Dr Paul Allen

What body do we occupy between the time our lifeless bodies decompose into worm-fodder and when they are resurrected in glory?  The short answer is that we don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say. Biblically speaking, it’s a secret.  So, let’s start with what the Bible  does  say: Disembodied spirits seem to require a material, animated host , i.e. a person or animal (remember the pigs) in which to operate in the material world. In Scripture we see spirit beings such as angels and demons disengaged from the material dimension until they manifest in a bodily form. Matt  12:43   When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. 2 Kings  6:17   Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. Bodies ...

"There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell." So wrote the agnostic British philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1967. The idea of eternal punishment for sin, he further notes, is "a doctrine that put cruelty in the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture." His views are at least more consistent than religious philosopher John Hick, who refers to hell as a "grim fantasy" that is not only "morally revolting" but also "a serious perversion of the Christian Gospel." Worse yet was theologian Clark Pinnock who, despite having regarded himself as an evangelical, dismissed hell with a rhetorical question: "How can one imagine for a moment that the God who gave His Son to die for sinners because of His great love for them would install a torture chamber somewhere in the new creation in order to subject those who reject Him to everlasting pain?" So, wh...