Plenty of people do use these words to support the idea of going directly into God's presence at death. Contextually, however, this cannot be the meaning. Jesus was responding the Sadducees who did not believe in the ressurection. They did not believe that anyone was raised to life again at some point after death..Suzana wrote:It is interesting - and it was Jesus who said that God was the God of the living. I guess this might be used to support the belief that the faithful 'dead' are already in God's presence
And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong. Mark 12:26,27
The thought may be expressed as follows. If God does not raise the dead, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will not be raised to life again. If they remain dead, how can God be their God? God is not the God of dead people. However, if they are raised to life, God will continue to be their God. If Jesus had been talking about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob being in the presence of God at the time God spoke to Moses, He would not have been addressing the question of personal ressurection, but the issue of the immortality of the "souls" of the righteous. However, Jesus introduces His argument with "As for the dead being raised..." Clearly then, it is the issue of personal ressurection with which He then dealt.