patrick jane forums

  Death is a Return:


While I have read all the interpretations of how our deaths being called a return to GOD  does not mean we came from HIM in some pre-existent way, I think that this interpretation is forced onto the verses by a preconceived need for us to be created on earth. Without the bias, no one would think twice about using return in these verses as a "going back to where we came from."

Return means:    “to go or come back; revert; bring, give, send, hit, put, or pay back; a going or coming back, a happening again.”

Job 1:21 And Job said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return thither.   Do we really think Job is planning on returning  to where he was born from, his mother's womb or is this a poetic way of saying he is going back to where he came from, ie, Sheol. If it does not mean that, what else can it mean?  Certainly not the "GOD's illogical analogy" of  the Pulpit Commentary  Verse 21.

Quote

And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. There is some difficulty in the word "thither," since no man returns to his mother's womb (John 3:4), at death or otherwise. The expression must not be pressed. It arises out of the analogy, constantly felt and acknowledged, between "mother" earth and a man's actual mother…

Better is Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible
naked shall I return thither; not into his mother's womb in a literal sense, which was impossible, John 3:4, but to the earth, and to the dust of it, Genesis 3:19, pointing to it with his finger, on which he now lay; meaning that he should go to the place appointed for him, the grave, the house of all living, Job 30:23, and so the Targum here has it...
using those well established scholars of the Holy Spirit, the Jewish commentaries, as his resource.

If he is only talking of becoming dust again, what about his spirit, the alive part of him that will be resurrected some day? Do you think his decaying body was more important to him as his identity, his "I", than his spirit? Do you talk that way about your clothes? But even to accept this as Gill would have us believe, does not answer the return of our spirits to GOD at death:
 
Ecclesiastes 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto GOD who gave it. You know what I think of this verse.  It supplies a description of what can happen to a person's spirit after death, which part was not so plain in the previous reference to Job.
 
The body returns to being basic elements: dust, as it was, that state it was in before it was alive; and this person's spirit returns to GOD, that state it was in before it was alive.  Therefore, “gave it” must mean “gave it life - sent it to live” rather than “gave it existence - created it then”. “Unto GOD” must mean “to the place - state where THEy are.”
 
If the spirit did not exist before conception, then it could not return anywhere, that is, “unto GOD”. It would have never been there before. Only with preconception existence can a spirit return to be with GOD, without making “return” mean something else.