these verses from the King James Version. However, I think you are misreading the grammar, because the punctuation is absolutely correct.
Grammatically, "today shalt" gives the date of the promising, not the fulfillment of the promise.
You spoke of studying "the entire Bible for truth" so it might also be of interest to note that Genesis 2:17 and 1 Samuel 18:21 also demonstrate what the King James translators meant by "today shalt."
* Eve did not die the day she ate of the fruit: rather, the promise of death was made sure that day. Answers such as "they spiritually died that day" are unsupported from scripture and deny the plain fact, and bring ridicule from skeptics.
* David was not made Saul's son in law that day: rather, he was promised that he would become the king's son in law on that day. There were "days to be fulfilled" and it takes a little time to find 200 Philistines, loot their bodies, return, and take a bath in time for a royal wedding: certainly more than 24 hours. Saul was not giving his daughter unless the conditions were fulfilled: that was the point!
* An additional example can be seen in Solomon's discussion with Shimei in 1 Kings 2...
"For it shall be, that on the day thou goest out, and passest over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die..." (verse 37)
"...and protested unto thee, saying, Know for a certain, on the day thou goest out, and walkest abroad any whither, that shou shalt surely die?" (verse 42)
Shimei did not die the day he passed over the brook Kidron. Verse 42 demonstrates that it was not the "knowing" that happened that day, but rather the "shalt surely die." His death was promised and made sure on the day he transgressed the king's command, but he knew this in advance on the day Solomon spoke to him.
These three examples demonstrate that at least the English King James translators did not see a contradiction with "today shalt" paired with an event that was to occur at a later date.
Plainly stated, "shalt" is the giving of a command, and "will" is the fulfillment of an action, and the two words are not freely interchangeable.
(continuing in next post...)
(Continuing...)
ReplyDeleteTo better illustrate:
God did not say "Thou will not commit adultery" because that would have been a prediction that Israel would not commit adultery and God would have been made a liar.
Any decent English dictionary will recognize the difference under their entries of “shall’ and “will.” From my hardback Webster's New World Dictionary (1974):
shalt: archaic 2d pers. sing., pres. indic. of shall.
shall: 1. to express futurity in the first person, and determination, obligation, etc. in the second and third persons.
will: 2. in formal speech, a) to express determination, obligation, etc. in the first person, and futurity in the second and third persons.
By defintion "shalt" is always in the 2nd person, i.e. "thou shalt." Therefore "shalt" always expresses determination and obligation, rather than simple futurity. “Shalt” is the voice of authority, not simple prediction.
* [determination, today ] "to day shalt thou... [insert promise]"
* [futurity, today] "today you will ... [insert promise]"
A more detailed (and overly complex for our purposes) verification of this grammar can be found in Fowler's "The King's English."
The grammar of Luke 23:43 has been subtly changed since the English Revised Version of 1881. People are usually told that there is "no difference" between "shall" and "will" (yet I notice that they haven't tried to change the grammar of the Ten Commandments, because that would be too obvious.)
The position of that comma has meaning. The promise was made to that dying thief that day, demonstrating a direct relationship between his repentance and forgiveness. Christ also made a promise (not a prediction) on his own authority while upon the cross.
Translational integrity also demands the comma phrasing of "today shalt thou be with me in paradise." Christ used "Verily I say unto thee" as a complete phrase, and not a single supporting example can be found where he ever used "verily I say unto thee today." The "today" would become meaningless except as emphasis, yet "verily" or "verily verily" already fulfills that function.
If Mr. Camping is using a modern NIV or NASB, his bible will say that Jesus promised that he and the thief would be in paradise that day. Yet this would make Christ a liar because he prophesied that he would be in the heart of the earth for 3 days and 3 nights. Peter also quotes David saying that Jesus (his soul) was raised from hell.
Luke 23:43 has been correctly translated into English for almost 700 years, since Wycliffe first translated the scriptures from Latin in the 1300's, and from Tyndale in 1525 and all the way through the King James Version of 1769. Even the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible preserves the correct reading. The first significant change to this verse was in 1881, approximately 130 years ago.
You be the judge: either modern translators who claim to be Hebrew and Greek scholars are ignorant of English grammar, or they recognize the difference and have altered this verse for doctrinal reasons.
Your King James text reads correctly without contradiction, if every word is read exactly as written according to the rules of English grammar.
A check or a contract has a date beside the signature. This date is not necessarily when the check is redeemed or the contract is fulfilled, but it does mark when the promise is made. The thief was not elected for paradise from the "beginning of the world" before he existed: rather he brought forth fruits worthy of repentance and his sins were forgiven.
"Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise."
The thief is still dead and buried, because Christ has not yet come into his kingdom. This promise will be fulfilled when Christ returns and the dead are raised. The scriptures cannot be broken.
Take care,
-Andrew
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
"You are incorrect. Adam and Eve did not die that day. Thankfully, we have a scripture to demonstrate this:
Gen 5:4-5
(4) And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:
(5) And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
This proves that you completely missed the entire point of my comment which I deleted. I showed many cases of "for in the day" meaning "continually" and also "day unto day". I posted many verses, including these two which I said relates beautifully to Gen. 2:17:
Ps 44:22 Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.
Ro 8:36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Of course the elect are not physically killed all the day long and neither were Adam and Eve. The elect (including Adam and Eve) are killed all the day long (always, continually) by taking up their crosses and following Christ all the way to Calvary (the one and only atonement for sins).
Dear Fixedheart,
ReplyDeleteYou quoted me from a post that you deleted... and with it removed the context. That's not proper.
Talking by email would be appropriate.
-Andrew