by
Lisa Grace
Thank you Reverend Mark that “sleep”
did not mean sleep, it meant “dead”. One of the points I’ve emphasized in my
posts over the last few months (running every other Thursday) is that you must
understand the rabbinical teachings and social customs, and interpret the Greek
and Hebrew according to what was known back in Jesus’/Yeshua’s day.
For instance, “it’s raining
cats and dogs” doesn’t mean it is literally raining furry pets, but that the
drops are coming down fast and hard.
Last week, I didn’t emphasis
that “sleep” means dead, which it was understood to mean in Jesus day. Just
like we might say someone has “passed away” means “dead”.
Jesus also frequently spoke
in parables. When he told the woman at the well that he could give her water so
she would never thirst again, He DIDN’T MEAN WATER and He DIDN’T MEAN she could
spend the rest of her life not imbibing the wet stuff.
It’s easy for us to
understand in this context what he meant, but for some reason, when you start
in on the supernatural, what you know goes flying out the window (and I don’t
mean literally flying out the window).
Please don’t throw the baby
out with the bath water (and I don’t mean to not throw the baby out with the
bath water, all though you shouldn’t do that if you are giving a baby a bath.)
Anyway, you see how someone
not knowing our culture would think we were saying some bizarre things if WE
meant them LITERALLY.
Since when we die, our next
aware moment is to be with our Creator in heaven or hell (and we’ll talk about
that topic some other time), Jesus couldn’t make his point if he told the literal
truth. This was the time for a parable. A parable about suffering, and how our
reward/punishment is not on/of this earth and if a man’s heart is hard, nothing
will convince him otherwise. The point was not to make to a statement
about ghosts. (Jesus mentions the “great divide“, although He doesn’t get into
the concept of time not really existing, the supernatural world exists outside
of time and what was—is—and always will be— are heavy concepts that again make
ghosts impossible, but serve no purpose in this parable hence saying, “great
divide” really says it all.) Rewards/punishment are metted out after
this earthly life.
Jesus knew ghosts do not
exist, only God creates life. Only God can bring a man back. Believing
otherwise is a blasphemy against God, (because you are saying if humans can
call up the dead, they are doing something only God can do so you are
making humans into a god and that is blasphemy) and you are being deceived by
demons.
Witches and those that call
out to the supernatural are communicating with supernatural creatures not man,
and not anything that ever was a man.
You see how easy it is to
take things out of context, I hope. Look at all of Jesus’ parables and you will
see how they were not meant literally, but as a way to get across a concept.
Again, in reviewing part two, you see how easy it is to think I meant “sleep“,
when I meant dead as a doornail (all though since doornails were never
alive, they can’t be dead, can they?)
In the same way Jesus did not
go into a long explanation of the words and terms He was using, because back
then this was already understood, unlike now, where we take too much
literally without understanding the times and context of what Jesus was really
saying. It’s time for me too catch some ZZZZ’s now (and no, I’m not really
going to try and grab the last letter from the American alphabet.)
