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Intermediate State (Christianity)
In some forms of Christianity, the intermediate state or interim state is a person's existence between death and the universal resurrection. In addition, there are beliefs in a particular judgment right after death and a general judgment or last judgment after the resurrection. It bears resemblance to the Barzakh in Islam. Early Christians looked for an imminent end of the world and many of them had little interest in an interim state between death and resurrection. The Eastern Church admits of such an intermediate state, but refrained from defining it, so as not to blur the distinction between the alternative definitive fates of Heaven and Hell. The Western Church goes differently by defining the intermediate state, with evidence from as far back as the ''Passion of Saint Perpetua, Saint Felicitas, and their Companions'' (203) of the belief that sins can be purged by suffering in an afterlife, and that purgation can be expedited by the intercession of the living. Those in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose coming as the Messiah#Christianity, messiah (Christ (title), Christ) was Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament, prophesied in the Old Testament and chronicled in the New Testament. It is the Major religious groups, world's largest and most widespread religion with over 2.3 billion followers, comprising around 28.8% of the world population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in Christianity by country, 157 countries and territories. Christianity remains Christian culture, culturally diverse in its Western Christianity, Western and Eastern Christianity, Eastern branches, and doctrinally diverse concerning Justification (theology), justification and the natur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Paganism
Paganism (, later 'civilian') is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism. In the time of the Roman Empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not '' milites Christi'' (soldiers of Christ).J. J. O'Donnell (1977)''Paganus'': Evolution and Use, ''Classical Folia'', 31: 163–69. Alternative terms used in Christian texts were '' hellene'', '' gentile'', and '' heathen''. Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Greco-Roman religion and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry". During and after the Middle Ages, the term ''paganism'' was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presumed a belief in fal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Intertestamental Period
The intertestamental period (Protestant) or deuterocanonical period (Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) is the period of time between the events of the protocanonical books and the New Testament. It is considered to cover roughly 400 years, spanning from the ministry of Malachi (c. 420 BC) to the appearance of John the Baptist in the early 1st century AD. It is roughly contiguous with the Second Temple period (516 BC–70 AD) and encompasses the age of Hellenistic Judaism. It is known by some Protestants as the "400 Silent Years" because it was a period when no new prophets were raised and God revealed nothing new to the Jewish people. Many of the deuterocanonical books, accepted as scripture by the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, were written during this time, as were many pseudepigraphal works, the Biblical apocrypha and Jewish apocrypha. An understanding of the events of the intertestamental period provides historical and literary context for the New Testament. Significan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment is a concept found across the Abrahamic religions and the '' Frashokereti'' of Zoroastrianism. Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived, resulting in the salvation of a few and the damnation of many. Some Christian denominations believe most people will be saved, some believe most people will be damned, and some believe the number of the saved and of the damned is unknown. The concept of the Last Judgment is found in all the canonical gospels, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew. The Christian tradition is also followed by Islam, where it is mentioned in many chapters of the Quran, according to some interpretations. The Last Judgment has inspired numerous artistic depictions, including painting, sculpture and evangelical work. In Judaism In Judaism, beliefs vary. Rosh HaShanah is sometimes referred to as a 'day of judgement', but it is not conceptualized as ''the'' Day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Isaiah
Isaiah ( or ; , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "Yahweh is salvation"; also known as Isaias or Esaias from ) was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. The text of the Book of Isaiah refers to Isaiah as "the prophet", but the exact relationship between the Book of Isaiah and the actual prophet Isaiah is complicated. The traditional view is that all 66 chapters of the book of Isaiah were written by one man, Isaiah, possibly in two periods between 740 BC and 686 BC, separated by approximately 15 years. Another widely held view suggests that parts of the first half of the book (chapters 1–39) originated with the historical prophet, interspersed with prose commentaries written in the time of King Josiah 100 years later, and that the remainder of the book dates from immediately before and immediately after the end of the 6th-century BC exile in Babylon (almost two centuries after the time of the historical prophet), and that perhaps these later cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Book Of Daniel
The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. It is ostensibly a narrative detailing the experiences and Prophecy, prophetic visions of Daniel, a Jewish Babylonian captivity, exile in Babylon. The text features prophecy rooted in Jewish history as well as a eschatology, portrayal of the end times that is cosmic in scope and political in its focus. The message of the text intended for the original audience was that just as the Yahweh, God of Israel saves Daniel from his enemies, so too he would save the Israelites in their present oppression. The Hebrew Bible includes Daniel as one of the Ketuvim, while Christian biblical canons group the work with the major prophets. It divides into two parts: a set of six court tales in chapters 1–6, written mostly in Biblical Aramaic, and four apocalyptic visions in chapters 7–12, written mainly in Late Biblical Hebrew; the Septuagint, the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sheol
Sheol ( ; ''Šəʾōl'', Tiberian: ''Šŏʾōl'') in the Hebrew Bible is the underworld place of stillness and darkness which is death. Within the Hebrew Bible, there are few—often brief and nondescript—mentions of Sheol, seemingly describing it as a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life. The implications of Sheol within the texts are therefore somewhat unclear; it may be interpreted as either a generic metaphor describing "the grave" into which all humans invariably descend, or an actual state of afterlife within Israelite thought. Though such practices are forbidden, the inhabitants of Sheol can, under some circumstances, be summoned by the living, as when the Witch of Endor calls up the spirit of Samuel for King Saul. While the Hebrew Bible appears to describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BC – 70 AD), a more diverse set of ideas developed. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Stephen L Harris
Stephen L. Harris (February 5, 1937 - April 14, 2019) was Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at California State University, Sacramento. He served there ten years as department chair and was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He received his MA and PhD degrees from Cornell University.Harris, Stephen L. Author's Website. July 28, 2009Stephenharrisauthor.com Harris was a member of the American Academy of Religion, a fellow at the Westar Institute, a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, and authored several books on religion, some of which are used in introductory university courses. He also had a strong interest in some geological topics. Harris grew up in western Washington state where the views of Mount Rainier Mount Rainier ( ), also known as Tahoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With an off ... and the mentoring o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Maccabees
The Maccabees (), also spelled Machabees (, or , ; or ; , ), were a group of Jews, Jewish rebel warriors who took control of Judea, which at the time was part of the Seleucid Empire. Its leaders, the Hasmoneans, founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 167 BCE (after the Maccabean Revolt) to 37 BCE, being a fully independent kingdom from 104 to 63 BCE. They reasserted the Judaism, Jewish religion, expanded the boundaries of Judea by conquest, and reduced the influence of Hellenization, Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism. Etymology The name Maccabee is often used as a synonym for the entire Hasmonean dynasty, but the Maccabees proper comprised Judas Maccabeus and his four brothers. The name Maccabee was a personal epithet of Judah, and the later generations were not his direct descendants. One explanation of the name's origins is that it derives from the Aramaic ''maqqəḇa'', "the hammer", in recognition of Judah's ferocity in battle. The traditional Jewish explan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Resurrection Of The Dead
General resurrection or universal resurrection is the belief in a resurrection of the dead, or resurrection from the dead ( Koine: , ''anastasis onnekron''; literally: "standing up again of the dead") by which most or all people who have died would be resurrected (brought back to life). Various forms of this concept can be found in Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Samaritan and Zoroastrian eschatology. Rabbinic Judaism and Samaritanism There are three explicit examples in the Hebrew Bible of people being resurrected from the dead: * The prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17–24). * Elisha raises the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32–37); this was the very same child whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8–16). * A dead man's body that was thrown into the dead Elisha's tomb is resurrected when the body touches Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21). While there was no belief in personal afterlife with reward or punishment i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Nonconformist (Protestantism)
Nonconformists are Protestant Christians who do not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church in England, and in Wales until 1914, the Church of England. Use of the term ''Nonconformist'' in England and Wales was precipitated by the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, when the Act of Uniformity 1662 renewed opposition to reforms within the established church. By the late 19th century the term specifically included other Reformed Christians ( English Presbyterians and Congregationalists), plus the Baptists, Brethren, Methodists, and Quakers. English Dissenters, such as the Puritans, who violated the Act of Uniformity 1558 – typically by practising radical, sometimes separatist, dissent – were retrospectively labelled as Nonconformists. In Ireland, the comparable term until the Church of Ireland's disestablishment in 1869 was Dissenter (the term earlier used in England), commonly referring to Irish Presbyterians who dissented from th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Indulgences
In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence (, from , 'permit') is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for (forgiven) sins". The ''Catechism of the Catholic Church'' describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions…" The recipient of an indulgence must perform an action to receive it. This is most often the saying (once, or many times) of a specified prayer, but may also include a pilgrimage, the visiting of a particular place (such as a shrine, church, or cemetery), or the performance of specific good works. Indulgences were introduced to allow for the remission of the severe penances of the early church and granted at the intercession of Christians awaiting martyrdom or at least imprisoned for the faith.Cross, F. L., ed. ''The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
