Letter to Rick (reader of bible in year podcast)

Letter to Rick (bibleinayear@gmail.com) reader of a great podcast-Rick-

One of the problems in Christianity is people talking like they know, but they don't know, things pertaining to eternal life.  Your friend's message on prayer was like that.  The idea that dead Christians are sitting in Heaven is 99% extra-biblical.  Maybe more like 100% because of the various fact we do know.  For example, we do know that "the dead in Christ shall be raised first"  when Jesus returns, and then "we who are alive shall be caught up with Him."  I call this a fact known because it fits into a indisputable Biblical time-line.  The idea of a "heaven and hell" are pure Dante's Inferno.  The Bible speaks little to support such ideas unless taken out of the "time-line of Christ."  I think for many what I has said so far is enough to raise righteous indignation and a call for my flogging.  Yet, I know I am close to the truth because I can read in scripture.  Is this important?  I believe it is absolutely fundamental to a Christian to understand what we know for sure, and what is just a person’s unsubstantiated view.  Since the Bible is God’s word He decides who understands it, as I’m sure you are gathering as you read it.  We both “see through a glass darkly” (I Cor 13:12) and even in Paul’s lifetime he “wrote things which are difficult to understand” (2 Pet 3:16).  Reading the Word and understanding it are two separate topics.  It’s a wonderful book.  It is made of “Spirit and Life” (John 6:63).  Here’s a nugget in the timeline.  It’s written to comfort Christian’s whose brothers or sisters in the faith have died.  Paul’ could have said (but didn’t) “little children those who are asleep (dead) are in  heaven, cheer up, don’t you want to be in heaven!” (It is not ironic but rather fearful to understand that the terrorists today gladly blow themselves and anyone near them into smoldering chunks of flesh think they are on the way to “heaven.”)  Here’s the truth:

1 Thessalonians 4
The Coming of the Lord
    13Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18Therefore encourage each other with these words.

Now that is exciting!  First of all I didn’t make it up, or interpret it. It’s a fact in the timeline that we wait for.  The return of Christ.  A reunion with those long dead in Christ.  There are other know facts on the timeline that make many so-called biblical ideas that “everyone knows that” become revealed as hog wash.  Often I wonder as a Christian how much more of what we believe is really pure deception.  

A theologian I am not

A theologian I am not, a Christian I am.  In that I have equal access to the final word –the Bible – as does a strawberry picker.  You don’t have to read much of the Bible to find out that God does what He pleases and what He pleases is going to be done on His  schedule.  The nation of Israel would have liked Christ to rise up and be their King, but it wasn’t time.  I find the existence of Israel a great proof of the power of God.  They are still here with us, and they still read and believe the scriptures although they must really be doing some fancy interpretations of 200+ scriptures that Christ has already fulfilled.