I'm a believer and I wrestle with issues sometimes. One of the issues is the meaning and significance of the resurrection. I've heard that the angel rolled the stone from Jesus' tomb so the people outside could see that he was gone.

But what, if any, is the significance of ressurection? Does that actually produce our salvation? I thought that the sacrifice did. Does it mean that Jesus is the first to rise? Yet, he met with Moses during the transfiguration, so there have been resurrections before and after him in the bible, evidently.

Please excuse my ignorance. I can be literally and figuratively blind. I'm 20/200 in the left eye anyway. I'd appreciate whatever insights you can provide me, scripture quotations included or not. You can post here or e-mail me, whichever you want.

No flames, please. I know it's a dumb question and pardon my ignorance. I'll probably be asking my pastor in the near future, too.

Thanks in advance.

George

the signinficance of the resurrection is that our Lord Jesus Christ destroyed death. In that manner He granted us eternal life next to him and salvation from our sins because He was among sin, yet He was free from it.

BTW no question is stupid, as long it's made with the sincere desire to learn.

yashafox,

Moses and Elijah "appeared" in front of Jesus, but I believe they were there in spirit. Jesus' substance was changed. Jesus' spirit and body combined to form one. Surely Moses and Elijah will have a body like Jesus at some point, but not until the last day.

how u doing spider?
I hope u r fine.
God bless you.

I think he did not rise physically. I think he rose up into heaven like a spirit. Like many people believe they will. Thats why the angle is saying why are you looking here for him when he is obviously dead and his soul is in heaven. Later people thought that Jesus story needed to be bigger then it really was(like dying on a cross is not enough) so they made up the part about the actual body being on earth. Which as you have pointed out serves no purpose what so ever.

I'm doing good, how are you?

very good. it's always nice to see you.

Jesus rose in his body as the first to do so.....all before him and after are risen spiritly.....but the can not interac in heaven....as in touch someone,hug,eat...and they long for the ressurection of their bodies so they can....we will have a glorified body then....remember Jesus came back to show the deciples that he did rise completly....and showed them....he said touch me i am not a ghost...and he ate with them.....we all look forward to this one day.

My personal belief is that Jesus set an example of how things should and will be. There is reference in Ezekial 37:12 to resurection, and numerous other references.Isaiah 26:19 also refers to the body coming forth from the grave. It is also my personal belief that the spirit and the body will be united again at some point in the future in resurection following Jesus example.

Hi George, I hope you don’t take this as a flame. I’m going to answer your question as a non-believer. But my answer is not to bash your religion, but rather to share with you my sincere and honest point of view.

When I view ancient documents that make divine claims, I do so with skepticism. I have no fear to question everything equally. When I read the biblical stories I imagine them from both vantage points,…

1. We’re they written by the supernatural creator of this universe?
2. We’re they written by men who may have had mortal agendas?

Then I ask myself which one makes more sense?

When I view the Bible in this way, every story within it makes perfect sense with respect to view # 2 and no sense at all with respect to view # 1. And trust me, I’ve have really bent over backwards to try to justify view # 1. Thus far I have not been able to justify the first view, especially with respect to the tenets of the overall picture.

So with that in mind, my conclusion is that the resurrection of Jesus was made up as an attempt to give proof of his divine nature and that the stories being claimed about him were true. After all, if they left that part out then everyone could question the authors,… “But how do you know this man was really God?”. Well, their answer is simply, “He rose from the dead! And people saw him!”

That’s the reason they wrote that part in there.

Like you say, from perspective #1 it would not have been required. In fact, that would fly in the face of the idea that it’s all supposed to be about faith. How can it be about faith if God keeps going around proving himself to select individuals? This is what I mean about it flying in the face of other tenets of the overall picture.

Accept view #2 and it all makes perfect sense why they wrote it the way they did. Try to justify view #1 and you’ll spend the rest of life in a hopeless entanglement of blatant self-inconsistencies.

Here’s some questions for you,…

1. How could having men nail God’s son to a cross end up ‘paying’ for their sins? Since when does more wrongs make a right? “Here, nail my son to a cross and I’ll forgive you of your sins”

What???

2. Jesus was supposed to be the “Son of God”, yet he supposedly states, “Before Abraham I AM”. And many people have Jesus being at God’s side at the moment of creation. But that implies that the whole scenario was predetermined before man ever even fell to sin! Before man was even yet created!

3. Also, if Jesus always was and always will be, then how does that make him God’s “Son”? In what way would he be God’s “son” if he always existed? This kind of flies in the face of the whole monotheistic picture, not to mention that it brings in to question, “Why only one Son?”

4. Finally, if it was Jesus mission to be crucified, then clearly his crucifixion was predetermined when he was a baby in a manger. In other words, men clearly weren’t even given a choice in the matter. They had no choice but to crucify him, otherwise God’s master plan and mission for his Son would have failed.

5. This is one I always had problems with,… If I accept that Jesus was nailed to a cross to pay for my sins, am I not condoning that act? They say that, for God, there is no time. If that’s true then it’s like I’m standing at Cavalry right now. The Roman’s are bringing Jesus to spot of crucifixion. They lay him on the cross, and they are standing there with spikes and hammers and they turn to me and ask, “Do you accept that we nail this man to this cross to pay for your sins?”

What would be your answer?

I can’t help but think this way, and so when someone asks me if I accept that Jesus died for my sins I’m back off and say, “No way! I do not condone that at all”. He didn’t die for my sins because I won’t permit it. I won’t accept that notion. I’ll go to hell before I’ll condone nailing him to the cross for my sake.

The whole story is a blood and guts nightmare. I personally don’t believe that it has divine origins. I believe that some preacher got himself crucified and was immortalized as a martyr God figure.

I don’t believe for one second that the creator of this magnificent universe would have planned such a blood and guts solution to every problem that comes up. Just read the Bible, almost every story has violent solutions. I’m supposed to believe that an perfect all-knowing all-wise supreme being can’t do any better than use these crude (clearly medieval) methods of trying to solve problems????

I give our creator more credit than that.

In my humble opinion these stories are clearly the demagoguery of men. Yes, based on real life events, but they made up the divine intervention parts. In short, I don’t believe that the supreme entity that created this wondrous universe could possibly be a unintelligent and unwise as the Bible makes it out to be. Therefore I conclude that the whole thing is manmade demagoguery. And I see no reason to believe otherwise.

It makes perfect sense when you view it as stories made up by men. You can clearly see what their motivations were.

Having said all of that, I am not an atheist. I believe that our true nature is indeed spiritual. I believe in “God” in a sense. It’s just a totally different picture of God than the Biblical picture. The view I believe in is generically called Pantheism, although if you look that word up you can probably find many different views that lay claim to that label. I only use the word to imply that we are collectively all manifestations of the Holy Spirit. All is one. We are all connected and arise from a single source.

There may even be some truth in some of the Biblical stories that speak along these lines. I even believe that Jesus understood pantheism and was actually trying to teach that view. In that sense Jesus was God and he knew it. But no more so than Buddha and many others. The story of Jesus became entangled with the stories of the God of Abraham and the authors of the gospels wrote the story from that view, thus taking any and all references that Jesus may have made with respect to being ‘god’ or being the ‘one with the father’ and putting those into a reference to the God of Abraham. In fact, it is my believe that Jesus himself actually tried to make the picture more palatable by appealing to those previous views.

So I believe that Jesus was a highly spiritual man who was closely connected with the Holy Spirit. However, I don’t believe that he was sent by God. I don’t believe that he was born of a virgin, or that he meant to be crucified to pay for the sin of man, or that he rose from the dead. I believe all of those things were demagoguery added by the men who wrote the gospels.

This has been a sharing of my view. Nothing more. Not meant to try convert or convince. Just sharing my view on a public Internet Religion Forum.

I like when James share his wisedom in this manner.

I do too Miguel. This is more representative of my true disposition. And also reflects the writing style I prefer.

Now we got THAT out of the way...



life, death and suffering are irrelevant to an eternal being...but make sense in light of a parable written for people...

so the story has a variety of interpretations as a metaphor.

first of all...the "writers" of the bible started 3500 years ago....the oldest being Job.....where God showed...."thats right"who opens the bands of Orion....ofcourse Jesus is the only one who can.......after all he created the entire heavens.


when Jesus decided he would Die for us .....he dicided where and when.....he would die for "US".

BTW:...i would like to get into all the deep creation of creation. God...from the very beginning...[orion]and all the ..other understanding of knowledge.

It is proof of the divine origin of Jesus, as told in the Bible...

When I was there at Calvary, I took his place.

But men didn't see me there.

Their blinded hearts and their hate left him there to die.

My love couldn't stop it.

But were I there as a man and present in that moment and not my own, would I have resisted Rome?

A greater fear accomplished to resolve the conflict in my own heart while there.

That fear manifested in the experiences of the past that brought me to believe that love is hated by enough men in my own generation to declare that my own generation is void of sufficient love to constrain violence and offence in need of repair.

Take it to the bridge to see the gulf.

There may the gulf be known that is the separation between God and man.

But only on the bridge. Take it to the bridge.

The bridge only allows the steps of faith to be tread upon.

Truly harder than walking on water with natural feet, but easier with the feet of the will in the heart.

Nothing prevents friends from being friends.

Hatred knows not a friend.

Hatred is bereft of grief and sorrows.

Confirmed by that which allows the heart new sight...

OK. Thanks. I'm still kind of unenlightened about it all. I do believe the Bible is divinely inspired and I also do believe that men with agendas wrote certain portions of it. I think both points of view have merit.

I think the Father Son and Holy Spirit always existed because they're one and the same. They're three in one and thus could always exist.

I do believe that the crucifixion and the resurrection were preordained. I'm not sure of the meaning of the resurrection, but I am sure that it was predicted and that it was meant to be and it was, in part, because of Jesus' nature that it occurred.

I figure as Easter week proceeds, I'll get more insights on this as I listen to various messages on the ressurection. I found that the disciples used the ressurrection as an example in their preaching following those events.

I learned that Simon Pwter went back to fishing after the ressurrection, but didn't have much luck. The ressurrection seemed to change everything.

Stay tuned.

GS