Pastor John,

Brad and I read and are discussing Vince’s email and your response. While we found both to be very clarifying, they brought up a couple questions:

(1) If Jesus comes back to exhume our bodies and take them to heaven to glorify, then what happens if our bodies are ashes via cremation?

(2) If after death our spirits are taken by the Lord to be with him, that indicates that our spirits are our true life. What is our soul? Is our spirit synonymous with our soul?

Brad & Allison

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Hi,

Thank you for the questions.  You two have really been thinking about these things.

(1) If Jesus comes back to exhume our bodies and take them to heaven to glorify, then what happens if our bodies are ashes via cremation?

My brilliant answer: I have no idea.  I just know that is what the Bible says Jesus will do.

(2)  If after death our spirits are taken by the Lord to be with him, that indicates that our spirits are our true life. What is our soul? Is our spirit synonymous with our soul?

My answer: That’s an easy one.  A soul is the combination of a spirit and a body, as we see in creation: “And Jehovah God formed the man from dirt of the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [spirit], and the man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7).

Thank you for the questions.  That’s the best I can do with them.

Pastor John

Comments welcome:

https://x.com/WitnessofSpirit/status/1920823475393962155

Hi John,

I have been meaning to ask you about this because I don’t remember ever hearing it before.  In the Old Meeting audio from January 18, 1981 (the meeting where you were preaching on discerning the Lord’s body), your father also had a message toward the end of the meeting.  This is part of what he said:

“…and another expression — please stay away from it — ‘going to heaven’.  I want you to tell me where anybody ever got that from, ‘we’re going to heaven’. Don’t you know that if you live right and you die, he’s coming after you? Well, what would you be doing, if you’re up there, he wouldn’t have to come back? You’re gonna fall asleep in Christ and have the pleasantest dreams you ever had in your life. You know, you’ll go to sleep and dream beautiful dreams. You’ll go to sleep and you’ll be in a beautiful world.  But you’re gonna be right here until he gets back. . . . We’re not even going to inherit heaven. Heaven was made for God and the earth was made for us, and the new one’s gonna be in the same pattern.  Heaven and earth. . . why do you want to go some place that’s gonna be burned up? [He’s] gonna destroy both!  There’ll be a new heaven and a new earth wherein will dwell righteousness. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth!”

What preacher Clark was saying here makes sense, but it did raise some questions concerning what I used to think about what happens when we die.  For one, if the righteous dead in the Old Testament went to the place called Paradise, and now Paradise has been relocated to Heaven when Jesus “led captivity captive”, it would seem that the righteous dead would still go to that place, now in Heaven.  Jesus indicated this when he told the thief on the cross, “Truly, I tell you, today you’ll be with me in Paradise.”

It seems a little strange that the souls of the wicked dead would continue to go to Hades, but the souls of the righteous dead no longer go to Paradise, but just remain (somewhere) here on earth.

And then there’s also the verse in 2Corinthians 5, where Paul says, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” 

I was also going to mention Revelation 19, where I had thought the Bible described the saints riding behind Jesus on His white horse when he returns to earth.  But when I read Revelation 19:14, it says, “And the armies that are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following him on white horses.”  The armies, I suppose, could be angels or other heavenly beings, but not necessarily us.

The point is, there are verses that seem to indicate that we will be present with the Lord in heaven after we die, and verses that indicate that we will remain here on earth until Jesus returns.  I know we don’t have a lot of details on what exactly happens at the moment of death, but can you shed any light on this mystery?

Vince

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Hi Vince.

It is clear from the Scriptures that those who die in the Lord go to Paradise, which is now in heaven where Jesus is, as you pointed out.  My father’s point, which he touched on in that sermon, was that after death, only our spirits go to in Paradise, for we are no longer in our bodies, nor have we received the new bodies God has promised to those who love His Son.  My father often described the state of the dead in Christ as being in a dream-like state.  Dreams seem real to those who are asleep, as real as when they are awake; however, the Bible says Jesus will be returning for the faithful, to catch them up out of their graves, give them new, glorified bodies (1Cor. 15:35–45), and take them away to present them to the Father.  Paul described that in 1Thessalonians 4:

13. Brothers, we would not have you ignorant concerning those who fall asleep, so that you do not grieve as others do, who have no hope.
14. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also those who have fallen asleep in Jesus will God take away with him.
15. Now, we say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who remain until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who sleep.
16. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them among the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so, we shall ever be with the Lord.

Your question, then, is this: If the dead in Christ are already in heaven, why would Christ be coming back to earth to get them?  It’s a reasonable question, and the only reasonable answer is what my father taught, to wit, the spirits of dead saints are in heaven, but they are without bodies.  Why the Father will send Jesus from heaven to raise those saints from their graves and give them new bodies (instead of just giving them their new bodies while they are in heaven, I cannot say.  He has His own (perfect) reason for that, and the Bible does not reveal it.

That brings us to your next point, which is the return to earth of Jesus “with ten thousands of his saints”, who are the “armies” you mentioned.  That event, the return of Jesus with his saints to reign on earth for a thousand years (Rev. 21:4), is different from his appearing in the sky to catch his people up to him.  His appearing (and the saints’ resurrection from the dead) takes place some months before his coming.  His appearing is prophesied in Revelation 14, and his coming is prophesied in Revelation 19.  That is how it is that when he comes, his saints will be with him; he had already appeared in the clouds and taken them to heaven to meet the Father.

After all that, and the Final Judgment, the eternal abode of the saints then will be on the new earth, not in heaven.  That was my father’s overall point.  “Dying and going to heaven” is a phrase that, technically, is correct, but the larger point is that those who are judged worthy will live forever on a new earth, not in heaven with God.

I think that answers your questions, but if I have missed something, please let me know.

Pastor John

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Pastor John,

Why did David hate the lame and the blind?

6. And the king, with his men, went to Jerusalem, to the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land. And they spoke to David, saying, “You will not enter here. For even the blind and the lame will repel you,” thinking, “David will not enter here.”
7. But David took the stronghold of Zion, which is the city of David.
8. And David said on that day, “Let everyone strike down a Jebusite!” And by way of the water shaft, he reached “the lame and the blind”, who were hated by David’s soul.  For this reason, they say, “The blind and the lame shall not enter into the house.”

Beth

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Hi Beth.

David did not hate those who were really lame and the blind.  In verse 8, the writer was mocking the words of the arrogant Jebusites who boasted that David could not take their city, saying, “even the blind and the lame will repel you.”  The writer is calling all the Jebusites lame and blind, saying that David hated them.  Then, after David’s victory (v. 7), the vain, taunting boast of the Jebusites became a parable in Israel for all who proudly make empty boasts.  We would say, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”  It is the same as what King Ahab told the Syrian king after he had boasted that he would defeat Israel, “He who straps on his armor [to go to war] should not boast like the one who [is victorious and returns home and] loosens it” (1Kgs. 20:11)

Pastor John

Comments welcome:

https://x.com/WitnessofSpirit/status/1920819455598174333

Hey Pastor John,

In Greek class we were talking about how the Greek word is translated “God” with a capital G if there’s an article before it, most often.  I was looking up some examples of where “the” doesn’t come before “God”, and there aren’t many that I could find.  

One that came up that I wanted to discuss was John 19:7, where the Jews were convincing Pilate to kill Jesus.  

7. The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to our law, he ought to die because he made himself out to be the Son of God.”

      7. Ἀπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι, Ἡμεῖς νόμον ἔχομεν, καὶ κατὰ τὸν νόμον ἡμῶν ὀφείλει ἀποθανεῖν, ὅτι ἑαυτὸν υἱὸν θεοῦ ἐποίησεν.

The Jews could be saying, “he made himself out to be a son of a god!” as they’re talking to Pilate, trying to convince him to kill Jesus, or at least, “he made himself out to be a son of God!”  I’m not sure, just wanted to bring it up.  I’m sure we’ve talked about this before.

Aaron

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Hi Aaron.

Yes, for the Father and Son book, Richard and John David gathered all the places in the New Testament where “son of god” is found, both with and without “the”.  We debated the difficult places, such as John 19:7, and decided that the Jews were concerned most of all with convincing Pilate that Jesus should die because he had committed a crime that was, under their law, worthy of death.  Romans would have laughed at someone who claimed to be a son of God, and dismissed them (as Pilate wanted to do), but not the Jews.  And Roman rulers were expected to respect the traditions and customs of local peoples.

From just the book of Matthew, we can see that both Satan and the Jews referred to the Messiah as the Son of God:

(Satan) Matthew 4:3, 6.

(Jews) Matthew 14:33; 26:63; 27:40, 43.

So, when the Jews said that Jesus had spoken blasphemy by saying he was the Son of God, they were saying that he had blasphemed by claiming to be the Messiah.  Why they thought that making that claim was blasphemous is difficult to understand, but they could not have been saying anything else, for no one at that time knew there was a Son of God who had existed with God from before the foundation of the world.  To the Jews, then, “Messiah” is all that “the Son of God” could have meant.

As an added note, Satan knew Jesus was the Messiah, but he, too, was ignorant of the pre-existent Son “through who God made the worlds.”  So, he, too, could only have been thinking “Messiah” when he used the term “Son of God”.

The best that I can remember, that is why we decided on the translation that we have for Matthew 19:7.

I hope your students are enjoying thinking about such things.

Pastor John

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Hey John,

In Philippians 3:8, there is a certain word that in the King James Version (KJV) was translated “dung”. And in our translation it is translated “garbage”. I was wondering if that particular word could be translated either way and the choice was made to have it say “garbage” instead of “dung”? Or was the KJV simply a bad translation and in our translation it was translated correctly?

Thank you!

Billy H.

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Thanks, Billy, for the question.  Here are the possible definitions of the Greek word σκύβαλον: 

“dung, sweepings, refuse, rubbish”

So, it could be either one.  It has been a long time, but I would guess that we chose “garbage” because it encompasses more types of junk than “dung” does.

Pastor John

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