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Actually, the Old Testament does speak of belief in continued existence after physical death. That's why there was a prohibition against attempting to communicate with the dead.
Under the Mosaic Law a medium (a person who attempted to communicate with the dead) was to be put to death.
Leviticus 20:27 'Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.'"
Deuteronomy 18:10 "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, 11] or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.
King Saul asked the medium at En-dor to bring up the dead prophet Samuel so that he could consult with him since God was no longer answering his inquiries. And 1 Samuel 28:13-19 states that Samuel was brought up in a vision and spoke with Saul and informed him that the next day both he and his sons would be with him.
David believed that he would see his dead son again - 2 Samuel 12:23.
And so yes, the Old Testament does speak of continued existence, and the belief of continued existence after physical death.
Now as to the matter of resurrection, one passage is Isaiah 26:19.
Isaiah 26:19 Your dead will live; Their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, For your dew is as the dew of the dawn, And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.
Even though most scholars today are of the opinion that the book of Isaiah had three different authors, and that the book was written over a period of time spanning the eighth through the fifth centuries B.C., they acknowledge that chapters 1-39 were written by Isaiah himself who lived during the eighth and early seventh centuries B.C. - Isaiah | The Center for Biblical Studies
This places Isaiah 26:19 which speaks of resurrection in the eighth or seventh century B.C.
While scholar N.T. Wright says there is a possibility that Isaiah 26:19 could be a metaphor for the national restoration [of Israel], he notes that the original Hebrew refers literally to bodily resurrection, and that the LXX (Septuagint) takes it in that manner. ['The Resurrection of the Son of God', N.T. Wright, p.117].
Isaiah 26:19 [Septuagint]The dead shall rise, and they that are in the tombs shall be raised, and they that are in the earth shall rejoice: for the dew from thee is healing to them: but the land of the ungodly shall perish.
By the way, Isaiah 26:14 does not contradict Isaiah 26:19. In Isaiah 26:14 Isaiah is expressing his belief regarding the pagan oppressors in contrast to God's people.
Last edited by Michael Way; 05-10-2016 at 02:57 PM..
Reason: Inserted a period that had been left out.
God's promise of eternal life predates the written word and the mosaic law.
1 Timothy 1:9-11
Titus 1:2
Revelation 13:8
there are others also.
The ^ above ^ verses do Not say ' after life ' but as you mentioned at Titus 1:2 eternal life or everlasting life.
The expression ' after life ' is indicating Not resurrection, but being more alive at death than before death.
So, yes, God's promise is eternal or everlasting life as in the dead will have a resurrection.
Acts 24:15 uses the ' future tense ' that there is going to be a resurrection.......
Future tense because most people will have a happy-and-healthy physical resurrection back to life on Earth starting with Jesus' coming 1,000-year governmental rulership over Earth. - John 5:28
So when did God create an afterlife? Well, sometime in the intertestamental period it appears---a time when the OT writers went silent and the Jews were returning from their exile in Babylon after having been exposed for the first time to pagan religions that taught an afterlife, which the Jews then picked up and incorporated into their own Jewish religion.
Did Old Testament writers believe in an afterlife? No.
Did they believe in a resurrection? No.
The Bible teaches that the dead are dead, just as atheists believe. They will not come alive again. They will have no reward in the next life as the New Testament teaches. Fundamentalists will argue that Solomon means that the dead know nothing until the final resurrection. That's not what the text says but that's the only way a fundamentalist can argue the point. But the fundamentalist cannot argue away the point that the Bible teaches that the dead have no reward of any kind after they die. That is clearly what the text says: they have no further reward.
I don't know how much clearer the Bible can state its position.
Likewise, in Job
Job is even stronger affirmation that nobody lives in the afterlife. they will not rise in a resurrection of the dead; they will never awake from their death state, even after the heavens are no more; they will never be awakened from their eternal sleep; (sleep was the Jewish metaphor for death).
But when the Jews absorbed the idea from the Greeks and the Zoroasterians of Persia that there is indeed an afterlife, suddenly their doctrines and beliefs changed. Jesus, being God, taught no afterlife in the Old Testament through his servants Job and Solomon yet suddenly changed his mind and taught abundantly that there are rewards in the afterlife and a resurrection from the dead when he incarnated on earth---things he denied as God in preincarnate form centuries earlier.
The Book of Daniel supposedly teaches a general resurrection but The general scholarly consensus now is that Daniel was written during this intertestamental period, sometime around 200 BC after the Jews had picked up this notion from the pagans they lived with that there is an afterlife and a resurrection.
Something is amiss here. I hope that is clear to everyone reading this.
God never created ' afterlife ' ( meaning the dead are alive at death ) God created ' resurrection '.
God's first mention of hope for mankind is found at Genesis 3:15
Jesus proved to be that promised ' seed ' (offspring) who will bring an end to Satan's works including death.-Heb 2:14 B
Bring an end to enemy death via future resurrection - John 3:13; 5:28; Acts 24:15; 1st Corinthians 15:26
When the Jews began mixing with the Greeks they adopted their philosophies and theories about an immortal soul.
Whereas the Bible teaches the soul is mortal because the soul (person) can die - Ezekiel 18:4,20
The soul can be destroyed - Acts 3:23 - so the soul is Not death proof.
The dead know nothing but an unconscious sleep-like state - Psalms 115:17; 146:4; Daniel 12:2,13; Ecclesiastes 9:5
Who is going to call Job out of the grave according to Job 14:15 ?________
So, Job will sleep death's deep sleep - Job 14:13-15 - until resurrection day or Jesus' millennium-long day .
Except for those called to heaven - Rev. 20:6, the majority of mankind ( which includes All who died before Jesus died )
will have a happy-and-healthy physical resurrection back to life on Earth with the opportunity to live forever on a beautiful paradisical Earth as originally offered to Adam before his downfall.
The book of Job implies a believe in an afterlife, the book of Daniel explicitly teaches the ressurection at least of "many".
As you cited the book of Job, the New Testament states that the present heavens will vanish, so if Job said, "till the heavens be no more", how much did he know? Do you get my point?
As soon as you use words like "implies" "suggests" and "seems to..." you have left the realm of objective and have gone into subjective. So what it "implies" to you may not be what it implies to William Lane Craig or the guy down the street. So to say it implies a belief in an afterlife has no value in objective discourse.
Now lets see what a Christian apologist has to say about Ecclesiastes:
Quote:
Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?
Solomon is saying that man's fate and an animal's fate are the same: both turn to dust. I mean that what the words say, right? Are we going to start "reading" into plain text meanings that are not there? Then Solomon poses a question "Who knows if a man's spirit rises upward". To me that suggests Solomon doesn't know whether man's spirit lives on or if it dies with an animal's. For Lane Craig Solomon is saying "Solomon isn't sure if a man's spirit is rising or not but he seems to lean toward the fact that it does rise, implying that Solomon did indeed believe in an afterlife". Where did Craig get that? That's not what it says to me. To me it says simply that Solomon doesn't know for sure one way or the other. It's about as neutral as one can get.
But the apologist in this articles has an ace up his sleeve. That ace is something apologists use when they are cornered with a conundrum like Ecclesiastes and that ace is called "Progressive Revelation" meaning that God progressively reveals his truths in layers as time passes. So Solomon didn't believe in an afterlife, but through "Progressive Revelation" God gradually revealed it to later writers.
This beautifully solves the conundrum of Mark never mentioning Jesus as divine. Through "Progressive Revelation" it wasn't revealed yet to Mark that Jesus was divine so he didn't write about Jesus' divinity, or at least he never has Jesus saying he is divine like John does. God revealed Jesus' divinity a little more to Matthew and Luke, and then finally in John God reveals fully to John that Jesus was divine, thus the 7 great "I AM's".
We can do this all through the Bible. How many thieves cursed Jesus, one or two? Well, it was revealed to Mark that two thieves cursed Jesus, but through "Progressive Revelation" to Luke, he records that it wasn't one two thieves that cursed him but one. Same thing with how many times did the rooster crow, once or twice.
So read the apologist's explanation for Ecclesiastes:
Quote:
The final sentence, though, does not explicitly state that the human spirit also dies, but it asks the question of where the spirit goes after death.
The question then arises: Why doesn’t Solomon know about the afterlife?
To answer this question, we need to introduce the concept of progressive revelation. Progressive revelation refers to the fact that >>>>>[GET THIS:] God, in the Scriptures, progressively reveals more and more of Himself over time. God’s ultimate revelation of Himself was in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus’s disciples completed the revelation of God when they wrote the books of the New Testament (NT).
I mean I have seen some fancy footwork by apologists to apologize for inconsistencies but progressive revelation is a beaut.
Future tense because most people will have a happy-and-healthy physical resurrection back to life on Earth starting with Jesus' coming 1,000-year governmental rulership over Earth. - John 5:28
huh ? John 5:28 says nothing about millenialism.
I am amillenialist.
As soon as you use words like "implies" "suggests" and "seems to..." you have left the realm of objective and have gone into subjective. So what it "implies" to you may not be what it implies to William Lane Craig or the guy down the street. So to say it implies a belief in an afterlife has no value in objective discourse.
Now lets see what a Christian apologist has to say about Ecclesiastes:
Solomon is saying that man's fate and an animal's fate are the same: both turn to dust. I mean that what the words say, right? Are we going to start "reading" into plain text meanings that are not there? Then Solomon poses a question "Who knows if a man's spirit rises upward". To me that suggests Solomon doesn't know whether man's spirit lives on or if it dies with an animal's. For Lane Craig Solomon is saying "Solomon isn't sure if a man's spirit is rising or not but he seems to lean toward the fact that it does rise, implying that Solomon did indeed believe in an afterlife". Where did Craig get that? That's not what it says to me. To me it says simply that Solomon doesn't know for sure one way or the other. It's about as neutral as one can get.
But the apologist in this articles has an ace up his sleeve. That ace is something apologists use when they are cornered with a conundrum like Ecclesiastes and that ace is called "Progressive Revelation" meaning that God progressively reveals his truths in layers as time passes. So Solomon didn't believe in an afterlife, but through "Progressive Revelation" God gradually revealed it to later writers.
This beautifully solves the conundrum of Mark never mentioning Jesus as divine. Through "Progressive Revelation" it wasn't revealed yet to Mark that Jesus was divine so he didn't write about Jesus' divinity, or at least he never has Jesus saying he is divine like John does. God revealed Jesus' divinity a little more to Matthew and Luke, and then finally in John God reveals fully to John that Jesus was divine, thus the 7 great "I AM's".
We can do this all through the Bible. How many thieves cursed Jesus, one or two? Well, it was revealed to Mark that two thieves cursed Jesus, but through "Progressive Revelation" to Luke, he records that it wasn't one two thieves that cursed him but one. Same thing with how many times did the rooster crow, once or twice.
So read the apologist's explanation for Ecclesiastes:
I mean I have seen some fancy footwork by apologists to apologize for inconsistencies but progressive revelation is a beaut.
But take Solomon's words anyway you want. That's the beauty of reading the Bible: you can interpret what it says to you, not what the words say.
Progressive revelation is quite Biblical as can be seen from statements by the apostle Paul when he spoke of the mystery which was hidden from past generations but which has now been made known.
Ephesians 3:1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles-- 2] if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you; 3] that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. 4] By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5]which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit;6] to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
Romans 16:25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past,26]but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith;
The Torah speaks only of this world and it would thus be inappropriate to discuss 'the next world'. Alternatively, the 'world to come' is a reward and the Torah is meant to tell us what to do, not what we get if we follow it.
The resurrection from the dead is a spiritual one. The dead are sinners who do not serve the Lord. Those who turn from wickedness to serve the Lord rise from the death of sin and possess eternal life which is the word of the Lord since the word of the Lord is life and will never die.
I am the resurrection and the life. I am the servant of God.
"Serve the Lord with reverence and rejoice before Him."
"Whoever offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me and to him who goes the right way I will show the salvation of God", says the Lord.
The heavens and the earth will pass away but my words shall never pass.
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meaning that God progressively reveals his truths in layers as time passes. So Solomon didn't believe in an afterlife, but through "Progressive Revelation" God gradually revealed it to later writers.
