Yet the Old Testament lays the foundations for a belief in resurrection by its repeated affirmation that life is essentially renewable. The Book of Daniel quoted a few texts on resurrection from the dead. Ezekiel, the prophet, for instance, uses resurrection language to speak of the whole nation's being restored to life. To sin and be forgiven is to experience a kind of resurrection. Faith in God who will not allow His purposes to be frustrated was commanding people toward a belief in resurrection.
But God will redeem my life
from the grasp of Shoel, and will receive me. - Psalms 49:15 -
Bless Yahweh, my soul,
and remember all his kindnesses;
in forgiving all your offences,
in curing all your diseases,
in redeeming your life from the Pit,
in crowning you with love and tenderness. - Psalms 103:2-4 -
By New Testament times only the Sadducees still not believing in the resurrection, and Jesus explained and teaches them that God's personal relationship with the patriarchs of old made it impossible to think of them as eternally separated from God, for He is God, not of the dead, but of the living.
Jesus replied, 'The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place on the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God. And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.' - Luke 20:34-38 -
The significance of Jesus' resurrection is explored throughout the New Testament. It was a vindication of all that Jesus had said and done. It was a token of what for others was still to come, for "Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep." - 1Cor. 15:20 - Speculative questions about the form of that experience were dismissed by Saint Paul with a peremptory "Fool!"
Someone may ask, 'How are dead people raised, and what sort of body do they have when they come back?' They are stupid questions. Whatever you sow in the ground has to die before it is given new life and the thing that you sow is not what is going to come; you sow a bare grain, say of wheat or something like that, and then God gives it the sort of body that he has chosen: each sort of seed gets its own sort of body. - 1Cor. 15:35-38 -
Resurrection, however, is not treated in the New Testament as something that can be experienced only beyond death. It is seen as a quality of life that can be appropriated at once and will immediately influence every facet of behavior. In Colossians chapter 3, Saint Paul immediately goes on to describe in detail the characteristics of resurrection life as it is lived here and now.
Is it true that life can be caught up into a force that makes it indestructible?
More is at stake than a belief in life after death, though that would be plenty. The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible view of resurrection is an affirmation about the nature of all human life and of the world itself. It says that we are part of a system in which renewal is always a possibility. The laws of entropy do not have the last word. It is not true that everything is perpetually running down so that it must all end in decay and death. Life is a renewable resource.
The person who believes in resurrection in this broad, biblical sense will neither cling to existing forms and institutions nor readily write them off: he or she will be prepared for them to rise again and to assume a new embodiment for the purpose. This belief has sociological understanding as well as personal consequences. All that and heaven too!
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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