re: Paging Aubie101 re: "Once saved always saved"

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I think of someone like St Ignatius of Antioch

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I think of someone like Irenaeus, who learned from Polycarp, who learned from John. He said the three pillars of orthodoxy are scripture, tradition handed down from the apostles, and the preaching of the apostles successors, but the surest source of orthodox teaching is the church in Rome.

Yes, but never the deceased.

Jesus is God, the Son. Yes, Paul instructs us, the living, to pray for one another. I see nothing in Scripture that supports praying to the dead or asking the dead to pray for the living.

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There's a Biblical reason to ask our friends and family in Heaven to pray for us.

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I was at a funeral not long ago and I asked the priest one on one, “why do people think their dead loved ones are in heaven right now? The LORD didn’t return for them yet.” He replied that he didn’t know. He was familiar with 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 like I am. Let me quote it for you.

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13But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18Therefore encourage one another with these words.

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Those who have “fallen asleep” is synonymous with the “dead in Christ”. Paul’s referring to those followers of Jesus who have physically died. He’s writing to his church who believed they were all about to be raised to heaven while they are alive. The resurrection was supposed to be a transformation, a metamorphosis, from evil sinful flesh and bones into a new glorious heavenly body. They didn’t expect the coming of Jesus to take so long. Paul assures them that even their loved ones who have physically died will be transformed and given new heavenly bodies and will meet Jesus in the air first and those like Paul and his congregation who are still alive will be transformed too. Jesus was supposed to come (hint… not return) about 2000 years ago.

The scripture is clear that the dead are not in heaven. The old Catholic priest agreed with me.

ETA: in this epistle, Jesus and God are clearly separate, and Jesus is an archangel… the archangel Yahweh. In Paul’s letters, he writes of the coming of Jesus… not the return of Jesus. Paul was a member of a group like the Essenes who followed the first temple religion worshipping El Elyon the father, Yahweh his son who inherited Israel in Deuteronomy 32:8-9, and Asherah the mother. Father, son, and Holy Spirit. Separate deities. The gospels are a historicized fictional story of the first temple cult. Jesus is Yahweh. Mary is Asherah. Jesus replaces the corrupt second temple (corrupted by Persia and Babylon) and the Passover the atonement sacrifice. Two identical goats are sacrificed. One pure as Yahweh, and that one is eaten by the priests. The other is released and sent to the wilderness as a sacrifice to AzazEl to take away their sins. Jesus the Messiah is crucified. Jesus Barabbas (barabbas means “son of the father”) is released. How many of yall knew that Barabbas’ name was Jesus?

The Quran confirms the early Christians worshipped Jesus and Mary as separate gods. Surah 5:75 and 5:116.

The Essenes confirm through their Dead Sea Scrolls they worshipped El, Yahweh, and Asherah. They claimed to be children of light and people of the way… terms used by later followers of Jesus. Either the Essenes or a group just like them invented Jesus’ (Yahweh’s) sacrifice because their writings indicate that is exactly what they were waiting on. Paul took it one step further claiming the things they were waiting on actually did happen and they were revealed to Paul in secret messages in scripture and through divine revelation (hallucinations). It’s interesting material for sure.

150 years before “the time of Jesus”, the Essenes were baptizing initiates in the Jordan into their death cult. The Messiah - the anointed king and earthly embodiment of Yahweh - was going to return, destroy the corrupt temple in Jerusalem, judge the living and the dead, and take the righteous into heaven with new heavenly bodies. Try to keep up. Also try reading a book - maybe with subject matter of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so that you can be less of an ignoramus. The Essenes of Qumran kept really good records.

What do you think John the Baptizer was doing in the gospels?

All the things the Dead Sea Scrolls community was prophesying… Paul comes along and claims he had a vision… that all that stuff just finally happened! Jesus was killed in Heaven by the heavenly Rulers (archons) and he was about to come down any day now to judge the living and the dead and bring them to Heaven.

It’s not Babylonian blasphemy. The modern Jewish religion and the Christian Old Testament is the actual corruption of Babylon. Do yourself a favor and read Isaiah 45:1 and see who “God’s anointed messiah” is. Spoiler alert: He was the Babylonian king who financed the building of the Jerusalem (second) temple.

Get your head out of your arse.

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Yes, Paul instructs us, the living, to pray for one another.

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That passage says nothing about "the living".

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I see nothing in Scripture that supports praying to the dead or asking the dead to pray for the living.

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We don't ask dead people to pray for us. God said he is God of the living NOT of the dead. So, we are asking those who are alive in Heaven to pray for us. Revelation contains imagery of this occurring.

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"The dead" is mentioned where?

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Right next to the words "scripture alone".....oh........wait.

In response to your second point, Revelation 5. The only way around this is to start with a presupposition and then insert your bias into the text.

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The scripture is clear that the dead are not in heaven. The old Catholic priest agreed with me.

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Both of these statements are absolutely false.

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Both of these statements are absolutely false.

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Wow, that is a compelling argument backed up by evidence and facts. You should quit your job and become a professional persuasive speaker.

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Read the article excerpt by Karlo Broussard that I posted above for the arguments against your position.

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I went back up and read them. It’s the same arguments I’ve heard before. I get it. However, Paul’s writings that pre-date all the other gospels and revelation state the opposite - that souls sleep until the resurrection of the dead. Don’t think that it is my position, as I don’t believe in any of it. But, if I did view the current canon as divinely inspired (which I don’t), I think the argument is stronger for soul sleep. Blame God for inspiring a shitty set of scriptures with many contradictions that split up his church. If the message was consistent without thousands of contradictions, we wouldn’t have thousands of Christian groups, especially the many Protestants, Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses that believe in soul sleep.

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As for the old Catholic priest - Did you really think that he had time to discuss this question of Theology with you at a FUNERAL?

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We had a party afterwards and were drinking beer. He’s an old Cajun fellow. He believes in soul sleep per Paul’s epistles. If the Catholic Church knew about it, they might excommunicate him .

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Even Jesus answered this question when he talked to the Sadduces about Moses and Elijah being alive and God not being a God of the dead.

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In some early Christian traditions, Moses went up straight to heaven bodily (in some traditions, he dies and is resurrected), in similar fashion to Elijah getting swept up to heaven in a whirlwind. The Quran, which was born from a Torah-observant Christian sect, preserves the story of Moses getting swept up to heaven in Jerusalem instead of dying on the other side of the Jordan for touching a rock with a stick.

ETA: I think Paul’s epistles preserves Jewish ideas of the Essenes and other groups who reject the Mosaic law and Mosaic theology and instead practice the first temple cult theology of polytheism with El Elyon the father God, his wife Asherah the Holy Spirit, and their unique son and archangel Yahweh. In that religion, people went to sleep when they died. I think the gospel writers who contradict Paul on the subject of soul sleep are being corrupted by Hellenistic ideas.