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came again, and she arose, straightway: and He commanded to give her meat’ (Luke 8:51-55).
Just before we continue with the thought of death being a sleep, there is a crucial point that needs our attention. We find it being alluded to in the last sentence of the passage of scripture just quoted: ‘And her spirit came again, and she arose, straightway’. This sentence implies that when this young girl had died, her spirit was separated from her body. This is widely accepted by many different beliefs with varying conclusions, but what does the Bible say concerning it? Well, in the book of Genesis, it gives us an important account of how God made man. It says ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul’ (Genesis 2:7). So God formed man’s body from the dust of the ground, and then breathed into him the breath of life, resulting in man becoming a living soul. This ‘breath’ is the element of life that God gives; it is the life principle that God imparts to us, and it has no consciousness in and of itself. The word ‘breath’ used here means ‘spirit’. This point is clarified in the book of Job where it synonymously uses these two words by saying ‘All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils’
nostrils’ (Job 27:3). With this in mind, the equation of man’s creation and existence would be: body + spirit (‘breath of life’) = a living soul. What happens to this equation when someone dies? We can find the answer to this in the book of Ecclesiastes, where it states that when someone dies ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it’ (Ecclesiastes 12:7). So according to this verse, the body which is formed from the ‘dust of the ground’ returns to the earth, and the spirit (which is the ‘breath of life’) goes back to God, which means that the dead no longer exist as living souls, or living beings. This goes directly against the idea that when someone dies, their spirit (or soul, as some misapply the terms) live on or exist separately from the body. This view is challenged on two accounts: the first being that the soul is actually the result, or product, of the body and spirit being united; the second is that the spirit (which is the God-given life element – not a conscious entity) goes back to God - it does not say that it roams the earth or goes to a spirit world.
The consciousness of an individual is a result of the body and spirit being united, so once the two have been separated at death, the consciousness of that person has ceased to exist. We find evidence for this point in the book of Psalms, where it informs us that when someone dies ‘His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth;
Death: an everyday phenomenon that causes much fear, confusion and speculation.
(Image courtesy of Sims and Jones funerals)