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Hades in Greek
mythology was the god of the underworld, the place of the dead. And
so the underworld itself was also known as Hades, named for its
ruler. When men went there, they were ferried across the river Styx
by one named Charon. Hades was called Pluto by the Romans. It is
obvious that the Bible writers did not entertain the Greek concept
of Hades.
Hades was a Greek
religious term that the Hebrews borrowed a few centuries before
Christ in order to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. When
Alexander the Great conquered Jerusalem in 332 B.C., the Greeks
ruled Judea until 163 B.C., when the Judeans were able to regain a
century of independence. Yet even so, they had a difficult time
resisting Greek culture and language, which was spoken throughout
Asia (now Turkey) and Egypt. Many Judeans (“Jews”), especially in
Egypt, could no longer speak Hebrew, and thus the need arose to
translate the Scriptures into Greek.
This project was
begun about 280 B.C. by a group of 72 scholars. Hence, the new
translation was called the Septuagint, meaning “the seventy.” This
translation is valuable in that it provides us with a key to
Hebrew-to-Greek word equivalents, so that we know how to understand
New Testament Greek terms. Though Greek words were adopted, they
were meant to convey Hebrew definitions.
One such example
was this Greek word Hades. When the Septuagint translators came to
the Hebrew word Sheol, they translated it as Hades. It was the
nearest Greek equivalent to Sheol. But this did not mean that we
ought to adopt the Greek mythological concept of Hades. No, the
concept of the place or state of the dead had already been
established in the Hebrew scriptures by the term Sheol.
And so, while the Greeks viewed their Hades as a
place of conscious torture, torment, or hard labor, the Hebrew
concept conveyed the idea of rest or sleep. However, Sheol was not a
tomb or sepulcher. The place where one puts a dead body was a
qeber or qebura. But the soul was said to go to Sheol.
In Psalm 13:3 David says, “enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the
sleep of death.” Daniel 12:2 says
also, 2 and many of those who
sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to
everlasting [Heb. olam, to obscurity, or an obscure
amount of time, an age] life, but the others to disgrace and
everlasting [Heb. olam] contempt. When Jesus was
about to raise a young girl from the dead, He said in Matt.
9:24,
24 He began to say, Depart;
for the girl has not died, but is asleep. And they began
laughing at Him. The Apostle Paul
carries this same Hebrew terminology into his writings as well. He
says in 1 Cor. 15:18-20,
18 Then those also who have
fallen asleep in Christ have perished . . . 20
But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of
those who are asleep. The Bible also says that “the soul that sinneth,
it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20). This idea was not unusual in the Bible.
In the great prophecy of Christ's death on the Cross, it is said in
Isaiah 53:10,
10 Yet it pleased the Lord
to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief; when thou shalt make
His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed. . .
12 because He hath poured out His soul unto
death.” The concept of the soul of the Sacrifice dying on
behalf of OUR souls is found in Leviticus 17:11-14. There we are
told that the soul (Heb. nephesh) is in the blood, and God
has given the blood for an atonement for our souls. That was why men
were not to drink blood, but to pour it out upon the ground. And so,
Jesus “poured out His soul unto death” (Isaiah
53:12). Physically, it was the blood that was poured upon the
ground, but the blood represented the soul being poured
out.
There is no
question as to the use of the word “sleep” to describe the dead. It
is also apparent that the soul is said to die and to be poured out
as the blood. Every good biblical scholar knows that this is the
case. Yet there is debate over whether or not this term indicates a
conscious or unconscious state of the dead. Some say that sleep
indicates a state of unconsciousness, citing Ecclesiastes
9:5,
5 For the living know they
will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they
any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. 6
Indeed their love, their hate, and their zeal have already
perished . . . . Others say that
Solomon was not talking about the actual state of the dead, but that
from our living human perspective the dead know nothing. Some go so
far as to say that Solomon was speaking as an unbeliever (in which
case the inspiration of the book itself might be undermined). Still
others say that the dead WERE in a state of sleep until Jesus'
resurrection, at which time He raised them up and brought them to
heaven with Him.
It is not our
purpose here to engage in a lengthy discussion of the state of the
dead. Many books have been written on the subject, and the issue has
only served to divide people. I will only say that I believe that
death is a return.
The body returns to the ground from whence it came,
returning to dust. (Gen. 3:19; Psalm 104:29; Eccl. 12:7). Few people
would argue against this point. The contention comes when we discuss
the state of the soul. Though Ezekiel tells us that the soul that
sins will die,” men speak of their “immortal souls.” So let us see
if we can clear up some of this confusion by showing that the soul
is not the seat of immortality. We will then show that it is the
spirit—not the soul—that survives death. Where does the
soul go after death? I believe that the soul, like the body, returns
to its state before creation. The body returns to dust, but the soul
did not exist or have a consciousness prior to the moment God
breathed the breath of life into Adam's nostrils. Hence, the soul
ceases to exist as such after death. This does not mean that it is
impossible for God to bring the soul back into conscious existence.
Acts 2:25-27 says of Christ,
25 For David says of Him
[Christ] . . . 27 Because Thou wilt not abandon
My soul to Hades, nor allow Thy Holy One to undergo
decay. We see here that
Christ's soul was in Hades, but not abandoned there. In other words,
He was raised from the dead. This makes it clear that the soul goes
to Hades at death. That is described in terms of sleep, and it
certainly is not a place of torment. This caused some in later
centuries to assume that Hades was composed of two compartments, one
for the righteous, and one for the wicked. But the Bible says
nothing of this. It was simply men's way of trying to explain how
all men could go to Hades, while trying to hang on to the idea that
Hades was “hell,” that is, a place of torture for the
wicked.
Acts 2:27 quotes the Septuagint
translation of Psalm 16:10, where Sheol is rendered by the Greek
word Hades.
The idea that
Hades is a place of torture is part of the Greek mythology. The only
justification that Christian teachers have in adopting their torture
theory has been the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke
16:19-31). To hold this theory, such teachers have had to literalize
this parable, instead of seeing it in the context of Jesus' other
Kingdom parables. Jesus told many parables to illustrate how the
Kingdom of God would be taken from the Jews and given to another
(Matt. 21:43).
In this case, the
rich man was dressed in purple and fine linen like the temple
priests who ruled the people. So the rich man is identified with
rulers of the Judean nation. Another identifying mark for the rich
man was that he had five brothers (Luke 16:28). The patriarch Judah
had five brothers born in Gen. 29 and 30. They are Reuben, Simeon,
Levi, Issachar, and Zebulon.
The rich man
feasted every day (on the Word). Lazarus, on the other hand, first represents the
lost house of Israel, which, at that time, was “laid
[ballo, to cast down] at his gate.” The Greek word,
ballo, is usually translated “cast” in the New Testament. For
example, in Matt. 3:10, a tree that does not bear good fruit is
“cast” into the fire. In Matt. 7:6, we are told not to “cast” our
pearls before swine. The word picture does not convey a man lovingly
and carefully laying pearls in front of swine. Neither does it
convey the idea of Lazarus being carefully laid at the gate of the
rich man. It portrays Lazarus as being cast down. Lazarus
represents the house of Israel that had been cast down and cast out
of the land from 745-721 B.C. We read of this in 2 Kings
17:20,
20 And the Lord rejected all the
descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the
hand of plunderers, until He had cast them out of His
sight. Thus, Lazarus
represents the house of Israel that had been cast out many centuries
before the time of Christ. He was the beggar at the gate, who could
only receive a few crumbs from the rich man's table, for they were
largely cut off from the Word of God at that time.
The parable
portrays both Lazarus and the rich man dying. Since these men
represent Israel and Judah, the parable shows the ultimate fate of
each nation after these nations were destroyed. The house of Israel,
like Lazarus, would be restored to Abraham's bosom (the promise of
God, the New Covenant). The majority portion of the house of Judah,
which rejected Jesus, would go into a time of “torment,” which they
themselves affirm continuously.
The rich man
wanted someone to go to his living brethren and warn them. However,
we read in Luke 16:31,
31 But he said to him, If
they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be
persuaded if someone rises from the dead. Elsewhere, in
John 5:46, 47, Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews who opposed
Him,
46 For if you believed
Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me.47 But
if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My
words? And indeed, this
came to pass. When Jesus rose from the dead, the temple priests knew
the truth but still did not believe. In fact, they are responsible
for blinding the eyes of the rest of the Judeans, most of whom would
have believed in Christ if their leaders had not deceived them.
Matt. 28:11-15 says,
11 Now while they were on
their way, behold, some of the guard came into the city and
reported to the chief priests all that had happened.
12 And when they had assembled with the
elders and counseled together, they gave a large sum of money to
the soldiers, 13 and said, You are to
say, His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were
asleep. 14 And if this should come to the
governor's ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble.
15 And they took the money and did as
they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among
the Jews, and is to this day. The parable of
the rich man and Lazarus is just one of many parables of the kingdom
that tell essentially the same story but in different ways. To do a
complete study of Jesus' parables is not possible in this short
study, but it is most appropriate to look at the others that have
led to the climactic parable of the rich man and Lazarus. These
provide us with a context by which we can be sure of our
interpretation.
The series of
parables leading up to the rich man and Lazarus really begins in
Luke 15:3-7. It is the parable of the lost sheep of the house of
Israel.
3 And He told them this
parable, saying, 4 What man among you, if he has a
hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the
ninety-nine in the open pasture, and go after the one which is
lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he
lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he
comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors,
saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which
was lost! 7 I tell you that in the same way, there will
be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over
ninety-nine righteous persons who need no
repentance. Though Jesus applies it specifically to the
individual, the motif itself is taken from a national situation with
the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Hence, the parable is
certainly applicable on that level. Ezekiel 34 is the classic
passage dealing with the lost sheep of Israel. Ezekiel was a
contemporary of Jeremiah, but they ministered primarily to two
different nations. Jeremiah remained in Judah and Jerusalem and
directly most of his prophecies to them. Ezekiel, however, was told
to go as a missionary to the house of Israel, “the exiles who
lived beside the river Chebar at Tel-abib” (Ezekiel 3:15). This was the location of some of the
exiles of Israel. We read in 2 Kings 17:6,
6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the
king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried Israel away into
exile to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Habor [the
same as Chebar], on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of
the Medes. In Ezekiel 34 the prophet prophesied against “the
shepherds of Israel,” that is, the priests and civil leaders, who
had fleeced the sheep but did not care for them responsibly. Part of
the condemnation was that they had not “sought for the lost” (34:4).
The divine law says in Deuteronomy 22:1, 2,
1 You shall not see your
countryman's ox or his sheep straying away, and pay no attention
to them; you shall certainly bring them back to your countryman.
2 And if your countryman is not near you, or if you do
not know him, then you shall bring it home to your house, and it
shall remain with you until your countryman looks for it; then you
shall restore it to him. Lost sheep
were the responsibility of all shepherds. Shepherds were not to
ignore lost sheep. Applied to the lost sheep of the House of Israel,
it has always been the responsibility of the Shepherds to find God's
lost sheep. It is written in the divine law. Yet most have been
content to turn the other way. Ezekiel says further in
34:6,
6 My flock wandered through all the
mountains and on every high hill, and My flock was scattered over
all the surface of the earth; and there was no one to search or
seek for them. 11 . . . Behold I Myself
will search for My sheep and seek them out.
12 As a shepherd cares for his herd in
the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for
My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they
were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. This is the
source material for Jesus' parable of the lost sheep. He came as the
great Shepherd (Heb. 13:20), the Good Shepherd (John 10:11), and the
Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4). He came to find His lost sheep, but in
finding them, He also has brought in other sheep which were not of
that fold. That is the subject of other parables such as the one in
Matthew 13:44.
In Hosea 2:19, 20
the prophet tells us that the divorced house of Israel would be
betrothed to Christ once again while they were yet in the
wilderness—that is, outside the old land. This, too, is important to
understand, in view of the fact that Lazarus was taken to Abraham's
bosom—that is, restored to the covenant with Abraham.
The next parable
leading up to the rich man and Lazarus is the parable of the lost
coin in Luke 15:8-10. It is said that this was no ordinary coin. But
was part of a wedding bracelet that was traditional in those days.
If this is true, then there is no doubt that Jesus' biblical source
material came from Exodus 19:5, where God said to Israel,
5 Now then, if you will
indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My
own possession [“peculiar treasure” in the KJV] among all
the peoples, for all the earth is Mine. The prophets
speak of Israel as being God's wife, especially in the context of
His divorce from her in later years (Jer. 3:8-14; Hosea 2:2). So
once again, Christ came to seek out the lost coin, representing the
lost house of Israel.
The prodigal son
was the next parable recorded in the last part of Luke 15. The
prodigal was the house of Israel (called “My son” in Hosea 11:1),
while the older brother with the begrudging attitude was Judah. As
long the house of Israel is lost (in the eyes of those who refuse to
seek them out) the Jews are more than happy to lay claim to the
inheritance of the birthright. But the day will come when Israel
will return. This will happen on more than one level. They will
“return” in the sense of being found as a people; and they will
“return” in the sense of repenting and returning to the Lord. When
that day arrives, let us not begrudge them as the elder brother did
in the parable.
This much is sufficient to see that the parable of
Lazarus and the rich man ought not to be taken as a literal
historical account of an individual who died and went to hades, but
is part of the ongoing teaching that Jesus did through His Kingdom
parables. The objection that the story of Lazarus is not
specifically labeled a parable is not valid, because Luke 15 and 16
is a series of parables, beginning with Luke 15:3, which says,
“And He told them this parable, saying. . ..” From that point
on, none of the other parables are individually labeled as
parables. But who among us would say that the story
of the prodigal son was not a parable, just because it was not
specifically labeled as such?
We conclude,
then, that the parable of the rich man and Lazarus was meant to
foretell the condition of “torment” that the Jews would experience
in the 1,900 years of exile after the destruction of Jerusalem.
Thus, this parable ought not to be used to teach that rich men—or
any others—are tormented by a literal fire in Hades after they are
dead. We have taken the time to explain this parable in some detail,
because it is such a stumbling block to so many people.
The soul had no
existence prior to God breathing the breath of life into Adam's
nostrils, for at that moment, man became a living soul. When that
breath is removed, the soul ceases to exist in its conscious state
that we call “living.”
The soul is attached to the flesh and depends upon
the physical body for its consciousness. Leviticus 17 shows this
quite clearly, saying in verse 11, “the life [Heb. nephesh,
“soul”] of the flesh is in the blood.”
The phrase, “the soul of the flesh,” or “the fleshly soul,” as it
could be rendered, shows that the soul is fleshly, or carnal. This
is why the Apostle Paul speaks of the soulish, or natural man, as
being carnal, fleshly. The soul is that part of us that is carnal.
It is the “old man,” within each of us (Rom. 6:6), that derives its
mortality and weakness from Adam. This is in direct contrast with
our spirit, which, when made alive by a relationship with Christ, is
the inner “new man.” We will have more to say about this in our next
section dealing with man's spirit.
Paul says in 1
Thess. 5:23, 23 Now may the God of peace
Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul
and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ. When Paul speaks
of “you entirely,” he lists the three parts of “you.” They are
spirit, soul, and body. There is a difference between soul and
spirit, which men can see if they rightly divide the word of truth.
Heb. 4:12 says that the Word is sharper than any sword and can
divide soul and spirit. That alone shows that soul and spirit are
two different things. They can be separated.
The best way to
understand the relationship between spirit, soul, and body is to
think of them in terms of their physical counterparts.
Spirit = breath, or wind [Heb. ruach = spirit,
breath]
Soul = blood
(Lev. 17:11) Body = flesh
(self-evident) The breath gives
oxygen to the blood, which is then carried by arteries and
capillaries in the body. Even so, the spirit gives life to the soul,
which is in the flesh. The relationship between spirit and soul is
pictured in the relationship between the breath and the blood. They
are different, but it is the spirit that gives life to the soul. It
was only when God breathed the breath of life into Adam that he
became a living soul.
When the breath is removed from a man, his flesh
and blood dies. Even so, when God removes the breath of life from a
man, both his body and soul die. A man's mind, will, and emotion cannot
function apart from his flesh (brain). The out-of-body experiences
that men often relate to us after being revived from death are not a
function of the conscious soul, but of the consciousness of the
spirit. As we will see shortly, the spirit and soul each have a
separate consciousness.
The soul is not the part of man that transcends
death. The soul comprises mind, will, and emotion that is dependent
upon the Spirit of God for its existence and upon the physical body
(brain) for its expression. It has a consciousness, as long as it is
made alive by the breath or Spirit of God. When Spirit is separated
from the body, it cannot survive, for James 2:26 says, “the body
without the spirit is dead.” But neither can the soul survive
without the body, for it is mortal. The seat of life is in the
spirit.
Death is a
return. The body returns to dust, the soul returns to “sleep,” and
the spirit returns to God. A more metaphysical way of putting it is
this: the body goes to the tomb; the soul goes to Hades; the spirit
goes to God (heaven).
The best example
of this in the Bible is Jesus' death. Jesus' body was put in
Joseph's tomb (John 19:38-42). As we have already shown previously,
Jesus' soul went to Hades. We turn now to the idea that Jesus'
spirit returned to God.
The spirit—that
is, man's spirit, as distinct from the Holy Spirit of God—is the
part of man that transcends death. Ecclesiastes 12:7 speaks of
death, saying,
7 then the dust will return
to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave
it. In the New
Testament we find this idea continued in the death of Jesus. Luke
23:46 quotes Psalm 31:5 in giving Jesus' last words:
46 And Jesus, crying out
with a loud voice, said, Father into Thy hands I commit My
spirit. And having said this, He breathed His
last. This detail is
recorded in Matthew 27:50 in this way:
50 And Jesus cried out again
with a loud voice, and yielded up His
spirit. So we see that
Jesus' spirit did not go either to Joseph's grave with His body, nor
did it go to Hades with His soul (Acts 2:27). It went to God who had
given it to Him. The real question is whether or not a person's
spirit has a consciousness that is distinct from the consciousness
of the soul.
Man's spirit has a consciousness that is distinct
from the consciousness of the soul. The fact that spirit has a
conscious mind should not come as a surprise. The Spirit of God
(i.e., the Holy Spirit) possesses a conscious mind. God is spirit
(John 4:24) and needs no physical brain or soulish mind in order to
function consciously. Gen. 6:3 says, “My Spirit will not always
strive with man.” Such striving would require conscious behavior. Isaiah
11:2 speaks of the Spirit of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.
Such things also require consciousness. In 1 Cor. 2:16 we are
admonished to put on the mind of Christ. In Eph. 4:23, 24 “the
spirit of your mind” is identified with the “new self” (NASB) or the
“new man” (KJV).
23 and that you be renewed
in the spirit of your mind, 24 and
put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been
created in righteousness and holiness of the
truth. It is obviously a
spiritual mind and an inner self that has consciousness.
Unclean spirits also have a consciousness, as we
read many times in the Scriptures. For example, Mark 9:26 says of an
unclean spirit, “after crying out and throwing him into terrible
convulsions, it came out.” Man is made in
the image of God. Therefore, it seems reasonable to say man's spirit
also has a consciousness. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 2:14 that divine
matters cannot be understood with the natural (literally “soulish”)
mind, but must be understood with the spiritual mind. He
says,
14 But a natural
[pseukikos, “soulish”] man does not accept the
things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and
he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
15 But he who is spiritual appraises all
things, yet he himself is appraised by no man.
16 . . . we have the mind of
Christ. Paul speaks of
the Adamic flesh and soulish mind as the “old man” in Rom. 6:6, Eph.
4:22, and Col. 3:9. That “man” is not referring to a outer “man” who
might stand before us. It is an inner “man,” which must be crucified
with Christ in order for the spiritual mind (“new man”) of the Last
Adam to become dominant in our lives.
On a secondary
level, a soulish person is one ruled by the soulish mind inherited
from Adam. A spiritual person is one ruled by the spiritual mind
inherited from the Last Adam—Christ. We have two minds, two
consciousnesses operating in our lives.
Hence, both the
soul and the spirit have a conscious mind of its own. The one, which
is the seat of mortality, must be crucified with Christ in order for
the other, the seat of immortality, to be raised up.
The mind of the
soul is dependent upon the flesh body in order for it to function.
The mind of the spirit, however, is independent of the flesh body,
but dependent upon the Spirit of God for its life and ability to
think. It is this mind that does not die with the body or the soul.
It is this mind that “returns to God” when the body and soul
dies.
So what does this
mean? Where does the spirit go when it “returns” to God?
To answer that,
one must stop trying to think carnally. Heaven is not “located”
somewhere in or beyond the stars. The spirit does not have to travel
anywhere. It does not take a certain amount of time to go from
heaven to earth or from earth to heaven. Ezekiel 44:17 speaks of it
figuratively as changing clothes. Paul uses the same terminology in
2 Cor. 5:2-4. When Jesus appeared to His disciples after His
resurrection, He demonstrated His ability to move from flesh to
spirit form in an instant (Luke 24:36).
When a person
dies, his spirit remains in the realm of spirit, where there is
neither time nor distance. It is always in the realm of “I am.” It
is not “I was” or “I will be.” It is not “I am here” or “I am
there.” All time is one. All space is one. In the spirit, all things
simply are. It is only in the earthly realm that we are bound by
time and space. To understand spiritual existence, we must think
“outside the box.”
In that spiritual realm, and from that perspective,
Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).
Abraham was dead from man's time-bound earthly perspective, but
alive from God's timeless spiritual perspective. The Pharisees did
not understand this, because they did not view things from God's
spiritual perspective. Since Abraham will be raised from the dead
(in earth's future time perspective), and since Abraham will become
a spiritual being that is no longer bound by time or space—that
means that Abraham will ultimately exist from earth's beginning! To
break out of earth's space-time continuum is to always exist and to
always be alive.
Why? How? Because
once a person has crossed the time-space barrier that limits our
present Adamic body, he can re-enter the earth realm at whatever
time and place he chooses. Will he decide to accompany Jesus Christ
to visit Abraham and then Sodom, as we read in Genesis 18:2 and in
19:1? Why not? Will he be sent to John to give him revelation, as we
read in Rev. 22:8, 9?
8 And I John am the one who
heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down
to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these
things. 9 And he said to me, Do not do that; I am a
fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and
of those who heed the words of this book; worship
God. Who was this
angel? He was just a man like John but in a glorified condition. I
believe that he was a man from the future (from John's perspective),
a man who had received the glorified body that was no longer bound
by time or space. He was a prophet that God sent to show John what
was given him in the book of Revelation. That prophet may have been
dead a long time (from John's earthly perspective). Perhaps it was
Moses, Isaiah, or Jeremiah. It makes no difference. God was not the
God of the dead, but of the living. This is what Jesus meant when He
astonished the people by saying in Matthew 22:31, 32,
31 But regarding the
resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken
to you by God, saying, 32 I am the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not
the God of the dead but of the living. These are not
easy things for our soulish minds to understand. In fact, our
soulish minds cannot conceive of such things, for they are outside
their realm of experience. Only the spiritual mind can understand
them, and, indeed, such understanding is perfectly natural to that
mind. The carnal mind is severely exercised by such thoughts, and it
is easy to develop a case of brain bruise.
So also is the
doctrine known as “pre-existence.” Did man pre-exist before
creation? Many teach this. There was a time when I taught against
it. Then when I began to hear God's voice for myself, I suddenly
began to experience the sensation of knowing things in my spiritual
mind that my soulish mind did not know or believe. It was at that
point that I began to realize that I had two conscious minds within
me. Only then did I understand the words of Jesus and of Paul that
have been quoted above.
The fact is, every man that will—in the
future—receive a transformed spiritual body will be able at that
point to transcend time and go back into the past and interact with
historical events and people back to Adam and before his creation.
That leads us to the seeming contradiction that in the future we
will pre-exist!
That is the state of being in which God now sees us from His
spiritual vantage point. He sees what will be as if it already is.
If we will be immortal some day, then from God's perspective we are
already immortal, because immortality comes with the spiritual body
that transcends time.
How important is
it to understand such things? For me, it was important because I
stopped arguing with people over the issue of whether men are mortal
or immortal. I found that both sides were right, but both sides had
an inadequate understanding of spirit.
I stopped arguing
with people over the issue of whether men went to heaven when they
died or into the ground to await a resurrection. I found that both
were right in some ways, but both explanations were inadequate. The
real issue is not whether or not we “go to heaven,” as our reward
but rather a matter of being clothed with that tabernacle from
above, that mortality might be swallowed by life (immortality). It
is that glorified dust-body that Adam was given as his inheritance
at the beginning. That is the inheritance that he lost through sin.
And that is the inheritance that he must regain at the great
Jubilee.
Thus, instead of
conceiving of our inheritance as being some heavenly real estate in
a land called “heaven,” we should be thinking in terms of inheriting
the earth—beginning with our own “earth.” We must first inherit the
portion of dust that we were made of before we can think of
extending that dominion to the rest of the creation. We inherit this
“earth” through the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles.
Our dust is not
the problem. Adam was made of dust, but it was not mortal. He had
the spiritual ability to communicate directly with God. It was a
glorified body. He only lost it after he sinned. Therein was he
found “naked.” He was “unclothed” in the sense that he was no longer
clothed with the tabernacle that is from above (2 Cor. 5:1-4). The
way back to the inheritance is pictured in the great historical
allegory of Israel's journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. That
journey is marked by special days called holidays that signify the
steps that each of us must take in our own personal
journey.
The first holiday
is Passover. We begin our journey by applying the blood of the Lamb
to our door posts (ears) and lintels (forehead—that is, our minds).
When we place our faith in the blood of the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world, we have experienced Passover for
ourselves. This is called “Justification.”
The next great
holiday was Pentecost, which commemorates the day God spoke to the
people from Mount Sinai and gave them the law (Exodus 20). When we
hear His voice and are led by the Spirit (the pillar of fire and the
pillar of cloud), He begins to write His law upon our hearts to
teach us obedience. This is the second great step toward the
Promised Land. This is called “Sanctification.”
The final great
holiday was the feast of Tabernacles, which marked the day that
Israel would have entered the Promised Land, if they had taken heed
to Caleb and Joshua. Because they refused, they died in the
wilderness not having received the promises. But we are admonished
to do what Israel failed to do. The Promised Land is our
inheritance. It represents, not heaven, but the heavenly tabernacle
that will clothe us when we receive that glorified body. This is
called “Glorification.”
And that is why
we ought to gain a better understanding of these holy days. They
prophesy not only of historic events in the time-line of history,
but also describe allegorically the path from Egypt (mortal body) to
the Promised Land (inheritance of the immortal body). May God grant
that we would be overcomers like Caleb and Joshua and that we would
not fall short of any of His
promises.
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