WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PERSON DIES?

As I attempt to answer this question, my preamble addresses two crucial issues:

1. I have never died before, therefore I won’t answer from an experience point of view. This is very important to note if we are to avoid spiritism in this entire subject of death.
2. The doctrine of death cannot be properly discussed and understood apart from the right conception of the nature of man. If we get wrong who man is, it becomes difficult for us to understand what it means for what we don’t know to die.

For example, one member argued from the lenses of Ecclesiastes 3:19 that man is an animal and when he dies, he rots and is eaten by worms just as other beasts.

But when you study anthropology, ancient cultures, traditions and beliefs, you realize that man is beyond matter. What constitutes man is way beyond the tangible.

We have a glimpse of the nature of man from a Hebrew scholar in Genesis 2:7:

And the Lord God formed man, of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breathe of life; and man became a living soul

In this text, we have a dual nature. Man is body and man is a living soul. And this Jewish concept of the nature of man is going to dominate the Old Testament:

Hamor said to Jacob, “The soul of my son Shechem longeth for your daughter” (Genesis 34:8).

Of David and Jonathan, it is written:

“The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (1Samuel 18:1).

These passages show the soul to be the seat of the affections. But as the soul loves, so it also hates. We read of those “that are hated of David’s soul” (2Samuel 5:8).

In the Old Testament, man is understood to be largely Body and Soul (Nephesh). When man dies, the body returns to dust and the soul returns to the giver (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

However, this text doesn’t use Nephesh but ruach (for spirit) whose Old Testament sematic range covers Nephesh as well). The Jews buried their dead and believed they had joined their ancestors and there was no spiritual until we get to the Canaanite cult of the Witch of Endor who summoned the so-called spirit of prophet Samuel (1Samuel 28).

Otherwise, the Jews believed that their loved ones died and everything (body and soul) ended at that.

When we get to the New Testament, however, which is dominated by the Greek philosophy, a revelation about this idea of the nature of man develops and extends and according to Pauline Epistles, Man is Body, Man is Soul and Man is Spirit. Man is now triune nature. Here are a few verses for this:

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of souland spirit, and of the joints and marrow (body), and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).

I pray God your whole spirit and soul and bodybe preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1Thessalonians 5:23).

According to Paul (a Jew trained in Greece), man, in his nature also has a spirit part. The Spirit Himself (meaning the Holy Spirit) beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God (Romans 8:16). So man has spirit as part of his nature.

Paul continues to distinguish this spirit nature of our from the Holy Spirit in these words:

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God (1Corinthians 2:9-11).

So our Body is flesh, bones and blood. This compartment in relation to the second is able to exercise the five senses of ‘Sight,’ ‘Smell,’ ‘Hearing,’ ‘Taste’ and ‘Touch.’. But to make sense of all this, it needs the second compartment active. That is the first compartment and when man dies this shuts down and begins to vanish.

And then we have the second compartment the Soul sometimes known as the mind and this is the centre of ‘Imagination,’ ‘Conscience,’ ‘Memory,’ ‘Reason’ and ‘Affections.’. This cannot operate and exist without the existence of the first (Body).

And then comes the third compartment which is the Spirit, what the Soul is to the Body, so is the Spirit to the Soul. This is the instinctual centre of Worship and Reverence to the supernatural. However, its practicality is only possible if the first two compartments are alive.

It is important to note that Man is not Body alone, Man is not Soul alone, and Man is not Spirit alone. The deception of Spiritism is to call Man any of the single compartments of man.

When man dies, his body deteriorates, and both his Soul and Spirit know nothing after the death of the body (Ecclesiastes 9:5). It is not because they (spirit and soul) are ignorant or because they have died the death of the body, but once the body dies, the two are useless. Otherwise the dead and all of us would have the opportunity to make choices beyond our graves. But we know this is not possible (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

Secondly, the Soul and the Spirit are not immortal compartments of the human nature as some assume but rather, are compartments that can only be disconnected and made useless by the death of the Body. The Soul and the Spirit of man after the death of the Body of the same man are useless (Psalms 6:5, Psalms 115:7, 30:9, Isaiah 38:18).

However, Biblical theology shows that these (Soul and Spirit) are not killed like the Body is and neither do they share the fate with the Body. Biblical theology also exhibits that the Soul and Spirit of man can only be killed by God but not Satan (sin personified). Look at what Jesus says :

And fear not those that kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (Mathew is 10:28)

The soul and spirit, therefore, are not immortal but they can only be killed by God alone. What happens at death is that they go to sleep and this why Jesus told his disciples that Lazarus has gone to sleep, and the language of sleep continues throughout the New Testament.

If you notice at the resurrection we are not given a new Soul and a new Spirit but rather new bodies. (1Corinthians 15).

Pr ITM White
The Gospel Hawker