The Sound of the Trumpet:  To preserve, publish, proclaim, plant, protect, and propagate the Abrahamic
Faith.  A publication of the Carolina and Georgia Conferences of the Churches of God of the Abrahamic Faith.
Discovering Life After Death

By Wally Winner


THE DRUZE have a cemetery in the mountains overlooking Beirut, Lebanon. It has Egyptian-type obelisks at the entrance,
and just beyond them is a pool in the shape of an egg with water in it representing the "egg of life." Everything goes through
an egg stage: human beings, animals, everything began in the egg stage, say the Druze,

Once you leave that pool you will notice steps or footprints of crustaceans, footprints of animals, footprints of higher forms
and, finally, footprints of man. Man is the highest form on the evolutionary scale, they say.

Beyond that pool is a depiction of the sun. When man leaves this life, he goes to the sun. His "remains" are borne on the
wings of "The Bird of Life" until he merges with the sun.

According to the Druze, man begins as an egg and ends in the sun.

Very interesting! Aren't you glad that Christians aren't as befuddled about what happens to man after death?

The creature worshipers in Africa say that when man dies his spirit goes into a living animal or a tree or a bush, so that person
continues to live on in some form—perhaps a much lower form than he was when he was a human being. In some cases he
can pass on to a higher level if he has been the right kind of person, according to the belief.

Spiritualists say that when a person dies, he is not really dead, but passes on to a new transition. You can under the right
circumstances, they say, call up spirits to hold conversations with them.

You can see right away that these ideas can't be true because they are somewhat contradictory.  

Perhaps of all the subjects that man could discuss, the most emotional is this: "What happens to man when he dies?"
Everyone has an opinion on the subject. There are almost as many ideas about it as people to give them.

King Solomon made it plain: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be
born, and a time to die" (Eccl. 3:1, 2).

The ancient Egyptians were concerned about death. Their attempts to solve the enigma of life after death reached
monumental proportions. Pharaohs' burial tombs were filled with treasures and life's paraphernalia, including servants to serve
the pharaoh in the state of existence after death.

The idea was perhaps perfected by the Greeks, primarily under the influence of the Athenian philosopher Plato (428-348 B.
C.), who was a pupil of Socrates.

In Phaedo—one of Plato's most famous works—Plato recounts Socrates' final conversation with his friends on the last day of
his life. Socrates declared to them:  "Be of good cheer, and do not lament my passing— When you lay me down in the grave,
say that you are burying my body only, and not my soul."
Socrates' statement is little different from the teaching of most churches today.
What about all of this? Are all of these ideas true? Are some of them true? Aren't we glad that Christians know what they
believe and are more precise and specific on the subject?

Well, I'm not so sure.

Heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo, soul sleeping—what is the truth about what happens to that personality that once was you
when you die? Where does it go? What does it do? What does it feel?
"mat says the Bible?
The blessed Bible, this my question be,
The teachings of men so often mislead me.
What says the Bible to me?"

It would be God that would know the answer to this, since He made man. It doesn't make much difference what philosophies
you and I develop, God has the only right answer and there is no better place to begin than at the beginning.

"The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul" (Gen. 2:7).

There were no preexistent spirits waiting to inhabit bodies according to this formula. God breathed life into the form he had
made and man became a living soul. That's a pretty simple equation even if math isn't your strength.  

The phrase "living soul" is kind of strange. If man became a living soul at that point, can there be a "dead soul"?

Surprising many Bible readers is the reference to a "dead soul" in Ezekiel 18:4, 20. The sentence repeated in both verses is
"The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Very interesting!

In Ecclesiastes we find another intriguing passage, "The living know that they shall die." Doesn't the thought of death pass
through your mind upon an occasion or two? "The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing" (Eccl. 9:5).

Evidently opposed to the idea of some type of conscious existence on the other side of the grave is this verse and the next (v.
6) which tells us that their love, hatred, and jealousy have vanished. If there was judgment at death and you found yourself in
heaven, wouldn't you love it? Or, conversely, if you found yourself in a fiery hell, wouldn't you hate it?

Still on that theme, Solomon in verse 10 says that there is no working, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in the grave. The
common understanding of a faithful Christian's situation after death would leave him in a heavenly reward for countless years,
but, based on verse 10, apparently without a brain. There must be a better explanation. The Scriptures don't fit the popular
beliefs.

The Scriptures continue to toss out all the information if we will grasp it. Psalm 115:17 strikes an additional blow to the
predominant teaching in Christian circles when it says, "The dead praise not the Lord."  If counted worthy of a heavenly reward
when my last breath on earth had expired and I found myself in the presence of the Lord, I believe I would at least utter a
thank you. However, the message of these passages begins to indicate to us that instead of an immediate reward, there just
might be a waiting period.

What do other scholars have to say on the immortality of the soul?
"The immortality of the soul...comes from the Greeks, and when Greek thought and Hebrew-Christian thought came into
contact in the Early Church, the Greek view often seemed to predominate." (Robert McAfee Brown, The Bible Speaks to You,
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1955, p. 221.)

"To sum up, the essential idea of the Egyptian conception of immortality was that the ghost or spirit of the man preserved the
personality and the form of the man in the existence after death; that this spirit had the same desires, the same pleasures, the
same necessities, and the same fears as on earth. Life after death was a duplicate of life on earth." (George Andrew Reisner,
The Egyptian Conception of Immortality, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912, p. 75.)

The immortality of the soul was believed and taught by the Romans, Greeks, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Egyptians,
and many other pagans. The real origin is much earlier.

In the third chapter of Genesis, God said that Adam and Eve could not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the
garden. But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened
and you will be like God."

This theory of the immortality of the soul persuaded our first parents to believe and accept it. It was the one desire that the
human mind could not resist. Millions continue to teach this doctrine today. It leads eventually to spiritism and devil worship. It
is contrary to Scripture. It destroys the Christian's belief in the resurrection, the second coming of Christ, and judgment.

"The immortality of the soul. . .this widely-accepted idea is one of the greatest misunderstandings of Christianity. There is no
point in attempting to hide this fact, or to veil it by reinterpreting the Christian faith... .The concept of death and resurrection is
anchored in the Christ-event ..., and hence is incompatible with the Greek belief in immortality." (Oscar Cullman, Immortality of
the Soul or Resurrec-tion of the Dead? New York: Macmillan, 1958, p. 15.)

If there was ever a tale to tell, a best-seller story, a made-for-TV movie, Lazarus would have been able to corner the market
after his resurrection in John 11. Lazarus had no story to tell. He was unaware of any events transpiring for the last four days.
Jesus told Martha that Lazarus was asleep. When Jesus called to Lazarus in his grave, he didn't say, "Lazarus, come down,"
or "Lazarus, come up," but "Lazarus, come forth." Why call him back to life at all if he was experiencing "heavenly bliss"?

Notice the future promise by Jesus in John 11. "I am the resurrection, and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet
shall he live. And who ever lives and believes in me shall never die."

The young man came to Jesus in Matthew 19 and asked what good thing he should do to obtain eternal life. Christ didn't
inform him that he already possessed it in the form of an "immortal soul."

When a human being dies, he becomes unconscious or asleep, with no knowledge of the passage of time. He sleeps until
Jesus, the life giver, calls him back to life at the resurrection morning. Only then does a person receive incorruptibility (1 Thes.
4 and 1 Cor. 15). Only Jesus has the keys to death and hell (Rev. 1:18). Other human beings do not have immortality. They
do not have a separate existence without their bodies.

The only real hope of the Christian, as taught by the original inspired church, was to attain to the resurrection. They knew and
understood that the only way to attain eternal life was through a resurrection from death.

Far greater than life insurance is this death assurance.