by Longlivetherenegades 12 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Luke 18: 17 Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a young child will by no means enter into it.
From the above
Only 144,000 who are the least in the kingdom of the heavens are those who received the kingdom of God like young child. Thereby allowed entrance into it.
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@ EverApostate
John the Baptist not entering into HEAVENS alongside Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will hold based on Matthew 8:11 is FIGURATIVE
John 3:3 In response Jesus said to him: Most truly I say to you, unless anyone is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God
Are Christians born again FIGURATIVELY or LITERALLY.
Hi Sea Breeze,
If our destiny is not to be like angels, why is Jesus saying:
Mark 12:25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
Orthodoxy socalled, wants 1 Corinthians 15 to deal with the body only. But as we see in the early passages of the chapter, the soul is lost without the resurrection he speaks so. So he is not appearing to believe in the existence of disembodied spirits like orthodoxy socalled (and JW regarding the 144,000 I think). There is a heavenly body (1 Cor 15:40). The Christian faith is of no use if man is not raised. The saints were not partying in "the good part of Hades" (Luke 16) that is just a symbolic presentation of the judgment upon Israel AD 33-70. As the more liberal and famous Greek scholar William Barclay recognises, Paul is speaking of the holistic existence of man. It is not so complicated to Paul (albeit miracolous), man is now corruptible but will become incorruptible:
"But Paul never said that we would rise with the body with which we died. He insisted that we would have a spiritual body. What he really meant was that a man's personality would survive. It is almost impossible to conceive of personality without a body, because it is through the body that the personality expresses itself. What Paul is contending for is that after death the individual remains. He did not inherit the Greek contempt of the body but believed in the resurrection of the whole man. He will still be himself; he will survive as a person. That is what Paul means by the resurrection of the body. Everything of the body and of the soul that is necessary to make a man a person will survive, but, at the same time, all things will be new, and body and spirit will alike be very different from earthly things, for they will alike be divine. "
https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/1-corinthians-15.html
Kurt Simmons and Ed Stevens also wrote about this, from a more conservative perspective, to the Preterist community:
"The eschatological Resurrection of the last day consisted in the spirits in Hades receiving individual, spiritual, immaterial, immortal, and invisible bodies suited to the ethereal realm above. Other views are unsound, and should be rejected."
As for your other quotations, Jesus was raised in his body for a sign of Israel. It is specifically said in Psalm 16:10 that his body would not rot. Like water baptism, it was for signs. Our body rot. Different story. Revelation is all hyper symbolic stuff taking place in the first century, maybe a tiny bit takes place later
Your rendering of 1 Corinthians 15:16-17 is corrupt.
Hope this helps / clarifies
