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WHO SURVIVED HEAVEN'S GATE? #3
WHO CAN KILL YOUR SOUL?
It's got to be one of the most heart-wrenching Fed
Ex parcels ever to go through the mails. Forty-one-year-old Richard D'Angelo,
better known as "Rio," had gotten the package with two videocassettes
on Tuesday, March 25, 1997. Instinctively he knew that it was tragic news
— but he didn't open up the package until that evening. The next morning
he told his boss, Nick Matzorkis, that he was convinced his 39 friends
in the Heaven's Gate cult were all dead.
We want to discuss today the concept of a soul — what exactly it is, and
whether or not a soul survives death, as the Heaven's Gate members insisted.
Let me share with you right here, word for word, what was in the handwritten
letter from Heaven's Gate to their former fellow member, Rio:
"By the time this is read, we will have
shed our containers. . . . We suspect the human bodies we were wearing
have been found. We'll be gone. We came from the Level Above Human in
distant space and we now have exited the bodies that we were wearing for
our earthly task."
And then there were the goodbyes on those two videotapes,
as cult members, all wearing dark, similar clothing, made it clear that
they believed they were going on. Despite their own deaths, the phenobarbital
was simply a catalyst to start their souls on a wonderful journey. Not
one of them considered their suicide to be an ending; no, their souls
were going to keep right on after March 25 into a great new future.
One middle-aged woman on the tape wore aviator glasses as she spoke, and
she used the same theme of the body simply being a housing for her immortal
soul. Listen to the transcript of her testimony:
"You know, we are like vehicles. I mean
if you use the analogy of a car and, you know, people may keep their cars
for a long time before they finally wear out and conk out and they die
on ‘em and, you know, they go and get another car. I mean that's all we're
talking about. It's not a big deal."
Even though he failed to make this so-called journey
with the 39, Rio D'Angelo still holds to an unswerving belief that his
former friends are right. Their deaths were not suicide, he insists. Now
get this: "Because their souls live on at the Next Level."
Let's spend our time today exploring exactly what the Bible does say about
the human soul. Can it die? Is it mortal or immortal? Does it survive
death? Was the Heaven's Gate cult correct in its belief that death simply
frees up the soul to ascend to a higher level, the "Level Above Human,"
as they had claimed for more than 20 years in their posters, mailings,
and finally, web sites?
It doesn't take long for the Word of God to address the issue. Even in
Genesis chapter two, at the very creation of Adam, the Bible describes
it this way:
"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." "A living being," says the New
International Version.
The Living Bible says simply this about what happened
when God breathed into Adam the "(quote) breath of life": "Man
became a living person." The Contemporary English Version doesn't
even talk about "becoming" anything, but observes: "The
man started breathing."
There's no hint here of this lifeless corpse receiving a living soul;
rather, the man himself becomes that soul. The entire package: skin and
bones and a brain and blood vessels and all the rest, when infused with
the spark of life, the breath of life by the Creator, becomes a living
man, a living soul, as said in the King James. In other words, you are
a living soul and so am I. You the person are a soul.
If you want to get into original languages, which we don't often do, the
word for "soul" is nephesh. Right before that, where it says
God breathed into him the "(quote) breath of life," the word
for that is neshamah. Our Adventist Commentary describes neshamah as the
life-giving principle, the spark of life. You and I could stand over dead
tissue for 50 years and not give it life, but God has that creative power,
doesn't He?
Now nephesh, or soul, can carry several meanings. It can mean breath,
as in Job 41:21:
"His breath kindleth coals, and a flame
goeth out of his mouth."
It can mean "life." It can mean the "heart"
— not the beating organ, but the seat of thoughts, emotions and affections.
As in: "I love you with all of my heart." Or it can simply mean
"living being," as used right here and elsewhere.
I'd like to share with you a simple illustration that's often been used
in my own denomination. Because it's true that there are two ingredients
here to the man: Adam or any of us. There is the body, the tissue, which
in the case of Adam was flesh formed out of the dust of the ground by
God's own hands. And then there is this spark of life, this breath of
life, also given by God.
And we sometimes use this illustration of a box. There are boards and
there are nails. By themselves, you have just that: boards and nails.
But if you put them together right, you have a box. Boards plus nails
equals box. Neither one by itself is a box, but together they form that
box.
What is a soul, then, as we apply this illustration? A body plus this
spark of life which only God can give. He breathed it into Adam, and suddenly
Adam was a living man. He became a person, a soul.
If we take this illustration on to Part Two, we could then ask: what happens
when a person dies? The body is still there, at least for a while until
the process of disintegration or decomposing sets in — you know, "dust
to dust." But the spark of life has clearly departed; it's gone.
That breath, or "spirit" of life, as it's sometimes rendered,
simply returns to the God who gave it. You can read that in Ecclesiastes
chapter 12, for instance. God gave that spark, and when life ends, He
takes it back.
So then we'd ask again: now you have that box where the nails are pulled
back out. The boards and the nails are separated. Would you still have
a box? Of course not. It didn't go someplace; it just doesn't exist any
longer. And so, biblically speaking, if the body and the spark of life
are separated at death, where would the soul GO? Well, it wouldn't go
anywhere; it would simply cease to exist.
I've heard preachers and evangelists of all churches talk about "lost
souls." Or, on a more positive note, reaching, let's say, "(quote)
150 precious souls for Christ" in a series of meetings. In both cases,
they simply mean people. People who are lost, people who are saved.
But we need to explore further the question of whether the soul is somehow
an entity which survives death and can continue in a conscious state.
As we've said earlier, many, many Christian groups teach this. And it's
more than disquieting to note that this teaching is held in common with
the Heaven's Gate cult, with the entire New Age movement, with reincarnationists,
etc., etc. What's more, biblical evidence here in Genesis appears to point
squarely in the other direction: that man himself, a living person, IS
a soul.
As we close today, let me briefly point you to two Bible verses which
clearly state that the soul is something that can die. In Ezekiel chapter
18, God Himself says this:
"Behold, all souls are Mine; as the soul
of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine: the soul that sinneth,
it shall die."
Jesus Himself, instructing His disciples who were about to head out as
missionaries, included a warning that there was One, God, who was fully
capable of destroying both body and soul in hell. There's more to say
about that verse, by the way, on both sides of this question. And I promise
you we'll revisit Matthew 10:28 first thing tomorrow.
Here in the New Testament where we're working
with the Greek language, we're encountering the word psuch , which is
generally translated "breath," "life," or "soul."
And the same commentary I mentioned earlier tells us that this word psuch
is translated something like 40 times in the New Testament as "life."
Another 58 times it's rendered as "soul." Often in those 58
times, there's a sense that it refers to a person's mind, his or her emotions,
to the heart, to the natural appetites, and so on. But in not one of the
58 instances, friend, does it refer to some separate entity which can
survive on its own beyond death.
I know we're just scratching the surface with this very difficult topic
— and no doubt you have some very good questions and objections. Friendly
ones, I hope. Be sure to stay tuned as we continue tomorrow.
As we close today, let me simply share again my conviction that we need
to be humble Bible students. These passages are hard; going through and
tabulating 108 occurrences of a Greek word isn't a lot of fun. But when
it comes to truth, the stakes are high, aren't they? I still remember
that story in Newsweek where this Rio D'Angelo left his apartment and
his girlfriend and his credit cards in order to follow this cult belief
that a man's soul could hitch a ride on a UFO, advance "(quote) beyond
human." But Rio also left something else: his own 11-year-old son.
He simply walked out of a young boy's life, telling him: "I'm going
off to learn how to get into heaven."
Friend, hold onto your Bible as our study continues.
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