That is precisely what the Bible teaches us. This, though, is not a book that describes what's going to happen to individuals when they die and go to heaven or hell; it's a description of the final judgment of God that somehow is going to be coming to Earth. When earlier I was saying that Jesus was an apocalypticist who thought that the world was going to come to an end, that God was going to destroy the forces of evil to bring in a good kingdom, that is precisely what the author of the Book of Revelation thinks, that - and the book is a description of how it's going to happen. In fact, by that definition, every human being on earth is deeply religious. That also is the view of Paul, that people would be destroyed if - when Jesus returns. What does the Bible say about homosexuality? For starters, Jesus wasn't These continue to be two of the common explanations today. Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. These people began to think that the reason there is suffering in the world is not what the prophets had said, that it - because people sin and God is punishing them; it's because there are forces of evil in the world that are aligned against God and his people who are creating suffering. The pursuit of true religiona life lived out of thankfulness for what God has done for us in sending Jesus Christ to live perfectly, to die for our sins, and to rise from death to give us the promise of eternal lifebrings glory and praise to God. We agree with this. What Is Paradise and Is it Different Than Heaven? - Crosswalk And I still think that Socrates is the one who probably put it best. Gain a comprehensive understanding of religious libertyand why it mattersas it relates to culture, the Bible, and the Great Commission in theReligious LibertyBible Study. The body is not your friend, and God did not create the body. We can define religious liberty as a determination to give people the freedom to be persuaded. What if religious liberty is warfarea distinctively spiritual military strategy crafted by our King and fitted perfectly for the goals of the Kingdom in this moment? EHRMAN: Well, the same advice everybody's getting who's listening to the right news sources, which is that you need to self-isolate. And so I think that hell is something we need to fight against; heaven, I'm all for. But idolatry abounds, not only in the various religions of the worldincluding atheismbut more importantly in our hearts. GROSS: And you say that for the ancient Jews, the fact that the Messiah didn't come, that was a turning point in beliefs about what happens after death, too. Real life is in the soul. Is there a connection to the Bible? They weren't Jews. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. A battle is being waged between God and the enemy, Satan. How Christian Slaveholders Used the Bible to Justify Slavery And these are more mystical texts. So the bottom line of the book is that the way you kind of trace the history of heaven and hell is that when people thought that everybody dies and it's the same for everybody forever, they thought, well, that's not fair. Sep 30, 2021 Scripture describes for us a "great harlot" that will be the religion of the world under the influence of the Anti-Christ ( Revelation 17:1-2 ). There is hope in moments of complete despair. But even bringing God into consideration introduces a new dimension. To find the full context of shorter scripture quotes, click on "Chapter" above each verse. Do We Know What Will Be the One World Religion in the End Times? He prays to it and says,Save me! EHRMAN: Paul is very important for understanding the history of heaven and hell, as he's important for understanding most things about early Christian thinking. And so in our various Gospels, you have Jesus saying all sorts of things that are contradictory because different people are putting their own ideas onto his lips. I mean, you know, a lot of people aren't joking. It seems to me that what Jesus says in the passage is that there is a place for the government. EHRMAN: (Laughter) I know, exactly. Article Images Copyright 2023 Getty Images unless otherwise indicated. And so I really believe that, and I'll probably always believe it. The Bible is the holy scripture of the Christian religion, purporting to tell the history of the Earth from its earliest creation to the spread of Christianity in the first century A.D. Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?14. GROSS: So you were saying there really isn't an explicit description of heaven and hell in the Hebrew Bible or even in the New Testament, but that Paul is important in understanding the history of heaven and hell. Paradise is a word that is likely borrowed from the Persians. And so they started thinking that it comes at death, and people started assuming then that, in fact, your soul would live on. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And so I'm - my wife and I have been completely self-isolated for a week now, and we're going to stay this way. . The carpenter measures with a lineand makes an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with chiselsand marks it with compasses. Put simply, the Law had become an idol. People who had been on the side of God throughout history would be personally raised from the dead and individually would be brought into this new era, this new kingdom that God would rule here on Earth. Bible verses related to Other Religions from the King James Version (KJV) by Relevance. But what does the Bible really say? And people started thinking, well, you know, surely I'm going to get rewarded, you know, not in some kingdom that's going to come in a few thousand years, but I'm going to get rewarded by God right away. You see, its become en vogue in North American Christian circles to put down religion. If Baal answered with fire, then the people should worship Baal. You blind guides! He cut down cedars,or perhaps took a cypress or oak,He let it grow among the trees of the forest,or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! Bible Verses About Fear So suffering now must be rewarded later, and wicked behavior now must be punished later. They are wiped out. Worthless. Your forthcoming book that you're working on now is going to be called "Expecting Armageddon." Either we live on and we see those we knew before and those we didn't know before, and we spend all of our time being with them, which for him was absolute paradise because Socrates liked nothing better than conversing with people, and so now he could converse with Homer and with all the greats of the Greek past. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. Bible Verses About Grace Jefferson Bethke, Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus, YouTube, accessed November 11, 2013. We are not soldiers of fortune; we owe allegiance to a King. Yeah, of course. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened. So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. And so this is what the later Paul has to say, and this is the beginning of the Christian idea of heaven and hell, that you can exist - even though your physical remains are dead, you can exist in the presence of God in heaven. And its certainly easy to see why. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Rather than acknowledge God, many people turn to alternative explanations. Most people, of course, are more concerned about the process of dying right now or getting sick or the economics of that. I probably would have subscribed - I would have subscribed to either the view that God was upset and we needed to repent so that he would relent, or that the devil - it was the devil doing it, and we needed to pray to God for mercy and for him to intervene on our behalf. This is FRESH AIR. However, despite what some say, the Bible doesnt claim that Jesus hates religion. . But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.10. So this is a really important shift for understanding both the history of later Judaism and the history of later Christianity and the historical Jesus. If you're just joining us, my guest is religion scholar Bart Ehrman, author of the new book "Heaven And Hell: A History Of The Afterlife." Is Sex before Marriage a Sin? And of course, belief in heaven and hell has done a lot of good; it's also done a lot of harm. Plato also has ideas about souls living on, either to be rewarded or punished forever. EHRMAN: Yes. In her new book Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the . Don't they read the Bible? Eventually, he left the faith altogether. You know, a lot of people read Revelation as indicating that people who are opposed to God - sinners will be cast into the lake of fire forever, and they will be - yeah, they'll be floating in fire for eternity. What were the explanations in the Hebrew Bible for plagues? GROSS: Are there things in the Hebrew Bible that still support the idea of heaven and hell as people came to understand it, things that you can extract from the Old Testament that might not literally mention heaven and hell but still support the vision that emerged of it? So how does the Bible understand religion? For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Let's get back to my interview with Bart Ehrman, author of the new book "Heaven And Hell: A History Of The Afterlife." Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. He converted several years after Jesus' death. Please see below for details. You get that in the story of Moses in the Book of Exodus. For more information, see ourPrivacy Policy. He thinks that there's going to be a resurrection of the dead at the end of time. The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. And Samuel comes up and is really upset that she's called him up from the grave, and he gets upset with Saul for doing this, and he predicts that Saul is going to die the next day in battle, which he does. Genesis 1:1-31 ESV / 1 helpful voteHelpfulNot Helpful. Mark 16:15-16 - And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. So why is Christianity around? He's a distinguished professor of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is one of America's most widely read scholars of early Christianity and the New Testament. It means "garden.". And in fact, it's not right. I have to deal with this in my book, where I try to show that, in fact, the Book of Revelation does not describe eternal torment for sinners in the lake of fire. All rights reserved. EHRMAN: Yeah, no, it's a good question. The word "abortion" does not appear in any translation of the bible! I try to respect everybody's views. My dear elderly mother is a very good Christian, and she believes that she will die and she will go to heaven and she will see her husband. We see this war playing out in the Scriptures and in our lives. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. You give a tenth of your spicesmint, dill and cumin. The life is in the breath. Be patient. The prophet Jeremiah curses the day he was born and the man who brought the news to his father, "because he did not kill me in the womb . It is called idolatry, something we are repeatedly and emphatically warned against throughout the pages of Scripture. as long as you love Jesus.3. The book is all about the terrible destruction that is going to take place on Earth when God destroys everything that is opposed to him, before bringing in a good kingdom. It has to do with the apocalypse, the revelation of God. Throughout the history of the church, many theories have been offered as to what this religion will be. In every epoch of history in which Christians rejected religious liberty and endeavored to enforce right belief, those Christians wound up persecuting other Christians for following the scriptures rather than the state churches. Their religion was futile. Bible Verses About Forgiveness Existence is entirely bodily. And they will live here on Earth, and this is where the paradise will be. But it's not what you believe. People do not live forever. I don't try to trash anybody's views. Giving religious liberty, therefore, keeps us focused on the battles that actually matter: For although we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh, since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh (2 Cor. And people generally point to these passages in the Book of Psalms that talk about Sheol, or Sheol. Well, if we're being rewarded, they're going to be punished. You simply - it is going to be a disaster for some way - somewhere, on some level, for the economy, but it'll be a worse disaster if we are out in public because we could be spreading the virus. . . I'm open to it, and I hope there is something after death, and if it is, it'll be good. And were all in it for the same reasonto fuel the churchs mission of making disciples. And they do it not because they feel a need to earn Gods approval or pay him back for what he has done in their lives, but simply because they want to; they feel compelled by their love for the Lord. Scott Gleeson Asha C. Gilbert USA TODAY 0:00 1:00 The COVID-19 vaccine has been scientifically proved to save lives, but for a select group of people in the. While waiting for my plane to take off, I did something I rarely ever do: I struck up a conversation with my seat-mate. And what he says is this: In all the world, fundamentally there are only two kinds of religionstrue and untrue. God's plan of redemption is for human beings: those descended from Adam.". He wasn't one of the disciples. Meat is not murder, but it is not the highest moral level to which we can elevate our diet.
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