In the Old Testament thought, Sheol is 'the abode of the dead.' Sheol was regarded as an underground region, shadowy and gloomy, where disembodied souls had a conscious but dull and inactive existence. It is also a place where punishment is received and rewards are enjoyed. Sheol is pictured as having an insatiable appetite.
However, before God judgment pronounce, Hades, or Hell, or Sheol is open and known to Him. This suggests that in death God's people remain under His care, but the wicked and the evil one, the unrighteous one, the mortal sinners never escaped His judgment. Sheol gives meaning to - Psalm 16:9-10 - "So my heart exults, my very soul rejoices, my body, too, will rest securely, for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor allow the one you love to see Pit." Saint Peter saw the fulfillment of this messianic psalm in Jesus' resurrection. "That you may not abandon my soul to Hades." - Acts 2:27
But if Yahweh does something utterly new, if the earth should open its mouth and swallow them, themselves and all that belongs to them, so that they go down alive to Sheol, then you will know that these men have rejected Yahweh. They went down alive to Sheol, they and all their possessions. - Num. 16:30, 33 - Gen. 37:35 -
May the wicked return to Sheol,
all the nations forgetful of God. - Ps. 9:17 -
Whatever work you propose to do, do it while you can, for there is neither achievement, nor planning, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol where you are going. - Eccl. 9:10 - 2 Sam. 22:6 -
...Yes, Sheol opens wide his throats
and gapes with measurable jaw
to swallow up her thronging nobility
as they are shouting for joy. - Is. 5:14, 14:9-11 -
I said: In the noon of my life
I have to depart
for the gates of Sheol,
I am deprived of the rest of my years. - Is. 38:10 -
Wealth is indeed a treacherous thing.
Haughty and unable to rest is he
who is greedy as Sheol,
who is like death, insatiable,
who assembles all the nations for his own ends,
collects all the peoples to his own advantage. - Hab. 2:5 - Amos 9:2 -
Saint Peter saw the fulfillment of this messianic psalm in Jesus' resurrection. "That you may not abandon my soul to Hades." - Acts 2:27 -
The Lord Jesus Christ resurrection is clearly linked with the overcoming of the powers of evil and death. In the Old Testament, Sheol is the place of the rephaim, the Hebrew term for a weakened existence. - Is. 14:9-11 - These beings, however, are not souls without bodies. Thus, the psalmist expected that God would ransom his soul from the Sheol. - Ps. 49:15 - It was Israel's firm belief in the goodness of God that led the Jewish people to believe that the righteous dead would yet see God. - Job 19:26 -
This expectation was the foundation upon which the Jewish ideas concerning the resurrection were built. It is certain that the Pharisees [a religious and political party in Palestine in New Testament times] proclaimed a life after death that required a resurrection.
Israel's concepts of the resurrection were born out of her relationship to God in her tumultuous history. At first glance the prophet Isaiah seems to express a view that the resurrection is for the faithful and that the wicked and evil one may not arise. - Is. 26:10-19 - The Jewish loyalist of the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees apparently agreed that for some there will be no resurrection to life. But prophet Daniel announced: When that time comes, your own people will be spared, all those whose names are found written in the Book. Of those who lie sleeping in the dust of the earth many will awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting disgrace. - Dan. 12:2 -
The New Testament consistently teaches hope in the resurrection of the believer based upon the resurrection of Christ Jesus as the "firstborn from the dead." Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a central doctrine of Christianity that affirms that God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day. Without the resurrection, the apostle Paul declared, Christian preaching and belief are meaningless. The resurrection is the point at which God's intention for Jesus becomes clear and believers are assured that Jesus is the Christ.
So significant is the resurrection of Jesus that without it there would be no Church or Christianity, and we would still be in our sins.
From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus who has been called to be an apostle, and specially chosen to preach the Good News that God promised long ago through his prophets in the scripture. This news is about the Son of God who, according to the human nature he took, was a descendant of David: it is about Jesus Christ our Lord who, in the order of the spirit, the spirit of holiness that was in him, was proclaimed Son of God in all power through his resurrection from the dead. Through him we received grace and our apostolic mission to preach the obedience of faith to all pagans nations in honour of his name. - Rom. 1:5 -
Brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, the gospel that you received and in which you are firmly established; because the gospel will save you only if you keep believing exactly what I preached to you - believing anything else will not lead to anything.
Well then, in the first place, I taught you what I had been taught myself, namely that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to Cephas and secondly to the Twelve. Next he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though I was born when no one expected it.
I am the least of the apostles; in fact, since I persecuted the Church of God, I hardly deserve the name apostle; but by God's grace that is what I am, and the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless. On the contrary, I, or rather the grace of God that is with me, have worked harder than any of the others; but what matters is that I preach what they preach, and this is what you all believed.
Now if Christ raised from the dead is what has been preached, how can some of you be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself cannot have been raised, and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and your believing it is useless; indeed, we are shown up as witnesses who have committed to perjury before God, because we swore in evidence before God that he had raised Christ to life. For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins. And what is more serious, all who have died in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people.
But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep. Death came through one man and in the same way the resurrection of the dead has come through one man. Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ.; but all of them in their proper order: Christ as the first-fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him. After that will come the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, having done away with every sovereignty, authority and power. For he must be king until he has put all his enemies under his feet. Though when it is said that everything is subjected, this clearly cannot include the One who subjected everything to him. And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all.
If there were not true, what do people hope to gain by being baptised for the dead? If the dead are not ever going to be raised, why be baptised on their behalf? What about ourselves? Why are we living under a constant threat? I face death everyday, brothers, and I can swear it by the pride that I take in you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If my motives were only human ones, what good would it do me to fight the wild animals at Ephesus? You say: Let us eat and drink today; tomorrow we shall be dead. You must stop being led astray: "Bad friends ruin the noblest people." Come to your senses, behave properly, and leave sin alone; there are some of you who seem not to know God at all; you should be ashamed.
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.
Everything that is flesh is not the same flesh: there is human flesh, animals' flesh, the flesh of birds and the flesh of fish. Then there are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the heavenly bodies have a beauty of their own and the earthly bodies a different one. The sun has its brightness, the moon a different brightness, and the stars a different brightness, and the stars differ from each other in brightness. It is the same with the resurrection of the dead: the thing that is sown is perishable but what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit.
If the soul has its own embodiment, so does the spirit have its own embodiment. The first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a living soul; but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit. That is, first the one with the soul, not the spirit, and after that, the one with the spirit. The first man, being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second man is from heaven. As this earthly man was, so are we on earth; and as the heavenly man is, so are we in heaven. And we, who have been modelled on the earthly man, will be modelled on the heavenly man.
Or else, brothers, put it this way: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God: and the perishable cannot inherit what lasts for ever. I will tell you something that has been secret: that we are not all going to die, but we shall all be changed. This will be instantaneous, in the twinkling of an eye, when the last trumpet sounds. It will sound and the dead will be raised, imperishable, and we shall be changed as well, because our present perishable nature must put on imperishability and this mortal nature must put on immortality.
When this perishable nature has put on imperishability, and when this mortal nature has put on immortality, then the words of scripture will come true: Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting? Now the sting of death is sin, and sin gets its power from the Law. So let us thank God for giving us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Never give in then, my dear brothers, never admit defeat; keep on working at the Lord's work always, knowing that, in the Lord, you cannot be labouring in vain. - 1 Cor. 15:1-58 - 1 Thess. 4:13-18 - 1 Peter 1:3-9 -
Now the Church is his body,
he is its head. - Col. 1:18 -
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Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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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