What is death? – Concordant Gospel Resources

This is part 4 of my Actual Good News series of articles on the topic of biblical soteriology (the study of salvation).

Please note that I’m including many of my scriptural references in the links (which are are the underlined words throughout the article), and they also link to studies with extended details that I couldn’t fit into the article, so please be sure to click all the supporting links in order to get the full picture, as well as all the Scripture references.

What is death? The answer to this question is simple: death is the absence of life. In fact, this is such a simple concept that a child could tell you this. At the end of the day, it takes religion or the occult (is there a difference?) to truly get someone to believe that death isn’t really death after all, but is instead actually life. (Religion also lies abut why we die, I should add, as we’ll learn in an upcoming article from this series.)

And if death is the absence of life, what is immortality? Well, it’s the opposite of death: life that can’t possibly ever end (or “life beyond the reach of death,” as many within the body of Christ like to put it). Of course, the fact that we still have to “put on immortality” in order to fully experience the salvation Paul wrote about means we’re not inherently immortal or “eternal” beings (in fact, Paul tells us that Christ Jesus is the only human to currently have immortality — no, I don’t believe this passage was talking about the Father, since otherwise it would seem to mean that Christ Himself, as well as the angels and other spiritual beings, could die at this point, so it appears it has to be a passage about a human and how that human is the only human who is currently immortal), but few Christians ever really stop to think about these facts particularly deeply, and so they just assume that we are inherently “eternal” and immortal, even if it’s just our souls which they assume are somehow naturally immortal.

The simple truth, however, is that immortality isn’t something we’re born with. We have to be given immortality, and it won’t be truly given to any of us until a very specific time in the future, which is all the proof one should need that no human can possibly suffer without end in the “hell” that the lake of fire will be located in, as the following points should make clear:

Immortality for humans is always connected with salvation in Scripture (only those who are finally experiencing salvation physically — in living bodies, with most of them having been resurrected from the dead first — will have “put on immortality,”or will have been made immortal, and whenever someone is made immortal it can then be said, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”, as far as they’re concerned, because death will have been swallowed up in victory for them).
Those who are going to be resurrected for the Great White Throne Judgement haven’t experienced salvation yet, so they’ll be raised as regular, mortal, biological humans.
Regular, mortal, biological humans who are set on fire burn up and die, presuming they aren’t rescued from the fire first.
There’s absolutely nothing in Scripture that tells us God will keep resurrecting people in the lake of fire perpetually so they can die over and over again without end after they’ve died a second time (which would make the lake of fire also the third and fourth and fifth deaths, and so-on-and-so-forth, rather than just the second death, which is all the Bible refers to it as in that context), and to insist that He will is quite clearly eisegesis, since there’s just nothing in the text that even implies it. (This also means that those Christians who have tried to deny a second resurrection of those who will die a second time in the lake of fire so they can be saved, by telling me, “Scripture doesn’t specifically say the words, ‘Those who die a second time in the lake of fire will also be resurrected a second time so they can be made immortal,’” can’t then turn around and say, “There’s a second and third and forth resurrection, and so-on-and-so-forth, so humans can suffer without end,” since they’ve already denied that Scripture says a second resurrection will take place at all.)

But even if humans can’t suffer in the “hell” that the lake of fire will be located in (and please read Part 2 of this series if you aren’t familiar with the meaning of that particular version of “hell” in the KJV), if we’re “eternal” beings, the way most Christians assume we are, we must still be able to suffer in another version of “hell,” which the unsaved will experience as ghosts after they die, right? This is what most Christians believe, anyway. And because of this, while “ye shall not surely die” might be the first recorded lie the devil told, it’s now being taught as truth by many people in the Christian religion who are trying to convince us that death isn’t actually death at all, but is instead actually life (“eternal life,” even), and that it’s really a friend bringing us to finally be with the Lord rather than an enemy that needs to be destroyed.

Based on all the sermons where I’ve heard preachers say things like, “When your heart stops beating, you won’t actually die; instead, you’ll move on to the next stage of your life, the place where you’ll spend the rest of eternity, and the location you’ll end up living in from that point forward depends on whether or not you choose to accept Christ before you pass on to that final destination,” it’s clear they’ve (at least temporarily) forgotten that nobody remains dead, since there’s still a resurrection of the dead in the future, prior to the Great White Throne Judgement (multiple resurrections, in fact, since for there to be a “first” resurrection, there has to also be a subsequent one, and we’re told that there indeed is one, in the passage immediately after the verses referring to the “first” resurrection), so the supposed afterlife “location” which one ends up in while they’re dead couldn’t be their final destination (presuming there even was an afterlife, of course). But in addition to this, it also demonstrates that they’re unaware of the fact that the Hebrew Scriptures (meaning the books of the Bible that are generally referred to as “the Old Testament”) tell us the dead know nothing, meaning they aren’t conscious at all (many Christians will do all sorts of theological and mental gymnastics trying to prove that these assertions made in Ecclesiastes don’t literally mean what they say, but there had been no passages in Scripture prior to those which said the dead are conscious, so there’s no basis for the idea that anyone who read these statements at the time they were written could have possibly understood that the writer instead meant the dead actually do have knowledge — although, for those who believe in the immortality of the soul, if Solomon was trying to get across to us that the dead don’t have knowledge, I’d like you to explain what he would have needed to have written differently there in order to convince you that he actually did mean they don’t have knowledge). Even in the Greek Scriptures (meaning the books of the Bible that are generally referred to as “the New Testament”), death is compared to sleep, not to being awake in an afterlife existence (outside of one very misunderstood story in the book of Luke, which I’ll discuss shortly). The book of Acts didn’t say Stephen died and went to heaven, for example. While his spirit was returned to God — not as a conscious being, though, because our spirit is just the breath of life that generates a conscious soul while in a body and isn’t conscious itself, since it’s actually our soul that is our consciousness, and spirits and souls aren’t the same thing — the book of Acts says that he himself went to sleep, not that he remained awake.

Scripture also says that David and others fell asleep — referring to their actual persons being asleep or unconscious in death — not that just their bodies decayed while they themselves remained conscious (when Scripture speaks of a person dying, it doesn’t just say their body died while they themselves continued to live; instead, it says that they themselves have died, and that the location of their very person is now “in the grave” or “in the dust,” in the very same place that everyone ends up, including all animals as well, in fact, and there’s no scriptural basis for reading these verses in any other way, at least not that I’m aware of — besides, if the immortality of the soul actually was a scriptural concept that Israelites believed is true back in “Old Testament” times, they themselves wouldn’t have implied in Scripture that the dead are unconscious and that they aren’t located in any other place than the ground). Similarly, bodily resurrection is likewise compared to waking up from sleep in Scripture, and not to a person being returned to their body to continue to be awake as they supposedly still were while they slept as well.

It’s important to remember that consciousness, at least for biological beings such as humans, can cease to exist, since one can be rendered unconscious, either by going to sleep, by fainting, or by being knocked out (and when someone is unconscious, they are no longer conscious, meaning they are no longer aware of themselves and their surroundings, which means their consciousness has temporarily ceased to exist, which is something I can’t believe I have to explain, but somehow many people I’ve discussed this with seem to miss this fact, so here we are), and if we can lose our consciousness under those common circumstances, with it ceasing to exist while we’re alive (which means we aren’t in a never-ending state of consciousness), there’s no reason to believe our consciousness could return after we die without a living and active brain to bring it back into existence the way our brains do when we awaken from unconsciousness, thus regaining consciousness. To make this really clear, let’s say that somebody was sleeping, and hence had no consciousness existing at that point (and before someone brings up REM sleep and dreaming, the subconscious processes of a physical brain that cause us to dream while we’re asleep aren’t the same thing as the consciousness we have while we’re awake, nor is there any reason to believe the neurological processes that generate dreams can occur without a living, biological brain; and one doesn’t dream the whole time they’re asleep anyway — in fact, we only dream about 20% of the time we’re asleep at night, so for approximately one third of our lives, give or take, we aren’t conscious at all), or was even knocked unconscious with a hard object or sedated for surgery. If they were to suddenly die right then while unconscious (and this hypothetical person is not in a state of REM sleep, and hence isn’t dreaming in this scenario, just to remove any doubt), would their consciousness just pop back into existence at the point of their death? There’s absolutely no reason to think it would, and the idea that death can recreate a consciousness that had stopped existing (as would be the case if this happened) really makes no sense at all.

But getting back to Scripture, it’s also important to remember that the first time those in the body of Christ are said to meet the Lord is going to be in the air in our newly quickened (meaning immortal) bodies (while living members of the Israel of God will do so at the Second Coming, and dead members of the Israel of God will do so at the resurrection of the just, 75 days after the Tribulation ends — and please compare the numbers in Daniel 12:11–13 to the numbers in Revelation 13:5 if you aren’t familiar with the 75 day difference between the end of the Tribulation and the resurrection of the just, because this is an important difference which proves that the quickening of the body of Christ takes place prior to the Second Coming, or at least prior to the resurrection of the just), which is the point from when we’re said to finally “ever be with the Lord” (and not from a previous point such as our physical death, which would be when those in the body of Christ actually began to “ever be with the Lord” if the immortality of the soul were true). In fact, the blessed hope we’re told to comfort one another with isn’t that the dead get to live happily with the Lord as ghosts in another dimension called heaven, but is rather the expectation that the dead in Christ will eventually be physically resurrected, and that all of us in the body of Christ (both those still living and those newly resurrected) will then be quickened and caught up together in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, which is when we’ll finally be in the heavens. (And the reference to “them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” in verse 14 is just talking about the spirits of the dead members of the body of Christ that had “returned to God” now coming back to rejoin their bodies, and isn’t meant to imply that they were already enjoying being “ever with the Lord” in heaven, since our spirits aren’t actually conscious, and the verse said “them also which sleep in Jesus,” not “them also which are awake in an afterlife in Jesus” anyway; remember, it’s our souls that are our consciousness, generated by a brain in a body which is being kept alive by our spirit, and our soul can’t exist so long as our spirit is not residing within our physical body, keeping our brain alive.) It’s important to remember that the reason Paul even brought this up to begin with was to comfort those who had lost loved ones to death. If the immortality of the soul were true, he would have instead needed to have written something more along the lines of, “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which are awake in an afterlife in Jesus are with Him now, enjoying the bliss of heaven, which is where you’ll go to ever be with the Lord when you sleep as well. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

Of course, Paul also makes it quite clear that the immortality of the soul can’t be true when he wrote, “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable,” in 1 Corinthians 15:16-19, as well as when he talked about all the dangers he faced while evangelizing, and pointed out that there would be no reason for him to do so if there were no resurrection from the dead, because if there was no resurrection, then nobody could be saved, in which case he might as well just go live life without worrying about evangelizing. This wouldn’t be true if those who are saved go to another dimension called heaven when they die. The fact that we don’t is why he could make that claim: because without the physical resurrection we would have absolutely no hope at all, since we would cease to exist for good (we wouldn’t even have the hope of continuing on as ghosts in another dimension called “heaven” with God, since those who died in Christ would have “perished,” meaning they’re no longer existing at all, and have no hope of ever existing again either, according to this passage), which was basically the entire reason Paul wrote that chapter in his first epistle to the Corinthians to begin with.

In addition, we know that not only has David himself not gone to heaven, at least not as of the time Peter made that speech recorded in Acts 2 (which was after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, which means we also have no reason to believe he’s ended up there since then), but that nobody other than Christ Himself had either as of the time John wrote that assertion in his commentary in the book of John, which was also after Jesus ascended into heaven (Jesus’ “red letters” quote should probably end at verse 12 based on the fact that verse 13 says the Son of man was in heaven at that point, which we know Jesus wasn’t at the time He had that discussion with Nicodemus, so everything from verse 13 to 21 presumably had to have been John’s personal commentary on the topic, written after Jesus had left the earth; it’s important to remember that the book of John was a theology book rather than a history book and, unlike the Synoptic Gospels, used historical quotes of Jesus to prove theological points instead of primarily being a historical record in and of itself the way the three Synoptic Gospels were, and that John often added his own commentary to the book, even though this commentary would have indeed been inspired by God), so it seems pretty obvious that life in heaven is only for those who have been made immortal, and isn’t for those who are currently dead.

In fact, if people were to remain conscious after death, God would cease to be their God while they waited for their physical resurrection, since He is not a God of the dead, but of the living, which would make things strange for people in the supposed afterlife if they no longer had a God (although, if the immortality of the soul were true, that would be a good explanation as to why the dead can no longer praise God, or even remember that He exists, since He’d no longer be their God while they were still dead). Strangely enough, though, some Christians actually try to use this statement to support their view that the dead remain conscious, mistakenly thinking that Jesus’ statement meant the dead aren’t actually dead, but are actually still alive. If they just took the time to examine the context of the whole passage in the book of Luke, however, they’d discover that it was really about how the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in a physical resurrection of dead bodies in the future, were trying to trip Jesus up with a question about who a hypothetical person would be married to after being resurrected from the dead during the impending kingdom in the next age, when the kingdom of heaven exists in Israel for 1,000 years (although it’s translated as “that world” in the KJV; as already mentioned in some of the previous articles in this series, the word “world,” at least in the KJV, doesn’t always mean “planet” or “earth,” but in many cases — including this one in Luke, since it was translated from the Greek αἰών/“ahee-ohn’” here as well — it’s a synonym for “age,” meaning “a long period of time with a definite beginning and end,” which is why most Bible versions translate αἰών as “age” rather than “world” in this passage). To put it simply, they weren’t asking about a ghost in an afterlife dimension and whether or not she’d have to be polygamous in that imaginary realm, but were asking their question about her various marriages in order to make the idea of physical resurrection seem ridiculous. However, Jesus corrected them by not only pointing out that those people who are going to be resurrected from the dead at the beginning of that “world”/age will be immortal like the angels and hence will not be married anymore at that time (because procreation, which was normally done by married people in Israel, isn’t something immortal beings are meant to do, as we know from Genesis 6 — look up the Nephilim if you aren’t familiar with what I’m referring to, because that’s too big of a tangent for me to explain at this point), but also by using the fact that the Lord could not legitimately claim the title of “the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,”as Moses revealed Him to be, if the dead weren’t going to be physically resurrected someday, because He’s technically not the God of those who are currently dead, but is instead only the God of the living (Jesus was using prolepsis in that statement — prolepsis, as mentioned in Part 1 of this series, being a common figure of speech used throughout the Bible which means “the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished,” calling what is not yet as though it already were, in other words, as God Himself often does — in order to prove that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will definitely be resurrected someday, because otherwise that statement about them would have been a lie since it would mean they’ll never exist again, when in fact “all live unto him” already, considering the fact that, as far as God is concerned, they’ve already been physically resurrected, at least from His timeless perspective — meaning, because God ultimately transcends space and time, He not only exists in our time, but He’s also already existing at the point in time when these three patriarchs will be resurrected as well).

The passage just can’t be read as saying the three of them were actually still alive at the time that Jesus made that statement. Verse 37 of Luke 20 (“…that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush…”) makes it very clear that Jesus is talking about the fact that these three patriarchs would eventually be physically resurrected, not that they’re actually still alive in another dimension (He didn’t say, “that the dead are living in another dimension”; He said, “that the dead are raised,” referring to a future resurrection). Jesus’ whole point is that, if they aren’t going to be raised from the dead to live again, God could not be said to be their God, because He isn’t the God of the dead but of the living. If they were actually still alive in some afterlife realm, God would have still been their God from a literal perspective rather than just a proleptic perspective at that time (and they could still thank and praise Him, contrary to what the book of Psalms says), but Jesus’ whole point was that, without a physical resurrection, He couldn’t be their God, since they’re dead and will never exist again if they aren’t going to be resurrected. Because they will be resurrected, however, God actually can be said to be their God, even if only from a proleptic perspective at present, at least as far as those of us who are bound by time are concerned.

There’s just no way to read verses 37 and 38 as meaning anything other than Jesus saying that those who have “gone to sleep” are indeed dead and unconscious until their resurrection, because the only way that Moses’ statement about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could possibly be used as proof of a physical resurrection from the dead in the future is if the three of them have ceased to live and consciously retain knowledge for the time being. If the three of them are actually still alive in an afterlife dimension somewhere, and if Jesus’ statement about God being the God of the living rather than the God of the dead was actually Him trying to prove the idea that God is still their God because they’re actually still alive somewhere, then the resurrection of the dead would be entirely unnecessary for God to be their God, and Jesus’ argument couldn’t possibly help prove a future resurrection at all, which means they have to no longer exist as conscious beings for now or else Jesus’ entire argument proves nothing as far as what the Sadducees were challenging Him on goes. Of course, Jesus’ statement in Matthew 22:31-32 makes this even more obvious, since Jesus is recorded in that book as saying, “But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,” making it clear that His statement about God not being the God of the dead, but of the living, is entirely about bodily resurrection (when Jesus said, “the living,” He could only have been referring to living in a physical body in the future and not to ghosts currently “living” in an afterlife realm, based on both this passage in Matthew and the one we looked at in Luke).

However, before moving on, if you still believe in the immortality of the soul after reading about Jesus’ discussion with the Sadducees, I’d like you to explain how, exactly, Jesus’ argument about God not being the God of the dead, but rather of the living, could possibly prove a future resurrection if His statement meant that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob actually are still alive in an afterlife realm somewhere. Because, unless you can do so, this statement by Jesus seems to be definitive proof that the dead aren’t actually conscious, and that no other passage in Scripture which one might believe teaches a conscious afterlife can possibly actually be intended to be interpreted that way, which means all the other “proof texts” people use to try to prove the immortality of the soul have to be interpreted in a different manner from the way most people traditionally interpret them.

And speaking of dead “Old Testament” saints, one of those “proof texts” is the story of the appearance of Moses and Elias (also known as Elijah) on “the Mount of Transfiguration,” which many Christians use to try to argue that the dead are indeed still conscious. But aside from the fact that this would make Jesus guilty of the sin of necromancy if He was talking to the ghosts of these two dead men (and Jesus never sinned, so it’s clear that this couldn’t have been what was happening there), we know that this was simply a vision to fulfill the prophecy which Jesus made immediately before this passage that they would “see the Son of man coming in his kingdom”(which is exactly what happened when they had that vision of Jesus in the glorified form He’ll exist in when the kingdom of heaven comes fully into fruition in Israel in the future), because Jesus outright said that it was just a vision.

And before someone tries to use Saul’s visit to the witch of Endor to prove the immortality of the soul, whatever the witch saw (remember, Saul didn’t see anything here), she described it as “gods ascending out of the earth,” so this was far more likely to have been a spiritual being of some sort than actually being Samuel (although the way this sort of thing was performed back then, from what I’ve been led to understand, involved a witch looking into a pit and pretending to speak to the dead in the pit, so I suppose it’s possible that God temporarily resurrected Samuel from the dead in that pit, but that wouldn’t prove the immortality of the soul either since he wouldn’t have been dead while in that pit).

Those aren’t the only passages they misuse, though, to try to prove the immortality of the soul. For example, many like to also claim that Paul said, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” Aside from the fact that this isn’t actually what Paul said at all (his actual words in 2 Corinthians 5:8 — at least as translated in the KJV — were, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord”), if you look at the context of what he said in the previous verses, and also remember that a physical resurrection in an immortal, glorified body is what Paul was, and the living members of the body of Christ currently are (or at least should be), looking forward to, you can see that he was figuratively comparing our current mortal bodies to earthly houses, and saying that he was looking forward to no longer being “at home” in his mortal body, but instead wanted to be at home in his glorified “house not made with hands.” When Paul talked about “houses” and “homes” in these verses, as well as when he referred to being clothed there, he was talking about physical bodies, with the “house not made with hands” being a reference to his future immortal body, not to him existing as a ghost in another dimension after he dies. And so, when he wrote that he was “willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord,” he couldn’t possibly have been talking about hoping he’d die so he would be with Jesus, since he specifically wrote in verses 3 and 4 that he was not hoping for death at all (when he wrote that he wasn’t looking to be “naked” or “unclothed”), but rather that he was hoping to be given an immortal body, or to be “clothed upon” (“with our house which is from heaven,” as he explained in verse 2) so that “mortality might be swallowed up of life,” confirming that this whole passage is about mortal bodies vs immortal bodies rather than about existing as ghosts in an ethereal afterlife dimension, and that he simply meant he was looking forward to trading in his mortal body for his future immortal body, which won’t happen until the Snatching Away, which is what those of us in the body of Christ call the event when we specifically will be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air (and which should not be conflated with the Second Coming, which is when Jesus returns for the Israel of God instead, about seven years later, give or take).

This is similar to the way they misuse Paul’s quote that, for him specifically at that particular time (it’s important to note that this verse isn’t talking about believers in general, but was about Paul’s unenviable circumstances at the time he wrote these words), “to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” to try to prove that he believed his death would bring him immediately to be with Christ in heaven, once again ignoring the context of the verses before these words, not to mention the verses after them as well, and the context of the surrounding verses make it pretty obvious that the “gain” Paul was referring to there would be a gain to the furtherance of the message he was preaching while in bonds, which his martyrdom would surely accomplish (the idea that the “gain” referred to going to heaven as a ghost is reading one’s presuppositions about the immortality of the soul into the passage). I’ll admit, verses 22 and 23 in the KJV aren’t the easiest for people today to understand (17th-century English isn’t something modern people always find easy to grasp), and some people will assume that by, “yet what I shall choose I wot not,” Paul meant he hadn’t yet decided which option he was going to select, as if it was up to him. But whether he lived or died wasn’t actually up to him at all — it was up to the Roman government (at least from a relative perspective, although it was ultimately up to God from an absolute perspective). Literally all Paul was saying there is that he wasn’t going to let it be known whether he’d personally rather continue living as a prisoner in bonds, which seemed to be helping the word to be spread more boldly, or whether he’d prefer to die and let his martyrdom help the cause even more than his state as a prisoner was doing, and that he was pretty much “stuck between a rock and a hard place” either way (which is basically all that “in a strait betwixt two” means), since his only options at that point appeared to be equally undesirable for him as an individual, which is why he then went on to say that he’d prefer a third option over either of the seemingly available two options, which was “having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better,” because if Christ were to come for His body while Paul was still alive, he wouldn’t have to suffer through either of the two options, but would instead get to depart the earth without dying, to “ever be with the Lord” in the heavens in an immortal body, which is a far superior option to living as a prisoner in a mortal body or to being put to death. He couldn’t possibly have been referring to dying and being with Christ in an afterlife when he wrote, “having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ,” since he’d just finished telling his readers that he wasn’t going to say whether he’d rather live or die, and that neither of the two likely options were particularly desirable for him (although he did conclude that, regardless of his preference, it seemed he was going to continue living for the time being anyway). Now, some Bible translations do make it look like he simply couldn’t decide whether he’d prefer to live or die, but he outright said that his desire was “to depart,” so those translations don’t actually make any sense if “to depart” meant “to die.” Besides, he’d already told the Corinthians that he didn’t want to be “unclothed,” meaning he didn’t want to die, but instead wanted to be “clothed upon” with the immortal body that he’ll only receive when he’s quickened, so either way, the traditional interpretation of this verse just doesn’t work. Bottom line, there’s simply no excuse for interpreting it in a way that contradicts the rest of Scripture, which the teaching that Paul would live on after his death and “ever be with the Lord” from that point rather than from the time the body of Christ is caught up together to meet the Lord in the air does in spades. It’s easy to get confused about verses like this if you ignore the context of both the surrounding verses and of Scripture as a whole, but once someone comes to realize the truth that death is actually death, and that “ye shall not surely die” is a satanic lie, they can then begin to interpret these passages in ways that are consistent with the rest of Scripture.

Christians don’t only misquote Paul in order to try to prove the immortality of the soul, however. Many also misquote Jesus as well, making Him out to have said, “If you die in your sins, where I go, you cannot come” (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Christians think they’re quoting Jesus by using those exact words, but it’s a lot). This isn’t what Jesus said at all, though. He actually said, “I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come” (or at least, that’s how the KJV renders it). First of all, this was a proclamation of fact, not an if/then proposition, as many misunderstand it to be (it helps to notice the plural “ye” in Jesus’ statement, since He was talking to, and about, unbelieving Pharisees at the time, prophesying that all those Pharisees hearing that statement would indeed die in their sins). Now, yes, in a follow-up statement (in John 8:24) He did say, “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins,” but aside from what I already pointed out (that the Pharisees to whom Jesus made the first prophetic statement definitely would die in their sins), this doesn’t help prove the immortality of the soul either. All it proves is that the Pharisees couldn’t follow Jesus to heaven (which isn’t an afterlife realm at all, as I’ll discuss in more detail soon) — presuming that’s even the destination He was referring to — but instead they’d die while seeking to be saved by their Messiah when they needed Him most (almost certainly a reference to their desire to be delivered by their Messiah from the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 when it finally happened to them about forty years later, and how they’d seek their Messiah in vain at that time, and would die in their state of sin while looking, although not even the writer of the book of John would have known that this is what Jesus meant).

Likewise, they misread passages such as Revelation 6:9–11 to defend the idea of the immortality of the soul as well, but if this passage were meant to be read literally it would mean that martyred ghosts are all trapped underneath an altar rather than enjoying life in heaven, and that these ghosts can wear physical clothing. This passage — taken from a very figurative book of the Bible — is obviously meant to be interpreted figuratively, with the “souls” of the martyrs no more literally talking to God than Abel’s soul was talking to God from the dirt in Genesis 4:9–10 (which would have been just as unusual a place for a soul to reside, if the immortality of the soul were true, as it would be for a soul to reside underneath an altar until its resurrection), especially when taking everything else we’ve just covered into consideration.

Some also attempt to argue that the reference to the Gospel having been preached to them that are dead, as 1 Peter 4:6 mentions, means the dead must be conscious. At this point it should go without saying, based on all the passages we’ve already looked at, that there’s no question the dead are unconscious, so any passages one brings up to try to argue that they remain conscious have to be interpreted in light of the facts we’ve already covered, which means that the people mentioned in this passage who had the Gospel preached to them had to have still been physically alive at the time it was preached to them, meaning the Gospel was preached to them, and they then died at a later point.

In addition, some also like to quote Hebrews 9:27 in order to argue for the existence of a conscious afterlife, because they believe it means that each individual will experience their judgement immediately after they die. This verse can’t be saying that at all, however, because we know that the judgement of individuals who have died won’t take place until after they’ve been physically resurrected from the dead at the Great White Throne (presuming they aren’t in the body of Christ, in which case they have an entirely different “judgement,” so to speak), so anyone who tries to use this verse to prove an afterlife is forgetting this minor detail. On top of that, though, this verse can’t actually be talking about humans as a whole at all, because that would contradict the rest of Scripture if it was, considering the fact that many people were recorded as being resurrected throughout the Bible who later would have died a second time as well, prior to their judgement (unless you believe that Lazarus and everyone else raised from the dead are still alive today), so whatever this verse is talking about, it can’t mean that humans only die once either, thus confirming that pretty much all of the traditional interpretations of the verse are incorrect. As for what this verse is talking about, it’s actually a callback to the death of high priests as mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures (specifically in the books of Numbers and Joshua, as any Israelite reading a book called Hebrews back when it was written should have recognized), based on the context of the rest of the chapter, as well as the existence of the Definite Article before the word “men” in the verse (while considering the context should make it obvious without having to look at the original Greek, at least for those who are familiar with the passages in Numbers and Joshua that I just referred to, doing so does make it clear that the writer of Hebrews had to have meant, “it is appointed unto the men once to die,” referring only to the death of certain men rather than to the death of all humans, specifically the high priests of Israel — including Jesus, of course — based on the mention of the high priest in verse 25, as well as all the other references to Jesus’ death throughout the rest of the chapter, not to mention the fact that the death and judgement of any other humans just doesn’t fit the context of the chapter in any possible way whatsoever). Whenever a high priest died, there was a judgement which resulted in the freedom of certain Israelite sinners, as mentioned in those passages in the books of Numbers and Joshua, and Jesus’ death as high priest resulted in the freedom of even more Israelites, which is all that this verse is getting at.

Still, other Christians will also point to a certain type of passage that they read their assumptions regarding the immortality of the soul into, in order to claim Scripture teaches the doctrine, such as the prophecy to Abram (Abraham) in Genesis 15:15, for example, which says, “And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace,” and if one weren’t aware of everything we’ve just covered, and they assumed that there is an afterlife realm which the dead end up in, it’s easy to see how somebody could read that assumption into this statement, concluding that his ancestors are in this afterlife realm, and that he would eventually join them there as well. However, there isn’t anything in the verse that actually says his fathers were in any sort of afterlife realm at all — the idea that an afterlife realm is where they were located is nothing more than an assumption one has to read into the text based on doctrinal presuppositions — and based on what we’ve now learned, they couldn’t possibly have been in one, since we now know that the dead are simply unconscious in the grave. And this fact is also confirmed in the second half of the verse, which tells us that the grave is exactly where they were, giving us the location of his fathers which Abraham would eventually go to, when it says, “thou shalt be buried in a good old age.” What most people don’t realize is that this verse is using a figure of speech known as a Synonymous Parallelism, which is where the second part of a passage in Scripture confirms, and even clarifies, what the first part is saying, using slightly different wording, in this case by telling us that Abraham would end up being buried with his ancestors after he’d lived to an old age, which means that these sorts of passages are simply talking about physical death and burial, and that they can’t be used to defend the doctrine of the immortality of the soul at all.

I’ve also heard certain Christians claim that when Job said, “But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost,” and when he then asked, “and where is he?”, that he was wondering where the dead are residing while remaining in a conscious state. But the truth is, he was simply speaking rhetorically to point out that the hypothetical dead man no longer exists, since he made it very clear in the next few verses that he believed the dead are indeed gone, at least until their future resurrection, by answering his own rhetorical question, saying, “As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.” This response by Job to his own question — along with his later statement that he was looking forward to seeing God with his own physical eyes after his resurrection, and not that he was looking forward to doing so in an afterlife realm — should make it pretty obvious that he didn’t believe anyone who is dead is actually still awake or living at the time they “sleep.”

And some Christians also try to argue that the prophecy which says, “Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee,” in Isaiah 14:9–11 proves that there’s a conscious afterlife which some people might suffer in as well, but when you consider the facts we’ve already looked at, and also consider the original Hebrew this passages was written in, it should be pretty obvious that the English word “hell” here is being used as metonymy for “grave” (at least in Bible versions that use the word “hell” in this passage; many use a transliteration of “sheol” instead, since “hell” is translated from the Hebrew word שְׁאוֹל/“sheh-ole’” in this passage in the KJV), as the inclusion of the word “grave” in verse 11, not to mention the references to worms — which are creatures that consume corpses — should also make pretty clear. This passage was simply using the figure of speech known as personification (something done multiple times in Scripture, including in this very book by the same prophet) to taunt the king of Babylon (no, the reference to “Lucifer” in that passage in the KJV isn’t talking about Satan, as most people have mistakenly assumed it is because they haven’t read the whole chapter particularly carefully), pointing out that even someone as proud and powerful as this king ends up in the same place that nearly everyone else ends up in (the grave). And since we already know that the dead are unconscious, the reference to the other dead kings speaking to him is just more figurative language, letting this very human king know that he’d end up in the same place as them (unless you believe the other dead kings mentioned in the passage are sitting on literal thrones and ruling over an afterlife realm called “hell,” but I’m trusting that you can see just how figurative this whole passage is, and recognize that the word “hell” in this passage is obviously not referring to the inescapable place of conscious torment which most Christians believe in, especially considering the fact that nothing in the Hebrew Scriptures had ever threatened never-ending torture — much less torture in fire — prior to this prophecy, including in any other passages which used the word “hell” in them, so there’s no way that anyone who read it when it was written could have possibly interpreted this passage as talking about never-ending torment in fire either).

Some people will also bring up verses such as Psalm 139:8 and Amos 9:2 to try to prove that the Bible teaches an afterlife existence (with the word “hell” in both verses in the KJV also being translated from שְׁאוֹל; although it is, of course, transliterated as “sheol” in many other Bible versions as well). Based on everything we’ve already looked at, however, the usage of שְׁאוֹל in these verses can’t mean that ghosts actually exist consciously in this “location,” at least not without contradicting everything else we’ve now learned. If you read the verses in the context of the passages they’re a part of, it becomes obvious that שְׁאוֹל is simply being used figuratively in these verses to refer to hidden underground caverns in order to tell us that there isn’t anywhere in the universe that God isn’t, and that it wasn’t being used to teach the concept of an afterlife realm called “sheol” or “hell” at all.

However, the main passage that Christians try to use to defend the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and this is really the one and only passage in the entire Bible that can possibly be used to even try to defend this doctrine, at least as far as I can find, since it’s the only passage in Scripture which actually seems to suggest that the dead might really be conscious (I don’t count the passage about the king of Babylon we looked at as actually suggesting this, since anybody paying attention when reading it can see that it’s obviously very figurative), and this is quite problematic for the popular doctrine, all things considered, especially since it only seems to suggest that the dead might really be conscious, and only when we take it at face value, because when one looks at the details of the passage a little closer, as we’re going to do, it quickly becomes apparent that it isn’t saying this at all. This passage in the book of Luke does use the word “hell” in the KJV (although many English Bible versions use the transliteration of “hades” instead, because this particular “hell” was translated from the Greek ᾅδης/“hah’-dace” in the KJV, which also happens to be the Greek translation of the Hebrew word שְׁאוֹל that we just looked at in Isaiah 14), but it’s obviously about a whole other “hell” than the one where the lake of fire will be located, since that one is going to be a physical “hole” (or valley) here on earth, and this one appears to refer to an afterlife realm of some sort (at least if one takes this story literally), which means it doesn’t seem like much about that “hell” can be applied to this one, and vice versa (although there actually is a connection one can make between the two, at least in this case, which I’ll explain shortly). And so, even if this passage were meant to be taken literally, it couldn’t be used to prove never-ending torment the way some Christians try to use it, because Revelation 20:13 tells us that anyone who is in the version of “hell” translated from the Greek ᾅδης will eventually leave it when they’re resurrected from the dead so they can be judged at the Great White Throne, and then possibly cast into the version of “hell” known as the lake of fire to die a second time, and since the “hell” translated from ᾅδης is also said to be cast into the lake of fire, according to the very next verse (which I believe is referring figuratively to being the only place people will die, or at least the only place where the dead will be located, from then on), and because something can’t be cast into itself, figuratively or otherwise, we know that this particular “hell” and the lake of fire can’t possibly be the same thing. (This also means that anyone in the “hell” that’s translated from שְׁאוֹל in the Hebrew Scriptures will also eventually leave it, because it’s the same “hell” being referred to in this passage in Revelation, which we know from the fact that Acts 2:27 — which translated “hell” from the Greek ᾅδης in the KJV — was quoting Psalm 16:10 — which translated “hell” from the Hebrew שְׁאוֹל in the KJV.)

At the end of the day, though, all the passages we’ve already covered make it quite clear that the dead can’t be conscious, which means there’s absolutely no way Jesus could have possibly meant for this story in the book of Luke to have been interpreted literally, at least not without contradicting the rest of the Bible (not to mention basic common sense about how consciousness works, as we’ve also already discussed), since to do so would mean the rich man and Lazarus actually were alive while dead, contrary to what all the passages we just looked at say. Besides, if we were to interpret this story literally, we’d have to believe that Lazarus was sitting inside Abraham’s chest, that there’s actually physical water and fire which intangible ghosts can interact with, and that there’s even gravity which they’re subject to, somehow keeping them from floating over a “great gulf,” even though there’s no matter there to be affected by gravity, since ghosts wouldn’t be made of the same sort of “material” that the living are made of (and this also brings up the question of how they even got to their respective sides of the supposedly uncrossable chasm, if this story were describing an actual afterlife realm, and why one couldn’t exit this “hell” the same way they entered it in order to re-enter it on the other side, especially since we know that everyone in the actual, literal “hell” translated from ᾅδης one day will “exit” it in order to be resurrected). Not to mention, if we did take the story literally, we’d have to believe that the rich all go to a place called hell when they die, while the poor all get saved, since there’s literally zero indication in this story that Lazarus was a believer. The reason Jesus said Lazarus went to “Abraham’s bosom” seemed to be entirely because of his suffering as a beggar, not because He’d accepted Christ as his Saviour or anything like that — and likewise, the reason the rich man was said to be suffering in “hell” was because he got to enjoy good things during his life, and not because he rejected Jesus (there was no indication that either Lazarus or the rich man had ever heard of Jesus, or even that Lazarus was a particularly virtuous man who kept the Mosaic law, if you want to try to look for other possible reasons for him getting to enjoy a better afterlife than the rich man in this story; in fact, Jesus didn’t explain anywhere in the story how to experience the positive afterlife that Lazarus got enjoy, or what to do in order to avoid ending up in the “hell” that the rich man in the story ended up in, which you’d think He would have done if this was meant to be a warning about how to avoid a negative afterlife in order to experience a positive one). The fact of the matter is, no Christians actually believe any of that, which means they’re already basically interpreting the story entirely figuratively to begin with (not to mention reading numerous assumptions into the text in order to make the story fit with the theological traditions they learned from their religious teachers), so they should really just finally acknowledge that it’s 100% figurative, since they already read it that way anyway (even if they haven’t realized that they’re doing so), meant to convey a message that had nothing to do with an afterlife at all, and everything to do with potentially missing out on getting to enjoy life in the kingdom of God when it begins in Israel, just like most of Jesus’ other warnings were about, especially in light of everything else we’ve covered about the state of the dead. Jesus was basically just using this figurative story to let his audience know that the kingdom of God would be taken from the religious leadership in Israel, meaning the covetous Pharisees who were listening to him tell this story, as well as the chief priests, which the purple and fine linen on the rich man tells us he represented in this story, and that it will be given to other, “lesser” Israelites — meaning Jesus’ “lowly” disciples, along with other Israelites who are among “the least of these,” currently scattered among the nations, possibly not even realizing yet that they’re actually Israelites — who will form “a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” in the land of Israel at the time they’re resurrected from the dead at the resurrection of the just, or if they’ve “endured to the end” and survived the Tribulation, especially if they’re among the 144,000 Israelites spread among the nations who will be sealed at that time (and the fact that some Israelites will miss out on enjoying life in the kingdom at that time is the connection between the two “hells” I mentioned earlier, since this is a story meant to convey that the religious leaders will miss out on enjoying life in the kingdom when it begins in Israel, with ending up dead in the “hell” known as the lake of fire for a period of time being at least one of the possible things that will keep them from it). Please note that I’m not insisting this is a parable, however (even though it almost certainly is one), because if I did, some Christians would argue that it can’t be a parable based on the fact that Jesus mentioned someone by name in the story, and because He’d never done so in any other parables before. And while this is a really weak argument, rather than get into that whole debate I’ll just say, since we know that basically nothing Jesus said in this passage can be read literally anyway, parable or not, it’s still entirely figurative, and leave it at that.

So, rather than going to literal afterlife realms called heaven or hell after we die, Scripture instead tells us that death is a return:

The body returns to the dust, meaning to the ground.
The soul returns to “hell,” meaning to nonexistence. The phrase “shall be turned into” in Psalm 9:17 in the KJV is simply a poetic translation of the Hebrew שׁוּב/“shoob,” which literally means “is returned to,” telling us that one’s soul does a U-turn back into some place or state referred to as the “hell” which is also transliterated as “sheol” in other Bible versions, since this “hell” is also translated from the Hebrew שְׁאוֹל. This verse just tells us that our sense of feeling and our consciousness (our “soul,” in other words) returns to the nonexistence from whence it came, which is all that most of the passages in the KJV which talk about people going to a place called “hell” after they die are referring to, be it passages where “hell” is translated from the Hebrew שְׁאוֹל or from the Greek ᾅδης (for those who aren’t aware, there’s no such “thing” as a soul, per se, but rather “soul” is just a word that’s used in the Bible as metonymy for our sense of feeling and/or our consciousness; for example, Scripture tells us that the “soul” of the flesh is in the blood, although the KJV translates it as “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” but if you dig a bit deeper you’ll discover that the word “life” there has the same root word translated as “soul” twice more in the same verse — נֶפֶשׁ/“neh’-fesh,” which is the Hebrew word that’s also translated as ψυχή/“psoo-khay’” in the Greek Scriptures — telling us that our sense of feeling and consciousness is dependent upon our blood while we live in these mortal bodies, which can be demonstrated by the fact that, when one loses blood to a part of their body, they lose feeling in that part of the body until the blood rushes back into it, or by how when someone loses enough blood they’ll lose consciousness and die, which could be why the KJV translators used “life” as metonymy for “soul” in that verse). Oh, and before someone brings up the fact that Psalm 9:17 is talking about “the wicked,” keep in mind that it still tells us they’ll return to “hell,” which means they had to have come from there to begin with. So regardless of who this particular verse is talking about, it still means that the “hell” which people “end up in” after they die can’t be what most Christians assume it is because it tells us that they’ve already “been there” before, figuratively speaking, meaning their consciousness/“soul” didn’t exist at one time, and it will return to that state of nonexistence again in the future, with their “soul” being figuratively “hidden or unseen” at that point, which is why it’s said that one’s soul is in “hell” when one dies, since one of the meanings of the English word “hell” is “unseen” or “place where something/someone is unseen” (and which is why the Hebrew שְׁאוֹל and the Greek ᾅδης are also both sometimes translated as “the unseen” instead of “hell,” depending on your Bible version).
The spirit returns to God Who gave it, although not as a conscious entity, since human spirits aren’t conscious on their own without a body. “Soul” (feeling and consciousness) is an emergent property of combining a human spirit with a body — as happened in Genesis 2:7 — just like combining the colours yellow and blue results in the colour green (our spirit is our “breath of life” in that verse in Genesis, with the word “spirit” being translated from the Hebrew רוּחַ/“roo’-akh” and its Greek equivalent πνεῦμα/“pnyoo’-mah” in the Bible, which also literally mean “breath” or “wind,” and which are also translated that way at times as well, including in that verse I was just referring to, but it doesn’t experience consciousness when it’s not inside a physical body).

This presents quite a dilemma for the popular view, of course. If the type of “soul” most Christians believe in was existing consciously in an actual place called hell and the “spirit” was with God, would the “soul” of an unsaved person suffer in a fiery location while the “spirit” enjoyed being with God in heaven? Remember, Scripture doesn’t discriminate between “saved” and “unsaved” spirits when it says they return to God upon death (to claim that only the saved spirits return to God is to read one’s presuppositions into the text, especially since the same book that tells us our spirits return to God when we die also tells us that everybody ends up in the same place when they die). And what does that say about us if our spirit and soul could go to separate places but are both conscious (are we made up of two conscious beings that can be split up when we die, yet only one will be punished for sin in hell while the other is in heaven with God)? This is just one more reason why the common view makes no sense. Instead, it’s better to believe what Scripture actually says: that “souls” can actually die (simply meaning that our consciousness ceases to exist when we die, as we’ve now learned). On top of that, if those who are saved “go to heaven” as soon as they die, then death isn’t really an enemy to be defeated (and, really, destroyed) at all, as Paul told us it is, but is instead actually an ally finally bringing us to God (and causing us to “ever be with the Lord” before the time Paul said this would actually occur), with our eventual physical resurrection just being icing on the cake rather than being the actual cake itself that it’s supposed to be (the resurrection and/or quickening of our human bodies has become nothing more than a small side note in most of Christendom, when it’s what we’re actually supposed to be looking forward to).

Of course, there’s another extremely important reason to believe all of the above, so please read the next article in this series to learn what that is, because it demonstrates that one can’t even join the body of Christ while believing in the immortality of the soul.

Please click here for Part 5 of this series.