I hate funerals. At funerals, people say stupid things. For example, “Look at Aunt May, she looks so beautiful and peaceful.” Mind you that Aunt May is dead and in a coffin. But, people want to say that she looks great as a dead body? Then, I would hear people say, “Well Aunt May is alive in heaven looking down on us right now.” I understand that people say things like this to comfort themselves and others because nobody likes death. However, do people really want to comfort themselves and others with pagan doctrines of false teachings just because it’s easier to swallow? The truth is that Aunt May and all our loved ones that have died are dead and will not regain consciousness until resurrection day. We may not like death but it is part of the process that we must go through in order to put on immortality and everlasting life. Jesus went through death to show us the way home, through death. The resurrection is a big deal!
Eternal hell is the most disgusting fable ever told! But, Jesus is the savior of the world, the entire world. So we must ask: What does Jesus save us from if eternal hell is a farce? Well, Jesus saves us from sin and death. But, just what exactly is sin and death? This question and many others are actually answered in scripture. Let’s first take a look at the Garden of Eden and the modern concept of sin and death:
Satan is the greatest liar of all time. He is a master of deceit because he includes as much truth in his lies as possible. God told Adam that from every tree in the garden you may eat, yea eat. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat from it; for on the day you eat from it, to die you shall be dying (Genesis 2:16). Notice that God told Adam this one and only rule before Eve was even created. Therefore, Eve would have received the knowledge of God’s instruction from Adam. So Satan, right off the bat, attacks the one who would have received the word from another human, rather than straight from God. Otherwise, Satan would have started with Adam.
But the serpent said to the woman: Not to die shall you be dying; for God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be unclosed, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3: 4-5). Now, the knowing good and evil part of Satan’s comment was actually true. In Genesis 3:22, God said: Behold, man has become like one of Us in knowing good and evil. The “knowing good and evil” part actually happened and is part of the process of God developing us into a perfect creation. Humans must have an experience of good and evil to have the contrast to fully enjoy the glory and goodness of God. However, the lie of Satan was delicately woven into the truth. The lie was that Adam and Eve would not die or begin to die once they ate of the fruit. Sadly today, religion continues to teach this lie of Satan within church walls.
Scripture says that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Christians simply do not believe in the scriptural definition of death as will be shown. For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know nothing whatsoever (Ecclesiastes 9:5). The bible says that the dead do not know anything. Popular religious and Christian belief is that a part of the soul lives on and goes to heaven or hell immediately upon death. Thus, these religions confirm and teach the lie of Satan that surely we will not die, but continue to live in some other realm. This lie diminishes the power of the resurrection and as we will soon see, causes people to deny the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ without even knowing it.
In the Old Testament death was very physical. The patriarchs died and went away. There was no mention of them or other humans living somewhere else after they died. Jesus spoke of Gehenna which was a physical location. The grave was referred to as a place people went after death where they were no longer seen. The bottom line: death is the absence and opposite of life. There is no feeling, sensations, passage of time or anything else in death as scripture says the dead know not anything. Death is not life for part of the soul in another form but is indeed death. Death may be a brutal, horrible process but being dead is like being in a deep sleep with no thoughts, emotions or anything else. You will make up at the resurrection and even if you were dead for 2,000 years it would feel as if you had just died. Jesus suffered, died and experienced the death state for us. God raised Him from the death state to show us how Jesus will one day raise us from the death state. Jesus is not snatching our soul back from heaven or hell at the resurrection to put us in some different body. He is raising us from the dead to have life. Then, at the Lord’s appointed time, and only then, do we put on our immortality.
We need to digress and talk about the false doctrine of the ‘Immortality of the soul’ and then look at the true definition of the ‘soul’ from scripture. First, where does the belief that a soul goes to heaven or hell immediately after death come from? I am not going to get into too much detail about this but it can be traced back to ancient Egypt. Then from Egypt, the mythology of the soul living after death crept into Jewish and Greek thinking throughout the ages. As a result, religion and churches injected this belief into their doctrines. However, there is no scripture in the bible that teaches the immortality of the soul or that a part of a person lives on after death. The church simply mixed pagan doctrines from Egypt that ran down the pipe to their own cultures and accepted it as truth. Satan works in subtle ways. The immortality of the soul denies death, the very thing that Christ came to save us from. Not only that, the immortality of the soul denies the fact that Jesus ever died. One way Satan attacks the truth is by denying what Jesus did and what He saved humans from by redefining the word death to mean something it doesn’t. If the soul lives on and humans don’t actually die, then Jesus doesn’t save us from death and He never actually died Himself.
This is not what scripture teaches as all. The Old Testament teaches that Adam died, Abraham died, Isaac died, Jacob died, Moses died and so on and so forth. There is no mention of any part of these people existing somewhere else after they died. Basically, they ceased to exist and have no thought, passage of time, or sensations at all as the dead know nothing (Ecclesiastes 9:5). So what is life and death? Let’s take a look at what scripture teaches about what the soul actually is.
God formed the human out of soil from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). Let’s break this down. So God formed a body from the ground, it was a human body. Then, God blew the breath of life into the human and the human became a living soul. This teaches that the soul is the combination of a body and breath of life from God. The body was not alive; it had no feeling or self-realization when God formed it from the soil. Okay, God’s next step was NOT to create a soul and put it in the human! No, His next step was to blow the breath of life into the body. The breath of life came out of God and into the body. Therefore, the fusion of the body and the breath of life became a living soul. The Hebrew word nephesh (5315) is the word used for soul. It is described as a soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, appetite, and emotion. The important point here is that the soul is not a separate part of a person that lives forever, rather a soul is formed when body and God’s spirit come together.
The word nephesh is used many times in scripture when God was creating living beings. And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living soul (nephesh), each according to its kind: domestic beast, creeper and land animal, each according to its kind (Genesis 1:24). Some bible translations sub the word creature in for soul in this scripture. However, the Hebrew word used to describe all the creatures that God created, is nephesh, the same word meaning soul when God created the human. So in essence, all living creatures have a body and when that body is combined with God’s spirit, they became a soul. They do not have a soul!
When God blew the breath of life into Adam’s body, Adam had no consciousness or sensation when the breath was still with God. God formed a lifeless body and it was not until He breathed spirit into Adam that he became aware and alive. He became a living soul! A soul was not put into him. I’ll repeat this hundreds of times because it is so important. If there is no body then the soul cannot exist, if there is not spirit or breath of life then the soul cannot exist. The soul is only formed when there is a body and God puts a spirit or breathes the breath of life into the body. The combination of the two is the soul.
So what happens when people die? And the soil returns to the earth just as it was, and the spirit, it returns to the One, God, Who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). People die and their bodies are lifeless, they become part of the earth, rot and decay. The spirit (breath of life) of the person returns to God, Who gave it. Now this spirit is not an immortal soul that goes to heaven or hell. Remember, the soul or nephesh is the combination of body and spirit. At this point, the soul no longer exists and the spirit of the human goes back to God just as it was with God before He blew the breath of life into Adam. Adam had no consciousness or sensation until the moment God blew spirit into him, he was just a lifeless corpse. For those of us that die, the spirit leaves our body leaving it lifeless and the spirit goes to God just like Adam’s spirit was the moment before God breathed life into him. We have no consciousness, thought or anything else when our spirit goes to God. For the dead know nothing (Ecclesiastes 9:5). This is death and we sin because we are going to die. This is the destiny of all humans and creatures on earth and this is what we must be saved from.
The following are some excerpts from the book of Job chapter 14: 10-14:
But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more
So he lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, people will not awake
Or be roused from their sleep.
If someone dies will they live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait for my
Renewal to come.
There are many other verses is scripture that teach that the dead are dead. There are no verses in scripture that teach that humans or their soul go anywhere else but the grave when they die. The above selection in Job is one of many that relate death to sleep. In fact, this passage teaches that humans will not be raised or awakened from their sleep until the heavens are no more. We don’t go anywhere when we sleep, we are unconscious. Death itself is a deep sleep and the bible does not leave any doubt about the teaching that no part of the human is alive anywhere else. Then, the million dollar question asked in Job 14:14: If someone dies, will they live again?
As I was driving up the highway to Michigan, I saw a giant billboard that read: If you died today, would you go to heaven or hell? This seems to be the question that religion asks. Little do they know that this question is blasphemy and contradicts the truth of the scripture. Simply put, it is the wrong question. The question that should be asked is in Job 14:14 that IF SOMEONE DIES, WILL THEY LIVE AGAIN? Death is the problem! We would remain dead forever and never rise from the grave if someone didn’t save us from this fate. Death is what we need to be saved from, not eternal hell. IF SOMEONE DIES, WILL THEY LIVE AGAIN? YES, because Christ Jesus went to the grave and God raised Him from that grave. Christ will do the same for each one of us at our appointed time.
You see, the resurrection is a big deal. It is the answer to the problem of sin and death; in fact, it will destroy sin and death completely. The teaching of the ‘Immortality of the soul’ makes resurrection day unnecessary. If people or their souls are in heaven and hell immediately after they die, then what is the purpose of the resurrection? At resurrection, Christians would have us believe that souls are snatched from heaven and hell, given a new body at resurrection, and then returned to heaven and hell. That makes sense only to illogical, unscriptural based, religious minds. Nowhere in scripture is this taught. God said man would die and Satan lied about it. The church believes Satan and not God. The bible says the wages of sin is death. Moses died and went to the grave along with the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Jesus died and was in the dead state for three days. We all die and will be dead until the resurrection! This is serious because if one believes that Jesus’s soul went somewhere else at His death than they are denying that Jesus actually died. This leads to another great lie of the Christian religion, THE TRINITY!
Satan is an evil genius because he tricks people into thinking they believe in Jesus when their own teachings actually deny Jesus. The trinity is one of those lies. Religion teaches that God is one in three parts, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This is not true as scripture would attest and not only that, but it denies the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ when you follow this teaching all the way through. First, from the mouth of Christ Himself: I am going, and I am coming to you. If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I (John 14:28).
If one is greater than the other, then they are not equal. No sense in getting into a squabble over who is greater, God or Jesus but these words from Jesus indicate that they are not the same being. Jesus is God’s son and He has all the attributes of His Father but He is not His Father. When we look at Jesus, the full representation of God is seen. However, God and Jesus are not two equal parts of the same being. In fact, Jesus Christ actually will give up His reign and subject Himself completely to God. How many times have you heard that? Yes, Jesus will give up His reign and subject Himself to God at the appointed time. When will Jesus give up His reign? Jesus will give up His reign after He destroys death and saves the last human being and the last bit of creation. Christ Jesus will raise every, man, woman and child from the dead and give them immortality along with the rest of creation. At that point, Jesus hands over the entire creation that He saved, including Himself, to God so that He will be all things to all creation. Don’t believe me? Here are the scriptures that prove it.
Thereafter the consummation, whenever He (Jesus) may be giving up the kingdom to His God and Father, whenever He should be nullifying all sovereignty and all authority and power. For He must be reigning UNTIL He should be placing all enemies under His feet. The last enemy is being abolished: death (1 Corinthians 15: 24-27).
The above scripture shows that Christ will reign until He puts all enemies under His feet. This word ‘until’ means that at this point in God’s plan, Jesus ends His rule and completes His mission of destroying death and saving all creation. Jesus gives up His rule and presents His accomplished work to God, His Father, NOT to Himself. Then, the bible goes on to say that Jesus will subject Himself to God so that God will be all in all. Notice it does not say that Jesus subjects Himself to Himself but to God. Clearly, there are different roles between Jesus and God. Jesus and God are not one. They may be one in purpose but not in being. God is Jesus’s Father. Jesus is the Son of God as the bible says over and over.
For He subjects all under His feet. Now whenever He may be saying that all is subject, it is evident that it is outside of Him Who subjects all to Him. Now, whenever all may be subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also shall be subjected to Him Who subjects all to Him, that God may be All in all (1 Corinthians 15: 27-28).
Jesus will be subjected to God once He fulfills His mission of saving all creation. He is a separate entity from God but always follows the will of God and is the perfect manifestation of the Father. In this way, they are one. However, they are not one being. The trinity denies the work of Christ because if you follow the teaching all the way through then Jesus did not actually die on the cross. The trinity says that Jesus’s body died but that He was still alive in the form of the Father. If this is the case then Jesus never experienced the death state for us and is not our savior. This is how subtle tricks from the devil get religious people to think they believe in the truth but deny it with their own false teaching. However, Jesus did die; both His body and being, and God raised Him from the dead. Jesus was dead like we will one day be dead. So, we will rise as He rose because of His death. We will follow Him in death and then follow Him in resurrection. Jesus is our Savior that suffered and died for us!
Now, if God is not a trinity then what is He actually doing with respect to His Son? The truth is that God is expanding His family to have many sons and daughters just like Jesus! God will give immortal, blissful life to all of His creation through the suffering, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. However, Jesus saves some before others. This is all a part of God’s will and foreknowledge. God chooses to conform people to the image of His Son so that these people will become His very sons and daughters. This is an expanding family and not a trinity.
Certain people are called according to the purpose that, whom He foreknew, He designates beforehand, also, to be conformed to the image of His Son, for Him to be the Firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8: 28-30).
Jesus saved the world and is going to be the Firstborn of many brethren. This means that Jesus is creating people to be just like Him, His very brothers and sisters. This would not be possible if Jesus was part of a trinity. Christ Jesus did more than just save us from death; He was the first Son of God and is creating us to be sons and daughters of God as well. We are sons and daughters of God because and through Christ Jesus!
The spirit itself is testifying together with our spirit that we are children of God. Yet if children, enjoyers also of an allotment, enjoyers, indeed, of an allotment from God, yet joint enjoyers of Christ’s allotment, if so be that we are suffering together, that we should be glorified together also (Romans 8: 16-17).
God gives belief to people that He designated beforehand to develop into the sons and daughters of God. These people are the first fruits of those that will enjoy the allotment of Jesus Christ. This is a special calling for selected human beings, but, if we continue reading in Romans 8 it is evident that all of creation is groaning for the revelation of the sons of God. Why does all creation want to know who the sons of God are? They also want to be freed from sin, corruption and death. For to vanity was the creation subjected, not voluntarily, but because of Him Who subjects it, in expectation that the creation itself, also, shall be freed from the slavery of corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Then, as scripture says, the rest of creation will put on the freedom of the children of God. You see, God is creating a family through Jesus Christ giving His creation the same attributes. Jesus was the first, and through Jesus, God will bring home all of His precious humans. Some He will bring into the family before others, but rest assured, God will one day be All in all. We will all be children of God because of Christ Jesus.
I would like to leave one final note on this topic. There are instances in scripture in which Jesus is praying to His Father, God. For example, Jesus prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His death. He also prayed on the cross. If Jesus and God are equal parts of the trinity, then was Jesus praying to Himself during these times? I don’t think so. Now, Jesus does and did accomplish the will of God perfectly. He is the image of the invisible God, BUT, He is indeed the Son of God. Jesus is the Image of the invisible God, firstborn of every creature (Colossians 1:15). Jesus prayed in Gethsemane that there be another way to save the world besides crucifixion but He put God’s will first. He prayed on the cross that God would forgive those in the process of killing Him. He did not run up to heaven to answer His own prayer. Jesus prayed to His Father, not Himself. Jesus died and did not exist for three days when He was in the grave. He was not alive in the form of the Father or in any other form or realm of existence. He was dead. Jesus was dead, asleep, just like we will one day be dead. Jesus was raised to new life and He will do the same for us at the resurrection…but not until the resurrection.
Saved ignoble 
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