Billy Graham’s Funeral and the absurd doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul

 

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

 

At the funeral of Billy Graham repeatedly a speaker would address him as if he is in heaven. This inroad from Classical Greek via Plato in his Book Republic chapter 12 into Christianity is a non-biblical stance.

Dr. Graham, the son of Billy Graham, looked at the coffin and addressed his father in heaven. What an absurd position to take?

Why would God take the person who died, soul, and then let them be stored on the bosom of Abraham [quite a large bosom] for thousands of years until the Second Coming and then bring the bundle of souls down to earth again and let them jump into the body to be resurrected and taken back to where they came from?

Do people not think of implications and compare biblical passages?

One daughter spoke and made a resolution to be an evangelist from now on too. She will preach the gospel. The interesting part of her speech, is that she took everyone to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 and in essence delivered the biblical doctrine of death as a sleep. The sleep-state of death concept. John Wycliffe and Martin Luther also understood the biblical position of the sleep-death state but the Protestant George Ioye in his Daniel commentary on chapter 12 in 1545 only expounded the immortality of the soul concept with souls on Abraham’s bosom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJFhcYjY4VU

Ann Graham in this tape at 51:31 proposed that God has called Billy Graham home just like Moses was called to heaven. It is strange that she say this. She made the typology of her father to be the modern Moses and admitted it is a long shot, but that Joshua was then given after Moses to lead people into the promised land. Thus, she suggested that the typology of her father [as Moses] may mean that God is going to bring Joshua = Jesus to take us to heaven. It is a modern homiletical interpretation of the Bible creating extra-biblical typology to make it sound right and convincing. It sounds sweet but it is not biblical. This is important to see.

Then in 52:16 she starts reading 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17.

The problem part for these interpreters is that they misunderstood verse 14 the last part: “them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him”.

From above or from below?

Wycliffe and Luther, and Seventh-day Adventists say, from below but George Joye/Ioye and here in this video, Ann and her brothers and others, are saying: from above.

The Bible says that the dead do not know anything. What is the purpose then to speak to your daddy in heaven when the dead do not know anything?

Why did Jesus do Lazarus a disfavor of “letting his soul shot back from a happy perfect state in heaven, back to this miserable world to live again”. What a disfavor then to Lazarus?

The scriptural passages just pile up against this absurd concept of the Greek immortality of the soul.

It is time for people to stop flash-flash with the smartphones, and sit down with the Bible like Seventh-day Adventists do, and think when you read and compare scripture to scripture. Stop following this one or that one and even Billy Graham, if he is wrong with his Sunday keeping instead of Saturday, with the Immortality of the Soul instead of Sleep-death state biblical doctrine.

Dear God

Clearly, men and women that are used by you in the past and seemingly in the present, are called, blessed, gifted but then get stagnated and fossilized in their understanding not realizing the Holy Spirit gave them chances to develop to the full truth and not just 75% of it.

The Holy Spirit will lead all people into the full truth. But not before people open their hearts and minds to a willingness for it and set aside the bondage of tradition, pastor, mother and father’s church, mega-church, goldplated church. Truth is what matters. It is all about truth.

 

Dear God,

Lead them all in the path of righteousness and truth for Your Name Sake.

Amen.