Re: [TruthTalk] Rikk Watts on Genesis 1

[Debbie Sawczak]

Judy, I will be more blunt. It seems to me you almost never hear a message as a whole. I'm beginning to think your interlinear responses are a strategy for avoiding making a sustained, coherent argument. You reduce everything to fragments. This is how you read the Bible, too, and it destroys meaning. I don't know any other way of describing the problem. I find it quite demoralizing. When you do write something that is all one piece, like the one G replied to, it is very hard to make sense of. I am not interested in answering the denatured fragments. Make what you will of that. But I think the answer to your question about 1 Cor. 15:50 is in the verses coming before, especially 35-49 and 51-54. The reason I referred you to the previous dialogue with David is that the same verses were talked about there. There are evidently different kinds of bodies. The perishable one perishes/des, yes, but is raised imperishable. It bears a relationship to the new one similar to the relation a seed bears to the growing plant.   This is also the answer to your objection about "reconditioning the old". I agree, we are not going back to the state of Adam, but our raison d'�tre as humans is and will be what it always was, and we are being made into humans who are able to fulfill it.   Debbie   ----- Original Message ----- From: Judy Taylor To: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org Cc: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 3:24 AM Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Rikk Watts on Genesis 1     On Thu, 5 May 2005 23:14:06 -0400 "Debbie Sawczak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Yes, people do use being human as an excuse. Humanity has been broken for so long, and the story of what we were made to be (and what we will be in Christ) has become so obscured, that they think of fallen humanity as the only humanity. To be truly human is to show with all our being what God is like,   How does "being human" in and of itself effect this since God Himself is not human?  God is a Spirit (John 4:24)   to be God's regent-servants in the world he has made, to live in intimate relationship with God as we were created to do.   There is just one way back to "intimate relationship with God" - Things can never revert back to what they were before the fall. Jesus did not come to recondition the old.  He came to introduce the new. In the garden Adam and Eve were not indwelt by the Holy Spirit.   When God made us, he said "very good".   When he completed his work in Genesis he said "very good" - are you forgetting how many generations ago that was? Today we are born into a fallen creation as fallen creatures ......   Jesus is truly human, and through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, we are being restored.   Jesus is not the same as the rest of humanity - He came from heaven.  John the Baptist points this out early on (John 3:31) "He that cometh from above is above all; he that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth; he that cometh from heaven is above all and what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth". Paul expounds on this further in 1 Cor 15:42-50.   If humanity is just going to be extinguished, there is no such thing as salvation. Think of it: you are animated by the Holy Spirit already now.    Salvation is not about saving some old wretched fallen nature Debbie; we are actually "saved from the wrath of God" by being conformed to the image of Christ and the Holy Spirit indwells us to help bring this about. The body is changed at the last trump and even that will not be the same, it is a "transformed body"   We will have bodies, Judy, although they will be different. We will not be ghosts or angels.    Did I ever say we would be ghosts or angels?  Why does it have to be from one extreme to the other?   We will still be human. What could we be other than human, and be ourselves?   As we have borne the image of the earthly we will bear the image of the heavenly - but it doesn't happen by osmosis and there are lots of "ifs, ands, and buts" IOW it didn't all happen at the incarnation and it necessitates our cooperation.   There is going to be a new earth, too. You might want to reference a previous thread in which David and I talked about the body, salvation, and resurrection.   Joy - Debbie   From: Judy Taylor   Debbie writes: 1. We are not saved to be something other than human. To be truly human does not mean to be sinful and broken.    What do you mean by "truly human" Debbie?  It's been my experience that ppl usually bring out "after all they are human" as an excuse for continuing in sin when they are threatened by someone they think may be setting the standard too high.   You can't be talking about the human body because we all know that "flesh and blood" cannot inherit God's Kingdom (1 Cor 15:50) So what are you saying here... What is your spin?   judyt