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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | How are pre-Christians made perfect? | Heb 11:40 | Rowdy | 114778 | ||
I'm quite sincere about the figurative language but I'm also trying to keep an open mind. Please expound to me about this a little more. IF the whole of God's creation is going to be totally disintagrated back into nothingness or void like it was before He created, what will the Lake of Fire be fueled on? What will the New Heaven and the New Earth look like? What are the dimensions? How will we stay on this New Earth? With or without gravity? Will we be consuming food or some kind of nourishment for our new spiritual bodies? I'm not saying all of Revelation or Isaiah CANNOT be taken literally; I'm just urging caution when we think about these things. Again, we must be open minded to God and His spiritual world. We don't have any common point(s) of reference for truly understanding what His world is really like. Our world here and now is finite and very physical, that's all we know with any absolute authority. Everything about the spiritual world, we get from our Bibles and the Bible only seems to give us figurative type language to describe the actual characteristics of this spiritual world. You didn't address all the points of my previous post. Please take a shot at responding to both those and to the specific points above. For example, do you honestly expect to see "streets of gold," etc. in Heaven? The one verse I do take quite literally is the one from 2 Peter as quoted in my previous post. Please marry this verse into your response. Please feel free to expound as much as you can and God bless you. |
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2 | How are pre-Christians made perfect? | Heb 11:40 | EdB | 114807 | ||
Rowdy We can't put God in a box especially a box built with human hands. God in the creation Genesis 1:3 created light before he created the Sun Genesis 1:16. A God that can do that can handle all the problems you brought up. The Bible doesn’t go into the “hows” of all of this but be sure the God of creation is more than able to make it happen. The fact we don’t have exact dimensions or a complete picture of what it will look like does not mean we should only view it figuratively. Even if God provided a snapshot of the new Heavens and New Earth the questions would still be asked. I’m guessing the verse from Peter your referring to is 2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. To address your question about the oxygen needed for consummation of the earth, in the fire ball of a nuclear explosion which is a burning fire and yet contains no oxygen (the oxygen was first to burn) we see things burned completely. As comets and debris are drawn close to the sun they are consumed yet there is no oxygen in space to fuel the fire. If God is able to sustain the Sun, arrange the planets, create life such as our bodies with 60,000 miles of veins and blood vessels, create the rose, and the minds that would question Him, He is able to have a fire that will consume this earth and all that is upon it. Do I expect to see streets of Gold? I expect to dance upon streets of Gold not just see them! Why is that such a stumbling block for you? I have seen gold in sheets thin enough to be transparent film on window glass. Furthermore the God that created gold is certainly able to modify the molecular structure of Gold to make it further transparent if that was the problem. But say for an instance the streets aren’t gold as we define gold but rather a material that appears as golden yet is transparent . Is this passage then just figurative or is literally describing a the golden streets of heaven? As for food we will eat of the “Tree of Life” that will produce a different fruit each month and the leaves of the tree will be used for healing of the nations. Rev 22:2 Rowdy your questions all hinge on the scientific how to’s. If you want to ponder a natural impossibility that God has performed ponder the virgin birth. In the natural there is no way for a reproductive egg to be fertilized and the woman to remain a virgin yet that is exactly what God accomplished. If we try to limit God to our physical science we fall short of understanding God. God transcends man’s science, man’s understanding and even nature. If God so desired He could eliminate gravity and still have everything as it is, with one exception we would then question how He did it. The answer to that questions He is God! Let me address one last point. While I’m not saying this is the case, let us for the sake of this discussion say all of this does take place in the spiritual realm rather than our existing physical realm. Does that make these passages any less literal? If the spiritual realm becomes our reality and if these events takes place in that reality would that not still be a literal happening? Yes it would, the venue would have changed but the event occurred as presented. EdB |
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3 | How are pre-Christians made perfect? | Heb 11:40 | Rowdy | 114839 | ||
As I mentioned yesterday dear friend, you've given me quite a bit to consider. I'm not convinced 2 Pet 3:10 can be resolved as you've done here but I'll admit there's not much in the Bible on this subject. I did take special note of the fact that most of your post is your opinion as was mine. I really appreciate the discussion. I'm still very much interested in what the rest of the Forum might say about this subject. Any takers out there? Put your thinking caps on and tackle it and God bless you all. |
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4 | How are pre-Christians made perfect? | Heb 11:40 | EdB | 114843 | ||
Rowdy Your exactly right most of my comment was opinion based on our limited knowledge of God. In areas where the Bible doesn’t give specific information and we try to give specific answers it has to be based on evidence found in the Bible. I tried to show you that clearly God has transcended our knowledge of science and violated what we consider to scientific law or facts. If God was able to create light before He created the Sun, if God was able to impregnate Mary while she remained a virgin, if Jesus could past through walls and locked doors, if locked chains fell from prisoners, if dead were resurrected, if Jesus could see a man sitting under a tree without physically seeing him, if spit could open blind eyes, if a touch could cure disease then I believe there is enough evidence to say God is capable of doing all that He declared and that my friend with that kind of evidence transcend mere opinion. EdB |
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