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Amazing Facts

Five Minutes After Death, Then What?

Joe Crews

Five Minutes After Death, Then What? Part 1

Five Minutes After Death, Then What? Part 2

Special scientific committees have been investigating psychic phenomena such as spirit forms, voices of the dead and communication with departed spirits.

The results of these studies have shaken the entire world community.

I'll be back in a moment with the amazing facts about souls 5 minutes after death.

Hello this is Joe Cruz in the Amazing Facts broadcast, facts which affect you.

You know, some of the most perplexing questions under discussion today have to do with the possibilities of life after death.

Many Popular books are currently on the market exploring the intriguing subject of communication with the dead.

Scientific committees have been set up on a university level even to investigate the hundreds of claims for extra-sensory perception.

The disturbing and often indecisive results of these studies has left millions of people with the impression that the dead are not really dead at all.

From high theological circles right on down to the most obscure layman, there is strong personal conviction that every earthly body actually houses a naturally immortal soul that can never die.

But friends, we are not interested in the ideas and speculations of men, no matter how learned they might be.

We have discovered long ago that error has a way of sweeping in on a tide of majority opinion.

Truth is determined by God and not man, and that is why we are dedicated in this broadcast to examining all the Bible evidence in the pursuit of ultimate truth.

Perhaps we might be led to some very unpopular positions under the influence of this Bible.

Every preconceived and cloudy opinion should be willingly laid aside in favor of the authority of the Bible.

By that book alone the lines of truth will be laid out on this program.

Now in our last broadcast we introduced the subject of death and the soul.

We discovered that there is no such doctrine in the Bible as a naturally immortal soul.

In Ezekiel 18, verse 4 we read, "...the soul that sinneth it shall die." Now scores of other texts expand on this very same thought.

God did not put a soul in the body at creation.

He breathed in the Spirit or the breath of life.

The soul is simply the life which resulted from the combination of the breath and body.

In Genesis 2, 7 we read, 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.

Now notice that man became a soul only after the breath was added to the body.

The fact is the soul is the conscious life which resulted when God added the breath to the body.

Now a simple illustration will probably help us see this truth more clearly.

The current flowing into that bulb will represent the breath of life which God put into the body, and the light itself will represent the soul which man became, you remember, after the breath joined the body.

And as we look at the shining light, we see a perfect representation of the completed creation.

Now we press the button and turn the light off.

The current has left the bulb just as the breath leaves the body at death.

Why, no, it simply ceased to exist when that current separated from the bulb.

Now let's ask this, where is the soul when the breath separates from the body.

Why, there simply is no soul until in the resurrection God restores that breath of life to that body again.

Now that should not sound so strange to us now that we have discovered how everything returns at death the way it was before.

Before creation, man did not exist in some disembodied form.

There was no personality, no conscious emotions before God added the breath of that body.

At that moment, man became a living soul.

If the soul came to be as a result of that union, when does the soul cease to be?

Well, surely as a result of breaking that union.

Suppose we have 2 things before us here, boards and nails.

We take a hammer and drive the nails into the boards making a box.

Now we actually have 3 things instead of 2.

Later we carefully pull out the nails and lay them down beside the boards.

Again we have only 2 things before us, boards and nails.

Of course there is no box because it requires the 2 things together to cause the box to become.

Now in the same way God started with 2 things, the body and the spirit.

When He put them together, the soul became, it came into being, it began to exist.

At death, the wise man tells us, the spirit returns to God and the body returns to the dust.

And nowhere in the Bible are we told that any soul survives the body or continues to exist without a body.

The soul or the life has no existence without the power of God residing in that body.

And at death that power of life is removed, it returns to God, and the state of that man is exactly what it was before the breath joined the body.

That means no life, no consciousness, and no personality.

You know, friends, even animals are referred to as souls in the Bible.

Because they have the same power from God to make them live.

You will read this in the writing of the wise man.

He said, For thy which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beast, even 1 thing befalleth them, as the 1 dieth, so dieth the other, yea, they have all 1 breath, all go into 1 place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." Ecclesiastes 3, 19, 20.

Now this does not mean, of course, that men and animals have the same ultimate end.

There will be a resurrection and judgment for God's creatures, but life comes only from God, whether it be human or animal, and that life is often referred to in the Bible as the soul.

All right, with this background now, we are prepared to see what actually happens to the person who dies.

In Peter's sermon on the Day of Pentecost, he made this strong statement about David who had, by the way, been dead for over a thousand years.

For David is not ascended into the heavens.

David had long ago departed this life, and though often wayward, he had received the assurance of forgiveness and salvation.

All right, why then was he not enjoying the bliss of heaven those thousand years after he passed away?

The question is answered in verse 29 where Peter explains, Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day.

So the inspired Peter said that David was right there in his grave.

If the man after God's own heart had not received his reward a thousand years after death, what about all the other good people who had lived and died up to that time?

They also were resting in their graves awaiting the call of God in the resurrection.

Now Jesus assured the people of His day, Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.

And again Jesus said, For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

Now notice, friends, that the recompense comes in the resurrection, and Jesus said that that reward would come when the Son of Man will come in His glory.

In simple direct language, Jesus declared that no 1 would be rewarded until the resurrection takes place at His second coming.

This means that none of the righteous dead have gone to heaven so far.

All are waiting in their graves for the judgment and the end of the world.

Almost the last words of the Bible confirm this fact.

And behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as His work shall be.

Revelation 22.12 This last day reward is further described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.53.

He says, And this mortal must put on immortality.

Well, now, friends, when does that happen?

In a moment and the twinkling of an eye at the last trump, Paul says there in verse 52.

So this settles the issue about the reward of the righteous without any question.

When will they be punished for their sins?

The amazing answer is found in 2 Peter 2, 9.

"...the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." Now there it is, friends, the wicked are reserved somewhere until the day of judgment arrives.

Series

Five Minutes After Death, Then What?

Five Minutes After Death, Then What? Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

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