So, some Jehovah's witness knocked on my door...

[KLP]

Agri, not sure if you have noticed but the Jews have this whole thing about numbers. 12 tribes for 12 Brides...not sure if you ever noticed but they got a thing about numbers, like the 7th day 70 years and 40 years all over the place, and 12 years a slave then jubilation...oy numbers on top of numbers with these people. And did you ever read that stuff about tabernacle patterns.... out they ying yang. They even got a book called Numbers.

[margin overa]

In considering the actual (or theoretical) views of the Jews during the OT period, it in the end seems to me to be like considering another CofC obsession with patterns. If the NT accounts of the early church and its doctrine make for an actual pattern, it's a darned loose-and-lax-mix-and-match kind of pattern; if the OT or NT are the products of inspiration, the amount of teaching about it falls pretty squarely in the soft-focus mode. Is that all a human mind can absorb about an afterlife? It seems a pretty paltry and contradictory way to talk about something that would be, after all, a highly significant subject.

[agricola]

Yep, I noticed. Rosh Hashana is the seventh month (new moon) or the 'sabbath of months' and so it is a bigger deal than the other new moons. So big, we turned it into 'the new year' even though it is still just the start of the SEVENTH month.

7.12.13.40.120. These are the 'special' numbers, that don't necessarily mean exactly those numbers, but stand in for something else (sometimes).

[agricola]

In considering the actual (or theoretical) views of the Jews during the OT period, it in the end seems to me to be like considering another CofC obsession with patterns. If the NT accounts of the early church and its doctrine make for an actual pattern, it's a darned loose-and-lax-mix-and-match kind of pattern; if the OT or NT are the products of inspiration, the amount of teaching about it falls pretty squarely in the soft-focus mode. Is that all a human mind can absorb about an afterlife? It seems a pretty paltry and contradictory way to talk about something that would be, after all, a highly significant subject.

why?

I mean, really - why do you think an afterlife is something that would be 'a highly significant subject'? Where should a person's focus be? On something 'highly significant', sure - so why should that be 'an afterlife'? how about THIS life?

[margin overa]

In considering the actual (or theoretical) views of the Jews during the OT period, it in the end seems to me to be like considering another CofC obsession with patterns. If the NT accounts of the early church and its doctrine make for an actual pattern, it's a darned loose-and-lax-mix-and-match kind of pattern; if the OT or NT are the products of inspiration, the amount of teaching about it falls pretty squarely in the soft-focus mode. Is that all a human mind can absorb about an afterlife? It seems a pretty paltry and contradictory way to talk about something that would be, after all, a highly significant subject.

why?

I mean, really - why do you think an afterlife is something that would be 'a highly significant subject'? Where should a person's focus be? On something 'highly significant', sure - so why should that be 'an afterlife'? how about THIS life?

Because it has essentially been the focus or endgame of Christian interpretation of the scripture for a very long time - I was simply trying to make the point that if a shiny, gleaming afterlife is the reward, or goal, of being a believer, the substance of the doctrine is pretty darn thin...like the church pattern conservative CofCers think is present and fully-developed, when it is in fact loose and lacking in specificity. Likewise ("in like manner"), if an afterlife in a literal heaven or hell is the actual destination, the supposedly inspired teaching and doctrine about it is also thin.

[KLP]

So Jesus gives a balance between how to live in this life, daily, how to love and serve and to avoid sin. And Jesus links the living in this life to the next life. And even with all the heaven/hell/judgment references and teaching by Jesus and his apostles, Jesus then also specifically states that there is a dwelling place with his father and that people can go there and that if it were not true he would have said so. I mean it is specifically and clearly stated, not interpretation and there is the Revelation to boot. Yet that is deemed to be "thin" and lacking of substance for a Christian doctrine and a matter of interpretation? LOL whatever. Seems to me that deniers gonna deny. That is fine, good for you. But it leaves me doubting that this "conclusion" is based solely on the actual text and not some prior POV.

[margin overa]

So Jesus gives a balance between how to live in this life, daily, how to love and serve and to avoid sin. And Jesus links the living in this life to the next life. And even with all the heaven/hell/judgment references and teaching by Jesus and his apostles, Jesus then also specifically states that there is a dwelling place with his father and that people can go there and that if it were not true he would have said so. I mean it is specifically and clearly stated, not interpretation and there is the Revelation to boot. Yet that is deemed to be "thin" and lacking of substance for a Christian doctrine and a matter of interpretation? LOL whatever. Seems to me that deniers gonna deny. That is fine, good for you. But it leaves me doubting that this "conclusion" is based solely on the actual text and not some prior POV.

What you're saying presupposes a prior POV, too: that it is fact something that is reliable and inspired. That's merely another interpretation, too, BTW. The Revelation that ends the NT is just one of many "revelations" that were floating around in the first couple of hundred years of the Christian church, and its inclusion is demonstrative of perhaps the most problematic document process in the NT. Resting on it as some genuine guide to the afterlife or instruction about the "End Times" is as dicey a proposition as I know.

You're relying heavily on presuppositions about those letters and texts, and making a great many assumptions yourself - that is fine, good for you...please don't act as if, however, that all you're doing is logically and frankly examining purely objective evidence and not proceeding from a set of ideas yourself. The entire assemblage of the NT (and indeed, the OT) is rife with problems, and the assembly and debate that collected those letters and gospels was and is nothing more than a the gradual accumulation of agreements and disagreements of human beings, a bit like the precedent law system of the United States. Nothing more. I have always enjoyed the Bible as literature, even when I was a CofCer; and I still do now that I see it as simply another kind of ancient compilation or anthology, with no genuine claims to inspiration.

[agricola]

I'm not questioning the EXISTENCE of the teaching, merely the level of emphasis. The idea that there is a heaven, that people are resurrected (bodily) and 'go there' to dwell 'with God', is purely and simply a Pharisaic Judaism characteristic teaching - which Jesus is affirming, probably BECAUSE at that time, there were ALTERNATE beliefs about there even being an afterlife, plus the Roman and Greek beliefs about the afterlife, which were mainly rather dull to unpleasant (mostly purgatory-ish).

So a) Jesus says yes an afterlife exists
AND
b) that afterlife (for at least some class of people) is not just pleasant, but downright terrific.

But certainly when the gospels relate Jesus teaching, he spends at least as much time (far more, actually) talking about how people ought to be acting HERE. Plus they should be acting that way BECAUSE IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, and not because there is a prize at the end.

By the way, that also is a standard Pharisaic (and normative modern Judaism) teaching: there is an afterlife and it is great. Truly evil people don't get to go. Judaism and Christianity vary on the exact details and disagree on the criteria for admission, that's all. Plus Christianity has that hell thing.

[juliac]

I have been approached by JH's and Mormons myself. I will say the Jehovah's Witnesses love love to argue right away - they won't listen to your opinion just like CoC did to me. I've had way more encounters with Mormons and took a course on Religion where Mormonism was a unit. Every time the Mormons approach me, they are always willing to listen to me talk about why I believe what I believe. They aren't very pushy like the JH's.

[Lev]

Mormons are nice folks. That's probably part of the reason why they have grown so much and the COC is still small and obscure. Both started about the same time and had the same goal of "restoring the church of the first century."

Lev