Glory-dazed and Long-way-2-go want to talk cults.
So let's talk cults.
Let's start with the biggest Christian cult, the Catholic Church.
Characteristic of all cults, they have a cult leader, the Pope, who thinks for them and interprets religion for them (I cannot even say he interprets the Bible for them since they are the opposite of sola scriptura). And if they leave their cult, they feel damned, because, wasn't "Peter"/Mr Pope given by Christ, the keys to the grave?
So the Catholics feel quite safe within the cocoon of their cult, knowing that if they go through the sacraments (mostly man made) ending with extreme unction, they make it. And I am not saying that some Catholics won't make it. Far be it from me to judge. To me there is only one box to tick and that is the "Friend of Jesus" box, and no doubt some Catholics are Jesus friends.
Let's get to the next big cult - the Reformed, Protestant churches.
These came out of the Mother religion or Catholicism. Starting with Luther, they objected to indulgences and the idea that a priest controlled your entrance to heaven, and the guilt which priests laid upon the laity to keep them in line.
So what did the Reformation do? It took a few steps away from Rome, in the direction of the "faith once delivered", and then stopped and camped a few miles from Rome, but a thousand miles from the faith once delivered to the first century apostle-led church.
Take an easy one for instance. The apostles were all 10C including Sabbath keeping. Rome had rejected everything Jewish including the Sabbath. So they threw out one of the big 10, in their dislike of anything Jewish. Anti-semitism is quite ironic since Jesus and all his apostles, and the early Israelite churches all had Jewish roots and began in synagogues, keeping the Sabbath.
But the Reformers kept Mother Rome's dislike for anything Jewish, and adopted a new idea - to call anything sounding like a law "legalistic". And "legalism" leads to feelings of guilt, which has to be bad, right? So now, anything goes. Who needs to get married to have sex? Who needs the opposite sex? Who needs rules. We have gone from the legalistic, guilt-inducing Catholic religion, to some no-rules=no-guilt opposite swing of the pendulum.
But the faith once delivered was a very definite "way" meaning a strict way of life. It had standards. You could not sleep with your stepmother and remain in good standing with the church. You could not lie to the holy spirit, and pretend to be someone in order to advance your status in the church.
And the faith once delivered did not believe in the immortality of the soul. The OT Jews did not believe in the immortality of the soul either. The OT did not say much on the matter, but men like David, Daniel, Job, Enoch knew that one day in the future they would be raised from the dead to be with their friend Jesus whom they walked with and talked to. They too ticked that box, "Friend of Jesus". To these men of faith, the idea that God "needed" an immortal component in man in order for God to be able to raise the dead would have sounded ridiculous and preposterous.
The Satan inspired, pagan societies with all their religions believed in an immortal soul, because they believed their "father" who taught them "you shall not surely die". So if you believe in the immortality of the soul, it is because you were birthed in a cult, and have not come out of that cult, to the faith once delivered.
Cult-blinded people like Glorydazed just put a :chuckle: in response to Ezekiel 37 which has Israelites, long dead, being resurrected bone to bone, being clothed with flesh and being told to live and know the Lord. No mention of an immortal soul here, yet the dead are given life. And all Glorydazed can do is chuckle away this description of a resurrection without any need for an immortal soul. Her religion and brain has no place where Ezekiel 37 fits in. No doubt she will say it is symbolic.
Most on this forum are so glory dazed by cult-think, have such a long-way-2-go to escape cult think, that you are reluctant to even try on a new paradigm called "truth". No, you will run back to the arms of your cult and feel secure in the sheer numbers of folks as ignorant as you who fill churches each Sunday. And in the Protestant cults, many tick the box "Friend of Jesus". There is no other box like "And smart too". You can be as dumb as a sheep and still be a friend of Jesus.
