Category: anthropology

sheol in the ground

gift of lifegift of life #10

sheol in the ground

The vast majority of biblical references to the intermediate state are in the Old Testament. This makes sense because it was the saints in the Old Testament who first started asking questions about the intermediate state. By the time the Old Testament was completed, a theological consensus was clearly revealed. This Old Testament consensus reveals that Sheol is a much different place than that imagined by modern theologians.

When Jacob was told that his son Joseph was dead, he assumed that Joseph was down underneath the earth somewhere. Jacob was so upset that he thought he would die of grief. He tells his children who are trying to comfort him “No, I will go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” So, the intermediate state was not a mystery to Jacob. These Old Testament saints knew Sheol is not heaven. It is the exact opposite. Yet they knew Sheol is the state that all souls enter at death.

Also, in the Old Testament, the sky and the land are places where God is praised continually. But in Sheol that praise stops abruptly. David prays for God to “let the wicked be put to shame; let them go silently to Sheol.” The deaths of his enemies would not only silence them upon earth, it would silence them in the underworld as well. Sheol is a place where the once mighty now lie still. It is the land of silence, where the dead go down to silence.

Job described a person in Sheol as spreading out his bed in darkness. He described Sheol as “the land of darkness and deep shadow, the land of gloom like thick darkness, like deep shadow without any order, where light is as thick darkness.” David describes those “long dead” as “sitting in darkness.”

Daniel described existence in Sheol as sleeping in the dust of the earth. It was a condition which required an awakening – a resurrection. This sleep was never the hope of Old Testament saints. Their hope was resurrection and restoration to life.

The thing most stressed in the Old Testament concerning Sheol is that it is synonymous with death itself. In the New Testament, this is seen by the terms death and Hades appearing next to each other. All those who die (the event) experience Hades (the state). In the Old Testament, this fact is seen in numerous passages where death and Sheol are placed in parallel. David, for example says “the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me.” He also says “in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?”

Let me summarize: Sheol is a silent, dark state or condition in which everyone exists at death, and can only live again by a resurrection from the LORD. It is always contrasted with heaven, and never equated with it. It is not the hope of the saints; rescue from it is the hope of the saints. That is the Old Testament consensus. And the New Testament agrees with that consensus.

If you have any questions about this teaching, you can ask me at jeffersonvann@yahoo.com. Join me for this entire series as we search the scriptures to learn about the gift of life.

listen to the audio file at Afterlife.

chasing slavery

May 2015 (10)“We chase all these things, thinking that we’re free.  But we’re blind to our own bondage. For in all our running to serve ourselves, we’re actually rebelling against the only One who can satisfy our souls.”

David Platt, Counter Culture: A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Abortion, Persecution, Orphans and Pornography. Tyndale House Publishers, 2015, p.8.

what girls are not for

May 2015 (9)“God …has uniquely formed (each precious girl) not for forced sexual violation from countless random men but for joyful sexual union with a husband who cherishes, serves, and loves her.”

David Platt, Counter Culture: A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Abortion, Persecution, Orphans and Pornography. Tyndale House Publishers, 2015, p.6.

what little boys are made of

gift of lifegift of life #6

what little boys are made of

The nursery rhyme asks “What are little boys made of?”  — and answers “Snips & snails & puppy dogs tails and such are little boys made of.” Little girls fare slightly better.  They are made of “sugar and spice and everything nice.”  No one believes that these statements reflect the actual chemical makeup of boys and girls.  But anyone who watches these little darlings play can understand what the original author was getting at.

The Bible gives us a much more scientifically accurate description of what little boys and girls are made of – and their parents too.  In Genesis 2:7, Moses, describing the creation of Adam, says that God formed him “from the dust of the ground” or “of dust from the ground.” Our bodies are composed of the same elements found elsewhere in nature.  In 1 Cor. 15:47, Paul tells us that our ancestor Adam was “a man of dust” and we share his nature.”

But what about the soul? Well, the Bible’s actual use of the word shows that it does not refer to a separate spiritual element. “When Moses first used the Hebrew term nephesh, he was referring to animals. In Gen. 1:20, Moses records “And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living souls, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” The phrase in Hebrew is nephesh chayah (souls of life). It is obvious from the context that Moses refers to fish and sea mammals, and birds, not people. This first use  of nephesh highlights a contrast with the Greek philosopher Plato’s teaching that only human beings have souls.” Then, just a few verses later, that same Moses, describing the creation of Adam, says “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 (Genesis 2:7)” He uses that exact same phrase nephesh chayah that he had used to describe the final product of the creation of animals. Just like the animals, human beings are made of the elements of nature, and given life from God. So, our souls are us, when we are alive. Our souls are bodies with breath in them.

The New Testament tells us something about our soul that does not fit the popular idea either. In Matthew 6:25, Jesus says “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Lot’s of Christians know that verse. What lots of Christians do not know is that the word for “life” in that verse is psuché, the New Testament Greek word that corresponds to the Old Testament Hebrew nephesh. So, Jesus is saying that bodies wear clothing (which seems logical) but he also says that souls eat and drink. Now, that does not fit our theology, so Bible translators are quick to rescue us from the embarrassment of having to recheck our theology, and simply translate the word psuché as life. But there is no reason to hold to two contradictory terms for translating the same word here. The soul is the life of a living breathing creature. If that is the only possible meaning in Matthew 6, it makes sense to interpret it that way elsewhere as well.

And the Bible does not teach that anyone’s soul is immortal. In fact, it implies that souls can die. For example, the psalms contain many pleas for deliverance, and 119:175 is one of them. It says “Let my soul live, that it may praise you…” The word nephesh has cognates in at least two other ancient near eastern languages that mean “throat.” That at least suggests that a soul may simply be the word for the body with breath in it. As such, it makes sense that animals have souls as well. They are living creatures, bodies with breath in them.

If you have any questions about this teaching, you can ask me at jeffersonvann@yahoo.com. Join me for this entire series as we search the scriptures to learn about the gift of life.

listen to the audio file at Afterlife.

the curse of immortality

gift of life

gift of life #4

the curse of immortality

— “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. ’” Genesis 3:22 (NET)

Some translations of this text (like the NET) have God forbidding sinful humanity the tree of life, therefore making us mortal. The literal text has God saying it more emphatically: “lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (KJV). The idea is that such a thing would be the worst imaginable fate: immortality is a curse to sinful man. So, until God takes care of our sin problem, eternal life is off limits.

For God to have not driven us out of Eden 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.  I. C. Agagbor says He ‘mercifully drove (Adam and Eve)… 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.’

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, after sin and its consequences are a thing of the past.

Until then, only God has immortality, because only God is free from the sin that makes immortality into a curse instead of a blessing. Our Lord Jesus Christ conquered sin and death by his death, and brought life and immortality to light.

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.” The tree of life was lost to us in Eden, but reappears in the New Jerusalem, after sin is destroyed. This tells us that God wants us to live forever, but not in our present sinful state.

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, and Plato argued that we already have eternal life, theologians who accepted Plato 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 the 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.

If you have any questions about this teaching, you can ask me at jeffersonvann@yahoo.com. Join me for this entire series as we search the scriptures to learn about the gift of life.

(listen to the audio file at Afterlife)