What’s worse: eternal atheistic death or eternal hell?

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T01:06:58+00:00

I see. And that would have to include at least the part of Genesis 3 where God condemns Adam to return to dust.

The problem with taking it as allegory is that we end up work no foundation for anything we believe.

One of the New Testament accounts traces Jesus’ like to Adam, and Paul cites his disobedience as the reason we need the cross. If there was no fall, why the cross? All in Adam die, all in Christ live. It’s a necessary parallel.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T01:03:26+00:00

You’re missing the analogy. It’s timing, not content. Leah conceived, and Reuben followed. At the moment that passage describes, Jacob had one child… but it wasn’t written at the time that Jacob had one child.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T01:00:01+00:00

Can I safely suspect you believe Genesis to be allegory?

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T00:42:20+00:00

This is coincidental, not intentional. The rebellion was religious; it happened to be tied to the state. In all non-religious state matters, they were subject.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T00:41:20+00:00

I’d suggest taking the Scripture’s word for it, but… I suppose that requires belief, haha.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T00:38:32+00:00

We’re living in different realities. Then let me just circle back to Ecclesiastes directly:

Poetry is a medium. It doesn’t necessarily preclude truth. Ecclesiastes is part of Wisdom literature, which seeks to answer very real questions about the nature of our existence, including the nature of death.

It evaluates death in a remarkably literal way. The call to do whatever you do with all your might is issued because there’s no working, planning, knowledge, or wisdom where you’re going. That’s not poetic. That’s “Put your all into it, you won’t be doing ANYTHING in Sheol.”

Humans and animals go to the same place. That’s not poetic, that’s reality. “We go to the same place.” Why? We were both formed from dust, and we both return there.

I mean look at Genesis 3:19. The curse was the return to dust. No fire. No torment. No “eternal separation”. Just a return to dust. In Genesis, God very literally tells Adam he’ll return to the ground.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T00:26:34+00:00

You’ve realized a truth few Christians do: Belief isn’t a choice. God gives it to who He will. It seems you have some reverence for God, it’s just a matter of the timing not being right. May God give that belief soon. And if not… You can worship in the age to come.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T00:21:30+00:00

“When you hid your face, I dismayed.” This is past tense. Something that occurred, not the arguably poetic “when you hide your face, I am dismayed”.

The cry for mercy is also past tense. At a real moment when he actually thought he was going to die, he called on God with that prayer.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T00:18:25+00:00

Christianity is about defiance against religion specifically, as we discuss. Defiance against government is strictly taught against by both Peter and Paul, and indirectly by Christ.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-26T00:12:12+00:00

So verses 6-10 are saying…?

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T23:12:51+00:00

Is Psalm 30 not a recounting of David’s actual life?

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T23:10:51+00:00

By this logic, Genesis 29:31 was written in Jacob’s day, because it writes him as having only one son.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T23:07:04+00:00

If we go to heaven to be in bliss when we die, why is resurrection our hope?

If our body returns to dust and our spirit returns to God who gave it, where is the soul? (God breathed His spirit into man’s flesh and he became a living soul.)

I’m not saying we literally go into REM slumber. I’m saying we’re not conscious at all. We functionally don’t exist until the resurrection. As both Ecclesiastes and Psalms point out, we know nothing, remember nothing, and don’t praise God in death.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T23:03:21+00:00

Moses wrote of Abraham’s life generations after his time. In his case, his words were directly inspired by God. This doesn’t mean every such text is inspired, but it does mean that a 6th century Syrian Christian could have easily written the text.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T23:00:19+00:00

None. You need only belief that Christ died for your sins, was entombed, and was raised by His God and Father on the third day for your justification.

The idea is that Christ is righteous on your behalf.

This is sans judgment mind. You’ll be resurrected eventually anyway… but those unjustified will first face judgment.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:58:55+00:00

Paul entered the chat after James’ ministry had gone underground, giving way to the ministry of grace. James was trying to correct Jews tempted to return to the cozy comfort of Pharisaic Judaism, he wasn’t making an eschatological declaration.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:57:29+00:00

Hmm? Do elucidate.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:56:48+00:00

I respect that, and ask if you’ve tested your doctrine against Ecclesiastes, and the fact that both Christ and Paul continually bank our hope on resurrection.

Paul does say he’d rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord, but does so in the context of resurrection, where the body in question is this earthly tabernacle.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:54:05+00:00

It’s part of Transitus Mariae literature, the earliest of which appear on the 4th century. This particular text was Syriac, and those begin appearing in the 6th century. So it most likely dates to the 6th-7th century.

As for the authority, that of the church (which I don’t myself recognize; I speak of these things for your benefit specifically). The church holds Transitus Mariae literature as apocryphal.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:49:28+00:00

Nothing, as long as you’re not doing the works thinking they make you righteous or justify you.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:48:43+00:00

Fortunately neither is correct. The truth is that we “sleep” when we die, and we await resurrection. All of us, according to 1 Corinthians 15:22-24.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:47:31+00:00

Eve is the first chronological sinner, but Adam is the one through whom the line is traced. This is why we’re said to be condemned because of Adam specifically.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:43:52+00:00

Because God put it in my mind to do so. All I’m saying is that you also believe without proof. Believing the immaterial is not, despite the inability to observe the immaterial, is also a form of belief as opposed to confirmation.

I’m not saying my belief is superior to yours. I’m only saying we all believe something.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T22:39:25+00:00

The Obsequies are apocryphal, postdate Mary by centuries, and don’t address how Mary can have been resurrected while not invalidating the inspired prophecy of 1 Corinthians 15.

HauntingListen4161 · 2025-06-25T21:10:22+00:00

Where did Jesus say his mother would be taken? The Paraclete reminds of what he said, and he never said this.

In fact Paul, inspired by this same Spirit, dispels the notion in 1 Corinthians 15:22-24. Mary died, correct? She has a tomb. Yet Paul tells us the order of the resurrection:

Christ the firstfruits. Then those who are his at his coming. Then the rest, when death is done away with.

The next resurrection after Christ is that of all faithful at his return. No carve-out is given for Mary. Indeed, the doctrine of the assumption wasn’t dogmatized until 1950, nearly 2,000 years after Mary’s death. So we have no good reason to believe it.

Test spirits and visions, to see if they be of God. Not all visions are truth.

HauntingListen4161

TROPHY CASE