God Thoughts
God Thoughts
August 31, 2020
I was introduced to the GriefShare ministry in January 2019, almost three years after Mike died. I found it so helpful that I went through a second cycle, and then became a facilitator. At a recent session a week ago, on the subject of heaven, one of the video commentators quoted the Apostle Paul, in 2nd Corinthians 5:6-8: “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” The commentator was using the verses to express his belief that as soon as we are ‘away from the body’, we are in heaven with God. It created an interestingly sticky situation for me when discussion time came: do I share my understanding and possibly disturb the grievers, who are comforted by thinking their loved ones are in heaven, or do I shut up? I shut up.
But it got me thinking about all the different teachings and traditions in all the different Christian sects today. Jesus says that only He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14:6.) He also said to the Pharisees and teachers of the law, “So you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘… They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men’.” (Matthew 15:7, 9.) Isaiah also said, “… should not a people inquire of their God? … To the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, they have no light in them.” (Isaiah 8:19, 20.) To me that means a teaching (tradition) must agree with the Bible to be sound. “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” (2 Peter 1:20.)
So I thought I would do a little study because there are so many traditions that have infiltrated God’s word throughout history, and they have devolved into all these different sects and creeds. It’s a form of meditation on God’s word for me; writing about it helps me think things through. So let me see if I can put this in logical order and send it out for consideration.
In order for me to believe my loved ones are in heaven, I have to believe in an immortal soul, or spirit. So I started there.
spirit – in Greek, “pneuma” which is a current of air, breath, or a breeze. Figuratively it can mean a rational soul. (A rational soul would be a soul that can reason, as opposed to just a “breathing creature”.)
soul – in Greek, “psuche” which means breathe. In Hebrew “nephesh” – properly a breathing creature, ‘animal’ or ‘vitality’. Also in Hebrew “ruwach” – wind or a sensible (or even violent) exhalation. And last, in Hebrew, “chay” meaning ‘alive’.
So it appears that a ‘spirit’ is simply my breath, and a soul is any breathing creature. “… the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7 KJV, emphasis mine.) Adam became a living soul, he did not receive a living soul. We are souls, we do not have souls. Big difference. As for the tradition that we have immortal souls, or spirits, which go right to heaven at our passing, this is the basis of the Great Lie that has caused all this misery and sin: “Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die …’ “. (Genesis 3:4). But, “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.” (Genesis 3:22.) I choose to believe that God means what He says.
Let’s go back to Paul, above: “away from the body, at home with the Lord.” In the context with which Paul is speaking, he’s talking about our ‘heavenly dwelling’. “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven.” (2nd Corinthians 5:1 NIV.) He’s reassuring his readers that, at the time of Jesus’s second coming, “the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 3:16-18, emphasis mine.) Paul is simply saying that he longs for the day when Jesus returns, when he will be ‘absent his body, and at home with the Lord’ in his heavenly house.
So what happens when I die? Here’s what Jesus said. “‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up.’ His disciples replied, ‘Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.’ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead’.” (John 11:11-14) And here’s an interesting aside I heard once; if Jesus, at Lazarus’s tomb, had not said “Lazarus, come forth”, instead just saying “come forth”, all the dead would have risen! In the King James Version of the Bible, as it records the deaths of Israel’s kings, it says “and (whichever king it was) slept with his fathers.” And in Ecclesiastes King Solomon, the wisest man ever, says “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; … never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.” (A study Bible commentary said he was just really depressed when he wrote that.) So I believe it follows that God’s word doesn’t teach that I have a “soul” or a “spirit” that goes immediately to heaven at the moment of my death. Once I die, my “spirit” (breath) “goes back to God” meaning it just returns to the atmosphere, and, as a “soul”, I cease to exist. I remain only in God’s memory, and in the memories of those who loved (or disliked) me. But here’s how incredible God is; when Jesus comes again, He will re-create me in an instant, and then I will become not a living soul, but an immortal soul!
And now, let me tell you why I love the knowledge that Mike is sleeping. “For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3 KJV.) Where better could he be than taking his much deserved rest, peacefully asleep, hidden with Jesus, and under God’s wings. Remember when you were a kid, and you could sleep all night, wake up the next morning, and feel like you just fell asleep seconds ago? That will be Mike, and all of God’s other children who are no longer with us. They’ve fallen asleep, and the next thing they know, it will seem like the next instant, they’ll hear Jesus saying, “Get up! Come on! Get up! It’s time to go home!”
And we will all forever be with the Lord.