Posted by Lou Pilder on December 9, 2007, at 10:23:51
In reply to Doctrine » Lou Pilder, posted by Sigismund on December 8, 2007, at 21:56:54
> So Lou, I take it that the belief in an afterlife, heaven and hell, is not an explicit doctrine, as it is with Christians?
>
> The Apostles Creed is interesting on this subject....
>
> I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
> the Creator of heaven and earth,
> and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
>
> Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
> born of the Virgin Mary,
> suffered under Pontius Pilate,
> was crucified, died, and was buried.
>
> He descended into hell.
>
>
> The third day He arose again from the dead.
>
> He ascended into heaven
> and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
> whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
>
> I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
> the communion of saints,
> the forgiveness of sins,
> the resurrection of the body,
> and life everlasting.
>
> Amen.
>
> I suppose descending into hell was related to some earlier (Jewish?) idea of hell being more like sheol (believe me, I know nothing about this) where the souls of the dead were gathered together.Sigismund,
You wrote,[...the belief in an afterlife...is not an explicit doctrine, as it is with Christians?..]
The writings of the Christian bible are from mostly Jews. The apostle Paul was Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee.
The belief in an afterlife is in the scriptures that were known by the authors of the books that make up the Christian bible.
Let us look at Ecclesiates 12:7
{Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.} Here we have a parallel to the book of Genesis where God made man out of the dust of the ground and will return to the ground as dust. In that book, God breathed the breath of life into man. Here the spirit will return to God {who gave it}.
Keeping in mind the subject of this thread being suicide and what the bible teaches or doesn't teach. I offer my perspective and being a Jew, my contribution to this thread will be from a Jewish perspective.
In the first chapter of Ezekial, he was shown a vision that he describes as a valley of dry bones. In his conversation with God, God says that He will cause breath to come into the bones and flesh upon them and they shall live and that God will open the graves and cause them to come out from them and He will put a spirit in them and they shall live.
John being a Jew penned the book of Revelation and in 21 he wrote;
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, niether sorrow, nor crying, neither shall ther be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. This is in his description of the new heaven and a new earth which he writes is inherited by those that Overcome. He then gives a list of those that do not inherit this new earth that have their part in the Lake of Fire which is called the second death.
John as a Jew could have rmembered the passage from Isaiah in 25 that reads;
[...He shall swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away all tears from off all faces...].
Lou
poster:Lou Pilder
thread:798827
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20070227/msgs/799702.html