Why do we die, and where do we go afterwards?

Originally posted by Locoman8
reply to post by InterestedObserver

 

Your soul dies with you but upon ressurrection, God breaths life back into you thus bringing your soul back to life because your body and soul are one. Body and soul are not separate. It's not like a pile of bones has a soul right next to it. The soul is in the body... is part of the body. Think of the soul as our concience guiding us through important decisions and choices.

just to further your post.

what makes us who we are? memories, personality traits experiences etc etc. what makes out body? dna right?

if god has infinite memory, could he not remember perfectly who we were and then when the resurrection comes put us back together?

its not that hard for god to do such a thing.

Again I ask, why did Jesus say it is better to celebrate death than to celebrate life?

Fear mongers... that's how I see Christians as a whole these day. That and control freaks. Behave or the bad guy will get you, and not only that, the good guy will punish you... Dang, I would be scared too...

Boogie Man Philosophy 101

Halloween Horror Classes in the gym for all those who want to learn about how hell is run.

Co-Dependancy Control issues in room 201 A

How To Rule the World with Fear, groups in room 1, 2 , 3, 4, and 5

How to be Spiritual and Live in Peace... well it looks like the classes are closed in this department.

How to Laugh at Yourself and Not Take Yourself to Dang Seriously... will start soon in the welfare office...

Originally posted by Zaimless
Again I ask, why did Jesus say it is better to celebrate death than to celebrate life?

actually i did explain that. its because you have a "name" or reputation you dont have when you are born.

Fear mongers... that's how I see Christians as a whole these day. That and control freaks. Behave or the bad guy will get you, and not only that, the good guy will punish you... Dang, I would be scared too...

if you read my above threads, you would see that the bible doesnt support hellfire. nor is this fear mongering. simple fact is that there are consequences for our actions.

i have another thread on what the bible says about being saved

www.belowtopsecret.com...

reply to post by miriam0566

if one believes that god put us on this earth to live a test and then go off the heaven or hell, then i can understand why you feel that way.

Just to throw in some of my own opinion, and to repeat what I have said in a few other threads:
If it makes you (not you, in particular, but anyone reading this) feel any better, I do not think we were put here in order to be tested.
Adam was not put in the Garden in order to be tested, either.
The serpent was doing the testing, not God.
Adam had freedom of will, being made perfect, and not knowing sin, so he had the opportunity to choose good or evil.
We do not have that choice because we are born in a fallen state.
God chooses who He will.
From the beginning, He chose Jesus.
The offspring of Eve will rise up and crush the serpent, God promised.
In the fullness of time, Jesus arose to fulfill His promise.
We get a free ride, we just have to jump on.
That is why the true Gospel is so great!

[edit on 9-7-2008 by jmdewey60]

reply to post by Zaimless

Fear mongers... that's how I see Christians as a whole these day. That and control freaks.

People are afraid, themselves.
Jesus said people will see that something very bad is coming and will have their hearts fail, for fear.
It is a sign of lack of faith.
God does preserve his remnant, a few who really do keep the faith.
Good luck, looking for it.
I am not just trying to be ironic, I really do wish you luck.

reply to post by miriam0566


I get frustrated listening to coast to coast am and hear someone say that you can download all your memory into a robot and you will live forever.
That is so wrong that it annoys me to think supposedly intelligent people could be so stupid.
There has to be a continuous chain of consciousness to preserve your being you.
Someone or something, knowing your past experiences, might be of some use to that thing, but it does nothing for you.
It is a long thin, unbreakable thread, connected on one end to God, that preserves our individual conscious being.
God has the ability to unwind that thread when we rise up, in a new bodily form.

Originally posted by jmdewey60.
The offspring of Eve will rise up and crush the serpent, God promised.

just a side note. jesus is technically offspring of eve since his lineage can be traced back to her.

bible also talks about jesus throwing satan into the lake of fire (destroying him)

Originally posted by jmdewey60

God has the ability to unwind that thread when we rise up, in a new bodily form.

the logistics are inconsequential, i was just pointing out that its kind of silly to say that god can't do it

reply to post by miriam0566

the logistics are inconsequential, i was just pointing out that its kind of silly to say that god can't do it

Right but that is how I visualize it.
There is an old way of explaining life that goes way back and I have heard it described that way and a visualization of that folk-lore popped into my head when I was trying to explain what this thing is, to be yourself and not just a clone or representation of yourself.

To clear up this notion of hellfire, I just wanted to state that the bible does not mention eternal torture for sinners. Hell is a word that's misrepresented. There is 1 Hebrew word describing hell in the bible and that word is "sheoul" which means "death". The greek counterpart to "sheoul" is "hades" which means "grave. There are 2 other words the New Testament uses to describe "hell" from greek translations. In 2 Peter, the great apostle describes a place of confinement for the devil and his fallen angels when mentioning "hell". The greek word "Tartaros" is used only once in this manner and comes from the word "tartaroo" which is a mythical abyss where evil pagan gods were sent for punishment. Peter used this as an example of Satan's confinement during the 1,000 year reign of Christ.... no mention of human confinement. The last word used in the New Testament and probably the word people truely associate "hell" with is the greek word "gehenna" which derives from the hebrew word "ge-Hinnom" which means "Valley of Hinnom"... a place on the south side of Jerusalem where pagan rituals and sacrifices were acted out. At the time of Jesus' sermons, the valley of Hinnom was used as a city dump where trash, animal carcases and criminal corpses were constantly burning. Jesus uses "gehenna" 11 times in the Gospels and simply describes the fate of unrepentant sinners with fire. Fire for the unrepentant, that's true but not 'never-ending' torment like tradition leads you to believe. Malachi 4:3 explains:

3) And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.

This explains that those wicked are burned into ash under the feet of the righteous thus explaining that hellfire is simply a death penalty for nonrepentance. It's also known as the second death.... when death and hades (grave) are defeated as explained in Revelation 20-22.

The punishment is eternal.... eternal death and not torment. The punishment for sin is death as explained in the opening chapters of Genesis.
Hell is just a term used by pagan greeks and romans for a place of torment for those not worshipping the pagan gods. It made it's way into christianity through the Jewish encounters with Greeks and Christian encounters with pagan Rome. The true hebrew and greek texts should be accurately translated while replacing the term "hell". Death, Grave, mythical abyss, and valley of Hinnom, should all replace "hell" in the bible and give the readers a way better understanding about the afterlife.

reply to post by Locoman8


ummm, i think i mentioned all this earlier no?

reply to post by miriam0566


If you did, I'm sorry for repeating it. I don't recall all of the translations of "hell" in your thread but if you did mention it, I apologize and it's a good refresher for those who tend to skip to the last page of the thread instead of reading the whole thread. I am on this thread to support your notion of what happens after death. God bless you and keep up the good research. Read some of my threads if you get a chance. Check out my profile page and visit the threads I started including "The truth about The Rapture", "St. Peter of Rome is really Simon Magus, the sorcerer", and "The truth about Christmas and Easter". Check them out and put your thoughts on them if you get a chance to.

Originally posted by Locoman8
Check out my profile page and visit the threads I started including "The truth about The Rapture", "St. Peter of Rome is really Simon Magus, the sorcerer", and "The truth about Christmas and Easter". Check them out and put your thoughts on them if you get a chance to.

i have been, very interesting subjects.

Well those things are taken out of context. The fact is the Christ created a church and told them whatever you loose and bind on Earth is loose and bound in heaven because they have jurisdiction and it has been the only church to exist before 1500 no other church existed.

Now if they create those seasons like Christmas and easter to throw off pagan hollidays what they are doing is deverting souls from paganism when they make it around those times.

The reason why the roman empire had to be converted is because God wanted it that way and peter and Paul had to trvale to rome and throughout the world and converted rome and it became the state religion by 300 ad...

and the Chruch was prophecied countless times in the OT to spread throughout the world and be the bride of Christ.



Now as for Miriam. we will find out what happens at death but make sure on Earth you do all you can to make it a good death and prepare your soul.

peace/

Originally posted by JesusisTruth
Now as for Miriam. we will find out what happens at death but make sure on Earth you do all you can to make it a good death and prepare your soul.

when i die, my soul will die too, just like with everyone. i will exist only in god's memory until the day jesus calls out to the tombs and resurrects me along with both the righteous and the unrighteous.

reply to post by JesusisTruth


You are of course mentioning things not proven or mentioned in the bible.... like the fact that Peter never left Jerusalem and that his real tomb is in Jerusalem and not in Rome...... something the Catholic Church has not been able to prove. You have issues with my views on ST. Peter vs. Simon Magus? Go to my thread and discuss it. This is miriam's thread about death.

This is probably one of the few questions to which we may never know the answer.
The real question should be do we realy want to know the answer?
Think of it this way, if you have a computer you need to format the hard drive from time to time to avoid data corruption and to keep it running smoothly.
similarly the human mind is a vast data storage device. If we were immortal the amount of memories stored in our minds even after a few hundred years would huge.
Are we capable of even storing such huge amounts of information, let alone comprehending it and learning from it.
Do you remember anything of when you were 2-3 years old?
Vauge memories are all that remain. your mind builds up data to fill in the gaps. Now imagine if you are a thousand years old. What would you remember of the last hundred years? What would you learn from it?
Death is an essential part of life. As ironic as that may sound, balance must be maintained.
A human is born into this world learns things by experiance and understands by involvement.
Evrything you see around you leaves an imprint on your mind and you eventually become the sum of your experiance.
you then pass what you think is relevant to the next generation so they can learn from it, add to it and avoid your mistakes.
that is how knowledge evolves into wisdom.
In the end one unique life ends but all its wisdom and experiance lives on.
That is the way the wheel of time turns till it comes back to re learn what it had forgotten.
death is a natural part of the cycle
You must not worry about what will happen to you when you die.
As far as you are concerned you may go to a different place, in which case there is nothing to worry about. If you dont then you just cease to exist in which case there is no point in proceeding any further.
What you must worry about is what knowledge you have added. what you have learnt and what you will pass on because that is the only part of you which will truly survive.
it will become one with the collective knowledge and life of the universe world and that is how you will live on.
What will matter is how your memories will be remembered. either you will be loved or hated and that will depend on the choices you will make here.
It can be argued that a person is ultimately the sum of his memories and experiancesso to simply try to answer your question, we die so that we may ,in a way, live forever.

Also life is a lesson. you only learn it when you are through :-)

reply to post by raptorinvictus


i dont agree at all. maybe from an atheist point of view, what you have expressed is basically as good as it gets. but if god created us, then i dont think it works.

you use the illustration of the hard drive. the way i see it is you spend your life filling it only to have a magnet pass after 80 years or so (if your lucky). even if you pass on even a fraction of it, its pointless. how many people have anything worth passing on?

its kind of a defeatist attitude of just accepting what you have got, even though you know its not worth much. because lets face it, all the knowledge in the world is useless if its going to be lost.

i think if god didnt exist, you would be right.

reply to post by miriam0566


That depends on if you beleave in reincarnation. If you look at it from the point of view of the soul learning from the collective experiance of all life then it might make more sense.
I beleave our bodies are but vessels for our souls which is probably the purest thing God created. We live so that our souls may learn to appriciate the value of knowledge.

how many people have anything worth passing on?

Dont underestimate the value of what you learn evryday.
Evrything you see and interact with ecomes a part of you no matter how insignificant it may seem.
When you walk outside a see a leaf falling to the ground and conciously ignore it your subconcious still remembers it and learns something from it.
If your life was worthless because of your mistakes others who knew of your existance learn from it and try to avoid it.
It is all part of our neverending journey towards perfection.
true wisdom comes only from experiance. Unless you experiance something personally you never appriciate the true meaning of it.
if you immediately know that the candle light is fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago.

Think about it.
if god loves all life he created then why would he put you through hard times unless it made you or others stronger?
why would God allow evil to exist unless it was to let us understand the meaning and value of good.
We live so that we may learn and we die so others may learn.
When our bodies die we live on in a way in other's memories so that they may learn from us.
God is the true state of perfection and we live so that we may learn and come as close to it as we can.

Originally posted by raptorinvictus
That depends on if you beleave in reincarnation.

if god allows us to reincarnate, then why have us forget evrything when we are reborn?

makes little sense right? if you are suppose to learn, then why forget? why must lifetimes of experience be pushed into our subconscious?

this is not even considering that if you believe in the bible, reincarnation completely conflicts with it. if reincarnation is gods original purpose for man, then why is death a punishment? why resurrect? why does it say the soul will die?

these tidbits are usually ignored. the bible is very clear on the nature of death and the condition of the dead.

but you do raise a good point, why does god permit evil? im afraid the answer doesnt lie with our humanistic self centered notions. thats not to say were arent important to god, we are, but the answer doesnt swirl around us. it has to do with certain lies and challenges.

i can get into details, but id prefer it for another thread











Dont underestimate the value of what you learn evryday.
Evrything you see and interact with ecomes a part of you no matter how insignificant it may seem.
When you walk outside a see a leaf falling to the ground and conciously ignore it your subconcious still remembers it and learns something from it.
If your life was worthless because of your mistakes others who knew of your existance learn from it and try to avoid it.
It is all part of our neverending journey towards perfection.
true wisdom comes only from experiance. Unless you experiance something personally you never appriciate the true meaning of it.
if you immediately know that the candle light is fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago.

Think about it.
if god loves all life he created then why would he put you through hard times unless it made you or others stronger?
why would God allow evil to exist unless it was to let us understand the meaning and value of good.
We live so that we may learn and we die so others may learn.
When our bodies die we live on in a way in other's memories so that they may learn from us.
God is the true state of perfection and we live so that we may learn and come as close to it as we can.

This is probably the best post i have ever read on this subject. People should read this to get a better understanding. This is probably one of the main subjects people have questions about. Great work.