Realities concerning Human Life and Death

A lot of institutions or churches and bloggers try to make their members and/or followers afraid for death. They frighten them with purgatory and hell and give the impression to them that God would penalise them for their sins still after they died. Though the Bible tells us that the price for our sins is death. By dying we have paid for our sins.

Reality of death

What are the Realities concerning Human Life and Death?

Human life coming to an end

Human Life ceases completely for everyone at death

“In Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22).

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12).

“For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower thereof falls away” (1 Peter 1:24).

“In death there is no remembrance of thee” (Psalm 6:5).

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:3-4).

Non-ending = Everlasting or Eternal life

God has provided a way to obtain Eternal Life

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

“ That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7).

“Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14).

Restored to life

Physical bodies will be restored to life and granted the gift of Immortality

“And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust” (Acts 24:15).

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16).

“For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised: and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable. But now has Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:16-20).

“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28-29).

Souls not immortal

Souls are not immortal and cannot go to heaven

Dr Agar Beet, in his book The Last Things, wrote,

“The Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a curious example of an opinion destitute of any foundation in the
Bible, and in some measure contradicting it, derived only from Greek philosophy, yet held firmly by large numbers of educated and intelligent Christians and Christian teachers and writers on the mistaken supposition that it is taught in the Bible.”

Professor Nygren, in Agape and Eros, wrote,

“For Christian faith, salvation from death is a mighty act of God; in the Platonic, Hellenistic view, immortality is a native possession of the human soul. When God through Christ awakens the dead to life on the Last Day, there can be no longer any doubt that eternal life is His gift.”

The Anglican Report issued in 1945, Towards the Conversion of England, says,

“The idea of the inherent indestructibility of the human soul (or consciousness) owes its origin to Greek, not to Bible sources. The central theme of the New Testament is eternal life, not for anybody and everybody, but for believers in Christ as risen from the dead.”

Bishop Gore, in his book Jesus of Nazareth, says that the popular idea of going to heaven at death is not found in the teaching of Jesus.

“The idea of the consummation of all things given to us in the New Testament, or from the lips of Jesus, is never that of being carried to a distant heaven, but of a return of the Son of Man to a recreated earth, when the kingdoms of this regenerated world shall become the kingdom of God and of His Christ.”

William Tyndale wrote,

“In putting departed souls in heaven, hell and purgatory, you destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection. If the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be, and then what cause is there of the resurrection?”

(See God’s Way by John Carter for more information)