Regarding the elders, I said that we only know of 3 people who are in heaven. If you can name some more, list 'em. Those folks are sure there as you mention, but we don't know who they are and where they came from, do we? The Catholics don't use the title "elder" anyhow, so we can rule them out :)
"You watch too much sci-fi. Reanimation? Read the story of Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead. Did Adam exist prior to God making him out of clay?"
How does this help your argument about the status of the soul relative to the spirits of the just already being in Heaven? This example of Lazarus undercuts your own argument, since by what mechanism, other than a reintroduction of his soul with his body, did he come back to life? Did he get a "new" soul? Did his soul just hang around somewhere until Jesus reinserted it? Did he even have a soul at all, and perhaps material bodies just "live" without the animating principle which is the soul? What does Lazarus' example even have to *do* with your novel comments about the near echo-chamber status you posit for Heaven?
Speaking of which, you now say: "Regarding the elders, I said that we only know of 3 people who are in heaven. If you can name some more, list 'em. Those folks are sure there as you mention, but we don't know who they are and where they came from, do we? The Catholics don't use the title "elder" anyhow, so we can rule them out" This is a direct contradiction of what you said originally, in post 351: "I really, really agree with this one. The Bible only lists 3 regular people who made it to heaven already (Enoch, Elija, and Moses, and one maybe (one of the guys that was crucified alongside Jesus). The idea that people die and go straight to heaven is Biblically unsound and makes much of the New Testament and Christianity in generally moot."
You changed your story in the face of the evidence provided by Revelation 7. So which one do you *really* believe: the "Three People Only Theory," or the "Three Named People and a Host of Unnamed Others Theory," which flies in the face of what you've been trying to say throughout this thread regarding the resurrection?
Which is it, or is it going to be yet another permutation that we'll see?