Asleep in Christ

In the New Testament, the “sleep” metaphor for death is taken up some 19 times. Examples: Matt. 9:24,  I Thessalonians 5:10  (Greek katheudo); Acts 7:60, Acts 13:36, I Cor. 11:30, 15:6 and 15:18  (Greek koimasthai). Unfortunately, the NRSV often obscures the point by translating, simply, “died”.¹

Following Jesus’ own example (e.g. Matt. 9:24), the metaphor  is used with comforting connotations in the New Testament. However, Jesus certainly did not mean to deny that death is real! As John 11:11-14 clearly shows, Jesus’ special point is that, because of Him death is not final.

“Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”²

Through Jesus, there is the assured prospect of being “awakened out of sleep”, by resurrection.

“I am the resurrection and the life.”³

It is the prospect of resurrection to eternal life which “gilds the bed of death with light.”

Paul makes exactly this point in I Thessalonians 4:13-18, where again the metaphor of “sleep” is used for death. The question here is: What comfort does the Gospel offer bereaved Christians (13, 15)? Thessalonian Christians are grieving over people in the church who have died. Paul writes: “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died [literally “are sleeping”], so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (13). Here is Paul, intent on dispelling ignorance concerning the dead. Here, if anywhere, Paul intends to be very explicit about the death-state. Here, if anywhere, he would undoubtedly assure us that the souls of the saved have gone to heaven, if that is what he believes. But he does not! The comfort he offers is not that “those who have fallen asleep” are already enjoying conscious fellowship with God. His whole focus is on future resurrection at the return of Christ, who has already been raised.

Verse 14 says:

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.

This does not mean that the dead are already alive “with” Jesus, but rather, that “although later in time, the resurrection of the people of Christ is their participation in his resurrection”.⁴  Similarly, in II Corinthians 4:14 Paul writes: “…we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus”. So then, the comfort Paul offers here in I Thessalonians 4 is, that “the dead in Christ will rise” (I Thess. 4:16), when Jesus “descends from heaven” at His return, and that thus “we shall always be with the Lord” (17). Alan Richardson concludes:

The apostolic Church seems to have held that we do not receive our resurrection bodies immediately after we die, but that we ‘sleep’ in Christ until the parousia (second coming)….the beautiful metaphor of sleep most adequately expresses the deepest conviction of the apostolic Church concerning those of the baptized who had already died…⁵

It is amazing how reluctant many Christians have been to accept the persistent biblical metaphor for death, “sleep”, in its plain significance. It is sometimes argued that the New Testament means to describe only dying itself as “falling asleep”, rather than the death-state as “sleep”. This is plainly not true. “The expression in the New Testament signifies…the condition…of the dead.”⁶ In Matt. 9:34,  I Thess. 4:13,  I Thess. 5:10 and I Cor. 11:30, the present continuous tense is used: the dead “is” or “are sleeping”. Furthermore, references such as John 11:11, Acts 13:36 and Rev. 14:13 show that the suggested distinction is illusory: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,” says Jesus, “but I am going to awaken him” (John 11:11) . “Awakening”, of course, is by resurrection (John 11:43-44,  Daniel 12:2).

Jesus’ great declaration in John 11:25-26 is commonly used at funerals. Rightly so!

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

What does this mean? “…the person who believes in me, even if death overtakes him, will nevertheless be raised up in resurrection life; and…every person who will gain resurrection life as a believer in me will never die but live for ever.”⁷ The only hope of those who are “asleep” in death is resurrection, and resurrection will occur at the second coming of Christ (I Cor. 15:17-23, 51-54), a hope based squarely, not on speculative ideas or wishful thinking, but on the central facts of the Gospel:

If Christ has not been raised…those also who have died [literally, fallen asleep] in Christ have perished… But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died [fallen asleep]. For since death came through a human being,⁸  the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being;⁹

…But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.¹⁰

DIVERSE CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS

It is scandalous that, despite the clear, consistent teaching of both the Hebrew and the Greek Testaments, Christian tradition has displayed great confusion over the death-state. Today it is very widely recognised that this has been due largely to the influence of ancient Greek ideas, an influence already strong in some pre-Christian Jewish circles. Paul Althaus explains: “…the original biblical concepts have been replaced by ideas from Hellenistic (Greek) Gnostic dualism. The New Testament idea of resurrection which affects the total man has had to give way to the immortality of the soul. The Last Day also loses its significance, for souls have received all that is decisively important long before this. Eschatological tension [i.e. the Christian hope] is no longer directed to the day of Jesus’ coming. The difference between this and the hope of the New Testament is very great.”¹¹ 

(a) During the Middle Ages, an elaborate fourfold doctrine of the death-state was evolved in the Western Christian Church. This schema is reflected in Dante’s great poem, The Divine Comedy, and became standard for Roman Catholicism. (1) At death, “souls” of unbaptised infants and, perhaps, exceptional pagans, go to “limbo”, a state of lostness but not actual suffering.¹²  (2) Souls of the lost go to eternal torment in “hell”. (3) Souls of most Christians go to a place of temporary suffering called “purgatory”, where through suffering they are cleansed of their sins and their attachment to sin, in preparation for final bliss. (4) Souls of exceptional Christians (the “saints”) go immediately to heaven (“paradise”), to be with God and Christ. Eventually, the souls of those whose time in purgatory is finished go there also.

All the sixteenth century Protestant Reformers rejected the doctrine of purgatory, for three good reasons: it is not found anywhere in the Bible; it is contrary to the fundamental of salvation by grace alone; it is open to terrible abuse, as when the Medieval Church claimed the power to relieve the suffering of those in purgatory and charged the faithful money to do so. Some added a fourth reason: there is no immortal human soul.¹³

(b) Through the Reformation, a simplified scheme emerged. According to a common Protestant view of death, the souls of the lost go immediately to punishment in “hell”, while the souls of the saved go immediately to “heaven”, there to enjoy full, conscious communion with Christ. Although this is widely assumed today to be the Christian view, it is neither the Roman Catholic view, as we have seen, nor the view of the Orthodox Church, nor has it been widely held by Christians at all until comparatively recently.

As a matter of fact, the idea of the soul’s immediate ascent to heaven at death is of Greek (Gnostic) origin, not biblical or Christian. In my opinion, it is precisely this view that the Apostle Paul is arguing against in his great “Resurrection Chapter”, I Corinthians 15.  Those he opposes there saw no need of a resurrection (verse 12), precisely because they assumed, in line with their Greek Platonist upbringing, that the soul is immortal and held that saved souls go to heaven immediately at death. Bruce Winter explains:

It was not the resurrection of Christ that was denied, but the resurrection of the Christian’s body over against the pagan doctrine of the immortality of the soul. To the first century mind, the immortality of the soul was unquestionably true for most pagans… Paul strongly refutes this aberrant view of the Christian’s continuity apart from one’s body….¹⁴

Not surprisingly, then, this view was also roundly opposed by prominent second and third century Christian teachers, such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian, who found it irreconcilable with the hope of the resurrection. “Justin Martyr told Trypho [a Jewish opponent] that if he encountered any Christians who ‘dare to blaspheme God…by asserting that there is no resurrection of the dead, but that their souls are taken up to heaven at the very moment of their death, do not consider them to be real Christians’ (Dialogue With Trypho, xx)”!¹⁵  And, as a matter of fact, neither Calvin nor Luther, the two greatest Reformation leaders, held this view!

(c) Calvin’s view was similar to that of many early, post-biblical Christian teachers, including Augustine: that the souls of the lost and of the righteous go to a preliminary state, in which they experience, respectively, suffering or bliss which is a mere shadow of what will happen later following the resurrection and the Last Judgment. In Calvin’s view, the biblical doctrines of the return of Christ and the resurrection did receive emphasis. Yet he also insisted on the immortality of the soul, largely on Platonist grounds. “As a Platonist, Calvin…found it easier than Luther…to hold to a natural persistence of the soul after death.”¹⁶  The result was an uneasy and unstable mixture.

(d) Martin Luther, on the other hand, is on record as having flatly denied that the soul is immortal.¹⁷  “Luther generally understands the condition between death and the resurrection as a deep and dreamless sleep without consciousness and feeling…. Luther therefore says nothing about souls without their bodies enjoying true life and blessedness before the resurrection. They sleep ‘in the peace of Christ’.”¹⁸

Luther was not alone, of course. Some early Christian writers did also express the view that the death-state is total unconsciousness.¹⁹  During the Reformation, Carlstadt and the great William Tyndale, the first translator of the whole Bible from the original languages into English, held the same view.²⁰  Many of the “left wing” of the Reformation (including Italian Evangelicals, many Anabaptists,²¹ “Spirituals” and others) also held the same view. Some did so as a result of increasingly careful and independent study of that other great Greek philosopher, Aristotle, but many did so purely on biblical grounds. Zwingli, another leading Reformer, recorded that, “The Catabaptists [i.e. Anabaptists] teach that the dead sleep, both body and soul, until the day of judgment….”²²

Some of these “radicals” held that, although the soul continues to exist separately from the body, it is entirely unconscious and inoperative (e.g. Conrad Grebel, Westerburg). Others held that the soul cannot exist at all without the body, but perishes at death along with it; that the human person is a strictly indivisible entity. I doubt that it is possible to be dogmatic either way, on purely biblical grounds, though I am inclined to the latter view. Either way, from the Reformation on, “mortalism” certainly became a “live” option once more!

In the 17^th century, in England, the great Christian independent, activist and poet John Milton was a mortalist and the outstanding philosopher Thomas Hobbes made the following observation, which is surely irrefutable: “That the soul of man is in its own nature eternal, and a living creature independent of the body; or that any mere man is immortal, otherwise than by resurrection in the last day…is a doctrine not apparent in Scripture.”²³

(e) Today, quite a number of Christians are attached to modified doctrines of purgatory, as a means, not merely of purifying those already saved, but also of bringing all humanity, perhaps, to eventual salvation.²⁴  The idea of universal salvation will be discussed in Chapters Six and Nine. As for purgatory in any form, there is simply no biblical warrant for such a doctrine: “…we have no evidence that Jesus or the apostles ever taught the doctrine – even in a weak seed form…”.²⁵

(f) An alternative approach today is to remain non-committal about the fate of the lost at death, but to hold that Christian souls or spirits become immortalised by union with the Holy Spirit of God, either when “born again” through faith in Christ (regeneration), or at death (e.g. Lucien Cerfaux, J. A. Baird). This view does fully recognise that immortality is not inherent in the natural soul, but is entirely a gift of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. However, quite contrary to Scripture, it still fails to treat the human person as an indivisible whole and also divorces the gift of immortality from the return of Christ and the resurrection. In Chapter Four, we will look closely at the sense in which eternal life is a present possession.

(g) Another recent approach is to hold that the resurrection itself actually occurs at death (e.g. Murray Harris; Emil Brunner, Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg all appear to advocate this view in some form). Again, proponents of this view do fully agree that there is no doctrine of the immortality of the human soul in Scripture. Further, they agree that immortality is entirely God’s gracious gift, through Christ. And they link this gift firmly to resurrection, retaining thereby a holistic view of the human person.

In support of this view, it is pointed out that, biblically, the resurrection body will not necessarily be the same as our present body. Furthermore, from God’s viewpoint time is not simply what it is from ours: perhaps therefore, it is suggested, the death-and-resurrection world also operates by a different time from our own. This approach is based, in part, upon a misunderstanding of II Corinthians 5:1-10, which will be considered in the next chapter.

In my opinion, this view involves a very dubious piece of logic. Although it is no doubt true that God’s relation to time is different from ours, I wonder what bearing this can have on the way time may affect humans after death. Surely it is not being suggested that at death the human soul becomes divine? Furthermore, the Bible itself does apply the normal concept of time to the interval between death and resurrection. After all, it is the persistent witness of the New Testament, that Christ Himself rose “on the third day”!²⁶

There are other reasons, too, that this view is biblically and theologically impossible. First, it entails divorcing the salvation of the individual from that of the Church as a whole; whereas, as Dr. Harris himself insists, the New Testament sees resurrection as “a corporate experience of ‘those who belong to Christ’.” (9M. J. Harris, Raised Immortal, p.233.))  This is sufficiently clear from I Thessalonians 4:7, which envisages the dead and the living being raised and/or transformed “together” at Christ’s return; and from I Corinthians 15:51-52: “we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.”

Second, it also divorces the individual’s resurrection from the judgment and renewal of creation as a whole; yet, as Dr. Harris himself states, the two cannot be considered apart from one another “without seriously undermining the testimony of the New Testament….the ‘new heaven and new earth’ correspond to man’s new, resurrection body.”²⁷

It is also noteworthy that, as Dr. Harris correctly observes, resurrection and judgment are “inseparably associated”.²⁸ Yet, as he also concedes, it is hard to find any reference in the New Testament to a judgment of the individual at death.²⁹  Of course, this is also a further reason to reject the whole idea of saved or lost “souls” going to heaven, hell or purgatory at death. Biblically, judgment occurs at “the end of the age”, on God’s appointed “day”, not before.³⁰

Further, if the resurrection of each believer occurs at death, then either the resurrection is divorced from the second coming of Christ and the triumph of God’s Kingdom, or the second coming of Christ and the triumph of God’s Kingdom are themselves divorced from our time, our history and our world. This amounts to no less than a new betrayal of Christian faith along Platonist lines. Once again God’s Kingdom is set in a world apart from ours, just as with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, or indeed the Egyptian kingdom of the dead. Whereas, according to biblical faith, it is with this world, its judgment and its recreation, that God is concerned.³¹

In contrast to the confusing diversity of Christian traditions, stands the clear and consistent teaching of Scripture. Jesus’ second coming, through which God’s Kingdom is finally achieved, will be an event which intervenes in our time and our world, to wind up, judge and transform our history:

While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness, by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.³²

When the Son of Man comes in his glory….the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats…³³

…the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.³⁴

This is obvious from the mere fact, that a generation will be alive on earth when it occurs and will experience “rapture” without dying (I Cor. 15:51, I Thess. 4:17, Matt. 24:40-41)! And the resurrection to immortality and everlasting fellowship with Christ will occur only in and through that event: Matt. 25:31-46; Luke 14:14; John 6:40, 14:3;  I Cor. 15:23, 51-57;  Phil. 3:20-21; I Thess. 4:16-18;  II Tim. 4:6-8.

Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.³⁵

“I will raise them up on the last day.”³⁶

Thus the dead and the living will meet Christ “together”,³⁷  when He comes in triumph. Meanwhile, the dead are extinct, or at least unconscious and inactive, and utterly beyond hope, apart from the sovereign memory, promise and power of God.

CLEAR – OR CONFUSED?

But could it be, after all, that the Bible itself is confused, self-contradictory? There remain five New Testament passages which seem, to some, to complicate the issue. In addition, the writings of John, in particular, frequently assert that Christians have eternal life in the present. The next chapter will consider these points in detail.

References

1. E.g., NRSV translates Acts 7:60 as “he died”, but the Greek says, literally, “he fell asleep”, as in KJV, RSV, NIV.
2. John 11:11.  Later, “Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead…’” (John 11:14).
3. John 11:25.
4.  F. F. Bruce, I & II Thessalonians, Waco: Word Books, 1982, p.97.
5. Alan Richardson, An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament, London: S.C.M., 1958, pp.345-6.
6. O. Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?, London: Epworth Press, E.T. 1958, p.51, note 6.  Compare Prospero, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest iv.i: “…our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”
7. M. J. Harris, Raised Immortal, p.212.
8. I.e. Adam, the first man.
9. I.e. Jesus Christ.
10. I Corinthians 15:17-23 (italics mine).
11. P. Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970, p.414; italics added.
12. Reports in 2006 seemed to imply that the concept of limbo is officially on the way out.
13. E.g. William Tyndale’s colleague, John Frith, in his A Disputacyon of Purgatorye, c1531.
14.  B. Winter, “I Corinthians”, in D. A. Carson et al. (Eds), New Bible Commentary, Leicester: I.V.P., 21^st Century Edition, 1994, p.1183.
15. F. Barton, Heaven, Hell and Hades, Charlotte: Advent Christian General Conference, 1981, p.33.
16. G. H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, p.582.  Williams adds: “In his anthropology…Calvin emphasised the Platonic conflict between body and spirit-soul.”
17. See Chapter One, note 11.
18. P. Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, pp.414-415.  Althaus also notes regretfully: “Later Lutheran Church theology did not follow Luther on this point.  Rather, it once again adopted the medieval tradition and continued it” (p.417).
19. E.g. Athenagoras, Tatian. See F. Barton, Heaven, Hell and Hades, pp.31, 35.
20. G. H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, pp.104, 401.
21. That is, those who held that baptism should be reserved for responsible believers in Christ.
22. Appendix to Elencthus, ch.8.4a (1527), cited in G. H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, p.106.
23. Leviathan, XXXVIII; quoted approvingly by G. S. Hendry, “Ecclesiastes”, in D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer (Eds), The New Bible Commentary, Leicester: I.V.P., 3^rd rev. ed. 1977, p.573.
24. E.g. J. Hick, Death and Eternal Life; Z. J. Hayes, “The Purgatorial View”, in W. V. Crockett (Ed.), Four Views of Hell, Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992, pp.91-118 (Hayes is not a universalist).
25. W. V. Crockett, “Response to Zachary J. Hayes”, in Four Views of Hell, p.126.  See also S. Travis, Christian Hope and the Future of Man, Leicester: I.V.P., 1980, pp.130-131: “…there are no reported sayings of Jesus which suggest the idea of remedial punishment or the possibility of a person’s destiny being reversed after death…. The idea of remedial punishment or the steady transformation of persons after death is a guess which contradicts the general thrust of Scripture.”  The same is true, of course, of reincarnation.
26. E.g. I Corinthians 15:4.
27. Raised Immortal, p.170.
28. Raised Immortal, p.159.
29. Raised Immortal, p.261, note 4.
30. Matthew 13:40-43, Acts 17:31; compare Matthew 25:31-33, Romans 2:16, II Timothy 4:8, etc.  See also Chapter Four.
31. Romans 8:18-23, II Peter 3:11-13.  See Chapter Ten.
32. Acts 17:30-31.
33. Matthew 25:31-32.
34. Romans 8:21.  See also Matt. 24:39-41, 37-44; Acts 1:11; I Cor. 15:51-52;  I Thess. 4:16-17; II Thess. 2:3-8; II Tim. 4:1; Heb. 9:27-28; II Pet. 3:3-12.
35. I Corinthians 15:23.
36. John 6:40.
37.  I Thessalonians 4:17.

The post Asleep in Christ | The death State appeared first on Afterlife.

According to the Bible, the dead, whether Christian or non-Christian, good or evil, saved or lost, are neither suffering in “hell”, nor labouring in “purgatory”, nor rejoicing in “heaven”. Rather, they have entirely ceased to function. Without consciousness, they await the resurrection of the dead at the return of the Christ, that is, Jesus, in the glory of God. To use a common biblical metaphor, they “sleep the sleep of death” (Ps. 13:3) .

THE SLEEP OF DEATH

In the Old Testament, dying is frequently referred to as, lying down in sleep, and the dead are said to be asleep. Three different Hebrew words are used to this effect. First, shachabh. Examples: Deut. 31:16,  I Kings 2:10 (“David slept with his ancestors, and was buried…”, compare Acts 13:36) and over 30 similar instances. Second, yashen. Examples: Job 3:13,  Ps. 13:3,  Dan. 12:2 (the dead “sleep in the dust of the earth”). Third, shenah. For instance, Job 14:12 (the dead “will not awake or be roused out of their sleep”: see below).

The “sleep” of death affects all humans the same way:
There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.¹

It is “a perpetual sleep”²  No “dreaming” is hinted at! Rather, the metaphor signifies utter inactivity, unconsciousness and, in effect, non-existence.

But mortals die, and are laid low;
humans expire, and where are they?
As waters fail from a lake,
and a river wastes away and dries up,
so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
or be roused out of their sleep.³

Job 7:21: “For now I shall lie (shachabh, KJV “sleep”) in the earth; you (God) will seek me, but I shall not be.”

There is no hope of further existence for us, unless God “remembers” and “awakens” us (Job 14:13-15). The astonishing thing is that, despite all the odds, this is exactly what He will do, at the day of resurrection, when “many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake” (Daniel 12:2) . In fact the book of Job itself asserts the hope of ultimate resurrection. However, this assertion is based, not on any supposed immortal part of human nature, but on faith in God’s ultimate justice:

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God….⁴

Again, it is precisely because the Bible’s approach to death is so uncompromisingly realistic, that the faith in resurrection which ultimately emerges is so compelling.

Just a few passages do appear to suggest that there is more to the death-state than “sleep”. The first is I Samuel 28:3-25, where King Saul consults the “witch of Endor” and the dead Samuel is said to appear and speak. Note four points. (1) The Bible absolutely condemns and ridicules the practice of consulting the dead, even in the immediate context (I Sam. 28:9) ,⁵  since “…there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol…”⁶  (2) Nevertheless, Samuel’s message to Saul at Endor is that of a genuine prophet of God. (3) The medium herself is forestalled in her arts and startled by Samuel’s appearing (verse 12). As W. A. Beuken observes, “Samuel beats the woman to it.”⁷  (4) Samuel is referred to here, not as a “spirit of the dead”, for which the normal Hebrew word is ‘obh, but as ‘elohim, a “divine being”. This word, in the medium’s language, “expresses well on whose authority and with whose message Samuel comes.”⁸

Our conclusion, with W. A. Beuken, is that Samuel’s appearing is presented as a “one-off” work of God, confounding both the “witch” and Saul, re-affirming God’s truth and power where Saul had hoped for a more comforting alternative. Samuel “does not come as a dead ghost…but…as a prophet of the…living God.”⁹  Similarly, after careful analysis, Bill T. Arnold concludes that it is “unlikely that a disembodied ‘soul’ of Samuel could be involved”, but rather “the concept of physical resuscitation is suggestive.”¹⁰  In fact, the account gives no credence to spiritism, nor does it teach anything at all about the death-state except this one all-important truth: that even there God is in control.

Two other passages may be taken together: Isaiah 14:3-20 and Ezekiel 32:17-32.  Both depict people dead in “Sheol” as speaking and experiencing emotion. But then, they depict trees doing the same (Is. 14:8, Ezek. 31:16)! These expressions “are obviously poetic symbolism”.¹¹  Mythological pictures of the death-state are being used for rhetorical effect, not as elements of doctrine. Similarly, in Job 26:5 “the shades (repha’im) below” are said to “tremble” before God.¹²  This is poetry, utilising features of common popular lore. Once again, all that is conclusively affirmed about the death-state is, that it is “the land of forgetfulness” (Ps. 88:12) , but that even the dead are not safe from God or beyond His power.

Now, to assert that the one God is in full control, even in relation to the dead, is a tremendous affirmation of monotheism. Pagan thought envisaged a multiplicity of gods, personifying a multiplicity of natural forces, often in mutual conflict, none of whom was in ultimate control at all. According to this way of thinking, the realm of the dead was the province of a different god from the realm of the living. For example, in Graeco-Roman thought, Hades/Pluto ruled the dead and Zeus/Jupiter the living. In Egyptian thought, it was Osiris as against Amun-Re’. The thoroughly pagan notion that hell is a realm ruled by the devil is a vestige of the same way of thinking. The biblical revelation of the one God, who rules living and dead alike, amounts to a radical revolution, a giant leap in human understanding.¹³ It is vital to our theme. But it adds no support to the idea of the immortality of the human soul or spirit.

What, then, of this word “Sheol”, which we have already encountered a couple of times? The Hebrew word sheol occurs some 65 times in the Old Testament, with reference to the place or state of the dead. The New Testament equivalent is hades (e.g. Acts 2:24-28). Although often misleadingly translated “hell”, “Sheol” is never once depicted in the Old Testament as a place or state of suffering. In fact, of the wicked it can be said, “in peace they go down to Sheol” (Job 21:13).  The true import of the word is clearly conveyed by various equivalents given in the same context. Equivalents are: “the Pit” (shachath: Job 17:13-14, Ps. 16:10, Isaiah 38:17; or bor: Ps. 30:3, 9;  Is. 14:15; Ezek. 32:18); “destruction” (‘abhaddon: Job 26:5, 28:22;  Prov. 15:11, 27:20); “silence” (dumah: Ps. 94:17, 115:17) ; “corruption” (diaphthora: Acts 2:31); “the grave” (qever: Ps. 49:14, 88:5) ; “the dust” (‘aphar: Job 17:16, Ps. 30:9); “death” (maweth: Ps. 6:5, Is. 38:18, Hosea 13:14; or thanatos: Rev. 1:18, 20:13-14) .

E. E. Ellis explains:

Sheol is ‘in the dust’ (Job 17:13ff. ) and is probably best understood generically as ‘the grave’…. It is a state of sleep, rest, darkness, silence, without thought or memory (Job 3:16-17, 17:13ff;  Ps. 6:5, Eccles. 9:5, 10)….¹⁴

The analysis of Helmut Thielicke, based on Ludwig Koehler’s research, is even more conclusive:

Sheol…is a nonland, a sphere that does not exist, and it is to this that the dead come.¹⁵

Part 2 here…

References

1. Job 3:17; see 21:26.
2. Jeremiah 51:39, 57.
3. Job 14:10-12.
4. Job 19:25-26.  Although there is much debate about this passage, it seems quite clear that Job anticipates seeing God both after death and in an embodied state; that is, by resurrection.  For convincing discussions, see: Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, London: S.C.M. Press, 1985, pp.307-309; Francis I. Andersen, Job, Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1977, pp.193-194.
5. See Leviticus 19:31, 20:6;  Deuteronomy 18:10-11; Isaiah 8:19-20.
6. Ecclesiastes 9:10.
7. W. A. M. Beuken, “I Samuel 28: The Prophet as ‘Hammer of Witches’”, in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Sheffield University, Vol.1, 6, 1978, pp.3-17; p.8.
8. W. A. M. Beuken, p.10.
9. W. A. M. Beuken, p.10.
10. Bill T. Arnold, “Soul-Searching Questions About 1 Samuel 28”, in Joel B. Green (Ed.), What About the Soul?, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004, p.81.
11. E. E. Ellis, “Life”, in The New Bible Dictionary, p.736.
12. See also Ps. 88:10-12.
13. For example, it paved the way for modern scientific faith in the uniformity of nature.
14. E. E. Ellis, “Life”, in The New Bible Dictionary, p.736.
15.  H. Thielicke, Living with Death, p.113.

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We should be videoing this year’s conference on the Saturday 11th May  10:45am to 3pm

Beasts and Super-beasts feel the Heat

Mark your diaries and send in or email your forms please!

note also The Gift of Life Workshop by Jeff and Penny Vann on the 18th May. Details here.

The post Tracing the Road to Gehenna : Conference 2012 appeared first on Afterlife.

This is open to anyone who is interested in exploring evangelical conditionalism, more details can be found :

The Gift of Life

Jefferson Vann is a regular contributor to this website. You can read his archives here.

For those outside New Zealand or unable to attend we hope to publish a recording of the workshop on  the Afterlife website.

The post The Gift of Life: One Day Workshop 18th May appeared first on Afterlife.

Location: “The Parnell”,  Quality Hotel Barry Court ,  10-20 Gladstone Rd , Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand.

Speaker: Dr. David Richmond

Topic: Beasts and Super-beasts feel the Heat

Will a loving and merciful God condemn millions to suffer torment for all eternity ?

Dr. David Richmond is a retired physician with a variety of interests.  He was inaugural Chair of the Auckland Hospital Research Ethics Committee, a founding member of the HRC National Ethics committee, inaugural director of Continuing Education for the R.A.CP. in N.Z. and inaugural Masonic Professor of Geriatric Medicine in the University of Auckland.  On retiring from that position he was appointed Assistant Dean (Academic) and awarded a personal Chair in Medicine and Medical Education in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. He has held local and national positions in the Baptist Churches of Aotearoa New Zealand and served a term as Dean of the Auckland Consortium of Theological Education and Hon. Dean of Theology in the University of Auckland. He recently retired from driving the Rainforest Express.

If you would like to come please email Glenise on cianz@slingshot.co.nz or print out the following form and post form here

You might be interested in watching Dr. David Richmond on the topic of euthanasia.

For those outside New Zealand or unable to attend we hope to publish a recording on the website.

The post Conditional Immortality Conference Coming May 11th 2013 appeared first on Afterlife.

Let my soul live, and it shall praise You;
And let Your judgments help me. (Psalm 119:175 NKJV).

In a long acrostic poem which mostly praises the word of God, an unknown psalmist asks the LORD to keep him alive, so that he can continue praising him, and continue learning from him.  It seems a simple request, and most commentators ignore it.  Yet, it has a surprise for the modern Christian.  When it is translated literally (as the NKJV does above), it suggests a possibility that popular evangelical Christianity has rejected: the possibility of a soul dying.

What?  Did I hear you correctly?  Is it possible for a soul to die?  Many believe that souls are immortal.  Yet this biblical poet does not seem to have gotten the memo.  He does not simply say “Let me live” as several modern versions translate it.¹ Nor does he say “May I live” as another version puts it.²   He is in danger of literal death, from who knows what, and describes that threat as the death of his soul.

Some are quick to say that the author could not possibly mean that he thought his soul could die.  Figart, for example, states “…this is not saying that those who have died and are in heaven do not praise the Lord; rather, it simply means that, here on earth when a person dies, his soul leaves his body; thus there is no life in the dead body from which to praise the Lord. So David realized this and wanted to remain alive so he could praise Jehovah before men. ”³ Likewise, Manton affirms “A man may praise God in Heaven; but from their bodies no service is performed for a long while in the other world; there is no such service there as here; as reducing the stray, instructing the ignorant, propagating godliness to others who want it, by our counsels and example.”⁴ Both men suggest that what the psalmist really wanted was for his body to stay alive, because (as everybody knows) the soul of a believer can never die.

But the actual text has the psalmist stubbornly refusing to accept what everybody knows — that his soul’s immortality is a given.  Long before the apostle Paul affirmed that God alone has immortality,⁵ this Old Testament believer simply prays that his soul continue to live, so that he can continue to worship and learn. Unlike the later Greek philosophers who would suggest that death is an illusion, this Hebrew poet seems to think that death is quite real, and that it would entail that his praising and learning would stop, because his soul (his whole being, including his body) would cease to function.  For this Hebrew poet, death is not the gateway to praise, but the interruption of praise.  Death is not going to God, where he can get closer to God, but the absence of a relationship with God.  He does not want to die and go to heaven, he wants to continue to live so that he can keep his link to heaven.

This psalmist is not alone in his view of the nature of death.  Solomon said: “The living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, nor are they remembered.  Whatever they did in their lifetime — loving, hating, envying — is all long gone.”⁶ He encouraged people to take advantage of their conscious lives, because “when you go to the grave, there will be no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.”⁷ And this psalmist would add “no praise, and no learning from the word.”  Death is not continuing to live; it is an interruption in life.

dying souls

This is not the only place in the Old Testament where souls are said to die.  Samson’s last words were not “Let me die with the Philistines” as every major English version translates it.  What he actually said was tamut nafshi im-plistim  (let my soul die with the Philistines).⁸ Samson, like the psalmist, seemed to think that his death would be total.

When Moses commanded “anyone who kills a person” to remain outside the Israelite camp for seven days, his actual words were kol horeg nefesh (anyone who kills a soul).⁹  Was Moses deluded?  Is it that he merely did not have access to the right theological word-book?  Hebrew has several words for body, and flesh.  But Moses chose a word that indicated the whole person, the soul (nefesh).  He had used that word when he described the creation of Adam.  He said “The LORD God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”¹⁰ The words translated “living being” are nefesh xayyah – alive soul.  Moses defined living people as alive souls, and so dead people would be dead souls. His theology is consistent.  It just does not agree with the theology that many have been taught.

 silent souls

The reason the psalmist did not want his soul to die was that “The dead do not praise the LORD, nor do any who go down into silence.”¹¹ Indeed, in death there is no remembering or thanking God.¹² Souls are silenced, so that they cannot praise.  They are not experiencing joy and life beyond the grave; they are in a kind-of holding pattern, a time of waiting. They are not floating around on the clouds, but unconscious in their tombs, awaiting the voice of Jesus, who will raise them to life again – either for permanent life, or permanent judgment:

“Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment”¹³

Paul described this intermediate state (between death and resurrection) as a sleep.  He said that Jesus is the only one who has been raised from that sleep, but that believers await his return, so that we, too may be raised:

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ”¹⁴

Popular theology has no place for that sleep.  God’s word does.  It places all dead souls in the grave, where they sleep until raised.  Jesus told his disciples that a dead girl was sleeping.¹⁵ Then he woke her soul up. He said that dead Lazarus was sleeping, and that he was going to go wake him up.¹⁶  He did wake up Lazarus’ dead soul, just as he intends to wake all souls now dead.  That is why the blessed hope is not floating away to heaven when we die.  The blessed hope is the glorious appearing of or Saviour,¹⁷ who has the keys of death and Hades, and can rescue our souls from death’s prison.¹⁸ He can make our dead souls live again. The good news of the gospel is not that we have souls that will live forever.  It is that we have a Saviour who will not let our souls die forever.

References

1. “Let me live that I may praise you, and may your laws sustain me” (New International Version). “Let me live so I can praise you, and may your regulations help me” (New Living Translation). “Let me live that I may praise you, and let your ordinances help me.” (New Revised Standard Version).
2. “May I live and praise you! May your regulations help me!” (New English Translation).
3. Thomas O. Figart,  Meaningful Meditations.  (n.c.: XulonPress, 2004), 399.
4. Thomas Manton,  One Hundred and Ninety Sermons on the Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm, vol.3.  (London: William Brown, 1845),  485.
5. 1 Timothy 6:16-17.
6. Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 NLT.
7. Ecclesiastes 9:10 NLT.
8. Judges 16:30.
9. Numbers 31:19.
10. Genesis 2:7 NET.
11. Psalm 115:17 ESV.
12. Psalm 6:5.
13. John 5:28-29 ESV.
14. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 ESV.
15. Mark 9:24.
16. John 11:11.
17. Titus 2:13.
18. Revelation 1:18.

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“And the LORD God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”¹

“And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”²

 The Curse of Immortality

There is some justification for this translation because the very next action God takes in the narrative is driving Adam and Eve from the garden, and posting cherubim as guards to prevent their access to the tree of life.
Other modern translations treat the text as if God is contemplating the possibility of, or dreading the prospects of human beings eating from the tree of life:

 “Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever “–”³)

“Then the LORD God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” –”⁴

“Then the LORD God said, “Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever”⁵

These are potentially appropriate translations as well, since they capture the awful prospect of a sinful humanity without the limits imposed upon them by the threat of death. God did not want that.
But the way Moses told the story is even more dramatic.  Moses has the LORD beginning his statement about the prospect of sinful humanity gaining immortality, … and just leaving it there.  These translations capture that nuance:

 “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:”⁶

“Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever – “”⁷

“Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever “–”⁸)

This, according to Hatch, is an example of the figure of speech known as reticentia.  “It is the sudden breaking off of what is being said or written, so that the mind may be more impressed by what is not said. The latter is too wonderful, too solemn, or too awful for words. In this instance, the exact consequences of fallen man eating of the tree of life are left unrevealed. They must have been too awful to contemplate or talk about!”⁹

unthinkable 

People are not accustomed to thinking about immortality as a curse, but that is exactly the impression that Genesis 3:22 leaves us with.  Adam, “being sinful … must not forever possess attributes and powers which he would terribly abuse.”¹⁰   The tree of life, which, by God’s grace, had been available up until the fall, must now be prohibited.  Immortality was to be prohibited because sin had infected the species.  It was not a mere infection of our bodies, as Barachman seems to imply.¹¹   Sin had infected humanity as a whole, and the death that serves as its proper wages affects us, body and soul.  The unthinkable would be for God to ignore this change in our moral makeup and grant us immortality anyway.  That is just what the traditionalist theology implies.  Piggy-backing on the Platonic doctrine of innate immortality, traditionalism suggests that God forbade immortality for our bodies, but condemned sinful humanity to immortality in our souls.  The only ones exempted from this curse are those who will be redeemed by Christ.

Payton called our mortality a “cosmic disease,”¹² and it is.  But it is also part of God’s solution to an even greater disease: sin.  In our present condition, immortality of any sort would be disastrous.  God’s plan for his creation is an eternity without sin, so until he deals definitively with that problem, death is a necessity.  It was that reality that prompted the LORD to warn our ancestors of the consequences of their sin.  He said that if we ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we would “surely die.”¹³ Moses’ literal words were “dying you shall die.”  It was a clear warning both of immediate mortality and inevitable death.

So, as Schemm writes, God “drove man out of Eden lest he make another fatal mistake and eat of the tree of life in his now-fallen condition.  Presumably there was great danger in combining eternity with sinful rebellion.”¹⁴ For God to have not done so would have been to condemn us to an eternity of sin.   God is not irresponsible.  He would not curse us with immortality in our fallen state.  He allowed death so that we would return to him for redemption and deliverance from sin.  He “mercifully drove them … out of the Garden of Eden because if they had eaten of the fruit of life, they would have become immortal without the opportunity for repentance and salvation.”¹⁵ .

The urgency with which God takes action is seen in an early Aramaic paraphrase of this verse, where God says “let us banish him from the Garden of Eden, before he puts forth his hand and takes (also) of the fruit of the tree of life.  For behold, if he eats of it, he will live and endure forever.”¹⁶  God chooses to make the pride of his creation mortal by forbidding access to immortality.  Mortality becomes the solution to the present problem.  It is a curse, but keeps in check an even greater curse.  As one Rabbi wrote, his “mortality is not only a physical, but also a moral necessity. Death is the most efficient threat against pride and sin.”¹⁷  And so humanity remained, prevented not simply by death, but by “banning (us) from the rejuvenating power of the tree of life.”¹⁸ .

think again about immortality

If that were the last mention of the tree of life in Scripture, we would simply have to accept the fact that everyone lives, and everyone dies, and that is that.  We might imagine a world in which things got better, and we eventually gained back the hope of immortality, but it would only be the hope of the hopeless.  Fortunately, Genesis is the beginning of God’s story of us, not its end.  As Pfeiffer put it…

“in time … the Garden and the Paradise which it represented became but a memory of a past golden age.  The memory, however,served to quicken hope in a golden age yet to come, where sin would be banished and man would again dwell in unbroken fellowship with his Creator.”¹⁹

The story of the fall itself sets a pattern that reflects a similarity to four other stories in Genesis.  That pattern (sin, judgment speech, token of grace, judgment) can be seen in the stories of Cain & Abel, the rebellions of the “sons of God,” the flood, and the tower of Babel.  Longman says “In these stories we not only see how human sin has disrupted the blessing of God on his human creatures, but also God’s pursuit of them in order to restore relationship with them.”²⁰ .
The fall in the Garden is the bad news with which God wants us to compare his good news.  There is a new tree that he wants us to partake of.  It is Calvary’s tree.  God in his grace wants us to look at that symbol of life that became death to us all, and see his Son dying on it as a sign of his grace.  The loss of the tree of life symbolized our lost relationship with God, and mortality was one of the many repercussions of that loss.  The death of Christ on the cross by God’s grace allows us another chance at the tree of life in the holy city,²¹ after sin and its consequences are a thing of the past.

Until then, only God has immortality,²²  because only God is free from the sin that makes immortality into a curse instead of a blessing.  Our Lord Jesus Christ, who conquered sin and death by his death, and brought life and immortality to light.²³  The gospel is this good news, entrusted to us as its messengers.  It offers a new chance to gain immortality, the right way.  As Witness Lee puts it, “It was God’s original intention that man should eat of the tree of life.  But due to the fall of man the tree of life was closed to him.  Through the redemption of Christ, the way to touch the tree of life, which is God himself in Christ as life to man, has been opened again.”²⁴ .

Plato was wrong

That is why Plato was wrong.  He imagined that immortality was everyone’s birthright.  He ignored what Moses said in Genesis, and suggested that immortality was an innate endowment from our creator, rather than a curse that our creator prevented us from obtaining.  Augustine believed in Plato’s version of human nature, and Calvin, Wesley and numerous other theologians went along with Augustine.  Who would not want to believe that death is an illusion?

However, the cost that comes with accepting Plato’s version of reality over that of Moses is that it necessitates us rewriting the gospel as well.  Since the goal of the gospel is eternal life,²⁵ and Plato argued that we already have eternal life, people had to find some other objective.  Enter, the new solution: getting our immortal souls to heaven when our bodies die. Suddenly heaven ceased to be the place where Christ was returning from. It became a place where our immortal souls of believers are going to.  Suddenly, hell ceased to be the second death on Judgment Day, where Christ finally will take care of sin and sinners for good. It became a place for God to torture immortal souls forever, without a chance of ever getting rid of sin.

It is time for believers to take back the gospel from the pagan traditions that have supplanted it.  We need to show the world that God is not guilty of cursing sinners with immortality.  He promises immortality only to the redeemed.  Only the saved are capable of living eternal lives to his glory.

References

1. New English Translation (NET).
2. New International Version (NIV).
3. New American Standard Bible, 1995 update (NASBu
4. New revised Standard Version (NRSV).
5. New Living Translation (NLT).
6. King James Version (KJV).
7. English Standard Version (ESV).
8.  New American Standard Bible (NASB
9. Sydney Hatch, Daring to Differ: Adventures in Conditional Immortality. {Brief Bible Studies, 1991}, 41 quoted in David Burge, “The Reticence of God”, Afterlife, 12 Sep, 2008
10. Alan Richardson,  Genesis 1-11  (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1966), 78.
11. Floyd H. Barackman,  Practical Christian Theology.   (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2001),  90. “God drove the saved couple from the garden in order that they might not eat from the tree of life and live forever in their unsaved bodies.”
12. James R. Payton,  Light from the Christian East.  (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007),  111. “humanity suffers, ever since Adam and Eve, from the “cosmic disease” of death.  we have all caught it from Adam.  Mortality came to reign among those created for life, for our first parents turned from life to that which has no life – that is, they turned to death, and all their descendents turned with and in imitation of them.”
13. Genesis 2:17.
14. Peter R. Schemm, Jr.,  A Theology for the Church.  {Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2007}, 323
15. Ifeanyi Chris Agagbor, The Disciple’s Prayer. {n.c.:Xulon Press, 2007}, 27
16. Michael Maher, tr. Targum Pseudo Jonathan: Genesis.  (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 30.
17. B. Jacob,  The First Book of the Bible: Genesis.  (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1974), 33.
18. K.A. Matthews,  Genesis 1-11:26.  {Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 1996}, 254.
19. Charles F. Pfeiffer,  The Book of Genesis: A Study Manual.  (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1958), 24.
20. Tremper Longman,  How to Read Genesis.   (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 114.
21. Revelation 22:14, 19.
22. 1 Timothy 6:16-17.
23. 2 Timothy 1:10.
24. Witness Lee, Life-Study of 1,2,& 3 John, Jude: Part One.{Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 2003}, 23
25. Matthew 19:16, 29; 25:46; Mark 10:17, 30; Luke 10:25; 18:18, 30; John 3:15f, 36; 4:14, 36; 5:24, 39; 6:27, 40, 47, 54, 68; 10:28; 12:25, 50; 17:2f; Acts 13:46, 48; Romans 2:7; 5:21; 6:22f; Galatians 6:8; 1 Timothy 1:16; 6:12; Titus 1:2; 3:7; 1 John 1:2; 2:25; 3:15; 5:11, 13, 20; Jude 1:21.

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(  Continued from Part one )

“DUST”

Genesis 2:7 tells us three things about ourselves. Let us examine each in turn, in the light of Bible teaching in general.

First: “man” (Hebrew ‘adham) was “formed” by God “of dust (‘aphar) from the ground (‘adhamah)”. “Man” (in the generic sense), not only “man’s body”, was so formed. This insight is echoed throughout Scripture: “we are dust” (Ps. 103:14;  see Gen. 3:19, 18:27;  Job 10:9).

Now, the same is true of the animals, according to Gen. 2:19.  In fact, the creation of the animals, in Gen. 2:19, closely parallels that of humans, in Gen. 2:7, and the animals, like man, are said to have been “formed out of the ground” (as in Ecclesiastes 3:20, Ps. 104:29).

The New Testament offers no contradiction. On the contrary, in the definitive statement on death and resurrection, I Corinthians 15,  Paul fully reaffirms Gen. 2:7: “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust” I Cor. 15:47) . Further, “As was the man of dust, so are those who are from the dust” (that is, all of us: I Cor. 15:48).  We “have borne the image of the man of dust” (49).  As Paul explains, this means that we are “flesh and blood”, “perishable”, “mortal” (50, 53).  It also means that, unless there is a resurrection, there is no hope for anyone beyond death (29-32) : “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’.”

However, writes Paul, Jesus Christ is the man “from heaven” (47-48) . All those in Christ “will also bear the image of the man from heaven” (49) . How? By a resurrection change (51-55, 42).  When? At the return of Jesus Christ (21-23) : “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” As Murray Harris concludes, “Immortality is not a gift bequeathed to all by the first Adam, but an inheritance won for the righteous by the second Adam (Christ).”¹

“BREATH”

Second, Genesis 2:7 says that we are alive in virtue of “the breath (neshamah) of life”. As a leading Bible scholar explains: “Today, one of the simplest tests of life is to see whether a person is still breathing; so also for the ancient Hebrew the breath or spirit was the principle of life.”²

Actually, the Old Testament uses three different words for “the breath of life”, or the life principle. In Isaiah 42:5,  and in Job 27:3, 33:4 and 34:14,  neshamah is parallel and synonymous with ruach (NRSV “spirit”). Once again, it is vital to note that this “breath” or “spirit” is also active in all animals. Animals, too, have “the breath (ruach) of life” (Gen. 6:17, 7:15).  In Gen. 7:21-22,  both words are used together, of humans and animals equally: “…all flesh…that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures…and all human beings; everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life…” Emphatic enough! Similarly, the book of Ecclesiastes insists that humans and beasts “have all the same breath (ruach)” (3:19).

All this confirms that, when speaking of the “breath of life” “breathed into (man’s) nostrils”, Gen. 2:7 is certainly not speaking of a personal, immortal substance. Rather, this “breath in their nostrils” is an indication of human frailty and mortality, not of human divinity and immortality.³

By the same token, the ruach (RSV “spirit”,⁴  NRSV “breath”) which, according to Ecclesiastes 12:7, returns to God at death, is not a conscious, personal entity, but the breath or power of life: “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.” This text, often grossly misunderstood, simply describes death in terms of the undoing of Gen. 2:7. This is not an intimation of the survival of a personal spirit. The context is about closure, not hope: “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity” (v8)!  What is said of humans here is said of all God’s creatures in Psalm 104:29:

When you (God) take away their breath (ruach), they die and return to their dust.

As Edmond Jacob observes:

No biblical text authorises the statement that the ‘soul’ is separated from the body at the moment of death. The ruach, ‘spirit’, which makes man a living being (cf. Gen. 2:7), and which he loses at death, is not, properly speaking, an anthropological reality, but a gift of God which returns to him at the time of death (Eccl. 12:7) .⁵

This is how we should understand Psalm 31:5 (ruach) and New Testament equivalents such as Luke 23:46 and Acts 7:60,  where the corresponding Greek word is pneuma: “Into your hand I commit my spirit.” Luke 23:46b actually explains what is meant: “he breathed his last” (the verb in Greek here is derived from pneuma). The “spirit” which the Psalmist, Jesus and Stephen are entrusting to God is their life-breath. The only difference here, from Eccl. 12:7,  is the attitude of trustfulness. The expression means: “Even in death, I trust you, God. I am in your hands.” Similar texts are Matthew 27:50 and John 19:30.⁶ James 2:26 explains simply: “…the body without the spirit (pneuma, NEB “breath”) is dead.”⁷

A third Hebrew word for this “breath”, or life principle, or simply life itself, is nephesh. In Gen. 1:30, . it is this word which is used for “the breath (nephesh) of life”, which animals also have. This, then, is the key to such texts as Gen. 35:18 (“soul”), . or I Kings 17:21-22: . “the life (nephesh) of the child came into him again, and he revived.” A close New Testament parallel is Acts 20:10 . (NRSV “life” – the Greek word is psuche). Both nephesh and psuche are very often translated “soul” in English versions, but this practice can be very misleading. Biblically, the nephesh or psuche that leaves us at death is not a personal “soul”, but the life principle, the power to live, which is God’s to give or take.

“SOUL”

Third, Genesis 2:7 tells us that man is (not has) “a living soul (nephesh)” (KJV; NRSV “being”). Again, the word is nephesh, just as the New Testament Greek counterpart is psuche (see I Corinthians 15:45). .

Once again, the same is equally true of all the animals in general. Again, compare Gen. 2:19.  There the animals are called “living souls” (nephesh; NRSV “creature”). Similarly, water creatures (Gen. 1:20-21) and land animals generally (Gen. 1:24;  Gen 9:10, 12, 15, 16).  An exact New Testament parallel is Revelation 16:3, where water creatures are called “living souls” (psuche; NRSV “thing”). In such cases, nephesh and psuche clearly mean: the organism as a whole, the whole human or non-human creature, without remainder.

In I Corinthians 15:45,  Paul not only quotes the Genesis verse, asserting its normative status for a biblical understanding of the human person, but also confirms its significance: that the human person is to be regarded as an indivisible unity and, as such, wholly mortal. “The first man, Adam, became a living being (psuche),” writes Paul, and as such he was “a physical (psuchikon) body” (v44),  “from the earth, a man of dust” (v47) ; and so are we, who bear “the image of the man of dust” (v49) , “flesh and blood”, “perishable” (v50).  It is only through Christ, “the man from heaven” (v48),  that we will “put on imperishability” (v55).

It will be useful, at this point, to outline the range of meanings that nephesh and psuche both have in Scripture.

(a) As we saw earlier, both words often mean “breath” or “life principle” or simply “life”, whether of humans or of animals. A few more examples: II Samuel 4:8, II Chronicles 1:11 (NRSV “life”); Rev. 8:9  (NRSV “living”).

In some important texts, the nephesh is said to reside in, or consist of, the blood: “For the life (nephesh) of every creature – its blood is its life (nephesh)” (Leviticus 17:14) .⁸  This usage also explains Isaiah 53:10 and 12, where the Lord’s Servant is said to give his “life” or “himself” (nephesh, KJV “soul”) as a sin offering. Accordingly, in Mark 10:45,  Jesus explains that He came “to give his life (psuche) as a ransom for many.”⁹

In Matthew 10:39,  Jesus declares: “Those who lose their life (psuche) for my sake will find it”; that is, they will “keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25),  “in the age to come” (Matt. 10:30;  as in Matt. 25:46). So then, this is also undoubtedly what Jesus means in Matthew 10:28, in the same context, where He insists that human beings “cannot kill the soul (psuche)”: not that we have indestructible, personal “souls” which survive death (psuche cannot possibly mean this in Matt. 10:39);  but rather that, despite death, the Christian’s life is not ultimately lost, because God can and will restore it in the resurrection age to come. Only God has ultimate power of life and death (Luke 12:4) . He may indeed destroy life ultimately (“in hell”, Matt. 10:28) , or restore life through resurrection.¹⁰  “What survives death is not some substantial part of us, but rather, God’s faithfulness in his partnership with us.”¹¹

One passage frequently taken to refer to living, personal “souls” of the dead, is Revelation 6:9-11, which refers to “the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God”, “under the altar”, crying to God for vengeance. However, there are good reasons not to take the passage this way.

The key is to observe four things. (1) The book of Revelation is very largely visionary in character and symbolic, rather than literal, in meaning. In this passage, for example, surely neither the word “altar” nor the word “robes” is meant literally. (2) According to Leviticus 17:11 and 14,  as we have seen, the “soul” is in, or consists of, the blood. (3) The “souls” (psuche) of the martyrs are located “under the altar”, which is where the blood of sacrifices was poured in Old Testament times (Lev. 4:7, 18, 30, 34, etc.).  Now, this vision concerns people who have sacrificed their lives for their faith.¹²  (4) According to Gen. 4:10, the blood of Abel, the first martyr, “is crying out to God”, figuratively speaking, for justice. Clearly the passage in Rev. 6 is in the same tradition. It graphically symbolises the urgent need for the coming of God’s final Kingdom, in order to vindicate the people slaughtered on His behalf, but tells us nothing literal about the state of the dead, other than this: that for some, at least, it is a state of “rest” (Rev. 6:11; compare 14:13) .

(b) As in Gen. 2:7, and its New Testament counterpart I Cor. 15:45,  nephesh and psuche frequently refer to the creature as a whole, human or animal, alive or even dead. A few obvious examples: Jeremiah 52:29  (“he took into exile eight hundred thirty-two persons”); Ezekiel 47:9  (“every living creature”); Leviticus 7:27 (“any one of you”); Acts 2:41  (“about three thousand persons were added”); Romans 13:1  (“Let every person be subject”). “Man is described as a soul by the Hebrew word nephesh and the corresponding Greek word about 152 times in the Old Testament and about 16 times in the New.”¹³

Note Ezekiel 18:4, 20,  where a nephesh, in this sense, can certainly “die”: “The person who sins shall die.” A nephesh can be killed: Joshua 10:28  (“he utterly destroyed every person”); Ps. 78:50 (“he did not spare them from death”). Sometimes it is described as “dead” and it may even be translated “body” (Lev. 21:11,  Num. 6:6,  Haggai 2:13: “contact with a dead body”)! Even by itself, nephesh can mean “dead person” or “dead animal” (Lev.21:1 – “dead person”; Lev. 22:4, Num. 6:11 – “corpse”)!

Often, nephesh occurs in a weaker sense, as merely a solemn version of the personal or reflexive pronoun. For example, in Gen. 27:19, where KJV translated literally “thy soul”, NRSV quite correctly translates simply “you”: “so that you may bless me.” Similar instances are Ps. 7:5  (NRSV “my soul”, NIV “me”); Ps. 30:3 (NIV “me”); Ps. 89:48 (NIV “himself”).

So with psuche. Of I Peter 1:9, J. N. D. Kelly writes: “…‘salvation of your souls’…is virtually equivalent to ‘your salvation’, just as in, e.g., 4:19 ‘your souls’ simply means ‘yourselves’.”¹⁴  Another recent commentator, Ernest Best, explains the verse as follows: “This is not a special part of man’s physical or mental structure, or a divine spark within him, but man as a whole…It is almost the equivalent of the personal pronoun (it can be so replaced at 1:9, 22; 2:25; 4:19).”¹⁵  Likewise, in English usage, the classic distress signal S.O.S., “Save Our Souls”, simply means, “Save Us”.

Against this background, we can now make sense of a very important text: Ps. 16:10, quoted by Peter in Acts 2:27, with reference to the resurrection of Jesus:

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One experience corruption.

In NIV and TEV,¹⁶  “my soul” is translated simply as “me”. Quite appropriately. There is no thought here of a living, personal entity separate from the body. On the contrary, the two lines of the text are synonymous. The point is, that the “soul”, used here to mean the whole person, does normally “experience corruption” in death. That is why Peter can argue that the Psalm text can be strictly true only as a prophecy of the resurrection of Christ, precisely because resurrection is the only answer to death. Even David, says Peter, “did not ascend to heaven” (Acts 2:34) ! Like everyone else, David “both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day” (Acts 2:29) . That is, David, body and “soul”, is still dead. In Acts 13:36-37, Paul makes the point even more emphatically: David “died, was laid beside his ancestors, and experienced corruption”. However, there is one person, just one, who has been raised from the dead: Jesus: “but he whom God raised up experienced no corruption’ (Acts 13:37) . Thus the resurrection of Jesus has identified Him, both as the Messiah, and as the one and only answer to death.

(c) Both nephesh and ruach, like psuche and pneuma, very often refer to psychological states, attitudes, dispositions or capacities: to the inner personality. A few examples: nephesh – Proverbs 23:2  (“appetite”), Exodus 23:9 (“heart”) , Deuteronomy 6:5 (“soul”); ruach – I Kings 21:5 (“depressed”), Joshua 2:11 (“courage”); psuche – Acts 4:32 (“soul”), Acts 14:2 (“minds”); pneuma – II Corinthians 2:13  (“mind”), I Cor. 2:11  (“spirit”).

However, never do any of these words refer to anything which survives the death of the body. Regarding nephesh, for example, Lawson G. Stone concludes: “What is striking is that, while the Old Testament duplicates every known use of nefesh [sic] documented in the cultures of the ancient Near East, it does not duplicate the use of nefesh to refer to the personal existence of the dead in another realm.”¹⁷  On the contrary, death means “silence”, even for the soul (Psalm 115:17) .¹⁸  “The dead know nothing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6) . “There is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going” (Ecclesiastes 9:10) .¹⁹

Hebrews 12:22-23 speaks of “the spirits (pneumata) of the righteous made perfect”.  Now, whether the writer is speaking of a current experience or of a future prospect guaranteed in Christ,²⁰  his use of the word “spirits” here does not necessarily imply that these “righteous men” are disembodied. This use is merely a matter of emphasis. As in Heb 9:9-10,  9:13-14 and 10:11-14,  the writer’s main point is to contrast the inadequacy of the old covenant to achieve real salvation, with what Christ has achieved for us. In 7:19,  he declares that “the law made nothing perfect….”  Whereas the old covenant was a matter of outward forms and mere shadows of reality, and could not “make perfect” the worshiper (10:1,  9:9), through Christ’s “greater and perfect” ministry (9:11),  His “once for all” sacrifice (9:26) , our “consciences” are truly “purified” (9:14)  and we have been “made perfect for ever” (10:14) . This emphasis on the inward, the spiritual, the real and the heavenly, as against the merely outward and earthly, accounts for the use of the word “spirits” in 12:23. The writer is not denying that the “righteous” have bodies as well (whether here and now or at the resurrection), but merely wishes to emphasise that the salvation enjoyed and the worship offered under the new covenant is genuinely effective for a real relationship with God – not merely external.

The famous passage about Christ preaching to “the spirits in prison”, I Peter 3:18-20, depicts the resurrected Christ announcing His triumph to fallen angels confined in “Tartarus” (see II Peter 2:4, Jude 6), not to a dead Christ preaching to departed human “spirits” in “hell” or “limbo” or anywhere else.²¹

To sum up:

Life is given to man as a psycho-somatic unity…. Thus soul may be paralleled with flesh (Ps. 63:1;  cf. Matt. 6:25, Acts 2:31), life (Job 33:28) , or spirit (Ps. 77:2-3; cf. Lk. 1:46-47),  and all terms viewed as the self or ‘I’. It is the ‘I’ which lives – and which dies (cf. Gen. 7:21, Ezek. 18:4).²²

DEATH

So then, what happens at death? The human being yields, or God withdraws, the gift of life (the “breath” or “spirit”), which God has given, and the whole person, who is “of dust from the ground” (Gen. 2:7), is dissolved. Our creation is reversed. “You are dust, and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19).  “When their breath (ruach) departs, they return to the earth” (Ps. 146:4) . We “sleep in the dust of the earth” (Daniel 12:2). Without “the catalytic agency of God’s spirit”,²³ we perish.

The basic picture holds for humans and animals alike. “When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust” (Ps. 104:29) . As Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 insists, “as one dies, so dies the other… All go to one place; all are of the dust and all return to dust again”. So also Job 10:9; Psalm 49:12 and 20, 90:3, 103:14-15. These are not pessimistic exceptions to biblical thought generally, as is sometimes suggested. Rather, they accord exactly with Genesis 1 – 3. And the same holds for both “the righteous” and “the wicked”: “the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked…” (Eccles. 9:2) . “…the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath (ruach) returns to God who gave it” (Eccles. 12:7).

The essential difference between humans and animals is that God has created us “in His image”: to live in personal relationship with Him and to represent Him in the world. For this reason, He has determined that human death, though all-embracing, is not final, but provisional. There is a judgment to follow (Eccles. 12:14, Hebrews 9:27-28) and a Saviour, through Whom we may gain resurrection to eternal life.

“Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”²⁴ .

References

1.  M Harris, Raised Immortal, p.204.
2. R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, New York: Doubleday, 1978, p.140.
3. See Isaiah 2:22: “Turn away from mortals, who have only breath in their nostrils, for of what account are they?”
4. Revised Standard Version, London and New York: Collins, 1952.
5. E. Jacob, “Death”, in G. A. Buttrick et al. (Ed.), The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Nashville: Abingdon, 1980, Vol. 1, p.802.
6. See also Luke 8:55.; Rev 11:11, 13:5. ..
7. NEB, New English Bible, Oxford and Cambridge University Presses: Oxford, 1970.
8. Also Lev. 17:11,  Deuteronomy 17:23.
9. Other New Testament examples: Acts 15:26 (NRSV “lives”), John 10:11, Acts 20:24,  Philippians 2:30.
10. Compare Matt. 16:24-27; John 10:17, 11:25-26.   Matthew 10:28 will come up for further discussion in Chapters 7 and 8.
11. H. Thielicke, Living with Death, pp.111-112.
12. G. E. Ladd comments: “The fact that John saw the souls of the martyrs under the altar has nothing to do with the state of the dead or their situation in the intermediate state; it is a merely a vivid way of putting the fact that they have been martyred in the name of their God.”  A Commentary on the Revelation of John, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972, p.103.
13. B. F. C. Atkinson, Life and Immortality, Taunton: Phoenix Press, n.d., p.3.
14. J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982, p.58.
15. E. Best, First Peter, London: Oliphants, 1971, p.58.
16. Today’s English Version (or Good News Bible), United Bible Societies, 1976.
17. Lawson G. Stone, “The Soul: Possession, Part, or Person?” in Joel B. Green, What About the Soul?, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004, p.56.
18. Ps. 115:17; compare Ps. 6:5, 94:17; Isaiah 38:18.
19. Job 14:22 refers to the pain of old age, not to a post-mortem existence.
20. After all, the “city”, of which the passage speaks, is still “to come”, according to 13:14, 11:16.
21. This passage is dealt with fully in an appendix.  My interpretation coincides with that of the Anglican J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, pp.146-164; and also that of the Roman Catholic J. A. Fitzmyer, “The First Epistle of Peter”, in The Jerome Bible Commentary, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968, who explains: “The Risen Christ proclaimed his triumph to the imprisoned…angelic spirits…” (p.366).
22. E. E. Ellis, “Life”, in The New Bible Dictionary, p.735.
23. R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I – XII, p.140.  Brown’s brilliant phrase captures it exactly.  Compare also Job 34:14-15:
    If he should take back his spirit to himself,
    and gather to himself his breath,
    all flesh would perish together,
    and all mortals return to dust.
24. I Corinthians 15:57

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The teaching that hell is a place where the unrepentant suffer unending conscious torment is often taught by prominent Bible teachers. Just last month, Hank Hanegraaff, the host of the popular Bible Answer man radio show, had a conversation with Lee Strobel, author of the many books including the excellent bestseller, The Case for Christ. That conversation highlighted some of the non-Biblical arguments these scholars use to uphold tradition over truth.

Before I critique their discussion, I must say that I have a great deal of respect for the work of these men. I just recommended Strobel’s book in my previous article. When I became a Christian in my late teens, I often listened to the Bible Answerman radio show with Walter Martin, who was assisted by Hank Hanegraaff at the time. These men are leading teachers, advocates for the authority of the Bible and defenders of the faith. How can I be bold enough to question them, when they have hundreds of years of tradition behind them in addition to their many years of education, experience, and popular books?

I question them humbly, and with great concern. If what people believed on the subject of hell didn’t matter, I wouldn’t waste my time. However, it does matter. The false teaching that God is going to punish people for an endless eternity is keeping people from knowing Him. Just last week, a co-worker requested prayer for a friend who had turned away from the faith towards universalism, because he decided the Bible isn’t reliable if it teaches a hell of endless conscious torment. Many others turn to atheism because of the traditional view.

In the January 31, 2013 Bible Answer man broadcast (about the 27:25 mark), Strobel referenced a letter from a believer who asked about annihilationism–the teaching that the unrepentant wicked cease to exist after judgment. He led into Hanegraaff’s remarks by saying, “… It’s just not biblical, Hank! And I’m seeing some evangelicals buy into it, are you?”

(Bible Answers man website is down at the time I published this article, hopefully it will be back soon. But found a link to the broadcast Doug mentions here: 
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/bible-answer-man/listen/lee-strobel-interview-on-afterlife-324179.html  ~ed)

Hanegraaff responded:

Yeah, I think it’s absolutely true … There is such a thing of degrees of punishment in hell, and annihilationism doesn’t come in degrees.

Actually, annihilation does come in degrees. This statement reflects a lack of study of the annihilationist position, especially into the diversity of views among those who teach conditional immortality. Many conditionalists, including myself, reference verses like Luke 12:45-47, an end-times focused parable where Jesus clearly describes degrees of punishment. Romans 2:6 highlights a recurring Biblical theme that God’s righteous judgment is “according to their deeds.” This punishment then ends in literal death, or the complete end of existence, as affirmed by verses like Romans 6:23: “the wages of sin is death.”

Hanegraaff then asserted:

And there is something further that we should recognize: a God of love and justice does not arbitrarily annihilate the crowning jewels of his creation.

This completely un-Biblical statement is somewhat chilling in its cold reference to God in the third person. “A God” makes the argument sound merely academic or philosophical. Hanegraaff’s definition of what “a God of love and justice” does is different from how the one true God Himself describes justice in the Bible. From His judgment of the first sin in the garden: “to dust you shall return,” (Genesis 3:19) God defines ultimate justice in terms of actual, real, and complete death. Hanegraaff’s use of the adjective “arbitrarily” is meant to paint the annihilationist position as capricious or unjust. There is, however, no arbitrariness in the Bible’s description of the annihilation of unbelievers. Revelation 20:11-15 shows God on a white throne where books are opened, and individuals are held accountable for their lives. Those who are not redeemed are condemned to the second death, when God will destroy both “body and soul in hell” (Matthew 10:28).

Hanegraaff continued:

He will however continue to sustain us in existence, albeit, apart from His goodness and His grace, and that of course, is the horror of hell.

There are a growing number of Christians reading the Bible for what it says, outside the influence of tradition, who find that the Bible is clear when it says: “the wages of sin is death.” John 3:16’s promise of eternal life for those who believe is contrasted with unbelievers who literally “perish.”

This means that advocates of endless conscious torment like Hanegraaff must provide specific Biblical references for their claims. This previous statement is a perfect example: where does the Bible teach that God sustains anyone in eternal existence apart from His goodness and grace? How is that even possible? A teaching this important must have a direct reference, not an inference from a metaphor or pure speculation.

Later, Hanegraaff said:

Flames in Hell are far from literal. The martyrs, of course, they experienced fire. They were dressed in tar jackets and they were lit ablaze in the first century. But what they didn’t experience is the horror of being perpetually unloved by the one in whose image they were created.

I certainly agree that the flames referenced to describe hell in the Bible are not necessarily literal. However, whatever “flames” describe, they do not describe something completely different from what we know flames to be on earth. We all know what fire does: it burns things up. Wood, hay, or stubble that is thrown into a fire is completely destroyed. It becomes ashes. It does not become eternal, or go somewhere separated for an endless, unloved eternity. If the God who inerrantly inspired the Bible intended for us to understand the concept of a perpetual state of being unloved, don’t you think He could have avoided metaphors like flames that convey destruction? Might He also have avoided the use of terms translated “perish,” “destroy,” or “destruction” to refer to the end of the unredeemed?

Hanegraaff ended his remarks with:

Imagine perpetual existence in the absence of love–in the absence of a sense of relationship because that’s what the torment of hell really is. And we were created for relationship with God. So what happens is not annihilationism but the erasure of the imago dei or the image of God in humanity so that we become as it were brute beasts. We were designed for love and relationship and now that has been erased. But we continue in existence. That, I think, paints a picture of the horror of hell.

Regardless of the Latin reference, no Scripture says that the punishment of hell includes the loss of the image of God or that the unredeemed become something like brute beasts. This is completely speculative, built on the Greek philosophy of the immortal soul and not the Biblical teaching that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

The Bible teaches that the gift of God is eternal life (Romans 6:23). Nobody possesses eternal life without God. Death is the end of life, destruction, or annihilation. It’s time for Bible teachers to leave behind Greek-inspired, non-Biblical arguments and read the Bible for what it actually says.

Further, does being a prominent Bible teacher mean that you are inerrant yourself? Since God is unchanging, do Bible teachers need to be unchanging too? Or should we all, in humility, constantly be searching for God to correct and train us? Is there no room for reformers, for those who look at hundreds of years of tradition, like Martin Luther did, and challenge people to read the Bible for what it says instead of how it has been misinterpreted for centuries?

It’s time for evangelical leaders to challenge their arguments, see where they came from, and if they don’t line up with the Bible, to change their minds. A time of reformation is as hand! I pray that teachers like Hanegraaff and Strobel will join it.

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