The Scripture Doctrine of a Future Life

THE Bible is commonly supposed to teach that there is something about man which is immortal. We have searched thoroughly for this supposed entity, and have not found it. If there is such a thing, in what part of man does it reside?

THE BODY? Certainly it is not the body which is immortal, for we know that this dies. All agree to this. God says, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Gen. 3:19. The Bible frequently speaks of dead bodies. "Together with my dead body shall they arise." Isa. 26:19. We see the body die and putrefy. Indeed, it is declared to be mortal. "Shall also quicken your mortal bodies." Rom 8:11. We find no immortality here.

THE MAN? Some people make a distinction between the body and what the Bible calls the man. Is this what is immortal? Is this the thing that does not die? Hardly; for the man was made out of the ground. "And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground." Gen. 2:7. Then we frequently read about man's dying. "But man dieth and wasteth away." Job 14:10. So men die. We see them die. We know they die. More than that, the Bible often speaks of dead men. "Behold there was a dead man carried out." Luke 7:12. "Thy dead men shall live." Isa. 26:19. "I am forgotten as a dead man." Psa. 31:12. A dead body lies on the ground, the breath of life has left it and is where you please and what you please. But the dead body is the man; the man is not the breath of life; that is something which has left the man. Make what you please of it, endow it with what attribute you like, locate it where you may imagine, it is not the man. It has left the man behind it. The carcass it has abandoned is he. So we find no immortality here.

THE PERSON? Well, then, is it the "person" that is immortal? This word is often used as applied to individuals. But the Bible declares that the person dies, perishes, is slain. "I have occasioned the death of all the persons." 1 Sam. 22:22. "Wicked men have slain a righteous person." 2 Sam. 4:11. "The fool and the brutish person perish." Psa. 49:10. We also read about dead persons. "They shall come at no dead person." Ezek. 44:25. It cannot be the person, then, that does not die.

PROPER NAMES? It is according to universal usage, both in Bible times and since, to speak of men as "Joseph," "Lazarus," "James." Perhaps here we shall find that which does not die. Let us see. Upon turning to the Bible, we read thus: "So Joseph died." Gen. 50:26. "Lazarus is dead." John 11:14. "And Sarah died." Gen. 23:2. And so of all who are named. Was there such a man as David? Yes, but the Bible declares plainly and repeatedly that David "died " that David is "dead." Again we are disappointed in our search. At every step we fail to find anything about man which does not die.

THE SOUL? "There!" exclaims the reader, "now we shall find it. The soul is immortal it can never die."

This has strangely come to be the popular belief. It is entertained by multitudes of real Christians; though such an error compels them to study the Scriptures to very great disadvantage. In the Old Testament the word from which "soul" is translated is the Hebrew term nephesh, with just two exceptions--Job 30:15; Isa. 57:16. Nephesh is never translated "spirit." It is translated soul 473 times; life 118 times; person 29 times; mind 15 times; heart 15 times; body or dead body, 11 times; will 4 times; also appetite, lust, creature, etc, in all 44 different ways. This will give the reader a fair understanding of its real meaning. The great Hebrew scholar, Gesenius, thus defines nephesh: "1. Breath. 2. The vital spirit, as the Greek psychee; and the Latin anima, through which the body lives, i. e., the principle of life manifested in the breath. 3. The rational soul, mind, animus, as the seat of feelings, affections, and emotions. 4. (Concrete) a living thing, animal in which is the nephesh, life." Parkhurst, a distinguished lexicographer, says; "As a noun, nephesh hath been supposed to signify the spiritual part of man, or what we commonly call his soul. I must for myself confess that I can find no passage where it hath undoubtedly this meaning."

Soul, in the New Testament, comes from one Greek word, psychee, which means the same in Greek as nephesh does in Hebrew. Psychee is translated soul, 58 times; life, and lives, 40 times; mind, 3 times; heart, twice; us and you, once each. It is defined by Robinson to mean primarily, "The breath. Usually and in the New Testament, the vital breath. Latin, anima, life, through which the body lives and feels, i. e., the principle of life manifested in the breath. Hebrew, nephesh."

Greenfield says: "Psychee, breath, life, i. e., the animal soul, principle of life, state of being alive, existence, spoken of natural life." "That which has life, a living creature, living being."

The first and most common meaning of the word soul in the Bible is person -the whole man. The next most frequent meaning is life—the vital principle in man or beast. After this it means the mind, the affections, etc. But there is not a single instance where it means an immortal, undying principle in man, which can live in a conscious state when the body is dead.

1. The soul was made of dust. The very first thing that we learn, on the opening page of the Bible about the soul, is that it was made of the dust of the ground. "And 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. What became a living soul? The man that was made of dust. It does not say that God put a soul into the man's body, but that the man that was made of the dust became a living soul. Paul settles the matter in his comment on this very text. He says: "And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul." 1 Cor. 15:45. Then he explains it thus: "The first man is of the earth, earthy." Verse 47.

The first man was made of the earth. Kitto, in his Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, renders Gen. 2:7 as follows: "And Jehovah God formed the man dust from the ground, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living animal." On this he remarks: "We should be acting unfaithfully if we were to affirm" that "an immortal spirit" is "contained or implied in this passage." Vol. 1, p. 59. There is then no immortality here. The phrase, "living soul," is translated from the Hebrew nephesh, chaiyah. The very same words are used in chap. 1:20, 21, 30. "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the [nephesh chaiyah] moving creature that hath life," (Hebrew, "living soul;" marginal reading, "that hath soul.") "And God created great whales, and every living creature [Heb., nephesh, chaiyah -living soul] that moveth, which the waters bring forth." Verse 21.

"And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life." Verse 30. Margin, "a living soul," from the same original terms. "And out of the ground the Lord God formed

every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them, and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, [Heb., nephesh, chaiyah -living soul] that was the name thereof." Gen. 2:19. In verse 7, man is called a living soul; and in verse 19, all the beasts are called living souls too. See also Gen. 9:10, 12, 15, 16. Lev. 11:46.

Furst, perhaps the highest existing authority on the Hebrew language, in his concordance defines nephesh as "the soul, by which an animal lives, both of man and brute." It is too bad for the cause of truth that the translators have covered up these facts by rendering the same words one way when applied to man, and quite another when applied to beasts. "In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." Job 12:10. So every living thing has a soul. "A righteous man regardeth the life [Heb., nephesh -soul] of his beast." Prov. 15:10. "And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man; and every living soul died in the sea." Rev. 16:3. Thus we see that every living animal on the earth, in the air, or in the water, is called a living soul, the same as man. Does this prove that all these beasts are immortal? No; neither does it prove it for man.

2. The soul eats natural food. "I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off." Lev. 17:10. "I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." Luke 12:19. Of eating forbidden flesh, the Lord says: "The soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity." "The soul that eateth of the flesh of the sacrifice, . . . even that soul shall be cut off." Lev. 7:18, 20. If "thou shalt say, I will eat flesh, because my soul longeth to eat flesh, thou mayest eat flesh, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after." Deut. 12:20. We might quote any number of texts like the above, where it is said that souls eat blood, meat, food, and drink wine, water, etc. Then the soul must be a material thing. Some claim that the soul is an immaterial, immortal, intangible essence. These facts show that this cannot be true.

3. The soul hungers and faints. "Thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after." Deut. 12:15. "As cold water to a thirsty soul." Prov. 25:25. The soul thirsts for water. "Hungry and thirsty, their souls fainted in them." Ps. 107:5. Then the soul becomes hungry and thirsty, and faints if it is not fed. "When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord." Jonah 2:7. Both of these texts speak of the soul which is within a man, and they say that this soul faints. This does not look as though the soul was immortal.

4. The soul dries away. "But now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all besides this manna before our eyes." Num. 11:6. What caused their souls to dry away? Lack of the food they desired. It must be a perishable thing, then, as it is wholly dependent upon daily food for strength.

5. The sword can reach the soul. Speaking of war, the prophet says: "The sword reacheth unto the soul." Jer. 4:10. More than that, many a soul has been reached and killed by the sword. "And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them: there was not any left to breathe." Josh. 11:11. Here were many souls utterly destroyed by the sword. Then the soul must be material, else how could the sword cut it? Souls breathe air as well as eat food, as the above verse shows.

6. The soul fails. "For I will not contend forever, neither will I be always wroth; for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made." Isa. 57:16. God himself declares that the soul would fail, if he were always to visit his wrath upon it. This is positive proof that the soul could not endure eternal torment. It would fail and die in the trial. Then it is not immortal.

7. The soul is in danger of death. "Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee." Gen. 12:13. He feared they would murder him, and so his soul would die. So believed Abraham. And thus Lot plead with the angel: "Let me escape thither,. . . and my soul shall live." Gen. 19:20. His soul then was in danger of dying. And so the prophet warned the king: "Go forth unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live, and this city shall be burned with fire; and thou shalt live." Jer. 38:17. According to God's holy prophets, then, a man's soul is in danger of dying. "And Samson said, Let me [margin, my soul] die with the Philistines." Judges 16:30. "Let me [margin, my soul] die the death of the righteous." Num. 23:10. Any Hebrew scholar knows that in the original the Holy Scriptures often speak of the death of the soul. Our common translation covers up this fact largely.

8. The soul must be specially preserved by God, or it will die. The Scriptures upon this point are numerous and decisive. We will quote a few. "O bless our God . . . which holdeth our soul in life." Ps. 66:8, 9. "None can keep alive his own soul." Ps. 22:29. Then it is quite liable to die. "Thou hast delivered my soul from death." Ps. 56:13. "To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine." Ps. 33:19. If the soul cannot die, these texts are meaningless; but if it is mortal and subject to death, then they are easily understood.

9. God threatens the soul with death. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Ezek. 18:20. How then do men vainly say that the soul cannot die? Does not God know? If the soul were immortal, it could not die; but God says it shall die; hence it is mortal. Again; "When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive." Verse 27. "For pieces of bread to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live." Ezek. 13:19. Who can doubt that the soul can die?

10. The soul can be destroyed. "He that doeth it destroyeth his own soul." Prov. 6:32. "The same soul will I destroy." Lev. 23:30. "Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Matt. 10:28. Here again we see that the soul is not immortal, for it can be destroyed. Indeed, every wicked soul will be destroyed in hell. It will not simply be cast into hell, but it will be destroyed. That which is destructible is not immortal.