where does it go?
Chapter 10:
Those who have lost a friend to death know the empty feeling that death brings. We look for words of comfort, some reassurance that our dear one is not really gone forever. Many find comfort in believing that their beloved has departed to a new life in a better place.
On the other hand, when a hated person dies, some take satisfaction in believing that he is now suffering horribly forevermore. Others believe that the dead wander the earth as ghosts and expect offerings from the living. What is the truth? We do not want to believe things which are not true, even if they are comforting, do we? What does the Bible say? We can be sure that Jehovah God will tell us the truth.
In contrast, Satan from the beginning has consistently lied about death. Urging Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, Satan said: "You will not die." But God had told Adam: "In the day that you eat of it you will surely die." Who proved to be telling the truth?
The same day they sinned, God condemned Adam and Eve and put them out of the garden. But the next morning, they were still alive. Did that prove Satan right? No. Whether they could feel it or not, they had been infected with death when they sinned. From then on, they slowly deteriorated. Because their bodies started from a nearly perfect condition, death came quite slowly. Adam finally perished at the age of 930 years. (Eve’s age at death was not recorded.) —Gen 2.16, 17, 3.1-24, 5.5.
But Satan does not give up easily. When we die, he cannot deny the cold, stiff body lying there. So he has promoted another lie to deny death: "You are not really dead. Only the body dies. The real person goes on to live in the invisible realm like myself." Now if that were really true, it would be very important for us to know, especially if it involves the greater part of the punishment for sin. What did God tell Adam and Eve about that?
God clearly explained to them just what death is and what it would do to them. We should look carefully at what he said, because Satan deviously contradicts it. At Genesis 3.17-19 we read: "And to Adam he said: "Because you listened to your wife’s voice and took to eating from the tree concerning which I gave you this command, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground on your account. In pain you will eat its produce all the days of your life. And thorns and thistles it will grow for you, and you must eat the vegetation of the field. In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return."
So according to God, their life would be miserable and difficult, under condemnation, alienated from their Father. (compare Ephesians 2.1, 12.) Finally they would die physically, and their bodies would return to dust. What then?
Did God neglect to mention anything? If the really serious punishment for their sin was to come after they died, surely he would have warned them about it. But looking at Genesis 3.20, we see that God had finished speaking. He had told Adam exactly what his punishment was: "you will return to the ground. To dust you will return." Was he talking only to Adam’s body, as a disposable shell? Or was he talking to the person, Adam, himself? If he was only talking to the body, why didn’t he tell Adam, the person, what was to really become of him? No, God did not leave anything out. And the Bible consistently says: "The wages of sin is death." —Rom 6.23; see also Job 24.19, 20.
As Adam’s natural descendants, we are born with no more right to life than he could give us. We are imperfect from birth, and we cannot prevent ourselves from sinning to some extent. So Romans 5:12 says: "through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned." "In Adam all are dying," 1 Cor 15.22 adds.
The Bible speaks of those under this condemnation by God as "dead", despite the fact they are up walking around and perhaps even unaware of their death sentence. So, as the apostle Paul put it, we are "naturally children of wrath," we are "dead in our trespasses and sins." Of course, we are actually alive in the literal or scientific sense. We eat, we grow, we have children. We love, we hate, we laugh and cry. We have hopes and plans for the future. Our being figuratively dead does not stop any of that. Is it the same when we die physically? Does our essence, the real us, escape that death and continue to live actively on? Are we aware of our surroundings, able to see, hear, speak, think and feel? —Ephesians 2.1-3; see also 1 Tim 5.6.
Not according to God, who should know. Just as Adam returned completely to the dust, so do we. Ecclesiastes 9:4,10 says: "For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all. . . All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol [the grave, AV], the place to which you are going." —see also Job 3.11-19, Psalm 89.48.
Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20 adds: "For there is an eventuality as respects the sons of mankind and an eventuality as respects the beast, and they have the same eventuality. As the one dies, so the other dies; and they all have but one spirit, so that there is no superiority of the man over the beast, for everything is vanity. All are going to one place. They have all come to be from the dust, and they are all returning to the dust." It is shocking to contemplate: by sinning Adam brought mankind’s right to life down to the same level as the beasts! Separated from God, we die just like a dog does.
What does this mean? Should we "eat and drink, for tomorrow we are to die?" That would make sense, if death was truly the end of it all forever. But it is not. —1 Cor 15.32.
King David loved God, and knew that his merciful heavenly Father would not abandon him to death forever. He composed a song, which in part reads: "I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; my flesh also shall rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in hell, neither will you suffer your holy one to see corruption. You will show me the path of life: in your presence is fulness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures for evermore." (Ps 16:8-11, AV; compare Job 33.25, 26) These beautiful sentiments show that David expected to go to hell when he died. But he would not perish everlastingly; God would remember him and raise him up to a joyful life again. May we have the same hope? Yes.
It is clear that David did not think of hell as a place he would live in excruciating pain, eternally separated from God. No, David knew he would just be unconscious in death, as the other scriptures above show. And he expected to get out, to be freed from hell. David spoke Hebrew, so he actually said "sheol". The King James Bible translates the Hebrew "sheol" equally as "grave" and "hell", but sheol is not two different places. So when we see the word "hell" in our Bibles we cannot assume it means a place of eternal punishment. Many modern Bibles simply leave the Hebrew word in the text. (We will discuss hell at length a little later in this chapter.)
Nine hundred years later the apostle Peter quoted David’s song, then said "let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his [tomb] is with us unto this day. . . For David is not ascended into the heavens." (please read Acts 2.25-36.) Had David’s faith been misplaced? No. His song proved to be an inspired prophecy that applied first to Jesus Christ. God’s loyal Son died and was buried (in hell, or the grave), but "this Jesus has God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses."
Many witnesses could testify: Jesus was alive again! This assures us that, in due time, David will also rise from the dead. We too can trust God to remember us when we die. Like Christ, when death comes, we can say to God "into your hands I entrust my spirit." We need not dread death nor anyone who may threaten us with it. —see 1 Cor 15.3-6,12-22, Luke 23.46, Heb 2.14, 15.
For those who are faithful, this is more than a hope; it is a guarantee from God. Jesus said, "He that hears my word and believes him that sent me has everlasting life, and he does not come into judgment but has passed over from death to life." Because our faith is alive, we are "declared righteous." That means God lifts the condemnation we naturally inherit from Adam; he no longer considers us "dead in our sins." Our names are written into His "book of life", a listing of those whom He has approved. —see John 5:24, Romans 3.23, 24, 5.1-19, Eph 2.1-7, Php 4.3, Rev 3.5, Jas 1.12, 2.20-26.
This does not affect our natural lifespan; we do go on to die. But God considers us as if still alive. To him, our death is merely a sleep, from which he can easily awaken us. When Jesus’ friend Lazarus died, Jesus said: "Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I go there to awaken him from sleep." No, Lazarus had not gone on to another life elsewhere; he was dead. But to God it was if he were merely sleeping. —John 11:11-14.
Lazarus’ sister Martha understood that her brother was dead. When Jesus reassured her with the words, "Your brother will rise," she replied "I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day." She did not mean the last day of Lazarus’ life: that was past, he had already been dead four days. She believed there was to be a future "last day" on which the dead would return to life.
Jesus then gave her an electrifying answer: "I am the resurrection and the life. He that exercises faith in me, even though he dies, will come to life, and everyone that is living and exercises faith in me will never die at all." Then he proved to her and us that he has this authority over death: he went to the cave where her brother was buried and called "Lazarus, come on out!" —and Lazarus got up and came out! (Read the whole account at John 11.1-44.)
Speaking to a crowd at Capernaum, Jesus said, "I am the bread of life. He that comes to me will not get hungry at all, and he that exercises faith in me will never get thirsty at all. . . for this is the will of my Father, that everyone that sees the Son and exercises faith in him should have everlasting life, and I will resurrect him at the last day. . . This is the bread that came down from heaven, that anyone may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever." (John 6.35, 40, 50-58) Later, to the Pharisees at the temple he said: "Most truly I say to you, If anyone observes my word, he will never see death at all." —John 8.51.
What did he mean? As explained above, if we live our faith in Christ, we "come to life" in God’s eyes. Though we may die physically, because we "are living" to him we "never [really] die at all." Of course, while dead we really are inactive; we "know not anything", we "sleep". But as Romans 4.17 explains, God "makes the dead alive and calls the things that are not as though they were." This applies to all those whom God approves, even to faithful ones who lived before Jesus’ time. Jesus said that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob "are all living to him [God]" even though they were still literally dead, awaiting that "last day". —Luke 20.38.
Jesus did not mean that those who put faith in him would go directly to their reward as soon as they died. Many years later Paul was inspired to write to the Thessalonian congregation, "Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant concerning those who are sleeping [in death], that you may not sorrow as others do, those who have no hope. For just as we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so too, through Jesus, God will bring back [to life] with him those who are asleep [in death]. For we tell you this by the word of the Lord: that we who live to the presence* of the Lord shall in no way go ahead of those who are sleeping [in death]. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven and give the command, with an archangel’s voice and with the trumpet of God, and those who are dead in union with Christ shall rise first. After that we who are alive, who have survived [to that time], shall together with them be caught away in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. So, be comforting one another with these words." —1 Thess 4:13-18.
Clearly, faithful believers who died before Christ's return would have to wait, until he came to call them from their "sleep." It is possible some of the Thessalonians misunderstood Paul, because in his second letter he wrote, "Brothers, respecting the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we request of you not to be quickly shaken from your reason nor to be excited either through an [apparently] inspired message or . . . through a letter as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here." In other words, ‘hold on, we didn't say he was coming today.’ He goes on to explain "it [the Lord's day] will not come unless the apostasy comes first." This was fulfilled over some centuries as Christianity was subverted by the introduction of worldliness and paganism. It is ending in our time, which we can clearly identify as the "last days." —see footnote above.
Who will be raised up from the dead? Paul said, "There is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous." Of course, we expect God to restore life to those who were faithful to him. But why would he raise up unrighteous people? —Acts 24.15, Jas 1.12.
The Bible plainly says that some will not be raised up. Isaiah 26:10, 14 says: "Though the wicked one should be shown favor, he simply will not learn righteousness. In the land of straight-forwardness he will act unjustly and will not see the eminence of Jehovah. . . They are dead; they will not live. Impotent in death, they will not rise up. Therefore you have turned your attention that you might annihilate them and destroy all mention of them." Some have already proved themselves incorrigibly wicked. God has already passed judgment on them, and he does not need to do it again. Nor will He raise them up simply to show them what blessings they missed. "They will not rise up." They are already annihilated forever.
Who, then, are the "unrighteous" that will be raised up? The thief who was hanged alongside Christ is one example. Clearly, he had some good qualities about him. He knew that his own crimes deserved punishment, and he had sympathy for Jesus. Why had he not followed Christ before? We do not know. But now he had no time to get baptized as a Christian. Yet he will not be forgotten; Jesus promised him, "You will be with me in Paradise." —Luke 23.32-43.
Perhaps even some of those Roman soldiers there, doing their job in impaling Jesus, were not condemned forever for that. Did not Jesus say (verse 34) "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing"? Throughout history there have been many who "did not know what they were doing." Many did try to live good lives. Although ignorant and imperfect, they believed in justice and kindness. Paul refers to people like that when he says "Whenever people of the nations that do not have [God’s] law do by nature the things of the law, these people, although not having law, are a law to themselves. They are the ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts, while their conscience is bearing witness with them and, between their own thoughts, they are being accused or even excused."
How will Jesus, as Judge, deal with them? Paul finishes: "This will be in the day when God through Christ Jesus judges the secret things of mankind, according to the good news I declare." (Rom 2:14-16.) Clearly Paul is implying that these who demonstrated godly law within their hearts will be favorably remembered, even though they were limited by their ignorance. They will return, not as righteous ones, but as persons not yet saved, not yet declared righteous. God knows that they have the potential to learn the truth and respond with faith.
What about us? Should we think, "So all I have to do is live a good life. I can stay ignorant and turn down every opportunity I have to learn about God, and still get by"? What do you think?
No. Jesus has sympathy for those who are ignorant because they have never had any opportunity to learn. He condemns those who refuse to learn when the opportunity comes to them. "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin." "If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say, ‘We see.’ Your sin remains." He likens his people to sheep; when they hear the shepherd’s voice, they follow. If we clearly hear the shepherd’s voice but will not follow, we are not his sheep. —John 15:22, 9:41, 10:3, 4, 16, 27; see also 3:19-21, Heb 10.26, 27.
Jehovah is so loving and merciful! He does not do to us what we deserve; he remembers that we are dust! Will everyone appreciate that when they find themselves alive again in a beautiful new world? You would think so. But being resurrected will not by itself save those "unrighteous" ones. It will merely give them their first decent opportunity to come to know and love God.
Dan 12:2 says, "There will be many of those asleep in the ground of dust who will wake up, these to indefinitely lasting life and those to reproaches and indefinitely lasting abhorrence." So not everyone who returns will be benefited everlastingly by the experience. Some will thereafter become condemned. Jesus said the same thing: "Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment." —John 5.28, 29.
Notice that when we put together all the scriptures on this subject, we come up with three kinds of resurrection: at 1 Thessalonians 4, those raised "meet the Lord in the air." This means they go to live in heaven, as explained in chapter 6 of this book. This is called the "first resurrection" in Revelation 20:6, and it is entirely before Armageddon. Then there is another resurrection in Rev 20:11-15. This one covers the other two kinds: those who are righteous but not chosen for heaven, and those who have not yet been judged.* These are raised after Armageddon to live in a "new" earth, and all of them must prove to be faithful through the final test, as explained in chapter 9. It is possible that some may fail before that, and clearly quite a few will fail that last test. Those that pass, however, will have been raised "to indefinitely lasting life" as Daniel said.
What happens to those who reject the many merciful opportunities God allows? In the Revelation, we see a vision of Judgment Day. Those who "are not found written in the book of life" are "cast into a lake of fire," said to "burn with sulfur." Is this literal? Is there an actual lake somewhere, perhaps inside this planet, where people are sent to live forever in the most horrible agony? Is this the Hell that is taught by so many religions worldwide? —Rev 20.11-15.
If you look carefully at this passage, you will notice that the dead are brought up out of "hell" (if you are using the King James version). Hell is emptied, then thrown into the lake. Even death itself is thrown into this lake. The people are then judged, and whoever was not written in the book of life is cast into the fiery lake. The lake is said to be the "second" death.
This account is clearly different from the traditional teaching of hell. Most people believe hell is the final place for the wicked, a place of no return forevermore. Not according to this. Clearly, people will get out, and some even will be found written in the book of life. Hell is obviously not what most people have been taught.
The English word "hell" is related to the words "hole" and "cellar"; it did not originally mean a place of fire, but was given that meaning later by the clergy. Likewise the word "inferno", which today means a raging fire such as the "hell" of the churches, comes from the Latin infernus, meaning only "low" or "underground". It is related to the word "inferior". Rather than use words now twisted by the clergy, we should look at the words originally in the Bible, and see how they were used.
The word "hell" is translated from "sheol" in Hebrew and "hades" in Greek. Earlier we noted that faithful King David expected to be in sheol temporarily, and that Jesus was not left in hades. Job described sheol for us in poetic language as a place where all the dead, good and bad alike, lie at rest, with the lifeless body being consumed by maggots. This fits with Jesus and others describing the dead as sleeping. This "hell", then, is no more than the state of being literally dead. It is not a specific location, but describes graves and death in general. It may imply God’s disfavor, or it may not. —Job 3.11-19; see also 17.13-16, Isaiah 14.4-11.
The lake of fire is quite different. It is not a place of rest with hope of arising someday; it is a "second" kind of death. We are all subject to the first kind of death, but we can avoid the second. But what is this death? Is it really a horrible kind of everlasting life?
Just as sheol is not a literal location, neither is the lake of fire. You will not find it by drilling into the earth. Rather, it is a way of describing the final condition of those judged as irreformably wicked. Earlier we quoted Isaiah 26.14, which said the wicked "will not rise up," but rather are "destroyed" or "annihilated". Fire is a fitting way to describe their end, because fire destroys utterly and irretrievably. The most effective and permanent way to get rid of garbage is to burn it.
That is what the Jews did when they put their trash into the valley of Hinnom, which served as the garbage dump for Jerusalem. Sometimes even criminals deemed unworthy of any burial were dumped, after being executed, over the wall into this valley, and either got consumed by maggots or burned. Sulfur was used to intensify the heat to burn difficult materials, such as flesh.
Many centuries before the time of Christ, the valley of Hinnom had been used for repulsive human sacrifice: parents would burn their children alive there. They called this "making them pass through the fire," perhaps believing they were passing through to an afterlife to be with the gods. Those parents were very wrong, terribly misled. Jehovah was very hurt at heart to see this happen, so hurt that he was furious. They should have known better; his law specificly forbade such things. So he desecrated and defiled their "holy place", this valley, by having it turned into the city’s garbage dump.
Reading the account at Jeremiah 7.29—8.2, you will see what else he decided to do to punish them. If, indeed, living forever in flames is the proper punishment for those whom God condemns, he seems to have forgotten to mention it. No, God does not forget anything. And throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, you will find very strong expressions of the wrath of God, sometimes with lengthy descriptions of the calamities that God would bring upon the wicked. Yet not once does he mention any everlasting torture in fire. From this we see: it is not God’s way to torture the wicked alive forever; rather, he destroys them. —compare Deut 28.15-68.
What, then, is the "hellfire" that Jesus spoke of? There, he said, "the maggot does not die and the fire is not put out." (Mark 9.43-48) Well, remember Jesus did not speak English. The word he used (Gehenna) actually means "the valley of Hinnom." Those he addressed knew exactly what he was talking about: the infamous city dump of Jerusalem. He was painting a graphic word picture of what awaited them if they did not fear God: they would be thrown away like so much garbage, burned completely or consumed by maggots, with no hope of being raised up. He was not implying, nor would any of his listeners have misunderstood him to mean, that they would have to live forever in a raging fire, shrieking in pain and terror, moaning and sobbing for mercy from a merciless, uncaring God. Yet millions today believe this is the fate of those who cross God, even those who have never heard of him. What utter cruelty! What injustice! Such a god could be feared, but never loved. No, such vicious ideas are from the twisted mind of Satan, not from the merciful God of the Bible.
We have seen many scriptures showing that the dead are aware of nothing at all. They "sleep" until being raised up for their reward at a future day. Those condemned forever are destroyed completely, "body and soul". (Matt 10.28) Yet many people ignore all of that, and point to one scripture as proof that people are tormented alive in fire after death. This is the parable of the rich man and the beggar, found at Luke 16.19-31. (please read.)
Put briefly, a rich man enjoyed his wealth but ignored the plight of a poor man in need just outside his gate. Then both died, the rich man living after death in a blazing fire, while the poor man found comfort in Abraham’s arms. The rich man asked Abraham for some relief, but was refused. What does all this mean? Is there any explanation that harmonizes with the other scriptures? Surely it would not be right to throw away the rest of the Bible, just because it presents a different picture of death.
The first key to understanding this parable is to recognize that it is a parable, not an account of an actual event. In a parable, each character or feature stands as a symbol of something which resembles it in real life. (Compare Jesus’ parable of the sower with his explanation of it, at Matt 13.3-8, 18-23.) To understand the parable of the rich man, it is helpful to realize who Jesus was talking to at the time: the Pharisees. (Luke 16.14) These were quite rich and were sometimes very disdainful of the poor. They would have understood that the rich man meant them, and the poor man represented the ordinary people they despised.
Who did "Abraham" represent? Well, Abraham was the beloved forefather of the Jews. He was dead and still sleeping in his grave, just as David was. No, he had not gone to heaven. Jesus said plainly that He himself would be the first one to rise from the dead and go to heaven (John 3.13; see also 1 Cor 15.20-23). Who, then, would "Abraham" picture? Apparently, God himself, as the loving Father of mankind.
This parable, like so many others, was a prophecy. Jesus was telling the Pharisees that they would "die" and suffer rejection by God, while the ordinary people would be comforted. This actually came true; not after literal death, but after a figurative kind of death.
This happened when the Christian congregation was established. It was humble, ordinary people that put faith in Jesus. It was they that received the outpouring of the holy spirit at Pentecost. Hence they "died" as to their past "poor" spiritual condition. (Lu 6.20, 21; Rom 6.11) No longer did they have to beg at the gate of the educated Pharisees for the scraps of scriptures they might deign to let them hear. Now they were truly "in the arms of Abraham", the warm position of God’s approval and support. —Romans 6.2-4, 22, 23.
But for the Pharisees it was a different matter! They could see that they had been rejected. Figuratively, they had "died", they had been removed for misusing their responsibility as teachers of God’s word. Worse, the Christians relentlessly publicized this throughout the land. Truly, this was torment to them. If only they had one little drop, one little sop, a word of reassurance, to ease the pain. But no, the Christians were not to do that.
The rich man’s request for one drop of water shows the parable cannot be literal, since a person literally sitting in a fire would not ask for one mere drop of water, and that applied to the wrong end of the anatomy. But taken as a prophetic parable, it makes a lot of sense. In fact, we can see an application of it in our time. So many clergy have acted like the Pharisees did, teaching their flocks just scraps of the Bible while living luxuriously off their tithes. But Jehovah’s Witnesses have been set free, and do not have to beg those clergy. We teach hard truths that expose those hypocrits, and this torments them. We give them no sop of kind words excusing their malfeasance.
Now that we have seen very plainly what the Bible says about death and how we can escape it, let us go back and examine two words that many are confused about: spirit and soul.
Most people think these are the same thing. They are not. They are distinct words in both Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Bible. In Hebrew, spirit is "ruach" and soul is "nephesh"; in Greek, spirit is "pneuma" and soul is "psyche".
The righteous man Job made this comment: "While my breath is yet whole within me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will speak no unrighteousness, and my own tongue will mutter no deceit!" (Job 27:3,4) By saying that the "spirit" was "in his nostrils", and making it parallel to "breath", Job gives us a clue as to what it is: a special, invisible life-breath that only God can give. Later in the book of Job we hear a wise young man say: "If he [God] sets his heart upon anyone, if that one’s spirit and breath he gathers to himself, all flesh will expire together, and earthling man himself will return to the very dust." (Job 34:14, 15) If we stop breathing long enough, we die; likewise, if we lose that "spirit", or special life-force from God, we perish.
Animals live by means of the same spirit. Eccl 3.19, quoted earlier, said that man and beasts "have but one spirit." Psalms 104 praises God for his creations, describing many animals. Then it says: "If you take away their spirit, they expire, and back to their dust they go. If you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you make the face of the ground new." (29, 30) Clearly, spirit does not refer to the individual, personal creature itself, but to something within it that causes it to live.
Speaking of a man dying of old age, Eccl 12:7 says, "Then the dust returns to the earth just as it happened to be and the spirit itself returns to the true God who gave it." The references above make the meaning plain: the spirit that returns to God is not the man himself, but the life-force that God gives to all living creatures.
If a person loses his spirit, can he get it back? Yes. In one case, a man was found near death from exposure. King David’s men gave him nourishment; the account says "he ate and his spirit returned to him." That is, he revived. What if a person has really died? Notice how Jesus raised up the twelve-year old girl: "He took her by the hand and called, saying ‘Girl, get up!’ And her spirit returned, and she rose instantly." The similar expressions in these two accounts help us to see that "spirit" simply means that which enlivens a person. It is not the person himself. —1 Sam 30.11, 12; Luke 8.52-55.
As was discussed in chapter 3, Who is God?, the word "spirit" is used rather broadly in scripture. Besides our enlivening force, it also can mean one’s attitude, or degree of enthusiasm. Even today we call an enthusiastic person "spirited". Do we mean they are possessed by more ghosts than a dull ("dispirited") person? Of course not. It’s just a figure of speech, just as in the Bible.
The Hebrew word for soul (nephesh) occurs very frequently in the Hebrew scriptures, and basically means a being, a creature, a person; or, the individual, personal life that a person or animal has. (Hebrew has a different word, "chaiyim", for life in general.) Only strictly literal translations render nephesh consistently as "soul". Others translations translate the word in a variety of ways. Here is a partial listing: life, my life, your life, its life, a person, creature(s), beast(s), animal(s), being(s), I, me, you, he, him, she, herself, whoever, anyone, my heart, your heart, breath, anything living, everything living, an individual, mind, the dead, a dead person, a body, a corpse.
Astonished? You should be. In every case the original word was "nephesh", either singular or plural. Actually, such renderings are usually reasonably close to the meaning intended. The only harm done is that the readers are left unaware that all of these are covered by one word, "soul".
There are a few of these you may be wondering about. For your comparison, here side by side we show a literal translation (the New World Translation) and less precise translations (from two popular versions; others are similar):
Gen 1:20: "And God went on to say: ‘Let the waters swarm forth a swarm of living souls and let flying creatures fly over the earth upon the face of the expanse of the heavens.’"
King James: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."
Gen 9:4: "Only flesh with its soul--its blood--you must not eat."
King James: "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat."
Gen 37:21: "When Reuben heard this he tried to deliver him out of their hand. So he said: ‘Let us not strike his soul fatally.’"
King James: "And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not kill him."
Lev 24:18: "And the fatal striker of the soul of a domestic animal should make compensation for it, soul for soul."
King James: "And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast."
Today’s English Version: "anyone killing an animal belonging to someone else must replace it. The principle is a life for a life."
Deut 24:15: "In his day you should give him his wages, and the sun should not set upon them, because he is in trouble and is lifting up his soul to his wages; that he may not cry out to Jehovah against you, and it must become sin on your part."
King James: "At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it; lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee."
Num 6:6: "All the days of his keeping separate to Jehovah he may not come toward any dead soul."
King James: "All the days that he separateth himself unto the LORD he shall come at no dead body."
Today’s English Version: "He must not defile himself by going near a corpse." (see also Lev 19.28, 21.11, 22.4)
"Soul" is often spoken of as the person himself, and at other times, as if were something a person possesses. For example, Judges 12:3 reads, "When I got to see that you were no savior, then I determined to put my soul in my own palm and go over against the sons of Ammon." The King James Version reads, "And when I saw that ye delivered me not, I put my life in my hands, and passed over against the children of Ammon." As you can see, the expression "my soul" does not mean some ghostly entity within our body; it simply means our individual life, our life as a person. It implies our whole self, and is a stronger way of saying "myself". For example, Psalm 6:3 (NW) says, "my own soul has been very much disturbed." Or, "my whole being is deeply troubled." (TEV) —see also Isa 29.8.
There is a popular song in Christendom with an often-repeated refrain: "And the soul never dies." Have you ever heard it? After reading the verses above, would you say it is true? The Bible plainly says: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ezek 18.20, AV; see also Ps 89.48 again, also Jas 5.20.)
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Similarly, a person can "lose" his soul. At its simplest, that merely means he has lost his life; he is dead. When Elijah raised up the little boy, the account says "the soul of the child came back within him and he came to life." Not that his soul was living somewhere else; simply, the dead boy got his life back. —1 Kings 17.17-24.
The expression "lose one’s soul" can mean something more permanent: the person has lost his right to life; he is condemned. Notice how both the simple and extended meanings are used by Jesus at Matt 16.25, 26 (also compare the parallel account at Luke 9.24, 25.) If we "lose our soul"* (die) for Christ, we "save" or "find" it (our life will be returned to us in the resurrection), but if we seek to save ourselves in our own way, we will "lose our soul" permanently.
This makes Matt 10.28 easy to understand: "Do not become fearful of those who can kill the body (our present existence) but cannot kill the soul (our whole self, our right to life); rather be in fear of Him that can destroy (utterly annihilate) both soul and body (our total existence) in Gehenna (God’s trash heap)."
If someone whom you truly love dies, it is normal to find it hard to accept that that one is really gone. In your heart you may never get accustomed to their absence. In fact in your grief you may imagine at times that they are still alive. You may even think you hear them moving or speaking in another room of the house.
Here is where a grave danger comes in: Satan is eager to support the false belief that your beloved is not really dead. You have to have faith that God is really telling you the truth. So do not feed your imagination. Do not answer back to imagined voices! Doing that, some have then been visited by a "ghost" that pretends to be the dead person. God emphatically forbids us from trying to talk with the dead, because He knows that we will contact the demons (fallen angels), not the dead person. (Deut 18.9-13)
These rebel angels are enemies of God. You cannot be a friend of God and a friend of his enemies at the same time. The demons do not love you. They are very cunning and deceitful, so they can be sweet and charming for as long as it takes to pull you away from God; but once they have you, they can on a whim turn viciously ugly. Do not become involved with them! Trust Jehovah! You will see your dead beloved alive again, when the time for the resurrection arrives.
Saul, the first king to rule Israel, proved unfaithful to God, being disobedient and presumptuous on several occasions. Samuel was the leading prophet at the time, and he had to tell Saul that God had rejected him. From then on God refused to respond when Saul prayed, and Samuel would not speak to him either. Then Samuel died of old age. Later the Philistines amassed a large army to attack Israel, and Saul was terrified. Still Jehovah refused to answer his calls for help. By this time Saul’s mind had become twisted by ungodliness. He had begun to believe that it was possible to speak to the dead, despite God’s law against such things. Anyone who even tried to speak to the dead was supposed to be executed. But Saul was able to find a witch hiding in remote En-dor. There he asked her to call Samuel up out of the grave, to ask him what he should do about the Philistines. The being that rose in ghostly form from the earth looked like Samuel, and spoke as if he was Samuel, but he was not really Samuel, of course. Samuel had been a prophet of God and would never cooperate with a witch. Nor could any witch force God to pass along advice that He had refused to give by any other means. No great genius was needed to see that Saul was doomed, so the demon simply foretold the obvious: Saul would die, the Philistines would win. —1 Sam 15.22, 23, 35, 28.4-19.
Saul was not loyal to Jehovah. He did not obey and was cast away by God. We must learn from this. Do not try to speak to the dead. Instead, seek to please Jehovah by being loyal and submissive to his authority. The next chapter will explore other ways we can do this.
