What the Bible REALLY Says!
Notice the warning of the apostle Paul, who once personally confronted Greek thinkers on Mars Hill in ancient Athens (Acts 17:15-34). To the Greeks in Colossae in Asia Minor he wrote:
"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Col. 2:8).
Jesus Christ himself warned of "making the word of God of none effect through your tradition" (Mark 7:13). “In vain they do worship me," he lamented, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" (Matt. 15:9).
So what does the Bible really say?
Consider first the teaching of the Old Testament. As we have seen, the Jews living in the Hellenistic world admit they took the immortal soul doctrine from Plato. Why? Because it is nowhere found in the Hebrew Scriptures!
Notice Genesis 2:7: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
Consider carefully: Man — formed of the dust of the ground, not out of spirit — "became" a living soul. A soul is what man is. It is not something a man has.
The Hebrew language further proves this point. The Hebrew word translated as "soul" in Genesis 2:7 in the widely used King James Version of the Bible is nephesh. Nephesh designates temporary physical life. It means a living, breathing creature. This is the same word used frequently in the first chapter of Genesis and elsewhere in reference to animals.
Notice, for example, Genesis 1:24: "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 in Genesis 2:7 and throughout the Old Testament for "soul." In biblical usage, a brute beast is also a "soul"!
In Leviticus 21:11, Numbers 6:6, Haggai 2:13 and elsewhere, the word nephesh is even used with reference to a dead body!
Nephesh clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of spirit essence. The soul is not a sepa rate entity from the body. It is the body! Man is a nephesh. He is a soul!
Many additional Old Testament scriptures reveal clearly the mortality — not the immortality — of the soul. Ezekiel 18:4, 20, for example, declares that a soul can die! Read it for yourself: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." If the soul were immortal, how could it die? It's a direct contradiction of terms!
No wonder Jewish scholars today have to point to Plato as the origin of the immortal soul doctrine!
The New Testament Speaks
What about the New Testament? Surely here we find biblical proof for an immortal soul. Or do we?
In the New Testament, "soul" is a translation of the Greek word psuche. Psuche is the equivalent of the Hebrew word nephesh. Like nephesh, psuche is frequently rendered "life" in addition to "soul."
Psuche is twice used in the New Testament for the lower animals, exactly in the same way as the Hebrew nephesh can refer to the life of animals. In these two scriptures (Rev. 8:9 and 16:3), psuche is rendered "life" and "soul' respectively, with reference to the life of sea creatures.
The word psuche has no connotation whatsoever of "spirit essence" or "immortal soul"!
Jesus Christ, in fact, declared that God is able to destroy one's soul (Greek psuche, or life) in gehenna fire (Matt. 10:28).
The words immortal soul are found nowhere in the Bible — Old Testament or New. The word immortal occurs only once in the entire Bible — in I Timothy 1:17, where it refers specifically to Jesus Christ!
The word immortality is found only in the New Testament, where it occurs fewer than half a dozen times. One of those places — I Timothy 6:16 — clearly states that, of all humans, Jesus Christ "ONLY hath immortality"! Romans 2:7 admonishes Christians to "SEEK FOR . . . immortality." If man already had immortality, he would not have to seek for it!
I Corinthians 15 — the "resurrection chapter" of the Bible — shows that a Christian "puts on" immortality at a future resurrection of the dead (see verses 50-54).
As Jesus clearly stated: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). Man — born of the flesh — is flesh. He was not created with inherent immortality. He has only a temporary physiochemical existence. “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," God told Adam (Gen. 3:19).
Only when mortal man is "born again" in a future resurrection will he finally put on immortality and be spirit! Why would a resurrection of the body be needed if the soul were already in heaven? The soul does not go to heaven! The mortal soul — man's physical life — dies and turns to dust! (Write for our free publications Just What Do You Mean — Born Again? and The Three Resurrections for more about this much-misunderstood subject)
The New Testament, then, teaches the resurrection — a rising from the dead — in direct opposition to the pagan Greek idea of an immortal soul. The resurrection is our only hope of eternal life! Jesus Christ's resurrection was a type or forerunner of the resurrection God promises to all who obey him (John 5:28-29; 11:25; Rom. 8:11; Phil. 3:10-11).
Man has no hope of future life inherent within himself!
The "Spirit in Man"
Now understand an additional basic truth. Few have ever grasped it.
Since man's material "soul" — his body and its physical life processes — are corruptible and perish after death, how is it possible for God to ultimately resurrect an individual? If everything is physical and turns to dust, what is there that remains of a person to be "brought back"? How are his personality, his memory, and his character preserved by God until a day of resurrection?
The answer is simply that not everything about a man is physical! The Bible calls this nonphysical component the "spirit [Hebrew ruach, Greek pneuma] in man" (Job 32:8; Zech. 12:1; I Cor. 2:11). It is not the man. It is in man.
This spirit in man, however, has no consciousness apart from the physical human brain. It is not to be confused in any way with the fictional concept of a conscious "immortal soul." "The dead know not anything," the Bible declares (Eccl. 9:5, 10). In the day of a man's death, "his thoughts perish" (Ps. 146:4). The Bible clearly pictures death as a sleep — a state of unconsciousness (Dan. 12:2).
At death, this spirit in man "shall return unto God who gave it" (Eccl. 12:7). It is then "filed away," so to speak, like a tape recording for God's future use at a resurrection.
On it is indelibly recorded one's character and the many experiences accumulated during one's lifetime. (See the accompanying article "What Is Man?" in this issue for a further explanation)
It is also this "spirit in man" — as often explained in the pages of this magazine — that sets man apart from the animals. It is what makes man unique. It imparts to the living human brain the power of intellect to comprehend materialistic knowledge. It is the source of human intelligence. It is not present in animal brain. (For a further examination of the spirit in man concept, write for editor-in-chief Herbert W. Armstrong's book The Incredible Human Potential. It is free upon request)
Whole World Deceived
There is no scriptural basis whatever for belief in an "immortal soul" surviving consciously after death.
Throughout the centuries of professing Christianity, innumerable sermons have been preached and countless pamphlets written supposedly "proving" the soul's immortality. Upon careful and open-minded examination, they are all found riddled with gross error and misrepresentation!
The doctrine of the immortal soul is built on a foundation of biblical mistranslations, false premises, sloppy scholarship and even outright dishonesty. Few ministers and laymen have had the spiritual courage to take a fresh, unprejudiced look at the question and accept the true Bible teaching.
For when the false doctrine of the immortal soul is toppled, along with it falls the equally pagan and false concept of Heaven and Hell — one of the cornerstones of traditional Christianity!
Satan the devil has succeeded — for the time being — in deceiving the whole world (Rev. 12:9). It was he who first introduced the idea that man does not really die, but is inherently immortal. “Ye shall not surely die;" Satan lied to Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:4).
God's future for mankind is far more transcendent than the common picture of immortal souls floating on clouds and strumming harps for eternity. For those who choose it and qualify, there is life after death by a resurrection. But that life will come through a new birth as an immortal spirit being into the very family of God — by means of a future resurrection from the dead!
Write for our booklets What Will You Be Doing in the Next Life?, What is the Reward of the Saved? and The Wonderful World Tomorrow — What It Will Be Like?
It is time to cast off the fables and traditions of men and understand the great meaning and purpose of human life as revealed in the Bible!
Will you have the courage to look into it for yourself'?