Why should there be so much confusion about what man IS?
What happens to a human at death?
Does death merely separate an immortal soul from the body?
Read the startling PROOF, answering these questions that have perplexed millions!
THE ONLY sure thing about life, they say, is death and taxes! That's a common American saying. To the average man on the street, death is a vague, far-off, unreal something that always happens to someone else — a hazy, cloudy, and distant possibility he feels he can worry about when it happens.
When the average citizen reads of the predictions of the National Safety Council concerning some four hundred persons who are to die on our congested highways, he cannot bring himself to believe one of those 400 persons could be he! And yet, true to the stark and tragic toll of lives that are lost every "holiday" in our nation, about the number predicted to die lose their lives in automobile accidents.
While most of us like to shove it out of our minds, to escape having to think about it, death is real. It's an integral part of life. Every living organism follows the pattern of birth, growth, senility and finally, death. Every day, thousands are dying of automobile accidents, of sickness and disease, of starvation and famine, and being killed in murders and wars! At the same time, many thousands of new lives are coming into being — with the many babies being born each day all over the world.
What is this thing called life, and (what seems more important to most) DEATH?
A Common Conception
There are literally dozens of differing ideas about what happens at death. To many people, it is a fearsome departure into some "other world," from which there can be no return. Most professing Christians believe death to be merely separation of the soul from the body — with the conscious individual living on! Death, they reason, is not really death at all — but continuation of LIFE under different circumstances, and in a different "body."
Amid all this confusion surrounding one of the most important questions of our lives, you hear various churches argue that human beings have only two places to go after death — heaven or hell. One great church teaches there are three places: heaven, purgatory and hell. Others understand there is only one place — the grave — and that a resurrection is needed to impart eternal life to human beings.
But what about all these differing ideas?
Why is there such confusion even among all the churches? Have they ever seen a "soul" go flitting off to heaven or hell? Has anyone ever BEEN there, and returned to tell us humans of his experiences?
Are the Dead Conscious?
Take for an example the modern innovation in medicine of "heart massage" as a last-minute emergency measure to preserve human life. The patient has died! The doctor, bending over the still corpse to examine it with his stethoscope, pronounces the body DEAD! Hurriedly, last-minute preparations are made, and the body is opened. The doctor begins to massage the heart of the dead person — forcing the blood to begin to flow once more. After several minutes, a weak, pulsating "fluttering" of the heart muscles is felt. Gradually, a regular, steady pulse develops, and the heart of the dead person begins to beat! The corpse is not a "dead" person any longer — the heart is functioning once more!
This is not some far-fetched idea —but a general description of some actual cases that have occurred.
But, during the time such persons were "dead," because their heart had stopped beating, where were they? Did they go to heaven or hell, and then come BACK into the frail human body they had left immediately at death? And if the conscious "you" leaves the body immediately at death, why is it that NOT ONE of the persons can remember ONE SINGLE THING during the time they were "dead"?
Have you never realized that if you are an immortal soul which can think and know after you leave the body, you would be able to think and know while you are unconscious, or in such a condition already described?
How Can You KNOW?
Since the "soul" is NOT something that can be found by laboratory testing, or by the methods of science, and since even the religionists have mixed-up, DIFFERENT ideas about the "soul," and since no soul has ever returned to tell us where it had been — then where is the only source of knowledge ? How can we ever find the answer to this perplexing problem?
There is only ONE SOURCE!
That source is the revelation of the Almighty Creator who MADE us, and therefore, He should be the One who KNOWS the answer, shouldn't He?
But — that revelation does NOT reveal what most of us have assumed, or have been taught to believe!
Where did all these differing, confused ideas come from? Why do the churches teach you have an immortal soul? Does the Bible teach it? Did Christ indicate it? Did the early apostles or the New Testament Church believe it? Why does the Bible continually emphasize the resurrection of the dead? Would a resurrection be NECESSARY if you continue to live apart from your body?
What Man IS
Most people do not realize what a man really is, believe it or not! Yet God plainly tells us the answer. "Then the Eternal God formed MAN of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and MAN became a living soul." (Genesis 2:7).
There is the answer! Man became a living SOUL; that is what man Is — a soul. Notice there is no mention that man has a soul, but that man is a soul!
When God placed Adam and Eve, who were two living sow, in the garden, He issued a command, "And the Eternal God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die' (Genesis 2:16-17). Notice, God was talking to the conscious man, and He said, "THOU shalt surely die," speaking to the man, who was a SOUL!
When God said Adam would surely die for taking of the wrong fruit, He was directly informing man of the penalty for sin. The inspired Apostle Paul wrote, "For the wages of sin is DEATH; but the gift of God is eternal life THROUGH Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).
Ezekiel was directed by the Holy Spirit to write, "The soul that sinneth, IT [the soul] shall die"! (Ezekiel 18:4, 20)
Death is the absence of life, the cessation of life — not the continuation of life under different circumstances. Notice the two opposite states given in Romans 6:23. God tells us the wages of sin is DEATH, but, on the other hand, the GIFT OF GOD (not something you were born with) is eternal life through Jesus Christ! If eternal life is the GIFT of God, and comes only through Christ, how is it that humans have assumed they already possess eternal life in the form of an "immortal soul"? Ezekiel said the "soul" that sinneth shall DIE! Since man is a soul, and since man can die, and a soul can die, it is obvious that man and soul are one and the same thing!
The Hebrew Proves It!
When God breathed the breath that imparted life into the first man, he became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). The Hebrew word in this scripture for soul is nephesh. Nephesh means "a breathing creature, i.e. animal or vitality" and is also rendered in the English as "any, appetite, beast, body, breath, creature. . . man, me, mind, mortally." (See No. 5315, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance)
Nephesh cannot mean, under any circumstances, ANYTHING immortal, eternal, extra-physical or possessing life other than temporary and mortal!
Open your Bible to Genesis the first chapter and the 24th verse! "And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature [NEPHESH] after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so." Here the word creature is the IDENTICAL Hebrew word that is used THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE OLD TESTAMENT for soul!
Read verses 20, and 21. Here, the identical word, nephesh, is again translated "creature" in the English! Insufficient space does not permit the reproduction of every single verse where this word nephesh is used, but for a few other references, see Genesis 2:19; 9:10, 12, 15 and 16. Here the word nephesh is used in every case, and always translated creature!
Nephesh is used in many places where the revisers have supplied our English word "body." Turn next to Leviticus 21:11. "Neither shall he go in to any dead body [NEPHESH], nor defile himself. . . ." A nephesh is called a dead body in this scripture! In Numbers 6:6; 9:6, 7 and 10; 19:11, 13 and 16 you can find identical renderings, where the Hebrew word nephesh is translated into English as "DEAD BODY."
The prophet Haggai used the same word when he said, "If one that is unclean by a dead body [nephesh] touch any of these, shall it be unclean?" (Hag. 2:13)
These scriptures are plain, clear and absolutely conclusive evidence that the same word rendered "soul" wherever it appears in your Old Testament is also rendered as "dead body"! Why have not men been willing to look into the inspired Word of God and find its true meaning?
It is with a gasp of surprise that many people turn to their Bibles and find that most of the traditions and the assumptions of MEN just are not there! How about YOU? Are you willing to CHANGE your ideas when you can see it PROVED, NOT from the vain "ideas" of men, but from the plain, clear, inspired Word of God?
You have already read — as quoted from YOUR BIBLE — the PROOF that a soul is an ANIMAL, a BODY, and CAN DIE!