(Gen 2:25 MKJV) And they were both naked, the man and his wife; and they were not ashamed.

Please comment on this verse... Thanks for your time.

Joe

Before 'the fall' what exactly was there to be ashamed about? (rhetorical question) Man had a face to face relationship with God. Woman was created out of man, she was part of man. Neither of them had any sin in their hearts, they did not have 'the knowledge of good and evil.'
Shame is a heart's response to percieved sin... it is conciousness of a wrong action or thought. There was nothing wrong with them looking upon eachother as they were in a perfect relationship with the Father and eachother.
When they ate of the fruit, those perfect relationships were broken.

This is not to say that since we have been restored in our relationship with God through the blood of Jesus that we can look upon the opposite sex without shame. There still is a wall of seperation between us and our fellow men, I think this is very well described in Roy Hession's 'Calvary Road' in chapter four where he talks about relationships. But this brings up a good question, one I am afraid I will not know until I meet Him face to face... will we be naked in our new bodies in heaven? Will we even be able to tell?

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Ian Smith

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Sandra Miller

Wow, my attempt at humor backfired… that wasn’t the response I was anticipating. I’ll do my best to explain my reasoning. It may be a little contentious on my part to assume anything about heaven however there are some things that have occurred to me in passing.

Firstly we know that we will not be given in marriage in heaven or bound to our earthly marriages if we take literally the answer Jesus gives to Sadducees in Matt 22:30. ‘At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.’

We also know that we will have new bodies at the resurrection, now it doesn’t say if these new bodies will have a gender. Since we are all the ‘bride’ of Christ, we may conjecture from this that we will no longer have physical sexual organs, because we are in spiritual communion with the true bridegroom. Plus at that point they are superfluous.

In response to your use of Revelations, there is no doubt in my mind that John could not fully comprehend the true nature of heaven, he was still in fact living and breathing… he was only being given a vision of the things to come, a snapshot as it were, that his mind and spirit could comprehend while still being bound to this earth.

Its an easy Sunday school issue to work out, through Jesus we have Justification, through the Spirit we have Sanctification, and at the judgment seat believers will be glorified.

Glorification, being made perfect in Jesus isn’t something that we can gain in this mortal body. If Justification is being freed from the punishment for sin, and Sanctification is being made free from the power of sin, Glorification, well we won’t really know the full affect of Glorification until we get there.

Now I can’t really tell you if John saw all there was to see, I really don’t think so… I also make the assumption that since he was not glorified that he could not really have seen heaven as it really was, but that he was given a vision that he could comprehend.

So simply put: No need for sexual organs = no need for cloths. (thus my comment, will we be naked in heaven?) Glorification is being perfect in Jesus, since we’ll be back in that perfect relationship again, there’s a good chance that we won’t even be able to tell whether or not we are naked, or androgynous (without gender, thus my second comment, will we be able to tell?)

It is really hard for me to believe that there will be cloths in heaven for a lot of reasons… it seems to me more likely that the references in Revelations are likely due to John’s limited scope in his human body.

Now I imagine a good many of you will think I’m a heretic and I’ll be stoned… or maybe I just need to be set straight in my thinking.

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Ian Smith

Brother, no one is stoning anyone here. I think you may be reading into the verse too much. If you will run some references on angels you will see that they are clothed. If were gonna be like them, than we will be clothed as well.

J-bird

I guess I'm not just quickly going to jump to the conclusion that just because an angel looks a certain way to someone at one time, that that angel always looks like that and didn't have to change their appearance to be percieved as an angel by a man. We are talking about beings that live in a spiritual realm with the father. To assume that they are of flesh and blood as we are would also be to assume that heaven uses mater in much the ways as the created world do.
If an angel showed up as a glowing blue-green blob floating mid-air, it would not have the same effect on a palastinian farmer 2000 years ago... then again, sailers less than 500 years ago thought that manatees were mermaids, so there could be some discrepancies. (please do not take this to mean that I believe that angels true appearance is that of a floating blue-green blob)
My point is simply this, there are a lot of mysteries that we will not know until we have reached the other side. I am only speculating that things will not be a carbon copy of this world - just slightly better... I think it will be incomprehensibly different.
Remember what Keith Green said, 'if it took seven days to make this world, and 2000 years to make heaven, then this is like living in a garbage can compared to what's going on up there.'

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Ian Smith

Hello Ian,

Jesus bore our shame [i]away[/i], yet we all wear clothes.

I think the biggest mistake you may be making, is to attribute to John - to suggest even - that what he saw is not what is [i]really[/i] there. That is [i]your[/i] carnal mind, brother. :-?

Paul says our mortality will be clothed with immortality. Peter says he will 'put off' his 'tabernacle' (that is, his flesh), but there is no doubt that we will have bodies, as souls are always thus 'clothed'.

It is also vital that we be wearing our wedding garment, according to Jesus - which would seem to back up, rather than undermine, John's account of his vision.

As ginnyrose pointed out, there are so many references to the appropriate [i]clothing[/i] for heaven, that any lack of gender, (which should have started here on earth anyway, in spiritual terms), will not be on our minds, I feel sure.... 8-)

Whether our robes in heaven are fine linen or glory, our bodies will be concealed by them, will they not? Isn't this why 'naked'ness was [i]not[/i] a problem to Adam and Eve?

Lastly, after Jesus' resurrection, [i]He[/i] was clothed.

It might interest you, also, in the light of the Church being the Bride, that in 'Return from Tomorrow', when George Ritchie saw the Lord, one of the things which he understood about Him, was His utter [u]male[/u]ness..... Now there's food for thought, also.


1 Cor 15:54, 1 Timothy 6:16, 2 Timothy 1:10, Matthew 22:12, 2 Peter 1:13, 14, 2 Cor 3:18, Revelation 3:18, Revelation 1:13,

Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.


I realise my reply doesn't say what you wanted to hear, but you are on shakey ground if you depart from what scripture [i][b]does[/i][/b] tell us.

God gave me a mind to think... I'm not going to close my mind about the mysteries of heaven just because of assumptions about certain interpretations of a few verses out of the bible.

God created the world, he isn't bound by the physical laws he put on his creation. If God can make the sun stand still, there's no reason to think that angels or Jesus' resurrected body are bound by the same physics as this world... and they may have had to modify their appearances so that we could comprehend them. They may have clothed themselves for our sakes.

Remember, God made himself look like a burning bush and a pillar of fire, yet no one would assume that thats what God looks like in heaven... those are just the ways that he portrayed himself to his people.

I went to search the web and found a couple of interesting things... most of all that I'm not the only person to have thought of this.
ChristianityToday Magazine had an [url=http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/juneweb-only/6-2-51.0.html]article[/url] which has some good insights on the topic... it disagrees with me on the gender issue but affirms my thoughts on clothing.

I do realize i can sound like a crazy person because I did also find out that [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Swedenborg]Emanuel Swedenborg[/url] thought a lot of the [url=http://swedenborg.newearth.org/hh/hh00toc.html]same things[/url]... but he went to a different level by saying that he actually saw these things and talked with angels and demons about them.

Now the reason that they're called mysteries in the bible is because they are, and we know that the bible doesn't contain a fraction of what there is to know about Jesus or heaven because it says so at the end the book of John.

So far the jury is out, we'll see when we get there.

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Ian Smith

Galatians 3:27-29 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Amen. This is what needs to be given to suicide bombers and all Muslim nen and women. Especially when they came from Abraham, not by Isaac but by Ishmael.

No seventy virgins.

In Christ: Phillip

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Phillip

A little to add to the Pot. 1Jo 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.

And then sons and daughters?

2Cr 6:18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

What beautiful garments we will have.

Isa 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh [himself] with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth [herself] with her jewels.

In Christ: Phillip

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Phillip