Death - The Last Word?

[@dougbell9543]

These brief topical lessons are of immense importance and are greatly appreciated. ✔️

[@NTWrightOnline]

As always, Doug, we are so grateful for your encouragement! There's so much more to explore, not only on this channel but also at www.admirato.org. We’d love for you to take our free courses! --NTW Online Team

[@yurisnisarenko]

Thank you, greetings from St.Petersburg, Russia

[@dougbell9543]

Greetings from Canada. We stand firmly together in the faith that once and for all was delivered to the saints. ✔️

[@NTWrightOnline]

We are grateful for the family of God, which extends across the world. We are together in one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We have one God and father of all, who is over all, through all and in all. --NTW Online Team

[@skipcadorette5077]

The Spirit within me wells up with hope as I listen to your words. Thank you.

[@NTWrightOnline]

We are so grateful for the hope we share! Thank you for sharing your reflections. --NTW Online Team

[@ringthembells143]

It is finished yet it has just begun.

[@brucecooper7905]

I know who you are, and I approve this comment of yours. And, EVERYTHING else you say, as well.

[@FlorinEftimie]

This is so good, and bringing hope and encouragement. Thank you

[@brucecooper7905]

just WOW! I could listen to NT ALL DAY EVERY DAY for the rest of my life. Thank you SO MUCH!!!

[@NTWrightOnline]

Thank you for your encouragement! We're grateful for our donors and ministry partners who make our KZbin channel accessible for all. --NTW Online Team

[@townsendstephen]

I loved this. Death IS the enemy, not a gateway to a better state. I have always wondered how tha old testament in particular does not speak of Dearg as a good thing. And the is the whole Bible theme of the paths which lead to life and to death. Not the same paths.

[@NTWrightOnline]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It's great to have a place to think and reflect on matters like these. --NTW Online Team

[@vivianevans8323]

Thank you for talking about Death with a capital 'D' and putting it into biblical context. Yes, Death is the enemy and or so it seems to me, all we have said about it are our attempts to get to grips with the heartache Death creates. For me, there's only one way to get to grips with that heartache is to look it in the face, accept it for what it is - inimical - and work to overcome it by love because Love is stronger than Death.

[@NTWrightOnline]

Beautifully said, Vivian. Thank you! --NTW Online Team

[@angelashort1331]

Indeed , LOVE LIVES ON . the everlasting building material , of The Kingdom of God . . The land of Beulah , the City of MORE , and more and more ,

[@terriwerning3477]

Wow-so much said in such a short time. I need to watch and listen again!

[@NTWrightOnline]

We're grateful you're here learning with us, thank you for your support! --NTW Online Team

[@Gorbyrev]

A beautiful expression of a wonderful truth. Many thanks Tom.

[@NTWrightOnline]

So nice to hear, thank you! --NTW Online Team

[@vsschreffler]

Great message of hope for the ultimate overthrow of death.

[@OmoleyeJames-ol6iv]

Wow! Amazing! Thank you N.T Wright

[@NTWrightOnline]

We appreciate your encouragement! We're glad you're here. --NTW Online Team

[@bettyh7586]

Always an encouragement.

[@FlorinEftimie]

Thank you for sharing this ❤ it is encouraging and enlightening

[@NTWrightOnline]

We are always grateful for your encouragement. Thank you! --NTW Online Team

[@ThembaMaselane]

Listening to this eye opening teaching makes Paul's epistle to the the church in Corinth talking about the sting of death being taken away.

[@NTWrightOnline]

We are so grateful to have a community where we can reflect meaningfully like this. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. --NTW Online Team

[@cristhianp.vasquez3460]

Thanks a lot, greetings from Bolivia!

[@NTWrightOnline]

Greetings to you in Bolivia! We're grateful you are here with us, together in the Lord. --NTW Online Team

[@Lloyd_Windon_MKM]

Wow! This is so enriching and liberating!

[@NTWrightOnline]

We're encouraged to hear this! Thank you for sharing. --NTW Online Team

[@cephasmcpher67peteroutdoorspip]

So much for death losing its sting.

[@jwillisbarrie]

Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf ❤

[@williama.hovestreydt6623]

A project? So many people talk about the after life with such certainty. How?

[@michaelkistner6286]

Amen!

[@gandalfgimlilegolas6663]

I have to disagree with Mr. Wright’s interpretation of “on that day you eat a it, you shall surely die”. It is the spiritual death that this signifies, not physical death.

[@itinerantpatriot1196]

That was an interesting take. I know I will die, but I refuse to live my life in fear. By the same token, I don't want to squander the gift of life and treat it as some sort of cosmic way station. If it were, it would serve no purpose, and that would land you in the same camp as the nihilists. Death does hurt, it's okay to acknowledge that.

[@NTWrightOnline]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, well said. Acknowledging the pain keeps us connected with God's heart, it keeps us meaningfully engaged in life and our work in it. --NTW Online Team

[@rainking50]

I love this teaching, and NT in general, but disagree with his closing point. We can be at peace with death AND be people of life. Our love can extend to even our enemies.

[@cindymcj5887]

So we don't really understand what happens to a believer between our physical death and Jesus' return? We know death has been defeated and He will take care of us?

[@awetish]

( Isaiah 44:8) " Don''t fear, neither be afraid. Haven''t I declared it to you long ago, and shown it? You are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me? Indeed, there is not. I don''t know any other Rock." I wonder sometime, when we think about God, whom we read in scriptures, God who can do all things, all knowing and loving and merciful. But is it only in theory and fantasy or in real life. The psalmist has shouted in one of his praises " Oh see and taste that the Lord is good" And we believe God is our rock of salvation. Salvation from all the power of darkness and corruption. Yes salvation from the last enemy, Death. Saint Paul in his epistle to corinthians has assured those who love God, " O Death where is thy power and thy poison" God has destroyed it by raising His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. God has shown His all power and Love, through this act of Love. Praise be to God, whose love for us is beyond we can imagine. Amen.

[@rijkjanssen]

Brother Wright, you speak the truth about death and resurrection from the ‘state’ of being dead. Death is the opposite of life. The dead have no consciousness. Jesus compared death to sleep (Lazarus). A sleep without dreams and without a body. We are momentarily no longer there. But if all goes well, your name is then in the book of life. In the resurrection, dead people come back. On Earth. In Heaven, there are no resurrections. Even Jesus' resurrection was on Earth. He had a body of bones and flesh and they fed him fish. 40 days later he went to Heaven but he comes back. I understood the order of resurrections like this: First Jesus, that has already happened. Then just before he returns those who belong to him (the believers in him and in his Father) and then during Judgment Day the rest of those who died. Below some texts that deal with it: For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all Ecclesiastes 9:5 He that conquers will thus be arrayed in white outer garments; and I will by no means blot out his name from the book of life, but I will make acknowledgment of his name before my Father and before his angels. Revelation 3:5 Your dead ones will live. A corpse of mine-they will rise up. Awake and cry out joyfully, YOU residents in the dust! For your dew is as the dew of mallows, and the earth itself will let even those impotent in death drop [in birth]. Isaiah 26:19 Most truly I say to YOU, He that hears my word and believes him that sent me has everlasting life, and he does not come into judgment but has passed over from death to life. John 5:24

[@glennfulcher5625]

I wonder what the mood was like at funerals Bishop Wright conducted? Humour aside, this is the stuff of nightmares. The texts of the early Church are replete with metaphors, symbols and myths, all of which were legitimate attempts to explain the meaning of Jesus. The Church Fathers did us a great service by keeping all of these side by side for us to appreciate - more literature than for any other ancient movement. The Church Fathers understood the importance of symbolism for finite humanity to access the transcendent, which no single symbol can possibly do. Wright’s exposition reflects just one model - that which was normalised in the Western Church post-Anselm, replete with legalistic interpretations of atonement. It is a constant source of puzzlement to me that modern evangelicalism should be so obsessed with the one interpretation of death as the punishment for original sin and Jesus’ role as the ransom paid to a God whose primary attribute is justice. The Eastern Church isn’t so obsessed, appreciating metaphors such as exemplar, teacher, victor, and exchange (among others), alongside some of the models that are more difficult to process outside of an ancient worldview. They had a much richer understanding of the meaning of Jesus that included, but went beyond, the cross. And surely, this is the one powerful insight that Bonhoeffer gives us. Our understanding of the world post-Enlightenment has irreversibly changed. And so the problem with Wright’s exposition is that he not only (legitimately) studies the myths of a world with a different structure to ours, he actually lives in it. We do not. The challenge for the modern Church, if its message is to be at all relevant today, is to address the meaningfulness of symbol and the radical impact of the person of Jesus upon our understanding of what it means to be human - in the likeness of God. Not frightening, threatening, or addressing one preferred model that appeals to human weakness or fear. But hopefulness in an optimistic world we know so much more about, and where “because I live, you also will live….you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.”

[@bertbranson5057]

I appreciate your concerns. But honestly, I think you are responding to a narrow Evangelism rather than to NT's ideas. You appear to know your traditions and its polemics fairly well. But not everything is a nail, Mr. Hammer. 😂

[@glennfulcher5625]

@@bertbranson5057 I’m not entirely sure what the argument is here, other than a claim that I don’t understand Wright’s “larger” picture. And indeed there is one, I suppose. Which is that Wright agrees with the central argument of Schweitzer regarding the Jewish eschatological context of the message of Jesus, and messianic expectation. At least Schweitzer followed this through to its logical conclusion, even if he could not bring himself to abandon his liberal Protestant faith. It is not about knowing “traditions and polemics”, but maintaining a critical approach to the interpretation of ancient texts, especially when there is an interface with modern faith. I agree that the eschatology is present in the New Testament, but I remain to be convinced that there was a strong pre-Markan form. There is little evidence of it in the Q tradition, for example. And we now know a great deal more about the Hellenistic cultural milieu of Galilee in the time of Jesus. Life and ideas were much more diverse than portrayed here. And at the interface, if modern faith is rooted in a pre-Enlightenment worldview, we do run the risk of becoming completely irrelevant, as Bonhoeffer warned us so cogently. In short, I have no question regarding Wright’s ability as a New Testament scholar, my question is about the narrowness of his interpretation, and willingness to make this the basis of a faith for the 21st Century.

[@wlf7184]

I assume you know that Wright does not accept a post-Anselmian, 'legalistic interpretation' of Atonement, that, in fact, he's spent a lot of time and effort arguing against such an interpretation.

[@glennfulcher5625]

⁠​⁠@@wlf7184Thanks for your comment. I’ll search for that video, as I may very well have misunderstood. I suspect I arrived at this conclusion because of his heavy use of Paul’s “more Jewish” side. As I’ve delved a little further into the view that Jesus saw himself as a Jewish messiah, whose eschatology was actually knowledge of his ascension and the prediction of the destruction of the temple in 70AD, I do have to acknowledge an error of understanding here. But I do find this position even more difficult. Even from a conservative position, such foreknowledge looks somewhat docetic. But I’m more concerned that it pushes all other evidence (such as sayings and sources like Q) to a date later than the gospels, on the grounds that “the big picture” is one of a thoroughly Jewish Jesus. The value of work by scholars in the Jesus Seminar, amongst other things, is to reveal the Hellenised world of the Galilee into which Jesus was born. I think the evidence presents a much more culturally rich and diverse picture than that presented by Wright. A Jew he may have been, but as a human his ideas and message do not appear to be tied to one worldview with a bit of divine knowledge thrown in. So much for the human Jesus, but Christology does need to be at least consistent in order to understand the response of the early Church to their experience of the person. Hence my preference for the understanding of the early Eastern Fathers.

[@flematicoreformandose5046]

Not in vain the god of death is the enemy.

[@rogersacco4624]

When theologians talk about life after death they mean in thr short term.Imagine living a googolplex of years and that's only the beginning! Immortality is the enemy not death.