| Bible Books Doctrines Words Lord Jesus Christ Messages Hermey Salvation Humm Site Help |
| search tips | advanced search |
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
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:
There is a doctrinal error which is accepted by most people because they don't know the truth and haven't really thought about what the Bible truly says. In addition, religious and social traditions give us an answer which is easy to accept without thinking about the answer. Most people are intellectually lazy and, therefore, accept the simple and easy answer. However, that simple and easy answer causes problems later when it impacts other things.
There are several different legal definitions of death. In some places, a person is considered dead if their heart stops beating and they appear to stop breathing. But there have been rare instances where people have come back from that condition hours or even days later. Some places say that such a condition is dead. Other places require the hospital to connect the person to machines and have the machines breath for the person and force the heart to beat. They require the hospital to verify that there is no brain activity before declaring the person to be dead. However, other places say that a person who had brain damage and has no brain activity beyond automatic functions such as breathing, is legally dead. So, a person can be considered dead one place and not dead another place.
The true definition accepted by most people is: 'Physical death is separation of soul and spirit from body and the second death is eternal separation from God'. However, fools who deny God's existence object to this definition and cause the confusing differences in legal definitions. However, even if we dismiss the concerns of the God deniers, we still have some problems with what the Bible says in some places.
2Corinthians 2:16 says: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?
Think about the phrase death unto death
. The word unto
means 'up to and including'. This phrase is telling us that we have a process, which is called death
which is moving towards an eventual final event which is also called death
. Now consider 2Corinthians 4:12, which says: So then death worketh in us, but life in you.
The word worketh
means 'an ongoing process of work'. Since we have 'an ongoing process of work', then death
can not be just a one-time event.
The true Biblical definition of physical death
is 'an ongoing process of corruption which cumulates in the soul and spirit leaving the body'. In addition, there is an ongoing process of corruption of our soul and of our spirit which the Bible also calls death
.
People who are 'dying' declare themselves to be dead
even though they are still breathing because there is no avoiding the end result of death
and they know it. Now, there are other places where the Bible talks about death
as a process, but we will go on instead of spending time with those places.
Medical scientists have examined bodies and concluded that the design of the human body is one that should last forever. Supposedly, every cell in our bodies is replaced every seven years. The body uses the things that we eat to build the replacement cells. This is why people say that we are what we eat. It is also why Jesus
said we must eat His body
to symbolically mean we must let Him control what we do in our bodies if we are to be truly saved and sanctified.
That said, the scientists have discovered that there is a problem with the reproducing of the body's cells. There is a minor bit of corruption in the process at birth which spreads and grows with time. We call that process aging and the Bible calls it the process of death.
While we could continue with this line, we need to return to our original Bible references with the understanding that there is a process of corruption which the Bible calls death
and that process of corruption affects our body, our soul and our spirit.
The God of the Bible is so high above us, and so complex, that each picture that we have of God is a complete person Who is greater than any man. And, we have three pictures of God called God the Father, God the Son and the holy Spirit. It would probably be easier for a worm to understand man than it is for man to completely understand God. However, we can understand that God is a trinity and when God made man in His image
, God made man with three parts called a body, a spirit and a soul. God the Son has a body and the Gospels tell us how He showed us how we are to live in our body. God the holy Spirit indwells the saved and deals with our mind, our feelings and our will, which is our soul. God the Father is a Spirit
(John 4:24) and is the center and source of all power. Likewise, our spirit is our innermost being and the true us while our body is only our 'avatar' in this physical reality.
Someone asked why the Bible always capitalizes the word Spirit
but leaves holy
not capitalized when we read holy Spirit
in the Bible. I believe that it is because His true name is Spirit
while holy
is a descriptor. Also, His job is getting this descriptor applied to God's people so that they are truly holy
people.
Now, we saw how our first Bible reference says that male and female
were made in God's image with a body, a soul and a spirit. Next, our second reference tells us the warning from God that they would die if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
. Then our third reference told us that they disobeyed God and ate from the tree. And, our last reference told us the consequence which is death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned
. Notice that they didn't just die personally but they caused death (to pass) upon all men
. And, the reason that death passed upon all men
is that all have sinned
.
With that in mind, we first need to understand that they did not eat an apple but ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
. Religion lies to us and tells us that it was an apple because religion does not want us too believe the truth. A the tree of the knowledge
is 'an organizes set of knowledge with the way to pass the knowledge to another person'. The lessons of math from learning our numbers through Calculus and beyond is a the tree of the knowledge of
Math. The lessons that English teachers give to their students is a the tree of the knowledge of
English. We are taught about good and evil
by religion. Therefore, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
is religion and getting religion brings death and separates us from an ongoing personal relationship with God. True Biblical salvation is restoring that ongoing personal relationship with God and is not religion. Religion tells us that the fruit was an apple in order to deceive us and cause us to believe that religion brings salvation when it actually brings death.
Next, we need to understand that God said in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die
. Her did not say 'you will partially die'. If my leg dies and the doctor has to cut it off, that does not mean that all of me died. According to the Bible, we have three parts: a body, a soul and a spirit. Religion claims that when Adam and Eve sinned, they only partially died. Religion gives the doctrinal error that their spirit died, that their bodies did not die, and religion ignores the soul. The Biblical truth is that all three died and that people accept doctrinal error because they do not understand certain Biblical concepts.
You can not pass on an infectious disease unless you have the disease. Parents can not pass, to their children, the corruption, which is called the aging process, unless the parents have it at the time that the child is conceived. We already saw that the Bible calls this corruption process death
. The Biblical truth is that God gave Adam and Eve bodies which would never die. However, when they sinned, the corruption process of death
entered their bodies and then passed onto all men. Therefore, they died physically in the day that thou eatest thereof
in that the corruption process entered their bodies that day. The process did not end until almost 1,000 years later, but the end was guaranteed. Therefore, they really did die that day in that a non-stoppable process was started.
That provides the physical death. And, as religion also agrees to, they died spiritually in that they were separated from God that day. Before then, God met them in the garden every day. After they sinned, they were cast out of the garden and God no more visited with them in their physical bodies but only dealt with their spirits. With that acknowledged, we need to understand the death of the soul.
According to the Bible, our soul
is the long-term version of the way we think, the way we make our decisions of will and the way that we react emotionally to the circumstances of life. According to the Bible, our heart
is the short-term version of these same three things. We control our heart
while God takes all of the decisions of our heart
and combines them to make our soul
. The more our heart
is like Jesus Christ, the more our soul
will be also. The more our heart
is sinful, the more our soul
will be also.
Now, think about babies. They fuss when there is nothing wrong with them. They are lying when they fuss but nothing is wrong. They are just expressing their selfish nature and demanding that Mommy spend all of her time paying attention to them. Now think about a selfish adult. All of the thefts, murders, wars and more are because selfish people demand that they get what they do not deserve. Thus, we can see the corruption of the soul all around us in the way that sinful people act. In addition, unless they get saved and let Jesus Christ change them, they become more corrupt over time.
Therefore, we must conclude that God told the truth and all of Adam and Eve died in the day that thou eatest thereof
. The death of their body and of their soul was the start of a corruption process which did not end until years later. But, since the end could not be avoided, the start of the process guaranteed the end of the process which we call death and they truly died in all three of their parts that day.
Since all three parts of man died as a result of sin, all three parts need salvation. Men, especially God deniers, concentrate on the Body. They think that if they can fix the corruption of old age, then they can live forever. However, that thinking ignores the corruption of the soul and denies the corruption of the spirit. If you have a light bulb disconnected from electricity, it will not make light no matter how well it is made. Even if men could make a new body, like science fiction envisions, it will not make the body alive without a spirit. Even if they can find a way to move the processes of the mind to a new body or a machine, that does not move the spirit and there are problems moving the emotions and will. Simply put, every way that man thinks that he can fix the results of sin will fail because only God can fix the results of sin.
I have a message on my web site called Body, Soul and Spirit Salvation. It has all of the details and Bible references but we will only consider them at a high-level.
The first thing to understand is that, since death entered all three parts of us, all three parts need salvation. In addition, the way, and the time, that God saves each part of us is different.