Jehovahs Witnesses: Why do you say Jesus was raised from the dead if he was destroyed?

Don't they teach that it was Michael the Archangel who was raised from the dead? Perhaps they've forgotten what they teach about who they think Jesus was:

"Who, though, was the son whom God chose to be born as a perfect human creature? ...He has rightly been called Michael the Archangel. His life-force having been transferred to Mary's egg cell by Almighty God's power that overshadowed Mary meant that he, Michael, disappeared from heaven. By human birth from Mary, the Jewish virgin, he was to become a human soul." (God's Eternal Purpose now Triumphing, 1974, pp137-138). In other words, they are saying the pre-human Jesus was Michael, who is an Archangel.

This is what Jehovah's Witnesses claim happened to the body of Jesus: "What happened to the perfect fleshly body of Jesus after his death? Was it preserved so that in time men will look upon it in worship? Or does Jesus still have this fleshly body in the heavens, “spiritualized” so that it can be seen and worshiped? Neither. The Scriptures answer: It was disposed of by Jehovah God, dissolved into its constituent elements or atoms." Watchtower, 1 September 1953 (but no scripture says that)

"After conversing with those amazed disciples, the resurrected Jesus vanished. He dematerialized or dissolved that clothed human body. He did not take that body and its clothing into the spirit realm with him. Had it been possible to do so, it would mean that a spirit person in heaven does have flesh and bones, at least in the case of the glorified Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:50" Holy Spirit Active in the Invisible Heavenly Realm Chapter 2, page 19 (1976)

They claim that after the physical body of Jesus "disappeared" what came out of the tomb wasn't Jesus the man (because they say Jesus is dead, forever dead), but it was this spirit creature who is Michael the Archangel. Michael's life-force returned to whatever it was that claimed to be Jesus - this apparition with a body of flesh and bones.

But then they say that this life-force is impersonal. "The word 'spirit' is translated from the Hebrew word ru'ach, meaning the life-force that animates all living creatures, human and animal. (Ecclesiastes 3:18-22) However, the important difference is that ru'ach is an impersonal force; IT DOES NOT HAVE A WILL OF ITS OWN OR RETAIN THE PERSONALITY OR ANY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DECEASED INDIVIDUAL." (Mankind's Search for God, 1990, pp153-154).

“Thus even the Son of God provided testimony to the effect that the spirit is an impersonal life force.” (Awake! 8 August 1972, pages 27-28) By virtue of their own belief that the spirit or life-force is impersonal and does not have a will or a personality, they have shot themselves in the foot, spiritually speaking. Their claim that “Michael disappeared from heaven” and “became a human soul” in the form of Jesus, the man, is untenable.

Does the Bible teach that what is resurrected is different to what died? Only inasmuch as the resurrected BODY is glorified, and fit for heaven, just as Jesus' resurrected body was glorified, and fit for heaven. If Jesus was not bodily resurrected, then no Jehovah's Witnesses can ever hope the dead will have a physical, bodily resurrection. What dies must be resurrected - not something completely different! A body dies to be replaced by a spirit? Michael the Archangel disappeared from heaven, only to turn up as Jesus the man, then Jesus the man died and Michael the Archangel is now sitting at God's right hand in heaven? Where in the Bible does it say that?

Salutations!

Human beings are more than just the sum of their constituents. Saying otherwise would be committing the fallacy of composition.

Every atom in the human body is replaced at least once every 7 years. Does that mean that we're not the same person we were 8 years ago?

Some believe that the resurrection of humans will be the raising of the dead from their dead bodies, or bones. But what about those who were burned, and whose ashes were scattered? Is God, the creator of the universe, incapable of fashioning a new body for that person?

Your analogy breaks down for two reasons: 1) You're not God, 2) The toy is not a person.

God is capable of making a new body, with the same person.

Yours,

Abernathy the Dull

Hi there

It is an interesting question , but one not hard to answer.

But first take for example the Bible account of Jairus' daughter.

Luke 8:49-54 ''---a certain representative of the presiding officer of the synagogue came, saying: “Your daughter has died; do not bother the teacher any longer.”  On hearing this, Jesus answered him: “Have no fear, only put forth faith, and she will be saved.”  When he reached the house he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter and John and James and the girl’s father and mother.  But people were all weeping and beating themselves in grief for her. So he said: “STOP weeping, for she did not die but is sleeping.” At this they began to laugh at him scornfully, because they knew she had died.  But he took her by the hand and called, saying: “Girl, get up!” --''

Jesus resurrected this young girl and her old body was restored back to life.

Now this is not the same as the resurrection of Jesus....

The body that people recognized as the raised Jesus was NOT the same body as before.

His old body was not restored back to life.

The life in that body was lost , and that body had no further use.

In fact, it was VERY important that his old body was NOT brought back to life......

If Jehovah had of brought Jesus back to life in his old body , or indeed again in any completely physical human body it would have invalidated the ransom sacrifice that he had just given.

So the body that people recognized as Jesus was NOT a normal human body made of flesh as he once had.

No , it was a materialized body of the same sort as the angels had used in the past.

It had of course physical attributes that allowed his disciples to recognize him , but No , it was not his old body.

For more Bible based information please feel free to email me.

For the One with the ability and power to create man in His own image, with a perfect body and with the potential for full expression of the marvelous characteristics implanted in the human personality, it would pose no insurmountable problem to resurrect an individual. If scientific principles established by God can be used by scientists to preserve and later reconstruct a visible and audible scene by means of videotape, how easy it is for the great Universal Sovereign and Creator to resurrect a person by repatterning the same personality in a newly formed body. Concerning the revitalizing of Sarah to have a child in her old age, the angel said: “Is anything too extraordinary for Jehovah?”—Ge 18:14; Jer 32:17, 27.

The Bible tells us that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God" so at some stage the physical Body of Jesus would have to have been destroyed..!

Greetings,

Sonny, you are misrepresenting our beliefs again. I ask again for you to show me the quote where our literature said we believe Jesus' body "was dissipated into gases." The only quote like this is over a hundred years ago and it did not say that was a belief of Bible Students. What it said was "We know nothing about what became of it, except that it did not decay or corrupt (Ac 2:27,31). Whether it was dissolved into gases or whether it is still preserved somewhere...no one knows-- nor is such knowledge necessary."

So your question is illogical and hypocritical. First, Witnesses never said they believed such a thing and second we don't believe what was taught over a hundred years ago any more than you believe everything that your religious writers wrote a hundred years ago.

Now, Witnesses used the term "dissolved" but again the last time we used it was in 1953 (WT 9/1; 518). But, it's not inaccurate since one of its definitions is "to separate into parts or elements; disintegrate but "dissolve" also has unwanted connotations such as a slower process. The ‘53 article clearly goes on to explain what it meant: "It was disposed of by Jehovah God, dissolved into its constituent elements or atoms...God caused Jesus' body to disappear, but not corrupt...disintegrated back into the elements from which all human bodies are made—Jn 20:1-13."

But the term "dissolved" is a scriptural term which was used by Paul to show that those resurrected to heaven do not keep their visible fleshly bodes. Rather their "earthly tents" are "dissolved" (2Cor. 5:1, KJV, ASV, WEB). ("Destroyed" RSV, NEB, NIV).

Christ body was not allowed to see corruption or decompose like sinful humans so God must have disposed of it in some instantaneous manner.

Jesus Christ gave his *flesh* as a ransom for us (Jn 6:51). Having given us his flesh if he ever took it back again he would nullify his sacrifice. If Christ had kept his body then there was no ransom!

The resurrection does not require the same EXACT body you died with. It is the *person* who is resurrected either with a spirit body in heaven or a physical body on earth.

Your convoluted logic would only lead you to the useless sophistries of history which require resurrected beings to once again posses EVERY physical cell they had during their earthly life.

The absurdity of such archaic logic is clear when you consider that a human body is made up of new cells repeatedly during our lifetime. In seven years or so virtually every cell in our body is different. YET WE ARE THE SAME PERSON!

"In a year," says Science Digest of December, 1954, "approximately 98 per cent of the atoms in us now will be replaced by other atoms that we take in in our air, food, and drink." So in the resurrection it is not body atoms that God remembers and re-creates; what God holds in his memory is the life pattern of the creature. This is what makes the same person in the resurrection—the life pattern.

The actual atoms of those who are long dead have since been spread all over the earth and often have subsequently been incorporated into vegetable and animal life—yes, even into other humans, who have thereafter died. It is plain that in the resurrection the same atoms could not be used for more than one person who is raised. (One conjures up pictures of atoms flying out of the earth and even out of other living organisms, to recompose the original bodies of people who lived in the past.)

Resurrection did not mean having one's original molecules reassembled before you can be the same person.

God is the Creator and can easily reconstruct, with different atoms, the body cells with the same genetic structure and arrangement. He can, in effect, imprint in that body ALL the memories and characteristics that the person had acquired during his lifetime.

Jehovah, the God of resurrection, does not need to reassemble atoms of matter that originally constituted a human body. He can fashion new bodies for those resurrected and still have them be the same person.

Even though Christ's "life" was transferred from his prehuman spirit existence and “became human” he was still the same individual! It was Christ who was transferred to earth and it was Christ who was resurrected.

Yours,

BAR-ANERGES

He would have the same memories. Don't you think you are being kind of petty on this one? Why not ask this question of everyone? Why JWs?

Aw, why did you destroy your toy?