An old hymn which I sung many times in my youth tells about going to heaven “where the soul of man never dies.”  The immortality of man’s soul has been preached since the first false prophet uttered the first lie spoken during the first false sermon which took place in the Garden of Eden.  This happened when the Serpent (Satan) assured Eve that she and Adam could sin and  “… not surely die,” meaning that they–their souls–would not die.  To the contrary, they would live forever.  He told her that their Maker, the One Who had created the entire universe, the One Who had given them life and could take it away, the One Whom they had never doubted–had lied to them.  In short order he convinced Eve that she and Adam could eat of the forbidden tree and inherit eternal life in spite of His command and warning to the contrary.  Since then the vast majority of human beings have chosen to believe Satan rather than God regardless of the subject.  One of those subjects concerns the soul of man.

Man has always had a fascination with death and the afterlife.  The central subject around which the question revolves is: DOES MAN HAVE AN IMMORTAL SOUL?  Billions of self-professed Christians “know” the answer is “Yes.”  The identification of the soul has never been in doubt.  The problem is that man has misidentified it, thereby negating all that the Lord said about life after death.  The twisting of Biblical teachings on life, death and life after death have been high on Satan’s priority list since Eden.  His prophets have preached those subjects thousands of times over the centuries.  Their success is evidenced by the fact that the church masses have accepted their word as Biblical Truth and thereby have failed to study God’s Word on the subject as we are all commanded to do in 2 Timothy 2:15.  By not studying His Word, man has failed to prove his spiritual beliefs by His Word as He commands us to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:21.  That Satan’s ministers have been very effective is proved by the fact that only a few people know what God said about death and what happens afterward.  Satan has led religious man to believe that the dead go to either heaven or hell immediately after breathing their last.  This is not Scriptural as my teachings titled Life After Death and The Resurrections of Mankind attest.

Consider this: If man has an immortal soul, then he cannot die, which God said all must do.  If man cannot die, then he cannot be resurrected from the dead.  If this is the case, then Christ, being a man, was not resurrected from the dead.  If this is true, then we have no hope of inheriting eternal life (1 Cor. 15:13,14,19).

During creation week God placed two trees in the midst of the Garden of Eden: the tree of life and the tree of death (Gen. 2:9).  Like all of the trees in the garden, they were “good for food and pleasing to the eyes.”  God had told Adam and Eve that they could eat of the trees in the garden.  That included the tree of life.  They were denied only one.  If they had partaken of the tree of life they would have lived forever.  Satan deceived Eve into believing that she and Adam could eat of the forbidden tree and live forever–the exact opposite of what God had told them.  Man has refused to believe God’s Word concerning life, death and the future of the soul ever since.  He has doggedly accepted Satan’s word about the immortality of the soul in spite of God’s plainly stated Word to the contrary.

In Genesis 2:7 the Scripture tells us: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.  And MAN (Heb-Adam) became a LIVING SOUL.”  Before receiving God’s life-giving breath man Adam was a DEAD SOUL.  Notice that God referred to the entity into which He breathed the breath of life “man,” not the mound of dirt lying on the ground.  Without breath the man (soul) was dead.  When a child is born the first thing the doctor does is to make him/her take a breath, which injects life into him/her.  If the child does not breathe, he/she never lives, even though he/she is a fully formed human soul.  The word “soul” in Hebrew is “nephesh” which is translated “a breathing animal.”  The word “nephesh” is used throughout the Old Testament to describe creatures (created entities) such as cattle, fowl, whales AND MAN.  Ecclesiastes 3:19 states that man dies just as animals die.  In each case the nephesh decays and returns to and becomes part of the earth from which man came.

Man does not have a soul; man is a soul.  Man has a spirit.  Spirits do not die.  More on the spirit of man later.  The soul is physical, composted of physical matter which makes it subject to death.  This Truth is emphasized throughout the Bible: “You do not know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life?  It is even a vapor that lasts for a little while then vanishes away” (Jam. 4:14).  Man’s physical life is also compared to grass which withers and is blown away by a gust of wind (1 Pet. 1:24/ Psa. 102:13-16).  Man’s physical life and his soul/nephesh are synonymous.

If man is to be resurrected from the dead as was Jesus, then man must die as did Jesus.  The Bible tells us that everyone who has ever lived will die and be resurrected from the dead.  The question is not “if” man is going to be resurrected, but when.  “Because of Adam all will die, even so, because of Christ all will be made alive (resurrected).  But every man in his own order (time) …” (1 Cor. 15:22,23).  The question is: WHAT WILL BE RESURRECTED?

Jesus Christ was the first human being to be resurrected from the dead–born again.  Being born again is the body’s change from physical to spirit as when Christ’s corpse changed from physical to spirit composition so that He could enter the Kingdom of God which was then and still is in heaven.  Recall that Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to inherit eternal life he had to be born again because flesh and blood could not enter the kingdom where God resides.  We are not saved until we are born again, which will take place during the first resurrection.  Anyone who believes that he is born again does not believe what Jesus said about the subject.  See Born Again.  Jesus is the “firstborn (first to be born again) among many brethren” (Rom. 8:20).  His spiritual brethren will be resurrected at the time of His return and born again as was He.  His resurrection makes the resurrection of all other human beings possible.  The Bible teaches that there are three resurrections.  In this study we will examine the first one in which God’s true saints,  His Very Elect, His Little Flock, His Holy Remnant will be resurrected.  These are they who, during this life, believed His Word and walked in the holiness of that Word until the end of their lives or until He return, whichever happened first.  L.J.