This has been a long held belief among most christians and, in fact, is a common belief among the majority of peoples and religions of the world - both past and present! Every religion and culture believes that man has a "soul" or "spirit" which has the ability to live outside of the body. This has led to belief in ghosts and other apparitions, as well as the practice of ancestor worship, necromancy, and the like. It is not surprising then that christianity has it's own belief system of the dead living on in some other metaphysical form. There is one big problem with this idea however; the Bible, which is supposed to be the christians' rule for faith and practice, nowhere teaches such a thing as souls living apart from the body!
Since childhood, I have been taught that I have a soul that lives forever. I never really questioned it. Someone wisely said, "We accept what we've been taught, and teach what we accept." How true. As part of my formal religious education, I was taught that men are spirit beings that have a soul that live in a body. That being the case, I've always imagined my body as a house - a shell, while the real me is my soul or spirit within my body. It was never very clear to me, I confess, but I believed it was taught in the Bible and correlated very nicely with the idea of man being made in the image of God; hence, our three-part nature.
I have recently come to the understanding that the teaching I received was all wrong! The fact is, the world and the church alike, have fallen prey to the oldest lie in the book, and what makes it so effective is, they don't even know it. Christians, especially, think they are enlightened in the question of what happens when a person dies, but we have been deceived. Here is the plain truth recorded in the book of Genesis.
God said to Adam and Eve...
"...but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." --Genesis 2:17
But Satan deceived the woman.
"But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die.'" --Genesis 3:4
Somehow, the common definition for death has been altered and softened. We now understand death as meaning a separation of the soul from the body. In this way, only the body actually dies while the real person (the soul) continues to live - either in eternal bliss, or eternal torment. But is this what the Bible teaches, or is it a lie of Satan handed down to us as tradition? To find the answer we must be willing to lay aside our tradition and see what the Bible actually teaches concerning the soul.
The best place to start is in the beginning.
"then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. --Gen 2:7 (ESV)
Man is animated dust! The word translated "creature" is nephesh in the Hebrew text, also translated "soul" in the KJV and others. Notice that the text says that "man became a living creature" (soul), not that he has (or acquired) a soul! Man was created an integrated, unified whole; not body, soul and spirit in the sense of separate, independent substances. I will do a more in-depth study of this concept in the future, but for now we should simply understand that the Biblical teaching of man's nature is as a unified being. When a man dies, all of him dies; there is a cessation of life; he is dead in every way. If man had a soul which detached itself from the body at the time of death, then only the body could be said to be dead. But God said "you shall surely die" (Gen 2:17). The use of the singular personal pronoun "you" signifies the person, the whole person, not just a body.
Further, if death does not mean "the cessation of life", why is death called an "enemy"? (1Corinthians 15:26) If death means that the soul leaves the body and goes directly into the presence of God, would it not be considered a friend? The fact is, death is not a friend, it is an enemy! And to believe that we continue living, that only the body dies, is to believe Satan's age-old lie. Not only that, but it destroys the doctrine of the resurrection of the body! If souls are already in a blissful state with God in heaven without a body, what purpose could there possibly be for a resurrection? Think about it!
When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he didn't call his soul back from heaven to be reunited with his body. No. That would have been a cruel thing to do... don't you think? It is time for the church to question traditional beliefs and pay more attention to what the Bible actually says. It is time for every sincere christian to be more analytical and discerning regarding the messages heard from the pulpit. We should not simply accept everything we hear simply because the preacher is charismatic or exciting or because it agrees with what we've always heard. While the teacher may be "judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1) we will all be held accountable for what we believe and accept as truth! (Mark 4:24)
