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Day 16 - March 7

  • bpruner8
  • Mar 9, 2015
  • 2 min read

Paul is brought before the court to defend charges he is facing from his own people. Yet, there are two viewpoints to what Paul has been teaching. He has lived as a Pharisee and taught according to their beliefs and so they defend him in court. On the other hand, there are the Sadducees who argue fiercely against what Paul has to say, specifically his preaching on the resurrection. To understand their view more clearly, please consider this commentary on their beliefs.

“The disbelief of the Sadducees manifested itself in a triple form, for they denied the resurrection and the existence of angels and spirits ( Acts 23:8 ), but the basal principle of their infidelity was the denial of spirits. It was, as it were, the tree trunk from which their other errors sprang as branches. If there were such things as spirits, it was not worth while to deny that there was an order of them known as angels. If man had a spirit which could survive his body, it was reasonable to believe that God, having so fashioned him that a body is essential to his activity and happiness, would in some manner restore a body to him. Jesus therefore does not pursue the argument until he has proved a resurrection; but rests when he has proved that man has a spirit. Jesus proves that man has a spirit by a reference from the Pentateuch, that part of Scripture which the Sadducees accepted as derived from God through Moses. The reference shows that God was spoken of and spoke of himself as the God of those who were, humanly speaking, long since dead. But the Sadducees held that a dead man had ceased to exist, that he had vanished to nothingness. According to their view, therefore, God had styled himself the God of nothing, which is absurd. The Sadducees could not thus have erred had they known or understood the significance of this Scripture, and they could not have doubted the resurrection had they known the absolute power with which God deals with material such as that of which the body is formed.” J. W. McGarvey and Philip Y. Pendleton


 
 
 

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