The Martyrdom of Stephen as a Refutation of "Soul Sleep"

Where was the spirit of Stephen after he was stoned to death? The Seventh-Day Adventists claim that it was asleep with his body in the grave. The Jehovah's Witnesses claim that it disintegrated, to be recreated at the final judgment. Those two doctrines are variants of what is commonly called "soul sleep." It is in sharp contrast to the traditional Christian belief that the spirits of the godly passed immediately upon death into the heavenly presence of Jesus (see II Corinthians 5:8). 

The story of Stephen is found in Acts, chapter 7. We are introduced to him in the previous chapter, where we are told that the church elected him to the diaconate, because he was "full of faith and of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 6:5). In chapter 7, he gives a long sermon about Jesus to a Jewish crowd, culminating in verses 51-53: "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it." As might be expected, his audience was not happy with his words: "Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him... They cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him" (Acts 7:54, 57-58). 

How did Stephen respond to this persecution? "He, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into Heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, 'Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God'... And, as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' And, falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, 'Lord, do not hold this sin against them.' And when he had said this, he fell asleep [i. e., died]" (Acts 7:55, 59-60). 

This spiritual man knew that death was upon him, but his expectation was to enter thereupon into the presence of Jesus, as orthodox Christians have always said. He knows nothing of a two-thousand year (and counting) gap between his death and rising to see Jesus only then. Stephen the Deacon was surely no Adventist or Jehovah's Witness. 

Is Pluralistic "Freedom of Religion" A Biblical Precept?

"These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth. You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the high hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put His name and make His habitations there" (Deuteronomy 12:1-5). 

We in America brag of our freedom of religion. Not only are there Christian (real or not) denominations of every description, but we also boast of our Jewish synagogues, Islamic mosques, and Hindu and Buddhist temples. And that doesn't even include the various varieties of nonreligious or irreligious Americans, even including Satanists. 

I think the contrast between those two paragraphs should be clear to anyone. Yet the pietists and dispensationalists have eliminated any evidence or discussion of what God said in Deuteronomy, as if the pluralism of modern America were the case from the days of creation. 

The pietist claims that the Christian faith is a private affair, "a relationship, not a religion." So the less visible his religion is, outside of church and home prayer, the more spiritual he feels. 

On the other hand, the dispensationalist claims that God's commandment here was for Israel, and ended with the coming of Jesus. After all, does it not refer to their "land"? 

And it does. Do we have no references to the land given to Jesus, and His body, the Church? "Ask of Me, and I will make the nations Your heritage, and the ends of the earth Your possession" (Psalm 2:8). That is the promise of the Father to the Son, in the intra-Trinitarian covenant, made before the world was created. And did Jesus ever claim that promise? "All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:18-19). The commandment was limited to the land, but the land was expanded to include the whole earth! 

As a Presbyterian, I am aware of the impact that this conflict has had on my own tradition. When the Westminster Standards were originally written, they included the presumption of establishmentarianism. However, after the US Constitution was adopted, American Presbyterians changed our standards to reflect the new political enthusiasm for religious freedom. I am disappointed that they chose a political justification over the requirements of Scripture. 

Neither political considerations nor pietistic latitudinarianism can override what God has commanded in His word. And that is that His truth is the only truth, and must displace all competing, but false, claims of truth. 

The Word of God Against Abortion Exceptions for Rape and Incest

In Ezekiel 18, that prophet gives us this rebuke to Israel from her God: "Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine: the soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). This verse is often taken out of context to mean that sin causes spiritual death. While that doctrine is true, it has nothing to do with the prophet's message here. As the rest of the chapter goes on to tell us, this verse is about God's justice. The soul that sins shall die for its own sins, not the sins of another person. 

"If a man is righteous and does what is just and right -... he is righteous; he shall surely live, declares the Lord God" (Ezekiel 18:5, 9). "[Then] if he fathers a son who is violent, a shedder of blood... Shall this son live? He shall not live. he has done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself" (Ezekiel 18: 10, 13). So the prophet gives a hypothetical case of a righteous man with a wicked son. Shall the righteousness of the father preserve the wicked son from the just consequences of his wicked acts? No, it shall not. 

Now we are given the case the other way: "Now suppose that this man [i. e., the wicked son] fathers a son who sees all the sins that his father has done; he sees, and does not do likewise... He shall not die for his father's iniquity; he shall surely live. As for his father, because he practiced extortion, robbed his brother, and did what is not good among his people, behold, he shall die for his iniquity" (Ezekiel 18:14, 17-18). So now the wicked man has a godly son, the grandson of the earlier righteous man. Shall this son die for his father's wickedness? No. In fact, the wicked son, even though he is between two generations of godly men, is also not excused thereby, but is required still to receive justice. 

"Yet you say, 'Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father? When the son has done what is just and right, and has been careful to observe all My statures, he shall surely live. The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself" (Ezekiel 18:19-20). This was a remarkable statement at the time! It was the common practice to kill whole extended families for the crime of one member. God declares that the common system was not His standard of justice. 

We have moved beyond such primitive concepts as described here, haven't we? We like to tell ourselves that, but it just isn't so. Do not most prolife Americans take for granted that exceptions for abortion in cases of rape or incest must always be allowed? Why is that? Has the preborn child committed a crime worthy of death? I would say that he obviously has not. Rather, in either case, it was his father who committed the crime. So why do we grant that killing the innocent baby is a just response? 

I think that this passage from Ezekiel shows that God does not grant such injustice. 

The Scriptural Origin of Paul's Faith

When he was called before Felix, the Roman procurator for the province of Judea, Paul gave an apologetic, that is, a defense, for the Christian faith for which the Jewish leaders had charged him of insurrection. Part of that defense, as recorded in Acts 24:14, is this statement: "This I [i. e., Paul] confess to you [Felix], that, according to the Way, which they [the Jewish leaders] call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the prophets." 

Paul's defense is not in any mystical revelation, whether by dreams or sensationalist evangelists, but strictly by the testimony that he found in the Bible, the Scriptures which we now know as the Old Testament (compare his later message to Timothy in II Timothy 3:14-15). 

If anyone could, Paul could have spoken of a mystical experience. In Acts 9:1-9, Luke the Physician gives us a record of Paul's, then still called Saul, persecution of the Christians, until he is literally thrown to the ground by Jesus, who challenges him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" (verse 4). Yet, we are then told, verses 10-19, that this same Jesus then sent a disciple named Ananias to explain the faith to Saul/Paul. "The Lord said to him [i. e., Ananias], 'Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to carry My name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel'" (verse 15). It is only after this meeting with Ananias that Paul is able to rise and be baptized, not after his vision. 

I think this record is one of the landmarks that distinguish between true Christian churches and the cults. Cults usually start with a leader who claims to have had a mystical experience, apart from Scripture, in which God supposedly taught him or her some new revelation. Nowhere does the New Testament describe conversions as occurring in this way. On the contrary, it is Paul himself who tells us that people are converted by the preaching of that same word of which he testified to Felix (Romans 10:14-17). 

We see this contrast most vividly in the Mormon religion, the founder of which, Joseph Smith, Jr., claimed revelatory visions, including new scriptures, to support his claims of a new religion, new though he claimed Christian terminology for it. The apologetic of Paul contrasts starkly with the claims of Smith, being one of the proofs that Mormonism has no legitimate claim to the name of Christ for its organization. 

Ezekiel and the Preaching of the Gospel

In the second chapter of Ezekiel, we have God's commissioning of the prophet to Israel in exile in Babylon. God's plan is not like men's plans for today's evangelistic crusades: "Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against Me. They and their fathers have transgressed against Me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn; I send you to them, and you shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord God.' And whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that a prophet has been among them" (Ezekiel 2:3-5).  Ezekiel's commission is not to someone that God has prepared to hear his message. He warns His messenger that his audience is rebellious. Yet that is his calling. On the other hand, God does promise Ezekiel one thing, that Israel will know that a prophet of God was among them. 

We see this with the best of today's street preachers. If they speak the word of God, they get a response. Whether it is hecklers (or worse) or converts, often both, men know that there has been a preacher among them. Does this make the hearts of such preachers hesitate to continue their work? Of course it does! And God addresses that fear. 

"You, son of man, be not afraid of them, nor be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions. Be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. And you shall speak My words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house" (Ezekiel 2:6-7). Does God deny that Ezekiel's audience will be a rough crowd? Not at all. On the contrary, He explicitly warns the prophet of their negativity. Yet He does not, as a result, let him off the hook. Rather, He redoubles the command to preach the word, regardless of the response of his audience. 

"Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from My mouth, you shall give them warning from Me. If I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 3:17-18). Notice that God doesn't make Ezekiel responsible for the response of his audience. On the contrary, Ezekiel's responsibility is to deliver the message. There will be no judgment of the messenger for the response to the message, but there will be severe judgment for failing to obey. Yet God's mercy is evident, even in the midst of His warnings. "But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul" (Ezekiel 3:19).