Does 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18 Teach Jesus Will Return With Dead Saints Now With Him In Heaven?
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FreeGrace2 said:
We sin BECAUSE of the inherited fallen nature from Adam.
You have missed the whole point.
WHY are we "imperfect"? Do you know? It is because of Adam.
Paul blamed Adam in Romans 5. You should read that chapter.
We sin BECAUSE of the inherited fallen nature from Adam.
You have missed the whole point.
WHY are we "imperfect"? Do you know? It is because of Adam.
Paul blamed Adam in Romans 5. You should read that chapter.
Acts of sin are the individual's personal responsibility but the propensity toward those acts is inherited from Adam
by the whole human race.
Chapter 5 is quite conculsive about our worst inheritance from Adam.
We don't have to perform a sinful act to have an appetite for it. It's a human predisposition.
Chapter 5 uses this language:
"sin entered the world through one man"
"the many died by the trespass of the one man"
" death reigned from the time of Adam"
" by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man"
" one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people"
If one from our generation had been the first to sin, his sin wouldn't have passed the nature to sin on to all the
offspring of mankind. Only his own descendants would be effected.
by the whole human race.
Chapter 5 is quite conculsive about our worst inheritance from Adam.
We don't have to perform a sinful act to have an appetite for it. It's a human predisposition.
Chapter 5 uses this language:
"sin entered the world through one man"
"the many died by the trespass of the one man"
" death reigned from the time of Adam"
" by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man"
" one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people"
If one from our generation had been the first to sin, his sin wouldn't have passed the nature to sin on to all the
offspring of mankind. Only his own descendants would be effected.
FreeGrace2 said:
Does the study indicate whether our sin nature comes from Adam, or from personal sin? iow, does sin cause us to have a sin nature?
Thanks.
Bingo! Excellent response.
Amen!
Does the study indicate whether our sin nature comes from Adam, or from personal sin? iow, does sin cause us to have a sin nature?
Thanks.
Bingo! Excellent response.
Amen!
I have a Jewish background and there is no chiasm there. The text clearly says,
"
13 Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about those who have died. We don’t want you to be sad like other people—those who have no hope. 14 We believe that Jesus died, but we also believe that he rose again. So we believe that God will raise to life through Jesus any who have died and bring them together with him when he comes.
15 What we tell you now is the Lord’s own message. Those of us who are still living when the Lord comes again will join him, but not before those who have already died. 16 The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. And the people who have died and were in Christ will rise first. 17 After that we who are still alive at that time will be gathered up with those who have died. We will be taken up in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air. And we will be with the Lord forever. 18 So encourage each other with these words."
The I Thess 4 does not say, anyone is coming with him from Heaven. But, these two texts do.
Jude 1:14
And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
1 Thessalonians 3:13
To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
"
13 Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about those who have died. We don’t want you to be sad like other people—those who have no hope. 14 We believe that Jesus died, but we also believe that he rose again. So we believe that God will raise to life through Jesus any who have died and bring them together with him when he comes.
15 What we tell you now is the Lord’s own message. Those of us who are still living when the Lord comes again will join him, but not before those who have already died. 16 The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. And the people who have died and were in Christ will rise first. 17 After that we who are still alive at that time will be gathered up with those who have died. We will be taken up in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air. And we will be with the Lord forever. 18 So encourage each other with these words."
The I Thess 4 does not say, anyone is coming with him from Heaven. But, these two texts do.
Jude 1:14
And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
1 Thessalonians 3:13
To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
https://www.gotquestions.org/chiasm-chiastic.html
https://www.compellingtruth.org/antithetical-parallelism.html
https://www.compellingtruth.org/synthetic-parallelism.html
"
CHIASMUS IN THE SCRIPTURES
1. The concept is quite easy but it does challenge some assumptions we make about how we should read Scripture. Chiasmus refers to a sequence of elements of a sentence or verse, paragraph, chapter or even book which are then repeated and developed – but in reverse order. It is sometimes called introverted parallelism. It is best understood through examples. Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath”. You can see “sabbath” and “man” are repeated in the sentence but in reverse order. This gives symmetry to the sentence which succinctly makes the point memorable.
2. If we give the elements of the sentence a marker to show the parallels – say “sabbath” is A and “man” is B – we can represent the sentence “The sabbath (A) was made for man (B), not man (B’) for the sabbath (A’)” as ABB’A’. The reversal of the AB order – to B’A’ – is what makes this a chiasm.
3. We can see a slightly more complex pattern in Genesis 9:6 ESV which follows the word order in the Hebrew text. (If you look at the KJV for this verse it changes the word order – “man’s blood” instead of “blood of man” and thereby slightly obscures the precision of the chiasm). So the pattern, displayed below, is ABCC’B’A’.
(A) Whoever sheds
(B) the blood
(C) of man
(C’) by man
(B’) shall his blood
(A’) be shed
4. When the pattern has a single central clause such as ABCB’A’. The effect of this pattern is to give prominence to the central statement, which can therefore be the main point of the passage, or at least considered as the pivot or turning point of the passage. Take for example an ABCB’A’ chiasm in John 4.
A (23a) But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth:
B (23b) for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
C (24a) God is a Spirit:
B’ (24b) and they that worship him
A’ (24c) must worship him in spirit and in truth.
5. When this passage in John 4:23-24 is read the repetition is immediately apparent. You may already have these key phrases underlined because they are echoes of the words of Joshua when he came to Shechem. But if you had these marked in you might have wondered why the repetition is there because the logic is not so easy to follow. This is where we need to readjust our approach. The linear logic we are used to in our culture, where points are made in one direction leading to a conclusion at the end of the line, is not the logic of chiastic passages. The main point is at the centre – God is a Spirit, and from this follows why we should worship Him in spirit.
6. Another even more complex but lovely pattern can be found in 1 Peter 1:23-25.
A (23a) Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God,
B (23b) which liveth and abideth for ever.
C (24a) For all flesh is as grass,
D (24b) and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
C’ (24c) The grass withereth,
D’ (24d) and the flower thereof falleth away:
B’ (25a) But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.
A’ (25b) And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
7. What this chiastic structure, as others, invites us to do is to view the passage as a whole. The pairs of clauses i.e. AA’, BB’, should be compared or contrasted. They make sense if we were to read the two together. So the sense of AA’ is that we are born again by receiving the Word of God which comes to us through the preaching of the Gospel – simple! The components of the next pair BB’ are almost identical in thought and give due emphasis to the eternal purpose of God revealed in the Gospel. In this case the middle section is a four line passage which has a regular parallelism – CDC’D’. The subject is grass then flower, grass then flower. Looking at the passage as a whole it presents us with the thought of our fleeting mortality at the centre, wrapped around by the message of the hope of eternal life through the Gospel.
8. So how common are chiastic structures? The academic study of chiasmus in modern times can be dated to the work of Nils Wilhelm Lund who published articles in 1930 and 1931 and then a book entitled “Chiasmus in the New Testament” in 1942."
https://www.chiasmusxchange.com/explanatory-notes/
N.T. was written in Greek, not Hebrew.
https://www.compellingtruth.org/antithetical-parallelism.html
https://www.compellingtruth.org/synthetic-parallelism.html
"
CHIASMUS IN THE SCRIPTURES
1. The concept is quite easy but it does challenge some assumptions we make about how we should read Scripture. Chiasmus refers to a sequence of elements of a sentence or verse, paragraph, chapter or even book which are then repeated and developed – but in reverse order. It is sometimes called introverted parallelism. It is best understood through examples. Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath”. You can see “sabbath” and “man” are repeated in the sentence but in reverse order. This gives symmetry to the sentence which succinctly makes the point memorable.
2. If we give the elements of the sentence a marker to show the parallels – say “sabbath” is A and “man” is B – we can represent the sentence “The sabbath (A) was made for man (B), not man (B’) for the sabbath (A’)” as ABB’A’. The reversal of the AB order – to B’A’ – is what makes this a chiasm.
3. We can see a slightly more complex pattern in Genesis 9:6 ESV which follows the word order in the Hebrew text. (If you look at the KJV for this verse it changes the word order – “man’s blood” instead of “blood of man” and thereby slightly obscures the precision of the chiasm). So the pattern, displayed below, is ABCC’B’A’.
(A) Whoever sheds
(B) the blood
(C) of man
(C’) by man
(B’) shall his blood
(A’) be shed
4. When the pattern has a single central clause such as ABCB’A’. The effect of this pattern is to give prominence to the central statement, which can therefore be the main point of the passage, or at least considered as the pivot or turning point of the passage. Take for example an ABCB’A’ chiasm in John 4.
A (23a) But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth:
B (23b) for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
C (24a) God is a Spirit:
B’ (24b) and they that worship him
A’ (24c) must worship him in spirit and in truth.
5. When this passage in John 4:23-24 is read the repetition is immediately apparent. You may already have these key phrases underlined because they are echoes of the words of Joshua when he came to Shechem. But if you had these marked in you might have wondered why the repetition is there because the logic is not so easy to follow. This is where we need to readjust our approach. The linear logic we are used to in our culture, where points are made in one direction leading to a conclusion at the end of the line, is not the logic of chiastic passages. The main point is at the centre – God is a Spirit, and from this follows why we should worship Him in spirit.
6. Another even more complex but lovely pattern can be found in 1 Peter 1:23-25.
A (23a) Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God,
B (23b) which liveth and abideth for ever.
C (24a) For all flesh is as grass,
D (24b) and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
C’ (24c) The grass withereth,
D’ (24d) and the flower thereof falleth away:
B’ (25a) But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.
A’ (25b) And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
7. What this chiastic structure, as others, invites us to do is to view the passage as a whole. The pairs of clauses i.e. AA’, BB’, should be compared or contrasted. They make sense if we were to read the two together. So the sense of AA’ is that we are born again by receiving the Word of God which comes to us through the preaching of the Gospel – simple! The components of the next pair BB’ are almost identical in thought and give due emphasis to the eternal purpose of God revealed in the Gospel. In this case the middle section is a four line passage which has a regular parallelism – CDC’D’. The subject is grass then flower, grass then flower. Looking at the passage as a whole it presents us with the thought of our fleeting mortality at the centre, wrapped around by the message of the hope of eternal life through the Gospel.
8. So how common are chiastic structures? The academic study of chiasmus in modern times can be dated to the work of Nils Wilhelm Lund who published articles in 1930 and 1931 and then a book entitled “Chiasmus in the New Testament” in 1942."
https://www.chiasmusxchange.com/explanatory-notes/
N.T. was written in Greek, not Hebrew.
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http://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/content/pdfs/40-3_Sola_Structura/40-3_Levinson.pdf
Based on what is written here, It may be parallelism we see in that text.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...blical_Narrative_Rhetoric_of_Characterization
https://www.gotquestions.org/synthetic-parallelism.html
https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/poetry/about-hebrew-parallelism-called-chiasmus.htm
https://www.compellingtruth.org/chiasm-chiastic.html
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-is-chiasmus-definitions-and-examples.html
Based on what is written here, It may be parallelism we see in that text.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...blical_Narrative_Rhetoric_of_Characterization
https://www.gotquestions.org/synthetic-parallelism.html
https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/poetry/about-hebrew-parallelism-called-chiasmus.htm
https://www.compellingtruth.org/chiasm-chiastic.html
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-is-chiasmus-definitions-and-examples.html
13 Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about those who have died. We don’t want you to be sad like other people—those who have no hope. 14 We believe that Jesus died, but we also believe that he rose again. So we believe that God will raise to life through Jesus any who have died and bring them together with him when he comes.
15 What we tell you now is the Lord’s own message. Those of us who are still living when the Lord comes again will join him, but not before those who have already died. 16 The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. And the people who have died and were in Christ will rise first. 17 After that we who are still alive at that time will be gathered up with those who have died. We will be taken up in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air. And we will be with the Lord forever. 18 So encourage each other with these words.
Matthew 27:51-53
Easy-to-Read Version
51 When Jesus died, the curtain in the Temple was torn into two pieces. The tear started at the top and tore all the way to the bottom. Also, the earth shook and rocks were broken. 52 The graves opened, and many of God’s people who had died were raised from death. 53 They came out of the graves. And after Jesus was raised from death, they went into the holy city, and many people saw them.
Luke 20:37
Easy-to-Read Version
37 Moses clearly showed that people are raised from death. When Moses wrote about the burning bush,[a] he said that the Lord is ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob
Matthew 22:32
King James Version
32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Easy-to-Read Version
51 When Jesus died, the curtain in the Temple was torn into two pieces. The tear started at the top and tore all the way to the bottom. Also, the earth shook and rocks were broken. 52 The graves opened, and many of God’s people who had died were raised from death. 53 They came out of the graves. And after Jesus was raised from death, they went into the holy city, and many people saw them.
Luke 20:37
Easy-to-Read Version
37 Moses clearly showed that people are raised from death. When Moses wrote about the burning bush,[a] he said that the Lord is ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob
Matthew 22:32
King James Version
32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
I have. He doesn't say what you claim he says.
Romans 5:12 Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned
Take note that the above verse is of course correct but this is what many people think it says:
"Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so SIN spread to all men because all men sinned"
That misreading/eisegesis is the basis for the doctrine that Adam has passed down his SIN to all of us but of course that is not what the verse says. Death is what is passed down to us, and of course that is only because we also sin, "so death spread to all men because all men sinned"
So death is only spread to those who sin, and of course all above the age of accountability have sinned.
Adam's sin is not spread to others making original sin/inherited sin incorrect because that is not what Paul teaches.
Death is spread, but only to those that have sinned.
So a baby is born without Adam's sin. When the child reaches the age of accountability and then sins, then a spiritual death comes to them and the only way to remove it is to be forgiven and be born again.
Well, that's what Scripture teaches, friend 
The Soul, which exists as a consequence of the union of the Body and the Breath of Life, can no more continue to exist when the Breath returns from the Body back to God, than light can continue to exist when the electric current is removed from the bulb. That's what the "Breath of Life" is - God's "life giving principle" that animates the inanimate.
That's why the Second Coming is called the "blessed hope" - because Jesus is coming to bring back into existence righteous Souls who fell asleep in death. It's why Paul said if the dead don't rise, they that are fallen asleep in Jesus are PERISHED - Paul did NOT say they which are fallen asleep in Jesus are good to go, because they're up there having a "hallelujah time" -- he said they are PERISHED if they don't rise.
That's why the Resurrection is not the "celestial fashion show" that so many claim it is, where disembodied "poltergeists" that have been floating around and enjoying all the benefits and joy and ecstasy of heaven get downloaded into a new body on some celestial cosmic supermodel runway.
The Soul, which exists as a consequence of the union of the Body and the Breath of Life, can no more continue to exist when the Breath returns from the Body back to God, than light can continue to exist when the electric current is removed from the bulb. That's what the "Breath of Life" is - God's "life giving principle" that animates the inanimate.That's why the Second Coming is called the "blessed hope" - because Jesus is coming to bring back into existence righteous Souls who fell asleep in death. It's why Paul said if the dead don't rise, they that are fallen asleep in Jesus are PERISHED - Paul did NOT say they which are fallen asleep in Jesus are good to go, because they're up there having a "hallelujah time" -- he said they are PERISHED if they don't rise.
That's why the Resurrection is not the "celestial fashion show" that so many claim it is, where disembodied "poltergeists" that have been floating around and enjoying all the benefits and joy and ecstasy of heaven get downloaded into a new body on some celestial cosmic supermodel runway.
Well, that's what Scripture teaches, friend The Soul, which exists as a consequence of the union of the Body and the Breath of Life, can no more continue to exist when the Breath returns from the Body back to God, than light can continue to exist when the electric current is removed from the bulb. That's what the "Breath of Life" is - God's "life giving principle" that animates the inanimate.
The Soul, which exists as a consequence of the union of the Body and the Breath of Life, can no more continue to exist when the Breath returns from the Body back to God, than light can continue to exist when the electric current is removed from the bulb. That's what the "Breath of Life" is - God's "life giving principle" that animates the inanimate.
Matthew 10:27 What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.
28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
that is what scripture teaches.
Scripture also teaches Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
THEN YOU YOURSELF TAKE WHAT IS TOLD US THERE, AND WITH SOME CONJECTURE FROM YOU
YOU THEN COME UP WITH
"The Soul, which exists as a consequence of the union of the Body and the Breath of Life, can no more continue to exist when the Breath returns from the Body back to God, than light can continue to exist when the electric current is removed from the bulb"
AND THEN YOU PUT FORTH WHAT WAS CONCLUDED AS ONE OF GODS TRUTHES and THEN ARGUE AGAINST WHAT IS TRULY WRITTEN BY THAT.
IF I AM INCORRECT, then please show me THE SCRIPTURE FOR "The Soul,....."
WHICH OF COURSE RENDERS NULL AND VOID
28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
God doesn't state WITHOUT THAT DUST OF THE EARTH THE soul ceases to exist DOES HE?