Death of the Spirit
Most Christians will state that humans never die, because all will live eternally in either Heaven or Hell. This requires that all have an eternal soul. Just because a majority of Christians believe this, it does not mean that it is true.
Genesis 2:17
17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Die comes from the Hebrew words moat tamoot. It literally means dying you shall die. It expresses a process of dying.
Genesis 1:26-27
26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
To be in the image of God means man alone was endowed at his creation to be like his creator. Like our creator, humans have reasoning and freewill. Humans can know and love God. Man can hold spiritual communion with God. Man alone could guide his actions through reason.
What is God? In the simplest of terms, Deuteronomy 6:4:
4Hear, O Israel: Yehovah our God is one Yehovah:
God is one, yet in 1 Thessalonians 5:23:
23And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Yeshua Messiah.
These speak of man is three in one. As God is spirit, soul and body so is man. Humans are not three people. There are three aspects.
When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, their spirit immediately died and it took Adam 930 years for his body to catch up. Without a spirit, one is dead. Either way one looks at it, this is still one day as Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3:8.
8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
When a spirit dies all is effectively dead and will die. Nothing can go into eternity without a spirit.
This series, Sheol and Hell, examines the question, “What happened to the soul as a result of the death of the spirit?”
Back to Lie in the Garden
Return to Sheol and Hell
Return to Sheol, Hell, Heaven and the Lake of Fire