While doing some study on the story, and comparing the text to what I have always believed to be true, I was left puzzled as to how these verses squared up against what I always thought to be true. Then I ran across this article: http://www.cgom.org/Publications/Booklets/Enoch_Elijah.htm.
I could not find a writers name associated with the it and the website dosn't seem to have a clear statement, other than "biblical teaching and spreading the gospel", to determine what school of thought they might closest conform to, so you might find some bad info there. I would be interested in what some of you think.
1 comment:
I think the article you linked to was pretty good and seems more or less right to me on the first reading. Death and heaven in the bible are dense issues. Pointing out that there are two types of "death" and three "heavens" is somewhat helpful but actually far too simplistic in my opinion as well. In John 3 Jesus is talking about "heaven" in the context of questions about the "kingdom." In other words this is a religio-political discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus. This is not a discussion about what happens to people after they die but rather about whether and what the God of "heaven" may be doing through Jesus and his signs to bring about his "kingdom". The kingdom, I think, is a package of thought that would have embodied a bunch of ideas to Jesus or to the average Israelite. It is that time that the prophets looked forward to. A time of restoration, peace, and national sovereignty. Most Israelites would probably have thought of the kingdom as a restored temple and a restored kingship, and probably often used the word kingdom to somewhat subtly imply the end of the Roman occupation of Israel. Heaven was also a politically charged word in the first century. To speak of heaven was fightin' words in a sense. Like the kingdom, Heaven was thought of in the first century as God's plan for the world. It undoubtedly involved the overthrow of Rome to most people.
Jesus and Nicodemus were having a secret conversation not just because Nicodemus was worried about what his friends might think. In a real sense, they were discussing the revolution. Most of Nicodemus party (pharisees) had, much like all the other mainstream sects, sold out to the politically powerful and actually had convinced themselves and were convincing others that the new temple was legitimate, that herod was a great king and a descendant of david and that through herod and the new temple God was restoring the kingdom. Of course Jesus in so many ways and illustrations showed his disagreement with that picture of the world. He condemned the temple and acted out various dramatizations of God's judgement upon it. And he proclaimed himself the messiah and the Lord, both politically charged terms that only politcal challengers would have used to identify themselves.
All that to say I'm not sure what happened to Elijah and Enoch. And honestly, I'm not sure what happens when anyone dies. That may sound like heresy, but it just seems to me that the Bible has very little to say about it. I believe in a future resurrection upon the earth for the faithful, the bible speaks again and again about that, and in the interim I think it is safe to suppose that the just will live in a heavenly state worshiping with the church at large as Hebrews seems to suggest. But I'm far from certain about it. I may be far afield from what you were getting at but your question was kind of vague.
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