What Happens at Death
Lesson 37
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No one can come to me
unless the Father who sent me draws
him, and I will raise him up at the
last day.
~ John 6:44
Introduction
Some people in the
Bible are remembered for their good
deeds, while others are remembered
for their rebellion. King Saul, the
first king of Israel, is remembered
for his rebellion against God. His
life is an object lesson showing how
quickly self-centeredness can lead to
a ruined life. The Bible says that
Saul died a tragic death – he
took his own life when he was 61
years old. In an attack on Shunem
about 1000 B.C., the Philistines
critically injured Saul. Rather than
let his enemies gloat in victory, he
fell upon his own sword and died. (1
Samuel 31:4) Many Christians believe
that King Saul went directly to hell
that afternoon. According to the
doctrines of an eternally burning
hell, King Saul and millions of
people like him are writhing and
jumping about in the flames of hell
fire this very minute. Advocates of
an eternal hell claim that once God
sends a person to hell, there is no
escape and no relief. The torment is
said to be painful and torturous
beyond words!
According to the
scenario above, King Saul has been on
fire for about 3,000 years. He must
be discouraged beyond words since
there is no second chance – no
way out of hell. He cries for relief
are no doubt drowned out by the roar
of hell’s furnaces. Think about
it. If there is a burning hell where
sinners, young and old, writhe in
eternal torment, it must be the most
awful place in the whole universe!
There is no way out, no hope, no end.
I can imagine how the hostages of
hell curse God and cry out for
immediate release from their misery
every time the devil turns up the
thermostat. Many Christians believe
this scenario to be true, or
something similar to it and they use
the parable Jesus told about the rich
man and Lazarus to prove it. (Luke
16:19-31) Unfortunately, many non
–Christians refuse to believe in
God because they find the doctrine
about God’s justice to be
repugnant. About 15 years ago, George
Gallup surveyed American Christians
regarding their views on Heaven and
hell. Almost 87% of the individuals
surveyed believed they were going to
Heaven and 91% said they knew someone
in hell or someone who was going
there. In recent years, some
theologians have lessened the cruelty
of hell. Consequently, recent surveys
reveal that larger numbers of
Christians do not believe that hell
is a literal place where the souls of
wicked people writhe in eternal
flames. So, is there a hell? Where is
it? What is it like? When does a
person go to hell?
Nobody is
Burning in Hell Yet
The idea of an
eternally burning hell is based on
the idea that man’s soul is
immortal or not subject to death.
Therefore, man’s soul continues
to live an intellectual life after it
leaves the body. For this very reason
Christians often speak of deceased
friends saying, “They have gone
to be with the Lord.” This
comment raises a good question. Do
you think Abel and everyone else who
has died “in the Lord” are
in Heaven, playing harps and eating
delicious fruit that grows on the
Tree of Life? Do you think Cain, the
first murderer, King Saul, and
everyone who has died in rebellion
against God are writhing in eternal
hell? For the following reasons I am
convinced that King Saul is not in
hell and Abel is not in Heaven.
- First and
foremost, Jesus paid the
penalty for our sins. (Romans
5:9; 1 Corinthians 15:3) If
the penalty for sin is an
endless burning in hell, then
Jesus did not pay the penalty
for sin. Jesus was
resurrected on the third day!
(Acts 10:40) We also know
that Jesus returned to Heaven
forty days after His death.
(Acts 1:3) So, Why would God
require human beings to burn
forever for their sins when
He required far less of
man’s Sin Bearer? (2
Corinthians 5:21) The Bible
indicates the Father does not
impose more on fallen man
than He put upon Jesus.
- God is fair.
(Psalm 89:14) God does not
torture people forever just
because they lived in
rebellion for a few years.
Eternal punishment for 70
years of rebellion is not
fair. A judicial system is
fair if it upholds the
principle that punishment is
commensurate with the crime.
(Matthew 7:1,2) Does God do
less? No! Should King Saul be
tortured with fire for
billions of years when he
only lived a mere 61 years?
No. In fact, the Bible says
that God will not torture the
wicked for eternity, but
instead reduce the wicked to
ashes. (Malachi 4:3)
- God is love
and the New Earth will be a
wonderful place to live. (1
John 4:8; 1 Corinthians 2:9;
Revelation 21:1-4) However,
it would be impossible for
the saints to remain content
and happy with God’s
government and justice if
they had to observe their
loved ones in the flames of
hell day after day.
- The Bible
teaches there will be two
resurrections. (John 5:28,29;
Revelation 20:4,5) The first
resurrection occurs at the
Second Coming. At that time,
the righteous will be
resurrected and they will
meet the Lord in the air. (1
Thessalonians 4:16,17) The
second resurrection occurs at
the end of the 1,000 years.
At that time the wicked will
be resurrected and they will
face their Maker as He
announces their sentence. Why
are there two resurrections
if people are already in
Heaven or hell? Why would God
resurrect the wicked at the
end of the 1,000 years (who
are alleged to be in hell
already), for the purpose of
putting them back into an
earthy body and then throwing
them into a blazing fire
again? (Revelation 20:7-15)
Things Do Not Add Up
Is it possible that
the Bible teaches that good people do
not go to Heaven when they die and
wicked people do not go to hell the
day they die? Consider the following:
1.
The Bible teaches there are a
resurrection for the righteous and a
resurrection for the wicked. If the
righteous go immediately to Heaven
when they die, why does Jesus say
that the righteous are resurrected at
the last day? “For my
Father’s will is that everyone
who looks to the Son and believes in
him shall have eternal life, and I
will raise him up at the last
day.” “No one can come to
me unless the Father who sent me
draws him, and I will raise him up at
the last day.” “There is a
judge for the one who rejects me and
does not accept my words; that very
word which I spoke will condemn him
at the last day.” (John 6:40,44;
12:48) Some scholars claim that
God’s purpose for resurrecting
the righteous at the last day is to
reclaim an earthy body. This argument
does not make any sense. If the soul
is a living entity that can exist
outside the body, why is a body
necessary? For example, if Abel has
been in Heaven for almost 6,000
years, why would he want or need a
body now? Besides, the Bible says the
flesh and blood cannot inherit
eternal life! (1 Corinthians 15:50)
Even more, what about the individuals
who suffer with physical deformities
while they are alive? Would their
soul want to return to a deformed and
degenerate body again? Certainly not.
If a body actually returns to dust
after death as the Bible indicates
(Psalm 104:29; Ecclesiastes 3:20),
then why would Jesus wait until the
Second Coming to gather some dirt to
create a new body for the deceased?
He would certainly create a new body
at any time.
2.
The Bible teaches there is an
appointed time for the people of
Earth to be judged. (Ecclesiastes
12:14; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Acts
17:31; John 12:48) If people go to
Heaven or hell at the time of death,
God would have to judge them at the
time of death. This is not what the
Bible teaches and contrary to what
many people believe. Neither Abel,
the first man to die about 6,000
years ago, nor King Saul, who died on
the battlefield 3,000 years ago, were
sent to their eternal destinations at
the time of their death.
3.
Even more compelling are the Bible
verses that confirm that the dead
know nothing (Ecclesiastes 9:5) and
that they are in a state of
“sleep.” (John 11:2-15) God
foreknew the devil would use
man’s curiosity about death to
trap people with his sophisticated
lies. (2 Chronicles 33:6) Therefore,
God expressly forbade man from trying
to communicate with people who are
dead. God said, “Let no one be
found among you who sacrifices his
son or daughter in the fire, who
practices divination or sorcery,
interprets omens, engages in
witchcraft, or casts spells, or who
is a medium or spiritist or who
consults the dead.” (Deuteronomy
18:10,11)
4.
Revelation 20:15 reveals that God
will put an end to sin at the end of
the millennium and everyone not found
in the Book of Life will be burned
up. Here is the problem as I see it.
Eternal life in Heaven or hell
requires immortality; however, God
grants immortality only to the saints
at the Second Coming. (See 1
Corinthians 15:51-53.) The wicked
never receive immortality. Therefore,
the souls of the wicked are not
immortal. In fact, the Bible clearly
says, “the soul who sins is the
one who will die.” (Ezekiel
18:4) Think about it. If wicked
people were immortal and suffered in
hell forever, the presence of sinners
and rebellion within the universe
would last throughout eternity!
Conditional
Mortality
To understand
man’s condition in death we must
begin with the book of Genesis. When
God created Adam and Eve, He granted
them conditional immortality. They
would live indefinitely as long as
they had access to the Tree of Life.
But, when they sinned, God separated
them from the Tree of Life so they
would eventually die. “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.’ So the Lord God
banished him from the Garden of Eden
to work the ground from which he had
been taken. After he drove the man
out, he placed on the east side of
the Garden of Eden cherubim and a
flaming sword flashing back and forth
to guard the way to the tree of
life.” (Genesis 3:22-24)
At the beginning of
life Jesus warned Adam
saying,”You are free to eat from
any tree in the garden; but you must
not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for when
you eat of it you will surely
die.” (Genesis 2:16,17) This
text does not mean that the body
would die and the soul would live on.
No! This text means that man would
cease to exist. The issue is at the
heart of the lie that the devil
wanted Eve to believe. Remember,
Satan said to Eve, “You will not
surely die.” (Genesis 3:4) Satan
led Eve to believe that if she ate of
the forbidden fruit that she would
become immortal like God. If she had
immortality, she could not be subject
to death! What a clever deception!
God did not insert an
everlasting soul in Adam’s body.
Instead, Adam became a living soul
when God created him. “The Lord
God formed the man from the dust of
the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and man
became a living being.” (Genesis
2:7, italics mine.) In other words,
God united Adam’s body of dust
with His own breath of life and Adam
became a living being. When Adam died
at the age of 930 years, his soul
ceased to exist because the human
soul cannot live as a separate entity
outside the body. The souls of man
results from a combination of two
parts – a human body and the
breathe of life. Here is an
illustration that might help to
illustrate this concept. A light bulb
comes to “life” when the
power of electricity is applied to
it. Light occurs when the light bulb
is connected with electricity. If the
power is removed, there is no light.
Likewise, if there is no breath of
life in the body, there is no soul. A
man’s soul is mortal which means
it is subject to death. God alone is
immortal and not subject to death.
When Jesus died for humanity, He had
to lay His immortality aside! (John
10:17,19) When the Father resurrected
Jesus, the Father restored
immortality to Him. (Revelation 1:18)
But notice what God said about man at
the time Noah’s flood.
“Then the Lord said, My Spirit
will not contend with man forever,
for he is mortal; his [remaining]
days will be a hundred and twenty
years.” (Genesis 6:3, insertion
mine.) Each time the word immortal is
used in the Bible, it pertains to
God, not man. “Now to the King
eternal, immortal, invisible, the
only God, be honor and glory for ever
and ever. Amen…God, the blessed
and only Ruler, the King of kings and
Lord of lords, who alone is immortal
and who lives in unapproachable
light, whom no has seen or can see.
To him be honor and might forever.
Amen” (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:15,16)
Paul expounds on this point by
writing that God will grant the gift
of immortality to the saints at the
Second Coming! When the perishable
has been clothed with the
imperishable, and the mortal with
immortality, then the saying that is
written will come true: ‘Death
has been swallowed up in
victory.’” (1 Corinthians
15:54) If the righteous receive
immortality at the Second Coming, it
is obvious that they do not have
immortality before that time!
Therefore, no one has
knowledge or intelligence before he
or she is born and there is no
knowledge or intelligence in death.
Death is a state of nonexistence.
Many people, of course, disagree with
this view and Christians offer
certain texts to demonstrate
otherwise. Let us examine these texts
and see what the Bible actually says:
Spirit Returns
to God
“And the dust
returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit [ruach] returns to God
who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes
12:7, insertion mine.) Some people
use this text to prove that the
spirit of man returns to God when he
dies. Although this text does not say
so, the alleged implications are
something intelligent returns to God
at the time of death. Advocates of
the exterior soul reason that when
the body and the spirit are
separated, the spirit (or
“rauch”) returns to God who
gave it. The Hebrew word
“rauch” means wind or
breath. Notice how this word is
translated a few verses earlier:
“As you do not know the path of
the wind [rauch], or how the body is
formed in a mother’s womb, so
you cannot understand the work of
God, the Maker of all things.”
(Ecclesiastes 11:5) The rauch of the
righteous, as well as the rauch of
the wicked, returns to God at death!
The text is clear on this point: the
“breath of life” is a gift
from God to all people at birth and
the “breath of life”
[rauch] returns to God who gave it
when we die, regardless off our moral
behavior!
Job’s use of the
word “rauch” helps clarify
the meaning even further. He says,
“As long as I have life within
me, the breath [rauch] of God in my
nostrils, my lips will not speak
deceit.” (Job 27:3,4 [KJV]) An
unrefined translation of Job’s
comment might read, “As long as
have life within me and the breath
from God in my nose, my lips will not
speak lies.” Neither Solomon nor
Job used the word “rauch”
to mean a conscious spirit roaming
the heavens.
King David also knew
that death brought an end to
consciousness. He said, “Do not
put trust in princes, in mortal men,
who cannot save. When their spirit
[nephesh] departs, they return to the
ground; on that very day their plans
come to nothing.” (Psalms
146:3,4) The Hebrew word
“nephesh” also means
breath. This word is used many times
in the Bible to describe the breath
of living creatures. Notice:
“And the Lord God formed the man
from the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath
[nephesh] of life, and man became a
living being.” (Genesis 2:7)
Concerning the flood, the Bible says,
“Everything on dry land that had
breath [nephesh] of life in its
nostrils died.” (Genesis 7:22,
insertion mine.)
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