I have some questions, I think this is the place to ask it.
What ever happened to Lazarus, he was raised bodily fron death:according to the Bible;and after the Resurection, many people that were in the graves were seen walking around.
Did they have to die again? Where was Lazuras,why wasn’t he an Apostle? He could have been a good person to spread the word. The people who was seen walking around after the Resurection could have also been good witnesses. did they die a second time? If so why? Were they in Hell before that? If no one could go to heaven unless they were saved by Jesus. Why didn’t all the people leave the grave, the Bible seems to hint that just a few were seen.
There are a significant number of people who have pointed out that Penn & Teller, the famous stage magicians, could and have reproduced all or almost all, of the so-called miracles in the Christ story. And every reason to believe that the priests of Egypt, who used what we call “stage magic” to awe the populace, could also do every single so-called miracle, by using props, stooges & slight of hand.
Bosda, you’re the sort of person who will spoil a perfectly good debate about whether balrogs have wings by coming in and pontificating to the effect that it’s a story made up by Tolkien!
AFAIK, no further reference is made, either in the Bible or in extrascriptural hagiographic literature, to the majority of these people: The centurion’s boy, the widow’s son, Jairus’s daughter, the “righteous who rose up from their graves” in Matthew (the last lot are usually considered by many readers to be Matthew indulging in a little hyperbole).
Lazarus, on the other hand, lived a fairly active and exciting life after his own and Jesus’s resurrections, becoming the first Bishop of Massilia (modern Marseilles) in a time of persecutions. (Note that this is considered pious tradition, and is not mandated belief even for the Catholics who proclaim it.)
Now THAT is a story! Hopefully a fraction of that is close to the truth!
(but “Nero’s daughter” :dubious: )
To the OP- what Polycarp said…
RE those righteous raised at Christ’s death & resurrection: when I was a kid (I’m not sure if I was taught this or I just figured it myself). I had the idea they hung around for forty days evangelizing their loved ones until they ascended with Christ.
Now, I see several theories as possible-
they ascended soon after the Resurrection, before Christ’s final ascension (He wasn’t on Earth all those forty days but in fact, seems to have arisen to the Father later that Easter Sunday- He just had to get the disciples ready for Pentecost);
according to 7th Day Adventist teaching, they are the 24 Elders before the Throne of God;
(this is my least favorite theory tho I admit it makes sense & ends the difficulties)- the passage in Matthew 28 has been misread & only means that the tombs of righteous people broke open during the earthquake & their bodies were seen by people coming into the city.
Now to where the spirits/souls of people were until Christ-
Assuming that there is a conscious existence between death & the general resurrection, Christian tradition has held that all souls before Jesus went to Sheol-Hades, which is pleasant for the righteous, but very troubling for the unrighteous.
Christ at His death went to Sheol-Hades to evangelize them- definitely the righteous & perhaps even the unrighteous- and that they entered into Heaven at His Resurrection- maybe even invisibly sharing in bodily resurrection (with some of those being the ones raised in the Matt 28 passage discussed).
I’ve generally been taught that now Christians go directly to Heaven upon death & that non-C’tians go to Sheol-Hades to await the Final Judgement. My actual beliefs are a bit more nuanced than that (I have no problem with thinking of some C’tians going to Hades as sort of a Purgatory, perhaps to minister to non-C’tian souls there, and for the possibility of non-C’tians in Hades to accept Christ & go onto Heaven.)
I thought the Biblical account is all who have died since the time of the days of Christ just are dead and have no consciousness. And all will be resurrected on Judgement Day, when their final fate will be determinced.
“Christian theology from the earliest times has believed that a future time will come when there will be a day of judgement for all humanity. Also known as the Last Judgement, God will at that time raise all human beings from the dead and will judge them. Because of the notion of sin and Original Sin, every single human will deserve punishment, that is, eternal damnation in hell. But because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, those who believe in him and his act of salvation will receive God’s mercy and enter into an eternal life in heaven. Judgement Day is often linked to other eschatological events, such as Jesus’ second coming, the arrival of the Kingdom of God, and the establishment of a New Heaven and a New Earth. Modern pre-millenialist Christianity believes that there will be two separate, future judgements, one for Christians and one for everyone else (the Final Judgement). In Catholicism, the Last Judgement is also known as the General Judgement as opposed to the Particular Judgement.”
According to that this has been Christian theology from the earliest times.
I suspect that you have not understood yBeafy’s comment. The General Judgement certainly is understood (at least as far back as the Synoptic Gospels), but the notion that the dead are in a non-conscious state (“just dead” or temporarily non-existent, hanging out in Hades/Sheol or simply mouldering in the grave), is not a common theme of Christian tradition–and is also not mentioned in the quotation you provided.
Now look at the I Thessalonians 4:13-18 passage quoted there:
"But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
"For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
“Therefore, comfort one another with these words”
Paul talks about the “those who have fallen asleep”. How else could that be interpreted as other than the dead are in a non-conscious state?
Pretty easily. If sleep is a metaphor for death, in which the act of “sleeping” (from which one will rise) simply means that the death of the body does not indicate the cessation of the being, then the state of the person/soul/entity is not even addressed.
When taken in conjunction with the parable of the poor Lazarus outside the home of the rich man in Luke 16, in which both (the dead Abraham) and (the now dead Lazarus) and (the now dead rich man) are all awake and conversing, it is apparent that there is also room for a belief that the dead are not unconscious.
I am not claiming that one cannot argue that the dead are not conscious; I only noted that your response to yBeafy did not address that issue. You have now addressed it, although I note that you have only provided one more interpretation over which to debate and not put the matter to rest. I am not sure that yBeafy is correct that the belief is new, but he is certainly correct that a belief that those who have died are not conscious is not the traditional belief put forth by either the Orthodox or Catholic traditions.
FRom my understanding of Scriptures,The earth will become a paradise. I get this idea from the beatitudes, and the writings of John; that Jesus would be on earth to teach men for 1000 years. The meek will inherit the earth.etc.
according to Scriptures, Jesus saw Moses, Abraham etc. They must have been some where other than Hades. To me it is quite a puzzle! It doesn’t Seem to indicate a heaven other than earthly one.
RE “Sleep of death” as Unconsciousness- we’re not fully unconsciousness while asleep, our mind is active, we think & dream & can sense some outside stimuli. The Soul-Sleep teaching traditionally holds that we are totally inactive until awakened in the Resurrection.
To Monavis- The Jewish Scriptures tells us only about Sheol (Hades in Greek)- a shadowy semi-conscious realm. Jesus expresses Jewish extra-Biblical tradition in his Luke 16 story of Lazarus & the Rich Man, where Lazarus goes to Paradise (“Abraham’s Bosom”, the good neighborhood of Hades) while the Rich Man just goes to an unpleasant flaming Hades.
Christian thought of Realms of the Afterlife seem to have included & will include- *Sheol-Hades -the Paradise aspect & the Tormenting aspect,
*Paradise-Heaven where the spirits of believers reside before the Resurrection, *The Millenial Kingdom Earth where Jesus reigns with the Resurrected Believers over humanity & from which Satan is expelled for 1000 years,
*Gehenna-The Lake of Fire where the wicked who remain in Hades are finally sentenced (to either be eternally destroyed or eternally tormented),
*The New Heaven and the New Earth- The Final Perfected Creation in which God & humanity shall dwell in complete harmony.
The Bible does seem contradictory about this. The problem I have is that the it is says the dead will be risen on Judgement Day.
"Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.
“The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.”
Revelation 20:11-15
Before the Judgement Day, it just seems to make no sense the dead would be conscious. The above passage to me at best suggests they are “(“just dead” or temporarily non-existent, hanging out in Hades/Sheol or simply mouldering in the grave)”. Why a Judgement Day if some get a free pass into heaven before then?
The Orthodox, at least, have consistently interpreted that as just a figure of speech meaning “death,” without saying anything about the state of the soul after death. At funerals, the petition “Grant rest, O Lord, to the souls of Thy servants who have fallen asleep” is repeatedly sung. This is clearly understood to be referring to the present time, when the soul of the departed is with the Lord, not some future time when they will be re-awakened.
Well, for one, heaven and hell don’t truly exist yet. There has been no general resurrection, so the souls of the departed are not yet rejoined with their body and so are only experiencing a foretaste of their ultimate state, whether that will be pleasant or unpleasant.
Also, if the souls of the departed are non-existent/unconscious, why does Revelations 6 describe:
Also, how do you interpret Hebrews 12:1 :
And also the Transfiguration, where Christ was seen conversing with Elijah (who had not yet died) and Moses (who quite definitely had). If Moses were temporarily non-existent, was he re-awakened so he could be seen conversing with Christ, and then went back to non-existence until the general resurrection?
If a horde of dead people came back, don’t you think it’d make the local news and/or major, major histories of the time outside of the religious tracts of a then tiny cult? What happened to them after they came back: did they go back to their families and jobs? Did buerrecrats execute them in order to keep all the paperwork consistent?
You do have a fair point. Just the resurrected Lazarus and Jesus could have been easily explained away by the locals as being identical twins who showed up after their brother had died and claimed to be the brother risen from the grave. And Jesus is said to have only hung around on Earth a scant 40 days. However, if the number of dead were many, then all their kin going around town saying the had risen from the grave should have raised a lot of eyebrows in the area.
The following passage from Quadratus is relevant to the question posed by the OP.
From Early Christian Writings
“Quadratus was one of the first of the Christian apologists. He is said to have presented his apology to Hadrian while the emperor was in Athens attending the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. The period of the emperor Hadrian, during which Quadratus is said to have made his apology, was from 117 CE to 138 CE.”
“Here is the reference from Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. IV.3.”
"“After Trajan had reigned for nineteen and a half years Aelius Adrian became his successor in the empire. To him Quadratus addressed a discourse containing an apology for our religion, because certain wicked men had attempted to trouble the Christians. The work is still in the hands of a great many of the brethren, as also in our own, and furnishes clear proofs of the man’s understanding and of his apostolic orthodox. 2 He himself reveals the early date at which he lived in the following words: “But the works of our Saviour were always present, for they were genuine:-those that were healed, and those that were raised from the dead, who were seen not only when they were healed and when they were raised, but were also always present; and not merely while the Saviour was on earth, but also after his death, they were alive for quite a while, so that some of them lived even to our day.” Such then was Quadratus.”
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