The Return of the Lord, Part 3 (#897)
We’ll continue with Part 3 of our Sunday series on The Return of the Lord.
In the first two sessions, we’ve talked about these topics:

• Where are the Dead?
  • Answer: They have returned to dust.
• Are the dead conscious?
  • Answer: No, they have no consciousness
• Will they always be there?
  • Answer: No.  It says in Hebrews that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgement” ; everyone does get up at various times and we cover this in later the class.
• Do Christians die or perish?
  • Answer: To die is simply to take your last breath, lose consciousness, and turn to dust, but in the future you come back to life.  Whereas to perish, is to be obliterated for ever.  Christians do not perish, if the Lord tarries, we’ll all die, but we’ll simply be sleeping waiting on the return of the Lord.  The perishing part is for those that don’t go on to eternal life, but rather go on to what is referred to in Revelation as the second death.

Today we’re going to look at some what I call difficult verses.  The reason I call them difficult verses is because if you take them by themselves and put your own spin on them, you could argue that the dead are alive or that people go straight to heaven.  As we hear in popular culture  and in much of Christianity that when you die that you do not lose consciousness that you are floating around somewhere and can talk to people, and that sort of thing.  There are some difficult verses which taken by themselves can look that way, but we try to very hard to look at what the whole Bible says about a topic .  And we’ve seen many verses that are very clear, that show when you die, you lose consciousness, you turn to dust, and that you stay there awhile, but aren’t there forever.  So the idea that after you die you would continue to stay alive or remain conscious, is simply not Biblical.   Today we’ll look at a few of these difficult verses, but we won’t cover them all; we’ll take our time and look at a few each week.  Let’s first look at a record in 2 Kings Chapter 2…

Taught by Bruce Mahone on 20160508.  All rights reserved.
Verse Listing and Notes
Some Difficult Verses
II Kings 2:9-12        Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven (sky – vs. 11) [No indication he died at that time or stayed in the sky]
Eccl. 12:1-7             The spirit shall return unto God who gave it [Note the administration – spirit was upon certain individuals, not born within]  Orientalisms: keepers of the house: feet; strong men: knees; grinders: teeth; those that look out of the windows: eyes; doors: ears; daughters of music brought low: voice no longer strong; almond tree: in bloom looks like a white head of hair; long home: grave; silver cord: the wife loosens the silver cord she received as a bride and places it with her husband’s body; golden bowl filled with coals: broken to symbolize the soul departing the body.
Mat. 17:1-9              There appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with him [Note vs. 9 – vision]
Mat. 27:51-53         The bodies of the saints which slept arose [vss. 52-53 do not appear in the earliest patristic quotations of this section]
Luke 16:19-31         Lazarus in Abraham’s Bosom [cf. Judges 9:7-16; Mat. 5:13-16. Some early Greek and Aramaic sources add, ?nd he said also another parable – to the beginning of Luke 16:19. Pharisees:They also believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life, and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again –  Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews XVIII, i, 3.  See also Luke 16:14-15; Acts 23:6-11.]
Teaching
897-The-Return-of-the-Lord-Part-3