Spiritual Death is Not Biblical

Thank you for your question:"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." Isaiah 9:2.Jesus fulfilled this prophecy according to Matthew who said,13 "And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim:14 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles;16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." Chapter 4 verse 13-16.Jesus was that light (& life) that brought those who were 'dead' unto spiritual life. That life He brought was eternal.Furthermore, spiritual death is found in the words of Solomon:"For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD." Proverbs 8:35.Those who have yet to 'find life' are spiritually dead.I hope this makes sense to you.

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"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." Isaiah 9:2.

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Isaiah is using figurative speech. It is poetic. The people weren't literally in darkness. Figuratively darkness can refer to misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow, wickedness. Shadow of death can refer to calamity and light can refer to happiness, knowledge, hope, etc.What in the text is referring to spiritual death?

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"For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD." Proverbs 8:35.

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Proverbs 8 is a fictional tale praising wisdom. Wisdom is personified. So life and death are being used figuratively. Life refers to right behavior and death refers to wrong behavior. IOW, a life of immorality leads to the destruction and death of all who are involved. Wisdom is good sense, not the soul or spirit. Proverbs 8 isn't speaking of spiritual death as it has been presented so far.What definition do you have for spiritual death?
What does spiritual refer to in the phrase?Edited by purpledawn, : Correcting typo: were to weren't

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

No, it isn't. It matches the doctrinal teaching I posted earlier from the New Testament.But even if that were so, God's poetic expressions are eternal truths. The truth that is mentioned there is the deliverance from death unto life. That is what Jesus brought. First eternal life and delievernce from hell...then the resurrection of the body and deliverance from physical death...that will be given all in the appointed day to come. Proverbs is not a tale praising wisdom. It is not tale at all. They are spiritual maxims for all generations and applicable for every day living.The reason you don't understand these things is perhaps you have never been born again of the Spirit. You might really consider that possibility.

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No, it isn't. It matches the doctrinal teaching I posted earlier from the New Testament.

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But even if that were so, God's poetic expressions are eternal truths. The truth that is mentioned there is the deliverance from death unto life. That is what Jesus brought. First eternal life and delievernce from hell...then the resurrection of the body and deliverance from physical death...that will be given all in the appointed day to come.

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Yes Isaiah is using figurative speech. You are projecting a later teaching onto Isaiah. This discussion is looking at the simple reading of the text, not hidden meanings. The NT wasn't around when Isaiah was written. The same with Proverbs. Wisdom is personified. It is a literary device.Some people are not able to study the plain text because it clashes with their belief system. If discussing the simple reading is difficult for you, then don't continue in this discussion. Later teachings and different forms of interpretation don't help the discussion.Show me that the simple reading of the text speaks of spiritual death.ABE: The words spoken in Matthew 4 were being used figuratively also, the same as Isaiah. The author isn't speaking of spiritual death.Edited by purpledawn, : ABE

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

The Holy Spirit says otherwise. But the language was plain enough.Learn this lesson: never declare a direct statement of fact as 'figurative' unless there is very good reason to do so.Isaiah was speaking of those who were living in spiritual death and Christ came to give them life. Nothing could be plainer than that. Not only so but Matthew recorded the fact that Jesus fulfilled what Isaiah said he would do...literally."That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles;16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.."Now, Zabulon, the land of Nephthalim, Jordan, and Galilee ARE ALL real, literal places. Jesus, being the Light of the world came among those who lived in those places and had no light and brought them life; life from death.You are picking and choosing what you will and won't accept as literal/historical based on your prejudices, not on fact.Without realizing it, your insistence upon the text being 'figurative' renders it useless. If the language of "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death" is not darkness and death in substance (reality) then what, pray tell does it mean?Your interpretation is in error. God told the truth. On the day that Adam sinned in the garden of Eden he died. First his spirit died and his body began to die. God does not lie. 'Let God be true and every man a liar.'"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." Jesus in John 5:24.The Lord Jesus Christ, being co-Creator with the Father did not lie about this and neither did His word lie about Adam and his sin. That sin brought him death on the day he committed it. The death God spoke of concerning Adam is the kind of death Jesus mentioned above. I didn't say anything about hidden meanings as it concerns Proverbs. Proverbs is neither a tale nor a story. It is a philosophy of life and the Lord expects His people to live by those proverbs that Solomon wrote because He inspired him to write them.You aren't telling the truth.

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Without realizing it, your insistence upon the text being 'figurative' renders it useless. If the language of "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death" is not darkness and death in substance (reality) then what, pray tell does it mean?

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The figurative language doesn't render it useless. It describes the situation of the people. I explained the usages in Message 167. If you take the words as referring to reality, then it isn't referring to spiritual death as it has been defined so far. The point of the discussion is to see that the simple reading is actually speaking to the audience about spiritual death. What words actually refer to spiritual death and how?

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Now, Zabulon, the land of Nephthalim, Jordan, and Galilee ARE ALL real, literal places. Jesus, being the Light of the world came among those who lived in those places and had no light and brought them life; life from death.

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Isaiah's use of figurative language doesn't make these places not real. Poetic style doesn't always mean fiction, but the style does use figurative language.What definition do you use for spiritual death?

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I didn't say anything about hidden meanings as it concerns Proverbs. Proverbs is neither a tale nor a story. It is a philosophy of life and the Lord expects His people to live by those proverbs that Solomon wrote because He inspired him to write them.

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Do you understand the use of personification and how to recognize when it is being used? If yes, please give me an example of personification.The article I supplied concerning Proverbs 8, is a Christian source. My statements are not out of line with the simple reading. Proverbs isn't from the Torah or the Prophets, which is the focus of this thread. See Message 1.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

It is never pointless for God to speak. It is profitable to take in the word of God even when you do not fully understand it. That has never changed.Here is evidence that the writers were faithful to record divine revelation which they may not have fully comprehended:Daniel was told things by divine revelation which he did not fully understand: "And I heard, but I did not understand." (Daniel 12:8) Joseph received dreams from God the full significance he did not understand until many years afterwards when he explains God's soveriegnty to his brothers: "And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth and to keep you alive by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharoah and lord of all Egypt; come down to me; do not delay" (Gen. 45:8,9)This was the eventual interpretation of his dreams of his brothers and parents bowing down to him. Years passed before its full comprehension for him was understood.The significance of an act of striking arrows at the intruction of Elisha was not fully comprehended by king Joash (2 Kings 13:15-19).The angel also expressed surprise that Zechariah did not understand a divine vision given to him: "And I answered a second time and said to him, What are the two olive branches that are by the side of the two golden spouts, which empty the gold from themselves?

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And he spoke to me, saying, Do you not know what these are ? And I said, No, sir." (Zech. 4:13)The angel did explain the details to Zechariah. However, I think we have to believe that sometimes the fuller meaning of visions or prophecies were recorded without the aid of interpretation.Some who did not believe the word of God did not understand. "Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Jehovah been revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1)The prophet is seemingly complaining to God. They have spoken for God but the audience has not received what was intended to be revealed. They did not understand it.God warns the scoffers that His word to them will require accumulation of line upon line and its fuller meaning must be obtained from not from one place but from different places. This seeming hiding of meaning is a judgment upon the scoffers: "Therefore Jehovah's word to them will be: Rule upon rule, rule upon rule; Line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little; that they may go and stumble backward, and broken and snared, and taken." (Isa. 28:13)Of course the New Testament tells us that let alone the prophets, even angels longed to comprehend some of the things written in the Old Testament. The prophets searched for fuller significance as well: Concerning this salvation the prophets, who prophesied concerning the grace that was to come unto you, sought and searched diligeently.

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Searching into what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ in them was making clear, testifying beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glories after these.

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To them it was revealed that not to themselves but to you they ministered these things, which have now been announced to you through those who preach the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit ... which things angels long to look into." (1 Pet. 1:10-12)God's word is a living word. And the Spirit of God "breaths" upon the word and enlightens the audience to the degree God wished.Moses could write things in Genesis which had one application to his immediate audience yet the living Spirit could illuminate deeper significances to latter audiences.

The request was to show evidence that the writers didn't understand what they wrote and the actual audience didn't understand what they heard.(Zech. 4:13) The angel explained within the writing, so the writer did understand what he was writing.This thread is looking at the plain text not other forms of interpretation. See Message 164.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

Explanation is usually an interpretation."And I heard, but I did not understand." (Daniel 12:8) That may be your contention but your title of the thread is hype, and false advertizing. For the Bible is not just the Torah.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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That may be your contention but your title of the thread is hype, and false advertizing. For the Bible is not just the Torah.

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The Jewish Bible can be referred to as the Torah.Picking on the title doesn't show me that the plain text of the Jewish Bible, the Catholic Bible, the Protestant Bible, or the Samaritan Torah supports the interpretation of the words translated as death in the OT as spiritual death.As I said in the OP, I feel that the spiritual death concept is a later concept influenced by Greek philosophers.The words translated as death were speaking of physical death. If you feel the text says otherwise, then show the evidence. Remember we are looking at plain text.The phrase "spiritual death" is not used in either Christian Bible, OT or NT.Paul refers to being "separated from the life of God" in Ephesians 4:18, which people today have referred to as spiritual death, but that doesn't change the meaning of words translated as death in the OT. In Ephesians Paul is talking about right and wrong behavior. Although Paul does use the word death creatively in his writings, death wasn't used in this instance.Some have said that the word death in the phrase "spiritual death" means separation. While death in the phrase may have that meaning to those who created the phrase, it doesn't change the use of the word translated as separation in the verse to mean death.Please provide a definition of spiritual death and show where the plain text speaks of spiritual death by the writers, not later interpretations.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

Yes of course, that's the whole point of the story. Can you not read?Maybe I'm not being fair. Religious issues stir people up and cloud their thinking, they put a lot of pressure on a person. So let's sort of take the same kind of content and make a different word problem with it, one that won't be so controversial.We have two statements, that disagree, and then the outcome, with commentary by one of the speakers. So let's say that one speaker, let's call him George W, says that some other country, call it Iraq, has WMD's. Another speaker, let's call him David Letterman, says not only do they not have WMD's, but if we waste money on a big war right now our economy will end up collapsing. So then (in this hypothetical case) what happens is, there turn out not be any WMD's and furthermore the economy does in fact collapse.In a case like this, is George W then going to get away with saying something like "Uh, what I really meant was spiritual WMD's? Nope. And if we happen to have something like a tape of him saying something like "You can fool some of the people all of the time; and we are going to concentrate on those." Well then. It's not hard to tell who is lying, right?So now let's walk through it again from the Bible. First we have one statement. Now here we have another statement which is contradictory. And now here we have the outcome You see that? Not only does he not die "on the day he eats thereof", he's in real danger of living forever, something that apparently wouldn't otherwise be going to happen! So who's telling the truth, and who's lying?Don't be surprised by this, guys. God lies all the time. That's the whole crux of the plot of the story of Jonah! Here's another nice bit about Jonah. He that hath an ear to understand, let him hear Pop quiz: those of you who can do the simple math required to count days and nights from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, is Jesus in this passage saying that the story of Jonah and the whale is literally true or not?

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Pop quiz: those of you who can do the simple math required to count days and nights from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, is Jesus in this passage saying that the story of Jonah and the whale is literally true or not?

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No, I doubt the author of Matthew took the bit about the whale as an actual event. Notice the author of Luke left that part out and focused on repentance.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

I removed my last post, I was just thinking out loud, sorry for the interruption Jaywill, please continue, I am glad to see you revived this topic.EAMEdited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.

Then why do you go into a discussion of Ezekiel 18:20 in your OP? Ezekiel is not part of the Torah.You wrote: I have no problem accepting that most of the blessings in the Torah are in the realm of physical life. I have no problem accepting that death spoken of in most of the Five Books of Moses (Torah) is physical.I also have no problem with the New Testament extending the terms life and death to add a more spiritual dimension. Notice I did not say add a spiritual dimension. I said add a more spiritual dimension.That may be a no-no to you. To me it is a continuation of the progressive revelation of God. Even if it was that doesn't make the fact of spiritual death not true. And that the New Testament writers inherited all their utterancess about life and death from Greek philosophy I would regard as unlikely.It is curious that you are so intent on eliminating a teaching of spiritual death from the Old and New Testament. As I said, I have no major problem with the Torah limiting its elaborations of the blessings of life and the misfortune of death to refer to physical life and blessings and physical death.And I have no problem with latter revelators expanding those passages to include a more spiritual element. So what?The concept of man being spiritually dead cannot be denied from the New Testament. "But Jesus said to him, Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead." (Matt. 8:22)It sheds further light on what happened to man when Adam and Eve were excluded from partaking of the tree of life. They were alienated from the life of God.That the new testament apostles shed further light on things written in the Torah is something you either accept or reject. As a Christian I accept it: " .... the revelation of the mystery was made known to me, as I have written previously in brief, By which, in reading it, you can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it is now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in spirit." (Eph. 3:4,5)This does not mean there was no revelation known by the author of the Torah. It does say that a certain mystery hidden from past generations was now being made known through new covenant holy apostles and prophets.These apostles and prophets of the New Testament are holy. They were called and set apart by God in exactly the same way Moses had been.Perhaps you have a problem with recognizing that the living God was still working and speaking in the new covenant as He was in the giving of the Torah. You don't have Paul or the Greeks to blame. You have to blame God. Paul is talking about abiding in the indwelling Christ or living by the old nature. This is why his prayer is that the Ephesians would be strengthened with power by God's Spirit into their inner man and that Christ may make His home in their hearts. Christ had come into their spirit as the life giving spirit " ... the last Adam became a life giving Spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45). But they needed to be stenghened into that realm of the indwelling Jesus Christ. They were use to living by the outward man. They were regenerated with a new man and inner man. They needed to strengthen their bond with that new realm.They needed to live from out of that new source of the regenerated inner life. Had I been in the audience when Jesus said "Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead by His mercy I would have accepted that His revelation of life and death shed deeper meaning on those words. I was not to resist Him in the name of the Torah but to follow Him. In Him was true life. And to not follow Him was to be dead yet while even physically breathing.Fortunately the disciples did not become ensnared in kind of interpretation rejecting Jesus' references to life and death in a way of surmising that He didn't know enough about the Torah. I am not sure how necessary that is to this particular argument. I already showed you that the mystery hidden in generations past was revealed to the holy new covenant apostles and prophets.If you reject that statement you simply reject it. But from Jesus Christ down (including His apostles) they shed a more penetrating light on many Old Testament utterances.It should be obvious that Christ the Messiah Himself, deepened the meaning of death in Matt.8:22. And of course the Gospel of John is filled with contrasts between spiritual ZOE life and spiritual death. But I suspect you'll cry "Greek philosophy!" so I refer firstly to Matthew's Gospel primarily targeting the Jews.Now having said this it is not hard for me to believe that God meant what He said when He warned Adam that the day he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would die. He began to die and spiritual death was the beginning.It is not relevant how much the writer of Genesis understood this. It is only relevant that the writer of Genesis was faithful to tell us what happened and what was said.We are aided by New Testament revelation to see that this act of Adam to disobey and partake of that tree brought spiritual death as well as physical death upon mankind.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I removed my last post it was out of context, sorry for the interuption, glad to see you revived this topic.EAM