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Does this scare you?

Frank Goad

Well-Known Member
Jw's, Christadelphians, SDA's and H. W. Armstrong.These four religions.Believe that when you die your mind, body, and spirit.Cease to exist.Until you can be resurrected.Does that sound scary to you?It just to scare me.But I just to dabble in the Jw religion.And finally came to the conclusion.That if the afterlife is like the Jws say it's ok.But after I stop dabbling in the Jw religion.I became Methodist and thought I might want to go to heaven in some spirit form.Then it hit me.With my dabbling in the Jw religion.And becoming Methodist.I had come to accept both types of afterlife.What about you?
 
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ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
Im happy with the scientific after death. I.e. your consciousness dies the atoms that make you carry on. They are recycled, everything alive today is at least, partly made from atoms that help made plants and animals (including humans). In that way we are all made from dead people.

And your atoms will continue forever, to help new plants and animals (including humans) grow.

Even after the world ends your atoms will continue, they may help make a new sun or rain down on a newly evolving planet and help create new life.
 

The Crimson Universe

Active Member
Jw's, Christadelphians, SDA's and H. W. Armstrong.These four religions.Believe that when you die your mind, body, and spirit.Cease to exist.Until you can be resurrected.Does that sound scary to you?

I'm not familiar with the beliefs of those 3 religions you spoke of, but the one i follow holds a similar belief, that after enlightenment and after your death, the body and mind(soul) will cease to exist, but the spirit which is infinite and eternal will forever remain in this cosmos and beyond.
 

Sgt. Pepper

All you need is love.
Jw's, Christadelphians, SDA's and H. W. Armstrong.These four religions.Believe that when you die your mind, body, and spirit.Cease to exist.Until you can be resurrected.Does that sound scary to you?It just to scare me.But I just to dabble in the Jw religion.And finally came to the conclusion.That if the afterlife is like the Jws say it's ok.But after I stop dabbling in the Jw religion.I became Methodist and thought I might want to go to heaven in some spirit form.Then it hit me.With my dabbling in the Jw religion.And becoming Methodist.I had come to accept both types of afterlife.What about you?

No, what you described doesn't scare me, and I don't believe the spirit dies when a living person physically dies. Personally, I believe human spirits carry on in both the spiritual and physical realms, and many of these spirits are capable of intelligent communication and interaction with the living. I've shared my personal experiences with human spirits in the Paranormal Activities forum, so I don't think I'll mention anything about it in this thread. FWIW, I don't know anything about the religions you mentioned in your OP.
 

Truth in love

Well-Known Member
Soul sleeper doctrine has been around for awhile. I personally don’t buy into it. If one is not at all functioning how can the gospel be preached to them?

1peter 3:
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
 

Semmelweis Reflex

Antivaxxer
When I was a kid the JWs would come to visit my mother periodically and often leave their literature. When I was about 10 years old I overheard a nice elderly JW woman telling my mother that Jesus was resurrected after three days in his old body. I don't know how or why but I argued with her. I think my reasoning was that if someone sacrifices something, i.e. gives something in return of something then they don't take it back. We went around and around on the subject. I didn't know anything, but what she was saying just didn't make sense to me. Years later the JWs changed their thinking in line with my own.

My mother never ever read any of the literature they left with her. She would usually throw it in the back of the closet or something like that. I was an avid reader so I started saving the stuff thinking maybe some day I will get around to reading it. I never did, until I became interested in the Bible. I wanted to read it, to see if I could, to see what I personally thought of it and possibly to debunk Christianity, which I loathed due to its hypocrisy, history of violence, oppression and repression. So it was their Bible I used along with an old KJV my grandmother had left my mother. After a while I started reading some of the other stuff I had saved away and I became a believer.

I contacted the JWs and started a study and they left me with a great deal more literature. Stuff going back to the 1950s. I read it. I read their newly (at the time) published Proclaimers book when the "society" was admonishing them for not taking enough interest in it. I was considered an excellent student; I could correct elders on the Watchtower's own literature or name books they couldn't remember. But I eventually discontinued my study before becoming a baptized publisher due to their stance on blood transfusions. It wasn't necessarily that I didn't agree, it was that I thought it should be left up to the individual.

Since then I have learned a great deal. Including some things about their past and present that is most certainly a cause for alarm. Their similar bans on vaccinations, higher education and neutrality, their history as false prophets, and their covering up of child molestation in order not to bring reproach on Jehovah's name. Or fear of lawsuits which is often their prime motivation for self correction. The fact that their members are strongly discouraged from examining "apostate" information is very similar to the current worldly tactics using "misinformation," "racism," "science denier" etc to trick people into groupthink and not criticizing or questioning the prescribed narrative.

Most of their teachings I do agree with except when they read themselves into Bible prophecy, then it makes no sense at all. They have had this army of volunteers who research and that research I generally trust more than any other source.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Jw's, Christadelphians, SDA's and H. W. Armstrong.These four religions.Believe that when you die your mind, body, and spirit.Cease to exist.Until you can be resurrected.Does that sound scary to you?It just to scare me.But I just to dabble in the Jw religion.And finally came to the conclusion.That if the afterlife is like the Jws say it's ok.But after I stop dabbling in the Jw religion.I became Methodist and thought I might want to go to heaven in some spirit form.Then it hit me.With my dabbling in the Jw religion.And becoming Methodist.I had come to accept both types of afterlife.What about you?
:) I became a Christian -- and that was enough. :)
 

Semmelweis Reflex

Antivaxxer
Soul sleeper doctrine has been around for awhile. I personally don’t buy into it. If one is not at all functioning how can the gospel be preached to them?

1peter 3:
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

This is talking about the angels who forsook their original form of spirit beings to take human form and mate with women provoking the flood of Noah's day. (Genesis 6:1-4; Jude 1:6; 2 Peter 2:4; 1 Peter 3:19; Ephesians 6:12)
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
Jw's, Christadelphians, SDA's and H. W. Armstrong.These four religions.Believe that when you die your mind, body, and spirit.Cease to exist.Until you can be resurrected.Does that sound scary to you?It just to scare me.But I just to dabble in the Jw religion.And finally came to the conclusion.That if the afterlife is like the Jws say it's ok.But after I stop dabbling in the Jw religion.I became Methodist and thought I might want to go to heaven in some spirit form.Then it hit me.With my dabbling in the Jw religion.And becoming Methodist.I had come to accept both types of afterlife.What about you?
How can you accept both? Don't they contradict each other?
 

Frank Goad

Well-Known Member
Jw's, Christadelphians, SDA's and H. W. Armstrong.These four religions.Believe that when you die your mind, body, and spirit.Cease to exist.Until you can be resurrected.Does that sound scary to you?It just to scare me.But I just to dabble in the Jw religion.And finally came to the conclusion.That if the afterlife is like the Jws say it's ok.But after I stop dabbling in the Jw religion.I became Methodist and thought I might want to go to heaven in some spirit form.Then it hit me.With my dabbling in the Jw religion.And becoming Methodist.I had come to accept both types of afterlife.What about you?

How can you accept both? Don't they contradict each other?

Yes they do.But what I was getting at in my first post was.What ever afterlife is true.I am fine with either.Because of what different teachings I have been exposed to.:)
 

Viker

Häxan
Jw's, Christadelphians, SDA's and H. W. Armstrong.These four religions.Believe that when you die your mind, body, and spirit.Cease to exist.Until you can be resurrected.Does that sound scary to you?
No
.What about you?
I have a 'here and now ' type of theology. For me, any life after death appears impossible. Much of my beliefs concerning what comes after death closely resembles what @ChristineM mentioned earlier. I use metaphor to describe it, however. Sort of, returning to the world, cosmos and the gods. What comes next is not up to me, I'll be deceased (powerless).

I would like to return as a ghost, vampire-like or demonic entity. That may just be wishful thinking or witchful thinking. :D
 

Truth in love

Well-Known Member
This is talking about the angels who forsook their original form of spirit beings to take human form and mate with women provoking the flood of Noah's day. (Genesis 6:1-4; Jude 1:6; 2 Peter 2:4; 1 Peter 3:19; Ephesians 6:12)
The entire world was wiped out in the flood. Peter does not specify a limited group.

1 Peter 4:6 also says that gospel was preached to the dead.
 

Semmelweis Reflex

Antivaxxer
The entire world was wiped out in the flood. Peter does not specify a limited group.

1 Peter 4:6 also says that gospel was preached to the dead.

The entire world except for Noah and his family. The spirit beings returned to heaven in spirit form where they were cast into Tartarus, often mistranslated as hell. Tartarus means the lowest place. Like Homer's Iliad was a literal reference but Peter uses the figurative, as in they, the disobedient spirit beings were debased, lowered into a figurative prison; a lowered position.

Regarding the dead, what do you think "Let the dead bury the dead?" The spiritually dead could remain and bury the literal dead. Those spiritually alive would follow Jesus.
 

Truth in love

Well-Known Member
The entire world except for Noah and his family. The spirit beings returned to heaven in spirit form where they were cast into Tartarus, often mistranslated as hell. Tartarus means the lowest place. Like Homer's Iliad was a literal reference but Peter uses the figurative, as in they, the disobedient spirit beings were debased, lowered into a figurative prison; a lowered position.

Regarding the dead, what do you think "Let the dead bury the dead?" The spiritually dead could remain and bury the literal dead. Those spiritually alive would follow Jesus.
Let the dead bury the was a teaching to focus more on the things of the sport and Christ. It does not invalidate Peters statement that the gospel was preached to the dead.
 
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