It’s an interesting and inspirational movie.
Sherman Nobles
I saw it too. It was a good movie. I believe it, I’m all in.
IF Jesus was raised from the dead with a mortal body, then what did Paul mean when he wrote that Jesus was “the firstborn from the dead”? (Col 1:18)
And IF Jesus was raised from the dead with a mortal body, then did He die again, as did Lazarus and all the others who were raised from the dead?
I’m also reminded of Moses and Elijah appearing and talking with Jesus. I trust that they too have their glorified bodies. So I’m pondering how they fit in with this, and how Samuel appearing to Saul fits in. These seem to me to support the concept that the dead in shedding their mortal bodies rise from death in their immortal bodies. But these can surely be explained from a different perspective.
I was just listening to “Does Love Win? Part 2” and the speaker mentions an interesting book I’ll have to purchase:
“Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity” by Jeffrey A. Trumbower.
In the video, (youtube.com/watch?v=Wjq4t5cdwIw) about 25 minutes into his discussion he talks of evidence of post mortem salvation. It’s pretty good.
Paul means as I pointed to up the page… Jesus was the firstfruits of Israel’s covenant renewal, i.e., resurrection; the firstborn ON BEHALF OF “all Israel”.
Of course Jesus didn’t die again… He ascended having “the power of an endless life”.
Matthew 11:21-22, Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.
The claim of Jesus that the people of Tyre and Sidon would have repented had they witnessed the miracles means these people are decidedly closer to repentance than are the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida. Would it not seem incongruous, especially for such people, not to be given a “second chance,” i.e., a chance for post-mortem salvation? Given that second chance, they, being closer to repentance, would indeed have a more tolerable judgment day.
Other than a second chance in which corrective punishment is less severe or less long-lasting because one is closer to repentance, what could reasonably make judgment day more tolerable?
Concerning the resurrection, Paul said, “This mortal must put on immortality.” (1 Cor 15:53)
I think Jesus was the firstborn from the dead in the sense that He was the first human being to have a true resurrection. By “true”, I mean a resurrection in which the mortal puts on immortality.
When a dead person comes to life again as a mortal, this is not a true resurrection, but is merely a resuscitation, such as was the case with Lazarus.
After Jesus was raised, he went right through a locked door. (John 20:19). We who have mortal bodies are unable to do that.
Well in one sense this is true… but how one understands “mortal / immortality” can provide other appreciations of this, for example…
Rom 6:5-6 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
For Paul, one did NOT need to be literally “crucified” to identify with “the likeness of His death” NEITHER was literal “resurrection” the prerequisite for “the likeness of His resurrection”. It was the “old man” or “body of sin” aka the old covenant mode of existence that needed crucifying and burying… ONLY then could the new man rise to newness of life, i.e., the new covenant mode of existence.
Someone who is unconscious can indeed experience “resuscitation”… Jesus however said quite plainly “Lazarus is dead” Jn 11:14. Jesus raised him “from the dead” Jn 12:1, 9, 17. And here is something to consider… IF being physically raised as per Jesus’ physical resurrection then all such resurrections MUST also literally occur back INTO THIS LIFE into in THIS WORLD… according to what Jesus did – THAT is not the traditional evangelical understanding.
I’m NOT convinced this is such a fool-proof appeal to establish your point because the gospels account for many wondrously and seemingly unbelievable things Jesus did that were NOT hampered by his physicality / mortality, and the bulk of these BEFORE his death and resurrection.
As I understand it… the “corruption/mortality” to be put off was the old covenant mode of existence, i.e., law righteousness. Likewise the “incorruption/immortality” to be put on was the new covenant mode of existence of Christ righteousness.
This “putting off / putting on” relates to the same exchange of covenant identity Paul references in Rom 13:11-14; Eph 4:22-24; Col 3:8-14. The old covenant world was deficient and ready to “pass away”. The OC life was a ministration of “condemnation / death” 2Cor 3:7-11; Heb 8:13] – hence the need for putting off “the flesh” i.e., the “corruption” and carnality OC law righteousness.
This interchange between you is making for a very fruitful thread imo. 
[size=150]Davo![/size] http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g374/Paidion9/Emoticons/Unhuh_zpsd20a14b4.gif
You will be interested to know, this is the story. For a lot more in whale swallowings, go here… www.salon.com/2012/01/15/swallowed_by_a … true_tale/
Swallowed by a Whale-- A True Tale? by Ben Shattuck
"In 1947, Natural History magazine published a newly discovered letter from 1891 penned by a man aboard the ship Star of the East that told of a fellow crew member surviving 24 hours in a whale’s stomach. Here is the story in brief:
The Star of the East was sailing around the Falkland Islands. The crew spotted a bull sperm whale and lowered the boats to give chase. As they approached, the whale turned on the boats and attacked. It stove the boat, scattering the crew in the water. All were accounted for except for one, a young whaleman by the name of James Bartley. All assumed Bartley drowned.
The next day the crew spotted the same whale, gave chase again, and this time killed it. They dragged it back to the ship and began flensing it of its blubber. As they peeled the blubber away, someone noticed something moving under the stomach lining. They cut the stomach open, and out rolled Bartley, unconscious but breathing, his face and arms bleached entirely white by the stomach acids. After waking days later, he said he remembered nothing but sliding through the whale’s throat, and that the throat quivered when he touched it on his way down.
It didn’t take much research – follow-up articles appeared in the years following 1947 – to find that Bartley’s story was fiction, a letter written by mischievous sailors to excite landlubbers. But the letter was enough to pique my interest. Was there ever an actual swallowing, some evidence embedded deep in an antiquated logbook or diary that I might uncover?
Sperm whales would rather eat squid, which require little chewing, and not the hairy, bony things we are. That’s not to say sperm whales haven’t swallowed more than squid. In the 1960s, biologist Malcolm Clarke and his colleagues examined the remains from 2,403 stomachs of sperm whales caught by whalers off the South American coast. Aside from the hundreds of squid remains, he found seabirds, lobsters, seals, driftwood, coconuts, stones, rays, swordfish and sharks. While finding a tiny coconut in a whale’s stomach is enchanting, there’s nothing so striking as the image of a sperm whale eating a shark. It disturbs me the way turducken does, like as a close cousin to cannibalism. More terrifying, with sharks in the diet, Americans who might have been swallowed by sperm whales would have had another thing to worry about: sharing the stomach of your predator with yet another predator. To be eaten after being eaten. To be the –en of the turducken.
In my initial foray into books about the dangers of the Yankee Whale Fishery, I found a pretty standard account of whalemen entering a whale’s mouth and then quickly being spit out. The whalemen either fell in the mouth from their perches in the whaleboats, or the whale, after smashing the boat with its flukes and snapping randomly at the debris floating in the water, chomped down on an unlucky swimmer. In 1771, for instance, a female sperm whale dragged Marshal Jenkins underwater when he fell from his boat, but she quickly resurfaced to spit him out. Job Sherman fell into a sperm whale’s mouth in 1860, Peleg Nye in 1863, Albert Wood in 1847. A November 1880 issue of New Bedford’s Shipping News tells of Wood, at the bow of a whaleboat floating over an angry whale, losing his balance and tumbling headfirst into the mouth. He landed straddling the lower jaw. The whale clamped down, dragged him underwater while smashing the boat with his fluke — immediately killing the boat steerer — then freed Wood, who bled heavily from his groin into the frothy water.
The famous Quaker captain Edmund Gardner’s entanglement with a whale paints the clearest picture of what might happen — he was photographed post-attack, his left hand, fingerless and gnarled, centered in the shot. Gardner and his crew were off the coast of Peru in 1839. They lowered for a sperm whale. Gardner, as captain, was the boat header. After the whale was harpooned, he switched places with the boat steerer to kill the whale with a lance. The whale turned on the boat, and bit the bow. An article in Our Flag – a mid-19th-century publication out of New Bedford — lightly describes the whale biting the bow as it might “the best part of an apple-tart in the munch of a hungry school-boy.” His crew retrieved him, put him in the bottom of the boat, and thought he was dead. But he croaked out that he wanted to go to a doctor in Peru, where he convalesced."
Thought I might er, um…resurrect this thread, in light of a passage I found in Job.
14 For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.
15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;
16 Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,
17 That he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.
18** He keepeth back his soul from the pit**, and his life from perishing by the sword.
19 He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain:
20 So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat.
21 His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out.
22 Yea, his soul draweth near unto the grave, and his life to the destroyers.
23 If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness:
24 Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.
25** His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s: he shall return to the days of his youth:**
26 He shall pray unto God, and he will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will render unto man his righteousness.
27 He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not;
28 He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.
29 Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man,
30 To bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living.
Now I realize these are the words of Elihu, one of Job’s three friends who gave ill counsel to Job in his misery. But for the most part it was a misapplication of the words they spoke concerning Job’s situation that got them in trouble, not the words themselves. I have the impression that what they spoke to job about God was for the most part, true. Even the Apostle Paul quotes Eliphaz from 5:13 in I Corinthians 3:19, saying, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.”
In Job 33, where this passage is extracted, Elihu speaks of God bringing one’s soul from the pit (or the grave). If true, then deliverance is post-mortem.
I thought I would add this Wiki How article on How to Tell if Someone Is Dead. These are some tests the layman can conduct. And a medical doctor writes on this topic at What is Brain Death?. And there’s a book article on [Excerpt]. My most fascinating book read on the topic is Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death by Sam Parnia and Josh Young. The last book is the best I have read, regarding this topic!
In Don Stewart :: What’s the Difference between Resurrection and Resuscitation?, it says:
But I do recall 2 gentlemen arguing about whether a parrot is dead or not.
Elihu was not rebuked, nor did he give bad counsel. He also was not one of the three who God was angry with.
I stand pleasantly corrected then. I didn’t realize that there were more than Job’s three friends involved. Elihu seems to pop up suddenly in the text.
All the more to examine what Elihu has to say.
When God is presented as rebuking Job’s ‘friends,’ is Elihu differiented from the other three friends? I wan’t aware any distinction was indicated by the Biblical text.
Well, Job 42:7 says, " And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath."
Eliphaz’ two friends were Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite (see Job 42:9).
So that pretty much eliminates Elihu from God’s wrath, since it was directed only to Eliphaz and his two friends. So Gabe is right.
Thanks Dondi, very helpful, and I should take a good look at this!
So the interesting thing about Elihu is that he is considerably younger than Job and his three friends, and he hadn’t spoken until now because he didn’t want to usurp their discussions, as a matter of respect, yet he feels that something is very wrong with Job’s friends advice. He respectfully waits until they are finished.
I suspect that Elihu joined them sometime during the latter part of the dialogue. But he accuses Job’s friends of condemning Job for reasons that aren’t sufficient to give, saying "Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment (Job 42:9). Job is, of course, blameless, as God declares in chapter 42.
What a blessing to know that God judges rightly!