The Race is Run http://www.raceisrun.typepad.com/weblog/

Hello again all,

Hope you don’t mind if I intrude here and say I’ve always been mystified as to why Jesus’ teachings on the subject of ‘eternal life’ haven’t received more attention from theologians. To me, at least, they provide answers to age-old questions.

Jesus taught that to ‘live’ was to live in the ‘mind’ of God. For instance, this passage in Mark 12:26-27:

“But about the dead, that they are raised; haven’t you read in the book of Moses, about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are therefore badly mistaken.”

So Jesus is saying that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not dead - they are living in the ‘mind’ of God.

He also taught that ‘raising from the dead’ meant being born again in the flesh. Almost the last words of the Old Testament are: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord…” (Malachi 4:5).

In Matthew 11:14, Jesus describes John the Baptist:

“And if ye will receive it, this is Elias (Elijah) which was for to come. He that hath ears, let him hear.”

And again in Mark 9:10-13:

“…They kept this saying to themselves, questioning what the “rising from the dead” meant. They asked him, saying, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”

He said to them, “Elijah indeed comes first, and restores all things. How is it written about the Son of Man, that he should suffer many things and be despised?

But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they have also done to him whatever they wanted to, even as it is written about him.”

Also in Daniel 12:13 we read:

“But go you your way until the end; for you shall rest, and shall stand in your lot, at the end of the days.”

Comments, anyone?