Monday, October 20, 2008

What Happens When I Die?

I'm new to this Blogg'n stuff and when I go back and read my post(s) they sound like they were written by an old man so before I start today I"ll click on, "refresh." There: Now I feel like 1988!
Some think 'Denial' is a river in Egypt and don't even want to think about death but I've been thinking about it and I have questions because I'm getting different stuff from different sources.
Speaking of Egypt, the reason the ancients took such care embalming the dead (especially the wealthy ones) is because they wanted to preserve the body until it met up with its immortal soul.
Hindi's in India (say that fast 3X) cremate the dead for the sole purpose of releasing the immortal soul from the lifeless body.
Buddhists believe in reincarnation as a way for the immortal soul to have a new body so it can continue to enjoy life.
Zoroastrians (Persia; a.k.a., Iran) believed the soul was immortal; they still do.
The Greek philosophers took the issue to a higher level and developed the most sophisticated view of immortality; id est, life after death. Most of that work was done by Plato and Aristotle.
Pagan Rome was clearly pantheistic and had a god for the hinges on the door, another for the door, another for the threshold, and still another for the hearth. Whenever and wherever the yfound a god they liked, they adopted and embraced it. Mithra, (Mithraism) was borrowed from Babylon (if I'm remembering rightly) because that was the god of light and immortality.
Probably everybody agrees immortality is a good thing; provided one finds themselves in the right place. Plato wrote that only intellectuals deserved immortality. (Another philosopher said, "Only the good die young.) (I'm sorry; that was a song. Right?)
So, winding up this opus, all these pagan religions handed off their one-note songs about immortality to the early Church of Rome which adopted these children of paganism without a DNA test: (That's 'code' for, "Does it agree with the Bible?"
Reading the Old Testament I see that when a person dies their thoughts cease, they have no idea what's going on, and they don't praise God.
Reading the New Testament I learn that Christ talked about death as a "sleep" just before he resurrected Jarius' daughter and His friend Lazarus. The Apostle Paul writes about the dead being raised when Christ returns to earth the second time.
So, I'm confused, and the reason I'm confused is because Christianity sounds a lot like paganism two or three thousand years before Christ. I said I have questions and there only two: Q1) Who is telling the truth? The pagans? The churches? Or, Christ and Paul?
The second question is this: Q2 Where does the church (your church and mine) get doctrine? From Paganism, Tradition, or Scripture?
Now if you read this and want to post a comment please do so but do us both a favor and don't bring up the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke chapter 16.) Because parables are stories that are supposed to illustrate a principle and they are not used as a source for doctrine. Don't believe me? As your pastor/priest/Bible teacher/theologian. And one more thing; dont quote Paul "...to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord"...unless you read the eitire previous chapter (4) in II Corinthians..
Thanks for tuning in, but please tell me; what's going to happen when I die? e.c.

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