It is dimly prophesied and hoped for in the Old Testament, but clearly revealed in the New.įor both (5) and (6), the individual soul survives bodily death. This view, the supernatural resurrection of the body rather than the natural immortality of the soul alone, is the only version of life after death in Scripture. Resurrection: At death, the soul separates from the body and is reunited at the end of the world to its new, immortal, resurrected body by a divine miracle. This is Platonism, often confused with Christianity.Ħ. ![]() But what survives is an individual, bodiless spirit. This soul eventually reaches its eternal destiny of heaven or hell, perhaps through intermediate stages, perhaps through reincarnation. Immortality: The individual soul survives death, but not the body. The question is not solved but dissolved.ĥ. Therefore, in this view, the very question of what happens after death is mistaken. ![]() In this view-that of Eastern mysticism-all separateness, including time, is an illusion. Pantheism: Death changes nothing, for what survives death is the same as what was real before death: only the one, changeless, eternal, perfect, spiritual, divine, all-inclusive Reality, sometimes called by a name (“Brahman”) and sometimes not (as in Buddhism). Reincarnation is usually connected with the next belief, pantheism, by the notion of karma: that after the soul has fulfilled its destiny, and learned its lessons and become sufficiently enlightened, it reverts to a divine status or is absorbed into (or realizes its timeless identity with) the divine All.Ĥ. Reincarnation: The individual soul survives and is reincarnated into another body. It is something like a “ghost image” on a TV set: a pale copy of the lost original.ģ. The “ghost” that survives is less alive, less substantial, less real than the flesh and blood organism now living. Traces of it can be found even in the Old Testament Jewish notion of sheol. Paganism: A vague, shadowy semiself or ghost survives and goes to the place of the dead, the dark, gloomy Underworld. It is the natural accompaniment of atheism.Ģ. Seldom held before the eighteenth century, materialism is now a strong minority view in industrialized nations. The human race has come up with six basic theories about what happens to us when we die.ġ. ![]() The claim of some that they have information of past history is nothing more than some kind of encounter with demonic powers who have been present throughout history.īelow is information from A Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli. This statement and the concept that mankind’s creation in God’s image is unique from the animals and even angels stand totally opposed to the idea of reincarnation-dying and coming back as another person or in the form of an animal or insect. The emphatic statement of the Bible, as will be pointed out below, is that “it is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment” (Heb. Both categories of people will be resurrected, one to eternal judgment and the other to eternal life with a glorified body (John 5:25-29). ![]() The Bible teaches that at death, while man’s body is mortal, decays and returns to dust, his soul and spirit continue on either in a place of torments for those who reject Christ or in paradise (heaven) in God’s presence for those who have trusted in the Savior. He is presented as distinct and unique from all other creatures-angels and the animal kingdom alike. It shows that man is the special creation of God, created in God’s image with both a material body and an immaterial soul and spirit. The whole thrust of the Bible opposes reincarnation.
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