Not only does it appear that those scars made beautiful, remain for eternity, but the remembrance also of who was responsible for their being there.

"And [one] hath said unto him, `What [are] these wounds in thy hands?' And he hath said, `Because I was smitten [at] home by my lovers.' " Zech 13:6 YLT

There is nothing in the Bible that I'm aware of that would indicate Christ gives up His other dimensions of Sovereign Lord, only another facet as humanity was added. It is just as understandable as Jesus being fully Divine and fully human while He was here on this earth.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD." Isaiah 55:8 KJV
Regards!

There was no difference as to Jesus' nature. Jesus did not tell Mary not to "touch" Him merely, but the original Greek indicates "do not begin to cling to me," or "do not go on clinging to me." The context shows he meant the former. (DA 790 says, "Do not detain me.") He hadn't yet ascended to the Father. He didn't want to be detained from ascending to His Father and receiving assurance that His sacrifice on behalf of mankind was accepted.

Compare this with Matt. 28: 9 where Jesus allows his followers to "hold him by the feet." Why the difference between his actions here and his words in John 20: 17? According to Ellen White (DA 790), between the time He told Mary not to detain Him and the time when He allowed His followers to hold him by the feet, Jesus ascended to the Father and received assurance that His sacrifice was accepted.

Yes, the Bible teaches that Jesus was really human at that moment. He had a glorified human body just like we will have at the resurrection (see 1 Cor. 15: 35-58). After His birth, Jesus was always both fully God and fully man, which He still is and always will remain.

Excellent answer. Thanks for the work you guys put in to answer this. I am now more informed about this matter and also this puts a new dimension on how to relate to Jesus in prayer.

And now for another perspective.

First the verse in Zechariah is not contextually anything about Jesus Christ either during His life or after His resurrection. This is one of those cases where a verse is taken out of context and used as a pretext for something totally unrelated.

Zechariah 13:4-8 NIV "On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his prophetic vision. He will not put on a prophet's garment of hair in order to deceive.
He will say, 'I am not a prophet. I am a farmer; the land has been my livelihood since my youth.' If someone asks him, 'What are these wounds on your body ?' he will answer, 'The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.' "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me!" declares the LORD Almighty. "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones.
In the whole land," declares the LORD, "two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it.

Here is a section from the Expositor’s Bible Commentary:

4-6 Because of these stern measures, a false prophet will be reticent in identifying himself as such and will be evasive in responding to questioning. To help conceal his true identity, he will not wear "a prophet's garment of hair" (v. 4), such as Elijah wore (2 Kings 1:8). Instead, to avoid the death penalty (v. 3), he will deny being a prophet and will claim to have been a farmer from his youth (v. 5). And if some suspicious person notices marks on his body and inquires about them (v. 6), he will claim he received them in a scuffle with friends as discipline from his parents during childhood. Apparently the accuser suspects that the false prophet's wounds were self-inflicted to arouse his prophetic ecstasy in idolatrous rites (as in 1 Kings 18:28; cf. also Lev 19:28; 21:5; Deut 14:1; Jer 16:6; 41:5; 48:37).
A few expositors assign a messianic sense to v. 6 (cf. Unger, Zechariah, pp. 22830, for the best defense of such a position, though most of his arguments here are weak, forced, irrelevant, or debatable). The following observations, however, militate against any messianic import for the verse: (1) it presupposes an unnatural break between v. 5 and v. 6, with a complete change in subject matter; (2) in order to find a proper antecedent for "him," it reverts all the way back to 12:10, thus regarding 12:11-13:5 as parenthetical, which is neither obvious nor necessary; (3) the most natural antecedent for "him" (v. 6) is "he" (v. 5), since weamur ("if someone asks") at the beginning of v. 6 certainly seems to be a response to weamar ("he will say") at the beginning of v. 5; (4) there is a rather clear change in subject matter in v. 7, indicating that the break is between v. 6 and v. 7, not between v. 5 and v. 6; (5) there is a change of person in v. 7, indicating the same; (6) the verb changes to imperative in v. 7, indicating the same; and (7) the literary form changes to poetry in v. 7, indicating the same.

We can be pretty sure that this verse should not be used to answer the question of does Jesus forever bear scars. The question one needs to ask is why does Jesus have scars? A reanimated healthy human body does not need to have scars at all, scars are the result of an imperfect healing process. Of course we don’t know what that would be like, a normal healing process for such wounds would take considerable time if they were not healed immediately. If Jesus felt the need was to show His healing wounds or scars to some who would not believe otherwise that would not indicate that such scars or healing wounds must forever exist. That would be unnecessary and totally speculative.

What is more important is that this idea of bearing scars makes Jesus limited by a human body. And this is problematic because for most people it makes Jesus no longer God, possibly why so many people are more tri-theists then Trinitarian. God is defined as omnipresent however the belief in Jesus forever human means He cannot be omnipresent. He becomes one of 3 separate Gods, and the most limited of all the Gods. Of course the Hebrew Shema says there is only one God, and John chapter one emphasizes that Jesus is God. Even on earth Jesus said He and the Father are one, and that if you have seen Jesus you have seen the Father.

Therefore a proper understanding of God is that God is one He is not limited by a human body, either with the earthly Jesus or after the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus died as a human He did not die as God as God is immortal. We can realize this by Jesus’ statements about laying down His life and taking it up again. Or where He said destroy this temple (his body) and I will raise it up again. He could do these things because He was God and as many other New Testament verses say God raised Jesus back to life. These are ways of trying to show the oneness of God, that Jesus was not merely a prophet but was God in human form.

What we see with the whole Jesus retains scars forever is the tendency to elaborate upon things that we have not received any Biblical information. The same is true for the statement: “Jesus ascended to the Father and received assurance that His sacrifice was accepted.” There is nothing in the Bible to assert the idea that Jesus ascended to receive assurance that His (remember He is God) was accepted.
John 20:17 Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, `I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "

There are various ways of looking at that verse. There is nothing in the verse that requires an ascension before the ascension that the disciples witnessed. The more likely explanation is that He is warning them (by sending the message with Mary) that things were not simply going back to what they were before, that there was a change in His mission and it would end soon with His returning to heaven.

We often think we know so much more then we do because we read other ideas into a text. We have to learn to read within the context rather then make the context fit our traditions or assumptions.

Thanks for "another perspective."

I would accept what Ellen White says any day in preference to the Expositor's Bible Commentary or any other commentary. As one who has studied and read her writings and compared them to the Bible, I have learned to trust her, just as I have learned to trust the Bible. There are many things in the Bible for which there is no proof, yet I believe it because I am convinced by evidence that the Bible is the trust-worthy Word of God. I also believe Ellen White was a true prophet of God and believe there is overwhelming evidence that she can be trusted. However, each person must decide these things for himself.

As for some verses being out of context, have you noticed how many Old Testament verses are quoted in the NT seemingly out of context?

Here are a few chosen at random: John 2: 17 quoting Ps. 69:9. Also John 13: 18 quoting Ps. 41:9; Matt. 21 quoting Zech. 9:9; and Hebrews 1: 8 quoting the Psalms.

Of course Jesus does not HAVE to keep the scars in his body. He chooses to keep them as a reminder of what happened on earth when He sacrificed His life for us.

The Bible plainly teaches that Jesus has a human, glorified body. It was with such a body that Jesus ascended to heaven, and it is with such a body that the glorified God/Man returns for His church at the end of the age. Christ has voluntarily chosen to be a member of the human race forever. He could have chosen to remain in heaven, and He certainly could have chosen to cease being human after his resurrection, but the Bible makes it plain that Jesus did not do so. All for us.

And of course with that logic since all of the Word that Jesus spoke was spoken from His own lips, to be true to context, in none of the written Word is He here in the flesh to verify. Therefore no certain conclusions can be reached until He comes back to verify through words spoken from His own lips.
And as we see from the vast majority of the world today, a condition denying that Jesus can be believed until He speaks from His own lips to them personally.

"He said to him, If they do not hear and listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded and convinced and believe [even] if someone should rise from the dead." Luke 16:31 AMP
parenthesis theirs LHC

"Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed."
John 20:29 NASB
Regards!

I often see this kind of response. On the one hand they say they trust EGW as much as the Bible but on the other hand they take what EGW says over what the Bible says. That is a problem. Now suppose you were telling the idea of why Jesus still has scars to other Christians, not Adventists, how do you think they would react to your extraneous material. They would say where does the Bible say that, and you would say it does not but I have a prophet that says it and I trust her just like I trust the Bible.

The simply fact is they will not agree that you in fact even trust the Bible.

As for taking verses out of context. It is true that some of the New Testament authors do that on occasion to make a point. It is problematic in itself but at least it has the approval as being inspired teaching from across the board Christianity (we need to understand their purpose rather then use it as an excuse). It hardly means that everyone else can simply take verses out of context. Whether a person thinks they are inspired such as EGW or Jimmy Swaggart etc.

In short if you have any doctrine it must come clearly from the Bible, if it does not then you have to try and get people such as other Christians who already accept the Bible as their standard to accept your chosen prophet on top of the Bible. That is counter productive especially if one holds to the idea that EGW was used to point people to the Bible.

It is readily admitted by the SDA church that Ellen White says many things that are not found in the Bible. That is nothing. What is important is whether she says things that contradict the Bible. I do not believe that her statement about Jesus having scars on his body in heaven contradicts the Bible. In fact, it agrees with the Bible.

As for talking with non-SDA, I do not talk about Ellen White to them, unless they either bring her up or are reading something she wrote. Ellen White was a prophet to the SDA church, not for all Christians. Some of her books are good for everyone, but she was raised up by God for the specific purpose of guiding the SDA church in these last days.

I am not really concerned with what other people who do not believe in her say about her, any more than I am concerned with what other people say about my wife. I know Ellen White and have confidence in her, and others have to make up their own minds. It is the same way with the Bible. I have friends who do not accept the Bible or Christ. I cannot help that. In the first place they don't study the Bible and they certainly do not know Jesus Christ. Therefore I understand their viewpoint, but it does not affect my viewpoint of Christ or the Bible. Each person must be persuaded in his own mind.




I agree in principle with your last paragraphs. I believe and am satisfied that Ellen White does agree with the Bible, but that doesn't mean everything she says can be found in the Bible. In the same way, not everything that the NT writers say can be found in the OT. Each prophet added new details in the plan of salvation. Paul said things that were not in any other parts of the Bible, and so did James and John.

Here on the AdventistForum I feel perfectly free to talk about Ellen White and quote her in doctrinal matters. People are free to disagree with what she wrote and I am free to quote her. That is one of the beautiful things about being in an Adventist forum. As I said before, everyone must make up his own mind.