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[lilitalienboi16]

Well to give you a bit of background on this thought of me mine... I have a friend, well two, that like to talk to me about God. They are both agnostics and they always throw me the leveticus scriptures of slavery, killing your child if they raise the hand against a parent, God commanding killings of this or that.. and well, it's things I am not equipped to answer and often times I result to simply telling them I can't answer some of those questions to which they continue that the bible could not possibly be God's Words, it's just a bunch of fairy tales like the north mythologies that you dismiss etc..

I have defended my faith and my beliefs with hard and sound reasoning along with scientific backing of my understandings. I am content with my faith and have no doubt that Jesus Christ is indeed Lord and Saviour of this world and that His words, God's words are kept in a book for us to this day known as the bible.

My friend one day brought up the notion of an eight year old dying of cancer or the children in africa who die everyday and he told me, how do these people get to experience your God's idea of good and evil. How do they learn, like you are, from this experience you claim that God is putting us through to make us more like Him? How does an eight year old girl dying of cancer get to become more like her "loving Father" in heaven?

Again.. I could do little to answer this specific question and I retorded with the thought that not everything always fits 100% with the idea's that I hold true, I cannot explain to him why an eight year old girl has to die of cancer and where the good in that lies. How does that girl get to experience part of what God is putting us through to make us more like Him. It was tough to answer him..

Well, along come a day where I thought these things through and it hit me. Now bare with me.. these might be things that you have all well understood now for a while or perhaps even found obvious.. and I do think this to be an obvious thought but sometimes its what's right infront of us that we miss. It's what we think we know, that when push come to shove, we realize we didn't really know at all. So.. I will state the obvious as I now understand it. As it "clicked."

Everything has an opposite, has it's own counter. To know good, we must know evil. To know what dark is, we must have seen the light. To know what tall is, there must exist short. To know what happiness is, we must experience sadness and to know what Love is, we must experience hatred. Some of these things like patience, something which must be waited for cannot be created with the snap of a finger, because by very definition of the word, it is something that takes time to come about so we know for a fact that some of these things, that make us more like our Father must be experienced. They cannot be created by our Father and simply given to us as is so often wondered about.

The most important thing in this universe though, the most important gift of all.. LIFE, LIVING... It's opposite... it's counter.. is DEATH or DYING. We must experience this to truly be made aware of what it means to be alive, to be living, to have life. So the most important gift God has ever given us.. we cannot truly be thankful for it until we experience the one act in which.. one cannot return from until that day. The one act that would be to many the most horrundeous, the scariest, the most desperate..all the while being the opposite of the most beautiful, most amazing thing our creator has ever bestowed upon us.

So yes.. while the wages of sin are indeed death.. I have now come to the realization, that not only is this death simply a penalty for sin but rather.. a most revealing moment and experience - the one that makes us most thankful and gives us the ability to truly be alive, to truly be free, to know what it finally means to have this most beautiful gift from our loving Father known as Life.

I now know.. I will never trully, no matter how much I think I do, fully appreciate the gift of life that our Father has given us simply because.. I do not know what it means to be without it.

I now see death as necessary, not just as some part of life that I could not understand other than it being said by God that it was to be so for our sins.. but necessary for us to truly and fully know what it means to be alive. To finally know as He knows the most beautiful thing in all creation, in all existance. The gift of Life.

Though this thought may be simple and obvious on the surface.. it wasn't until I could put it into words on a paper, that all the death, the killing, and everything in this world that didn't seem fair or so ugly to me - no matter how much I thought I understood God's plan or HIs will - it wasn't until that moment that it all made sense to me.

So the death of an eight year old girl to cancer, though a most tragic loss of life, is to her, a bestowing of a most beautiful gift, one that when she is raised from the dead will truly be made known to her. One that will one day be made known to us all.

Please don't mock me for these thoughts.. they are rather personal and well.. I hope they help bring some comfort or even understanding to others who struggle with anything related to killing, death or having to die.

I guess the only part of this that doesn't make sense is... we know that the Father has never died... yet I'm sure He knows and is very greateful, more than we could ever imagine, on what it means to have life and be living. So I guess my theory has a hole in it there and one other hole is in the fact that what about thsoe who are still alive at Jesus return and don't have to die but are rather caught up with Him in the air.. could we say that they don't truly know what it means to be alive? Just some thoughts against my thoughts.. I am a scientist after all xD

Welp feel free to share your thoughts or ideas and what not. Just be nice with me

I do uphold the scriptures always.. above my own thoughts.. I Just didn't think these contradicted any scriptural ideas that I understand currently but I could be wrong.

God bless,

Alex

[Dave in Tenn]

Some very good thoughts, Alex.  I might add that the death of 'others' while we are still alive is also an experience of evil meant to humble us.  Your eight year old dying of cancer did not die in a vacuum.  I reckon the less capable (due to age) that a dying person is to reap the spiritual reward you mention, the MORE it affects the rest of us who HAVE lived to an age to appreciate it.

Jesus died in faith.  He did not raise Himself from the dead.  That His faith was deeper and more 'secure' than ours is not arguable.  His didn't come from nowhere.  But God raised Him from the dead to give US faith.  Ours doesn't come (and doesn't grow) from nowhere either.

I'm thankful to God that you have a piece of it.  I hope your discussions with your buddies will help to instill and grow theirs. 
   

[Kat]

Hi Alex,

Death is a profound reality to us all and to seek more understanding of this reality is just natural. I think it actually shows a maturing spirit when you can begin to look on things from more of a spiritual perspective, not just from the physical aspect of it.

Of course we wonder about these thing, like the little girl dying of cancer or those tiny infants that die. The way I look at those precious little ones dying before they have a chance to experience more of life. Well they will be raised back to life, I believe that they will be given a chance to be raised up and live out a full life in the next age, with all the physical things that entails. Now I suspect that the next age will be quite a bit different than this age, and there will be no Satan around, but they will have a life experience and I do believe they will have to learn how to be righteous.

I've thought about that Scripture "it is appointed for men to die once," and I think it will have to hold true. If a person is blessed to be in the first resurrection then they will "see" Jesus and God told Moses nobody could see His face and live (Exo 33:20). So I thought that maybe the 'change' that Paul spoke of is like a death. In that instant, when you 'see' Christ and the change comes to the Elect that are still living, will that be a kind of death to the physical body? Like the physical body would be consumed by His glory?  Of course they will be instantly given a new body, but it would still be a death, I would think. Of course these are just some thoughts though.

One more thought is about the Father not having experienced death. That is true, but if the Father is in Christ so complete that they are One, then certainly He experienced everything that Christ did. I really believe that the Father was experiencing this life through Jesus Christ and that would include His emotions and feelings I would think as well. Something interesting that occurred to me just now, as that the Father could not actually experience the state of actually being dead, we can see that He had to continue to uphold all of creation. It was just moments before Jesus actually died, after all the things that He had suffered when He said, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?" Was that when God withdrew, because He could not go into death, the unseen, where there is no consciousness with Christ?

Mat 27:46  And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"
v. 47  And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, "This man is calling Elijah."
v. 48  And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to Him to drink.
v. 49  But the others said, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him."
v. 50  And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit.

Interesting topic.

mercy, peace and love
Kat

[lilitalienboi16]

Some very good thoughts, Alex.  I might add that the death of 'others' while we are still alive is also an experience of evil meant to humble us.  Your eight year old dying of cancer did not die in a vacuum.  I reckon the less capable (due to age) that a dying person is to reap the spiritual reward you mention, the MORE it affects the rest of us who HAVE lived to an age to appreciate it.

Jesus died in faith.  He did not raise Himself from the dead.  That His faith was deeper and more 'secure' than ours is not arguable.  His didn't come from nowhere.  But God raised Him from the dead to give US faith.  Ours doesn't come (and doesn't grow) from nowhere either.

I'm thankful to God that you have a piece of it.  I hope your discussions with your buddies will help to instill and grow theirs. 
   

Thank you dave, some very profound wisdom here. You are right, death does not exist in a vacuum but it is very hard to relate the idea's I shared here, with people, such as my two friends, who don't believe necessarily in any form of religion or direction with God. I am however, content with what I understand and have no intentions of convincing them of anything else other than they believe. I will certainly have to remember what you said here, for my own sake.

Hi Alex,

Death is a profound reality to us all and to seek more understanding of this reality is just natural. I think it actually shows a maturing spirit when you can begin to look on things from more of a spiritual perspective, not just from the physical aspect of it.

Of course we wonder about these thing, like the little girl dying of cancer or those tiny infants that die. The way I look at those precious little ones dying before they have a chance to experience more of life. Well they will be raised back to life, I believe that they will be given a chance to be raised up and live out a full life in the next age, with all the physical things that entails. Now I suspect that the next age will be quite a bit different than this age, and there will be no Satan around, but they will have a life experience and I do believe they will have to learn how to be righteous.

I've thought about that Scripture "it is appointed for men to die once," and I think it will have to hold true. If a person is blessed to be in the first resurrection then they will "see" Jesus and God told Moses nobody could see His face and live (Exo 33:20). So I thought that maybe the 'change' that Paul spoke of is like a death. In that instant, when you 'see' Christ and the change comes to the Elect that are still living, will that be a kind of death to the physical body? Like the physical body would be consumed by His glory?  Of course they will be instantly given a new body, but it would still be a death, I would think. Of course these are just some thoughts though.

One more thought is about the Father not having experienced death. That is true, but if the Father is in Christ so complete that they are One, then certainly He experienced everything that Christ did. I really believe that the Father was experiencing this life through Jesus Christ and that would include His emotions and feelings I would think as well. Something interesting that occurred to me just now, as that the Father could not actually experience the state of actually being dead, we can see that He had to continue to uphold all of creation. It was just moments before Jesus actually died, after all the things that He had suffered when He said, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?" Was that when God withdrew, because He could not go into death, the unseen, where there is no consciousness with Christ?

Mat 27:46  And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"
v. 47  And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, "This man is calling Elijah."
v. 48  And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to Him to drink.
v. 49  But the others said, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him."
v. 50  And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit.

Interesting topic.

mercy, peace and love
Kat

Kat I think you shared some great insight also and your thought about no one seeing God's face and LIVING was a very interesting point. I had never looked at that as far as the emphasis being on the "AND" part. This would certainly be a form of death.

I too believe that the Father did experience what His Son did while it was happening, I was simply playing the devils advocates with my own thoughts because the Father as you said, could not die Himself, as He had to sustain the creation. Your second point about Christ crying out, is also a very interesting one as well! Perhaps that is the case.. but I don't think there is anyway to ultimately prove that one. It's a great thought though and I could see it being possible.

Thanks for your input, both of you! And i'm glad my topic has sturred some interest! It has certainly given me some peace about the harder things of God's Word and why He does what He does, the way He does.

Love to you both,

Alex

[Deborah-Leigh]

Hi Alex

This Thread is as a beautiful tapestry of carefully stitched thoughts and illuminating ideas woven with humble regard to the Spirit of Truth.

The creation process required that Adam be put into a deep sleep.

Jesus relates death to sleep.

Ray qualifies the fact that God is still in the process of creating us into His Image.

Jesus Christ is personally resurrected, and waking, in us, His unified state of Glory.

This song is presented to cradle the beauty of offerings already given through multiple lives and deaths that have gone before us and, as a picture of Adam being woken out of a dark dream, to meet his bride in the fullness and Glory of Christ's work of ultimate, sanctified and perfected creation, much to the Joy and Blessing of Father.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMl124VvFRg

Thank you for a lovely Thread.

Arc

[Stacey]

Hi Alex,

Glad you shared your thoughts with us. Your two friends are indeed necessary. I wonder when the time comes for them to be enlightened to the truth will they think back on the days they were so adament with you on those days you all talked about God? Probably.

Would you have ever come to the "wide eye'd moment" you shared here without the input of your buddies? And the questions that you don't have answers for or the ones that are hard to answer, (I have plenty too) I believe are moments when God is teaching you (us) things that may not be apparent at the time but then later give us those special moments. 

To me your testimony here is one more example of everything, every second of every day in each of our lives is not only caused by God but they are necessary for our individual learning and growing in faith experience. 

Lord, give us this day, more wide eyed moments! 

[Rene]

Please don't mock me for these thoughts.. they are rather personal and well.. I hope they help bring some comfort or even understanding to others who struggle with anything related to killing, death or having to die.

Hi Alex,

I cannot image that anyone here would mock you for these thoughts.  I, personally, am delighted to witness your growth and understanding.

René

[lilitalienboi16]

Well thank you everyone for the positive comments! I'm so glad this was well recieved by everyone! I had a great day at the hospital by the way! Lots of fun =]

To stacey;

No, i don't think I would have ever realized what I did in that moment had it not been for my two friends and their continual questioning of my beliefs.

I whole heartedly agree with your statements though and AMEN! To the last one

[JohnMichael]

Wow, Alex. I read this, and I got misty-eyed. God was speaking through you, and this was absolutely beautiful.

Even the counter He created to LIFE is overflowing with His abundant Mercy and Love.

In Him,
John

[Extol]

Thanks for sharing with us, Brother Alex!

Two of my favorite verses regarding death and evil:

Genesis 50:20: But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive.

1 Corinthians 15:50: Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption.... BUT... the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (v 52)