Opus 2025-183: Up or Down

It started with questions about Samuel being raised up on his sleep by the witch of Endor.  

(1Sa 28:13 KJV)  And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.

Samuel came up out of the earth, or so it says.  Does that mean that Samuel was in hell?  Does it mean that heaven is under our feet?  All kinds of questions came up and eventually we came to the Old Testament saints who seemed to have gone to be with God.  

We must admit that there are at least four individuals that we know were with God before Jesus went to the cross.  Start with Enoch.  Then you have Elijah who also was taken by God.  Then you have the story Jesus told about Lazarus and the rich man in which Abraham appears.  Finally you have the Mount of Transfiguration where we see Elijah again and Moses.  Whatever else you want to say about salvation and eternal life we have these four.

We also have very clear statements that the only way to the Father is through Jesus, that He was the Perfect Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world, that without the shed blood of Jesus there would be no forgiveness of sins.  Do you sense any problems yet?

Somehow in your theology, and your understanding of the teaching from the Bible, you must make a way for both of these to be true.  How did Moses end up on the mount of transfiguration, talking to Jesus before Jesus went to the cross?  How did Abraham end up talking to the rich man from Paradise before the shedding of the blood of Jesus?  

These are questions which you must deal with.  You can’t throw out or ignore much of the Bible just fit into a bit of theological tradition that you have been taught.  If necessary, lean on mystery. Mystery is a part of scripture.  A well know example is found in the clear teaching in the Bible that God is one.  We also have clear teaching that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.  They talk to each other and about each other, yet there is one God.  Mystery.  We call it the Trinity.  The Bible would call it a mystery.  Mysteries by their very nature are hard for us to understand or totally beyond our comprehension.

So if you can’t figure it out, call it a mystery.  Whatever you do, don’t deny the truth.  There are answers.  There are explanations.  Sometimes we understand them.  Sometimes we don’t.  But they are still true.

homo unius libri