Because it doesn't make sense. Many people don't know English.




I'll try to make clear my thoughts on these points.

1.The resurrected unrighteous will be destroyed by the glory of God:



2.The wicked choose death:



The exclusion of the wicked from heaven is voluntary with themselves:



3.I agree that the wicked prepare to take the New Jerusalem by force.

4.I believe the light of the glory of God, which gives life to the righteous, will slay the wicked.

TE: Because it doesn't make sense. Many people don't know English.

MM: And for this reason you're willing to reject a plainly worded truth?

---

TE: 1.The resurrected unrighteous will be destroyed by the glory of God:

MM: Are you basing your observations on the account recorded in GC 662-665? Because it certainly doesn't say what you observed, right? It says exactly what I outlined above. Yes, the glory of God will eventually consume them, but it doesn't happen in the pages I quoted. Your observation is described later on in the book. Do you agree? If so, then it is obvious the truth and the glory of God do not cause the wicked to desire death. That's my point.

I'm rejecting your ideas in regards to this. Are you thinking God will perform a miracle so that those who have never heard English will be able to pronounce it? They will utter words of which they have no idea of the meaning?

---



I'm basing this on DA 764, which is why I put "DA 764" after it.



You mean it contradicts DA 764? If that's what you're asking, no, I don't think so. I think your ideas regarding the GC passage contradict DA 764. I think your ideas are incorrect. I think the problem lies in your interpretation of the GC passage. I interpret it differently. In the way I interpret, it's in harmony with DA 764. That's one of the reasons I prefer my interpretation to yours.

Also I perceive my interpretation as being in harmony with what Jesus Christ revealed about God's character. I see your interpretation as presenting God acting violently, using force, and being cruel, not of which I believe He does.



We're talking about different books, aren't we?



That the wicked choose death is stated in the DA 764 quote. Regarding the desire of the wicked, that's made clear in the GC 543 quote. I'll repeat a portion here:



This is dealing with the judgment.

Here's my approach. I see in this GC passage (GC 541-543) as well as GC 35-57, DA 764, DA 108 (and others) principles which apply to the judgment. I see in the GC passage that you quoted from a description of a vision. Visions have elements which are symbolic and elements which are literal. We have to figure out which is which. I'm using these other passages to help me figure this out.

So, yes, you are willing to reject a plainly worded truth because you cannot imagine or envision how it can be true. Thank you for answering my question.


It's not a symbolic vision, Tom. She is telling it like it is. That's the purpose of the book GC. Again, here is what she plainly says:

Four observations based on the sequence of events described in GC 662-665:

1) the resurrected wicked see the glory of God without being consumed by it,

2) the force of truth causes them to acknowledge Jesus without it causing them to seek death,

3) they prepare to take the New Jerusalem by force, and

4) the brightness of God's glory encompasses the earth without causing them to die.

Let's trace this a bit.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"With one voice the wicked hosts exclaim: "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!"

TE: I believe every eye will see the glory of the Son of God, but I don't believe every person will at the same exact moment of time say the exact words "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" Do you?

MM: Of course I do. That's exactly what she said, right? "With one voice." If she didn't intend for us to take it literally, why didn't she say so? Why do you find it so unbelievable that "every person will at the same exact moment of time say the [same] exact words"?

TE:Because it doesn't make sense. Many people don't know English.

MM: And for this reason you're willing to reject a plainly worded truth?

TE:I'm rejecting your ideas in regards to this. Are you thinking God will perform a miracle so that those who have never heard English will be able to pronounce it? They will utter words of which they have no idea of the meaning?

MM:So, yes, you are willing to reject a plainly worded truth because you cannot imagine or envision how it can be true. Thank you for answering my question.

(moving on to the present post)

TE:Apparently you think everyone in heaven will speak English? I pointed out that:

1.I was rejecting your ideas in regards to this question.
2.I asked you, "Are you thinking God will perform a miracle so that those who have never heard English will be able to pronounce it?"
3.I asked you, "They will utter words of which they have no idea of the meaning?"

Your response to my questions is "So, yes, you are willing to reject a plainly worded truth because you cannot imagine or envision how it can be true. Thank you for answering my question."

Do you not see that your response here is a rather unreasonable? In particular, I find the "so yes" ... and "thank you" parts are rather puerile and unpleasant.

The plain truth I understand EGW to be expressing is what Paul said:



Now Paul's comments no more imply that the unrighteous will all miraculously speak Greek any more than Ellen White's comments imply they will speak English.

Regarding visions not being symbolic, they are symbolic. For example:



The question of what is symbolic and what is literal has always been one of debate. Everyone knows that visions and dreams are symbolic; the question is which part is which.

The difficulty I have with your interpretations of the GC passage is that they do not appear to take into account what EGW has written in other places, such as DA 764 and GC 541-543. I believe what we should do in regards to understanding the judgment is to take all of the data we have regarding the subject, and by putting it all together, come up with an idea which harmonizes with all that we have.

"With one voice the wicked hosts exclaim: "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!"

TE: Now Paul's comments no more imply that the unrighteous will all miraculously speak Greek any more than Ellen White's comments imply they will speak English.

MM: Tom, you seem to be implying they they will not exclaim these words with "one voice", that they will exclaim this sentiment with a multitude of different voices. In my mind, the best way to understand "one voice" is to assume they will be resurrected speaking one language, which may or may not be English.

---

TE: The difficulty I have with your interpretations of the GC passage is that they do not appear to take into account what EGW has written in other places, such as DA 764 and GC 541-543. I believe what we should do in regards to understanding the judgment is to take all of the data we have regarding the subject, and by putting it all together, come up with an idea which harmonizes with all that we have.

MM: Good luck with that enterprise, Tom. I doubt you'll get very many people, especially non-SDAs, to go along with your symbolic interpretation of GC 662-665. It is too plainly worded to be misunderstood. What are you going to do with the rest of the book, are you going to spiritualize away everything else that is worded too plainly to be misunderstood?

Which parts of the following excerpt from GC 662 are literal and which parts are symbolic? This is the first two paragraphs of chapter 42 entitled "The Controversy Ended" reformatted for ease of discussion:

1. At the close of the thousand years, Christ again returns to the earth. [Literal or Symbolic]

2. He is accompanied by the host of the redeemed and attended by a retinue of angels. [Literal or Symbolic]

3. As He descends in terrific majesty He bids the wicked dead arise to receive their doom. [Literal or Symbolic]

4. They come forth, a mighty host, numberless as the sands of the sea. [Literal or Symbolic]

5. What a contrast to those who were raised at the first resurrection! The righteous were clothed with immortal youth and beauty. The wicked bear the traces of disease and death. [Literal or Symbolic]

6. Every eye in that vast multitude is turned to behold the glory of the Son of God. [Literal or Symbolic]

7. With one voice the wicked hosts exclaim: "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" [Literal or Symbolic]

8. It is not love to Jesus that inspires this utterance. [Literal or Symbolic]

9. The force of truth urges the words from unwilling lips. [Literal or Symbolic]

10. As the wicked went into their graves, so they come forth with the same enmity to Christ and the same spirit of rebellion. [Literal or Symbolic]

11. They are to have no new probation in which to remedy the defects of their past lives. Nothing would be gained by this. A lifetime of transgression has not softened their hearts. [Literal or Symbolic]

12. A second probation, were it given them, would be occupied as was the first in evading the requirements of God and exciting rebellion against Him. [Literal or Symbolic]

Everyone will be resurrected speaking the language or languages they knew when they died. Nobody's identity or character is changed when they are resurrected, and language impacts us profoundly.

Why would you think everyone will speak one language?



This seems sarcastic.



On the contrary, I think if you asked 100 people what they think it means when it says that all the wicked will with one voice "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!" that maybe 1 or 2 would agree with your interpretation, and many times more than that would agree with mine.



I agree that it's difficult to misunderstand.



This seems sarcastic again.



I fear if I say something is not literal that you will misunderstand and think it's not real. Everything that's written here will really happen, but what exactly happens requires reason and intellect to understand.

For example, when she writes that the wicked are as numberless as the sands of the sea, this is not literally true. For one thing, the sands of the sea are not literally numberless (which means not countable, which is to say infinite). For another, there are many orders of magnitude more sands of the sea than there are wicked people at the judgment. However, anyone with a little reason and intellect can easily understand the meaning here, which actually quoting from Scripture, which is that will a whole lot of people involved.

Similarly when she writes that the wicked with one voice will exclaim "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord," it seems clear to me that she has the same thing in mind that Paul does when he writes in Phil. 2 that all will acknowledge that Christ is Lord.

Tom, do you have a quote to back up what you’re saying? Because the quote I posted says exactly the opposite of what you’re saying. That’s why I believe God will resurrect everyone with “one voice”. The same applies, no doubt, to the resurrected saints. Otherwise, what are we supposed to believe – people will not be able to communicate until they learn each others’ languages?


If you were here in person, and saw the look on my face and heard the tone in my voice, you would not suspect I was being sarcastic. I am dubious, doubtful, incredulous – but certainly not sarcastic. But thank you for calling me on it. I hope you accept my answer.


I’m glad you agree what she says and describes in the following quote is “real”. Don’t worry about confusing me, you’ve already accomplished that by saying what she wrote here isn’t real, that we cannot take what she wrote literally because it is a vision, and visions must be interpreted using information collected from other books and passages. Which you haven’t done yet, that is, you haven’t quoted other places where she describes the exact same scenes with different conclusions. Yes, you’ve quoted other things she has written, but they do not cover the same scenes.

At any rate, I’ll answer the following questions by making the right answer bold. I've also included a few comments here and there. Tell me if you agree or disagree, and why.

Here's a quote:



This quote tells us we should use our reasoning powers. It's not reasonable to assume that all the resurrected wicked will know English.



Only if one doesn't use reasoning powers when reading it. Again, it's not reasonable to suppose that everyone will know English, nor that Ellen White had this in mind when she said this. This reminds one of the incident where people complained of her vision that spoke of Satan being in the heavenly sanctuary:





You're not going far enough here, MM. She says that everyone will say with one voice, "Blessed is the One who comes in then name of the Lord!" (from memory; might be slightly wrong). This means, if you're going to take this literally, that everyone will be resurrected knowing English.

I accept your answer. Please keep in mind that I don't have the luxury of hearing your tone of voice, and so forth, so reading certain things can be painful. Given it is not your intention to be hurtful, please read what you are writing before posting it, as if you were reading it from someone to yourself and see how it sounds.

I'm not saying I'm guiltless in this regard, as I may inadvertently say painful things to you as well. I will say that I very often tone down what I'm writing to you because I'm aware of this unfortunate circumstance in conversing on the internet that you've pointed out, regarding the lack of being able to hear one's tone of voice, body language, etc.



I just said it was real. I never said it wasn't real. Why are you saying I'm confusing you by saying what she wrote her isn't real when I said the reverse? If you decide to take what I write to be the reverse of what I'm writing, that will no doubt lead to confusion.



I've mentioned DA 764, GC 541-543, DA 108 many, many times.



Clearly DA 764 is dealing with the destruction of the wicked, as well as GC 541-543 and DA 108.



I already commented regarding this on #99656. For example, I wrote this.



Do you disagree with this? Or do you think there will be an infinite number of wicked? Do you think there are as many wicked as there are sands in the sea?

The number of grains of sand in the world are estimated at 10^22. Of course, many of these are not on the sea, but it's easy to see this is a much higher number than the number of wicked, which would be in the order of 10^9. So the true number is not even close. Obviously this phrase was not meant to be taken literally.