Questions and Answers
Inasmuch as none of the political and religious leaders of our nations will repent of their sins and stand in the gap to tell the people to repent of their sins and turn to the true God, calamity will follow. What a contrast to the king of Nineveh who, responding to Jonah’s warning, repented of his evil deeds and told the people to do likewise. Notice God’s pronouncement in Isaiah 63:4-5: “For the day of vengeance is in My heart, And the year of My redeemed has come. I looked, but there was no one to help, And I wondered That there was no one to uphold; Therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me; And My own fury, it sustained Me.” God’s Church must be different. A warning must be given, and God expects and requires of His Church to do so. And so, God demands of His Church to plead the cause of the needy and to show the leaders of our nations and the people following our leaders their sins with the hope that they will repent and turn. Isaiah 58:1 says: “Cry aloud, spare not; Lift up your voice like a trumpet; Tell My people their transgression, And the house of Jacob their sins.” He… Paul says that the rulers of this world did not understand the Truth about Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 2:6-8). That is still true today, as this world is still cut off from God and godly understanding. Satan, the god and ruler of this world, has deceived the whole world, so that good is believed to be evil and light is vilified as darkness (Isaiah 5:20). Christ says that the Gentile rulers of this world exercise lordship over the people, even being (falsely) called “benefactors,” but that this is wrong and should not be done (Luke 22:25-26). But as we will see, that does not only apply to Gentile kings and nations. Christ even calls our political and religious leaders “blind guides” (Matthew 23:16). God calls the leaders of the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,and other English-speaking nations leaders of Sodom. Note Isaiah 1:10: “Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the law of our God, You people of Gomorrah…” God is charging the leaders and the people with the same types of sins Sodom and Gomorrah were famous for, leading to their utter destruction. They are supposed to hear and to heed, but they don’t. Isaiah 3:12 says… In part one of this two-part series, we looked at the assertion by some, maybe many in mainstream Christianity, who believe that Jesus’ resurrected body was physical and that this same, physical Jesus ascended to Heaven, from where He will one day return to Earth. Let us continue to look at evidence that proves otherwise. We read Christ’s words and action in Luke 24:39: “‘Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.’” As we said in the previous instalment, the Roman Catholic Church “explains”: “Christ makes it plain to His disciples that He does have a physical body; He is not a disembodied spirit.” Again, as pointed out before, this “explanation” overlooks that Spirit beings do have form and shape—they are not “disembodied” spirits, but their bodies are composed of Spirit. There is plenty of evidence of angels taking on the form of a human being so that they could be seen, as we know that a flesh and blood human being can’t see a Spirit being unless it materialises itself. The question has been asked and answered as to “How many times do angels appear in… At first glance, it might seem a ridiculous question to ask but there are those who think that when Jesus went back to Heaven, He did so as a physical being. In our Q&A entitled “How Important is the Correct Understanding About the Immortal Soul? (Part 2),” we quoted a Christian author who wrote: “A fundamental article of the Christian faith is that the resurrected Christ now dwells in Heaven. We are told that His resurrected body on Earth was physical and that this same, physical Jesus ascended to Heaven, from where He will one day return to Earth. It seems indisputable, then, to say that there is at least one physical body in the present Heaven.” On the website catholic.com, we read: “In Luke 24:39, the risen Jesus says to the disciples, ‘See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have’ (emphasis added). This verse is sufficient to debunk the idea that Jesus did not rise bodily, but John 2:19-22 provides another nail in the coffin. Here Jesus claims, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ Two verses… In previous Q&As, we’ve already looked at false assertions by some Christian writers that “human beings have an immortal soul, that the present Heaven is a temporary lodging place even though the present Heaven is not our final destination place and that that between our earthly lives and our bodily resurrection God may grant us some temporary physical form that will allow us to function as human beings while in that unnatural state ‘between bodies’ awaiting our bodily resurrection.” We have also reviewed the spirit in man which is not the same as the soul as the Bible shows, in simple terms, that man is a soul, not has a soul. We showed that each human being has a non-physical component in his brain, called “the spirit in man.” We also looked at the fact that the Hebrews did not believe that we go to Heaven when we die. Neither did the early Christians. We also reviewed the false belief that “the resurrected Christ now dwells in Heaven and that His resurrected body on Earth was physical and that this same, physical Jesus ascended to Heaven, from where He will one day return to Earth.” This leads on to the erroneous assertion, where… “Pornography” may be difficult to define, and many may not agree on a common definition. When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity in 1964, he responded: “I know it when I see it.” In applying this quasi-definition to a motion picture at issue, he concluded that it was not pornographic. This was in 1964. Surely, today’s standards and definitions are even much more liberal. We will not try to define pornography in this article. Rather, we set forth guidelines which the reader may use to come to conclusions applicable to oneself, based on his or her understanding and conscience. We use the word pornography (another word might be obscenity) with this introductory precaution in mind. In this present age, pornography is frighteningly easy to access. With the lightning speed of a whim, people can view pornographic images and videos on computers and phones, dramatically reducing barriers to availability that would have otherwise prevented them from doing so. Hand in hand with greater accessibility, media and entertainment increasingly normalize pornography. The proliferation of pornography and derivations of it are designed to exploit the raw sexual urge of people, especially men. The nature of pornographic content may… There are two interesting additions God made to His Law that did not originally appear in it. These additions were made because questions were asked about particular situations that occurred that the Law, at that time, did not cover. While they were not a part of the oral law, the principle is similar to that mentioned in Deuteronomy 17:8-11. In these cases, the people with the questions went to Moses and Aaron to ask for a decision on the matters. Moses then went to God for the judgement which was then incorporated into the written Law. The first of these is mentioned in Numbers 9:6-11. “Now there were certain men who were defiled by a human corpse, so that they could not keep the Passover on that day; and they came before Moses and Aaron that day. And those men said to him, ‘We became defiled by a human corpse. Why are we kept from presenting the offering of the LORD at its appointed time among the children of Israel?’ And Moses said to them, ‘Stand still, that I may hear what the LORD will command concerning you.’ Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, saying: “If anyone of you or your posterity… What is the “Oral Law?” When we read of Jesus’s interactions with the Pharisees, we find that they had many laws and procedures that were not mentioned directly in the Law that God inspired Moses to write down. So, did the Pharisees or their predecessors create these, what could be termed oral law, sometime after the close of the Old Testament period? Actually, the oral law was first mentioned directly in the book of Deuteronomy, and the necessity for oral law arises in the book of Exodus, and it may well be referred to in the book of Genesis, as will be mentioned later. So, what is the oral law, and why was it necessary, and when were parts of it created? In actual fact, there are three basic categories of oral law, each with a different purpose. What we mean by the term oral law can be described loosely as additions to the written Law, sometimes called the Torah, which are needed if one is to carry out specific commanded activities in the way God intended. In other words, for some of the specific commands that God gave to His people, you could not possibly carry them out as God intended, based on what is written in… In part 1 of this Q&A, we discussed the fact that many religions believe that each person has an immortal soul. Orthodox Christianity, in general, has the same understanding. But is it true? In our booklet “The Theory of Evolution – A Fairy Tale for Adults,” the Spirit in Man is discussed and below are a few selected highlights taken from pages 19-26. This shows that the Spirit in Man is not the soul. “Herbert W. Armstrong… published his findings in a book entitled, ‘The Incredible Human Potential.’ This is what he wrote on pages 74 and 75, ‘Animals are equipped with brain and instinct. But they do not have power to understand and choose moral and spiritual values or to develop perfect spiritual character. Animals have brain, but no intellect—instinct, but no ability to develop holy and Godly character. And that pictures the transcendental DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANIMAL BRAIN AND HUMAN MIND. “‘What then can account for the vast difference? Science cannot adequately answer. Some scientists, in the field of research, conclude that, of necessity, there has to be some non-physical component in human brain that does not exist in animal brain….’ “Mr. Armstrong then explains that, according to the Bible, each human being has a non-physical component in his brain, called ‘the spirit… On the Britannica website we read the following: “Human beings seem always to have had some notion of a shadowy double that survives the death of the body. But the idea of the soul as a mental entity, with intellectual and moral qualities, interacting with a physical organism but capable of continuing after its dissolution, derives in Western thought from Plato and entered into Judaism during approximately the last century before the Common Era and thence into Christianity. In Jewish and Christian thinking it has existed in tension with the idea of the resurrection of the person conceived as an indissoluble psychophysical unity. Christian thought gradually settled into a pattern that required both of these apparently divergent ideas. At death the soul is separated from the body and exists in a conscious or unconscious disembodied state. But on the future Day of Judgement souls will be re-embodied (whether in their former but now transfigured earthly bodies or in new resurrection bodies) and will live eternally in the heavenly kingdom.” This is one of several “explanations” of our future in heaven. It is by far not the only one, as we will discuss below in more detail. However, we can see from this information how the thinking of pagan philosophers can infiltrate…Who is to warn the leaders of the world? (Part 2)
Who is to warn the leaders of the world? (Part 1)
Is Jesus Christ a Spirit Being Today? (Part 2)
Is Jesus Christ a Spirit Being Today? (Part 1)
Could the third Heaven be physical?
What are the dangers of pornography?
What do we know about the Oral Law? (Part 2)
What do we know about the Oral Law? (Part 1)
How Important is the correct understanding about the “Immortal Soul”? (Part 2)
How important is the correct understanding about the “Immortal Soul”? (Part 1)