I think we probably agree there is an afterlife in an unseen realm that is not able to be perceived in this world. I’m not sure how that relates to Jesus ascending through the stratosphere to be with His Father in heaven.
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Did Jesus physically rise from the dead?
- Thread starter Thinking Homer
- Start date
I think we probably agree there is an afterlife in an unseen realm that is not able to be perceived in this world. I’m not sure how that relates to Jesus ascending through the stratosphere to be with His Father in heaven.
Easily grasped by most religions actually. Most have teachings of an afterlife of some description...even if its reincarnation.
Yet you accept all that your prophet taught at face value....why not Jesus?
Why is the thought of a different life form with capabilities more advanced than ours, out of the realms of possibility for you? Why couldn't Jesus have been raised as a spirit capable of walking through walls and being able to materialize in different bodies? Because it is out of the realms of human science to test? Is it impossible though? Or just unlikely according to current knowledge? How advanced is current knowledge?
When the women went to prepare Jesus' body for burial...the tomb was empty. This fulfilled a prophesy that his flesh would not be left in the grave to see corruption. (Psalm 16:10) So it explains why he had no decaying body in a tomb for people to turn into relics to venerate, (as some are want to do) or a place to visit or to honor someone who died.
Why does Bahá'u'lláh have an elaborate tomb when Jesus doesn't? Was it written that Jesus had to die twice?
I deliberately omitted Buddhism and Hinduism as they both range from atheist to theist perspectives. Reincarnation is a major part of the after life for many Hindus and some Buddhists. The Jews also have a variety of perspectives when it comes to an after life.
The Baha'i Faith has a very clear perspective on the after life:
Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter. It will endure as long as the Kingdom of God, His sovereignty, His dominion and power will endure. It will manifest the signs of God and His attributes, and will reveal His loving kindness and bounty.
(Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, LXXXI)
Heaven and Hell | What Bahá’ís Believe
That's not true. We critically analyse all the major faiths as we do Christianity.
The Baha'is believe in an Omniscient, All-Powerful God just as the Christians do. The Baha'is however are clear that there is just One God, not three gods. We do not see Jesus as being literally God incarnate.
Of course God has the power to enable miracles and great things to happen. Just because He can, doesn't mean He does. We would be fools to take every miracle written in every religions sacred book literally.
Take the OT literally and we have the young earth Christians making an absolute mockery of Christianity by trying to fit science into what the bible literally says.
The symbolism of an empty tomb is powerful and that's why its included. It symbolised the power of life after death. I don't believe the gospels are literal historic accounts. For example we need to consider why history is silent about many of the events that are recorded in Matthews account of the crucifixion.
And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.
Matthew 27:51-54
The reason is simple. The author of Matthew has produced high embellished narrative based on Mark and Luke. If the events actually happened you think we would have some record of them outside of the gospels?
Why does Bahá'u'lláh have an elaborate tomb when Jesus doesn't? Was it written that Jesus had to die twice?I just don't understand Baha'i thinking at all.
You are assuming our inability to locate a burial site for someone two thousand years ago is a proof that He never physically died. We couldn't locate the burial site of most people who died two thousand years ago. Does that mean they were all resurrected too?
Interestingly, the ancient Jews had no belief in an afterlife. (Ecclesiastes 9:5; 10) The Hebrew scriptures teach that man is a soul and that life ceases when breathing stops. (Physicians know this..right?)
The soul dies. (Ezekiel 18:4) In the Genesis account, Adam wasn't "given" a soul...but "became" one when God started him breathing. He was never given a heaven or hell scenario...he was simply told he would return to the dust if he disobeyed God's command. (Genesis 3:19)
The later Jews, in apostasy, adopted the Hellenic belief in an immortal soul....so did the Christians, but it was prophesied by Jesus and the apostles that an apostasy would occur "while men were sleeping"...which was after the apostles passed away. Weeds of fake Christianity spread like weeds always do. (Matthew 13:24-30; 36-42)
And that faith is based on the writings of your prophet. It promotes a separation of body and soul...something the Bible never does....but something that commonly runs through all other religions. It apparently has a common origin.
How is it possible to "critically analyze" writings that are so diverse in their content and beliefs? I cannot see how anyone can reconcile all these faiths as if they all come from the same God. He obviously speaks with a forked tongue.
We don't either. The Bible does not teach a trinity. That is an adoption from pagan religions. The Jews and Muslims have no trinity.....so neither should Christianity. Jesus was Jewish.
I do not take "every miracle written in every religions sacred book" as a true occurrence. But I do take what I consider the word of God to tell me about these things...its from just one book with only one author. I have no reason to question the God who authored this work. It has always proven to be reliable. Jesus used only OT scripture to teach his listeners.
The Bible does not teach that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Humans have interpreted it that way, but science and the Bible can never disagree because God is the author of science. Science is not in the business of proving anything though....(as all the scientists here keep telling me.) So if you can't prove what you say is true, then it ends up being an unprovable suggestion...not a fact.
What a great example you have presented!......this event was not recorded by anyone but Matthew....it is missing completely from the other gospels. And the details are so vague, that it isn't clear if it was the bodies of the saints that walked into Jerusalem to show themselves to people, or whether it was the people who went to check out the bodies unearthed in the cemetery, that did so. If this was really a resurrection of the saints, then it would have been a monumental event among the people....yet there is silence except for this small mention. The proverbial mountain made out of a molehill.
No I am assuming that if something like the shroud of Turin could be kept and preserved for centuries as a religious relic, then imagine what religious fanatics would have done with Jesus' bones or teeth! Relic worship still survives in Roman Catholicism, despite the fact that it is forbidden in scripture to render devotion to a physical object.
Jesus' tomb was empty because it fulfilled prophesy. And Jesus' manifestations thereafter prove that he was raised from the dead. Eyewitnesses testified to the fact.
If Bahá'u'lláh is a self proclaimed Messianic figure, what makes you believe him and not Jesus?
Ellen Brown
Well-Known Member
godnotgod
Thou art That
The writers of the Ascension seem to have had an overactive imagination, LOL. Alan Watts provides some interesting commentary:
excerpted from: Myth and Ritual in Christianity, by Alan Watts
godnotgod
Thou art That
Uh,,,kinda. Reincarnation, otherwise known as The Wheel, is the unenlightened state of Samsara, the world of birth and rebirth, or suffering. The goal is to find a way to escape The Wheel and the round of births and deaths. It is the illusion of an individual self or soul that is born, suffers, and dies that keeps one on The Wheel. Liberation from Samsara occurs in Buddhism when the illusion of self is dissolved via Nirvana. This is the drop merging completely with the ocean and losing all personal identity, and only occurs in this eternal present moment. There is no future 'afterlife' of an individual soul This process is Awakening to Ultimate Reality now, the experience of Supreme Enlightenment of the Buddha.
In Hinduism, the individual soul is called the jiva, and the goal is to 'become' Brahman, or 'the ground of all Being'. This is incorrect, actually, as nothing 'becomes' anything else; the jiva is, in reality, Brahman, or Pure Consciousness, playing itself as 'the jiva', playing itself as an individual soul. This illusion is known as maya, created by divine play called lila. When Brahman awakens, the jiva is no more, and only Brahman is the true Reality. So jiva cannot 'become' Brahman, because it has always been Brahman from the very beginning. This 'becoming' also occurs in this eternal present moment. The masks come off, the drama is over, and Reality ensues. There never was a jiva. On the larger scale, the world is Brahman, playing itself as 'The World'.
In Buddhism's Heart Sutra, the core teaching is that 'all phenomena, including man, is empty of inherent self-nature'. This is expressed as:
'form is emptiness;
emptiness is form'
This principle of emptiness, or Sunyata, is due to The Law of Dependent Origination, in which all 'things' arise co-dependently. IOW, it only appears that separate 'things' actually exist, when the reality is that all such 'things' are interconnected with all other 'things'. IOW, there are no 'things'. The notion of an individual soul in need of salvation is an illusion of the mind. Once this illusion is seen for what it is, there is only a universal awakened consciousness present. The drop returns to and merges with the vast limitless ocean of Pure Being.
So you see that in both views, the individual self, or soul, is illusory. We are not that, but are, instead the divine nature itself, disguised as an individual self, seeking itself, seeking 'salvation'; seeking 'heaven', while avoiding 'hell', and going round and round on The Wheel of births and deaths. Only Awakening to the true nature of Reality can set us free, the true nature of Reality being that we are none other than That itself.
"We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are Nothing, and being Nothing, you are Everything. That is all."
Kalu Rinpoche
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godnotgod
Thou art That
How can you agree that there is an "afterlife in an unseen realm" that is a reality when you have zero experience or knowledge of such a place? As Shunryu Suzuki of the San Francisco Zen Center stated:
"The idea of another realm is a substantial, delusive idea"
All anyone has ever known and experienced is that they are here, now. That is all. That is all anyone has ever experienced, even those with near-death visions of 'another realm'. However, if you experience a spiritual awakening in the here and now, in which consciousness undergoes a radical transformation, the world as you now see it will be completely transformed, though it is the same world. How can that be? Because we see and perceive the world via conditioned awareness, it appears to us the way it does. The authentic spiritual experience is transcendent of perception and conditioning, and we then see it as it actually is. Essentially, via this awakening, we now see The Ordinary as none other than The Miraculous. There is no 'other realm' called 'The Miraculous', or whatever. The Heavenly 'realm' and the Earthly 'realm' are one and the same. It is the conditioned mind that tells us they are separate due to the mind's dualistic conditioning of the subject/object split. This experience is the true meaning of Jesus overcoming death and living in the state of eternal life, as expressed by:
"Before Abraham was, I Am"
and
"The kingdom of God is within you" [here, now]
Jesus, or rather, Yeshua, is telling us he does not live in Existence in Time and Space, as Abraham did, subject to birth and death; he lives in this eternal present moment as Pure Being, and that what we seek we will find within, not in some 'other realm'.
Also, see the Parable of the Lilies of the Field, aka, 'The Wisdom of Insecurity'.
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syo
Well-Known Member
physical. his spirit never died.
Of course not. If he existed at all he was just a man.
godnotgod
Thou art That
Over time, Christians fabricated not just the Resurrection, but the Ascension as well as a means to prove that Jesus was who he said he was, the Son of God. They have made The Resurrection the centerpiece of Christian belief, when it is The Crucifixion that was the major event that shed divine blood necessary for the Salvation of all of mankind and the washing away of Sin. But The Crucifixion without The Resurrection was not enough to be convincing. Many god-men had come and were crucified and lay in their graves. Christians proudly point out that only Jesus's grave was empty, 'proof' that he resurrected himself from the dead. A miracle was needed to clinch the divinity of Jesus Christ, and that miracle was The Resurrection along with his Ascension into Heaven, allegedly witnessed by a few. But the myth falls apart upon closer scrutiny. For one, St. Paul claims that some of the '500 eyewitnesses' were still alive at the time of his writing. But what saint in his right mind would not have beat a path to their door to transcribe their testimony with bated breath? Instead, not a single word from these '500 eyewitnesses', either written or oral. They remain in a total historical vacuum.
If only Christians could trim the fat and the hype, and recognize Yeshua as a man who was a great enlightened teacher, they would have one hell of a religion. Instead, they go on adding every accretion they can get their hands on to attach to an unrealistic doctrine based not on reality, but upon belief.
lukethethird
unknown member
Are we to take the story literally, as if it really happened?