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Death ls an Enemy
Instinctively, we know one thing:
Death is our enemy. We bate it; we
abhor it. We don't li.ke to come in
contact with it.
But it happens to all of us. We
have to face it someday. But do we
have to fear death?
And when is a person dead?
Courts of law have had difficulty
determining exactly wbat is the mo–
ment of death. Is it when the heart
stops beating? Or when there is no
brain activity?
People are in disagreement over
what life is, whether we are tempo–
ra l, mortal, and therefore just transi–
tory, and die just like a dog dies; or
whether we are an encased outer
vessel in which lives a consciousness
which is spiritual and eterna! and
which will Uve on consciously after
the body decays.
What does the Bible say about
death? Let's take a look.
Death in the Bible
In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solo–
mon wrote: "For that which befal–
leth the sons of meo befalleth
beasts; even one thing befalleth
them: as the one dieth, so dieth the
other ; yea, they have all one breath;
so that a roan hath no preeminence
above a beast: for all is vanity. All
go unto one place; all are of the
dust, and all turn to dust again"
(Ecclesiastes 3.:19-20). That's pretty
plain, isn't it?
Ecclesiastes 9:4: " ... to
him
that
is joined to all the living there is
hope: for a Uving dog is better than
a dead !ion. For the living know that
they shaU die: but tbe dead know
not any thing ...."
People who say, "When you're
dead, that's it, that's all there is"
generally don' t recall this scripture,
but just through common human
sense they know that dead is dead.
Continuing in verse 5: ".. .IOei–
ther
hav~·
they [the dead] aoy more
reward ; for
t~e
memory of them is
forgotten." . There are billioos of
people who have gone the way of all
tlesh and have been utterly forgot-
26
ten in history. Verse lO of that same
chapter declares, "Whatsoever thy
hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might ; for there is no work, nor de–
vice, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in
the grave, whither thou goest." But
is this life all there is?
What ls Man?
In Genesis, chapter 2, we find out
what man is. His creation is re–
corded in verse 7: "The Lord God
formed roan of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nos–
trils the breath of life; and man be–
carne a living soul." The Hebrew
word for soul is
nephesh.
Each per–
son
is
a soul, a being, an entity, a
transitory personality, a temporal
body. That's what he is. It does not
say in the Bible that he has a soul.
lt
says he
is
a soul
In the first chapter of Genesis, the
word
nephesh
is used of lower life
forros, beasts, animals, and creeping
things, which include scallops, lob–
sters, crabs, etc. As a matter of fact,
in the Old Testament the word
nephesh
is even used to express the
thought of a "dead body." A He–
brew would have been thought cere–
monially unclean if he had touched
a dead
nephesh
-
the word that is
translated "soul." Thus it is clear
that "souls" are not immortal. They
can die.
The term
nephesh
has a wide
meaning. lt includes the life, the ap–
petite, tbe emotion, the whole being
or the whole personality. But it
never means something immortal -
as a separate entity from the body!
Tbe
Jewish Ency clopedia
says:
"The belief that the soul continues
its existence after the dissolution of
the body is ... speculation ... no–
where expressly taugh t in Holy
Scripture .... The belief in the im–
mortality of the sou l carne to the
J ews from contact wi th Greek
thought and cbiefty through the phi–
losophy of Plato, its principal ex–
ponent, who was led to it through
Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in
which Babylonian and Egyptian
views were strangely blended" ("Im–
mortaUty of the Soul," vol. VI, pp.
564, 566).
The belief in the immortality of
the soul dates back to ancient
Egypt. Herodotus, an ancient G reek
historian, wrote: "The Egyptians
were also the fi rst that asserted that
the soul of roan is immortal."
In the
Phaedo
Plato wrote: "The
soul whose inseparable a ttitude is
life will never admit of life's oppo–
site, death. Thus the soul is shown to
be immortal, and since immortal,
indestructible . . . . Do we believe
there is such a thing as death? To be
sure. And is this anything but the
separation of the soul and the
body?"
But the Bible teaches no such
thing. Unfortunately, many early
church leaders embraced as truth
the teachings of the pagans.
Origen declared: "Souls are im–
mortal." Tertullian, an important
teacher from North Africa, wrote:
"For sorne things are known, even
by nature: the immortality of the
sou l, for instance, is held by
many .... I may use, therefore, the
opinion of a Plato, when he de–
clares: 'Every soul is immortal. '"
Scripture, however, teaches that
your life is just like a vapor which is
here today and gone tomorrow. In
Ezekiel 18, verse 4, we read: "Be–
hold, aU souls are mine; as the soul
of the father, so also the soul of the
son is mine:
the soul that sinneth, it
sha/1 die.
"
Here your Bible says that a soul
dies. Whatever you think a soul is. a
soul is capable of dying.
In the New Testament Paul ex–
plaioed that "the wages of sin is
death "
(Romans 6:23). Death. And
what is death? lt's the absence of
life.
But is there any hope of life
after
death?
Beyond the Grave
Death is a hideous enemy of
mankind. We don' t like to even con–
template it. We hate to think about
it. We are distraught when we hear
of a loved one having died.
What happens when we die?
In the book of Job we read: " But
PLAIN TRUTH August 1974