WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE?

Cults Say That Eternal Punishment Is Not Eternal

Coming next : 

1) Explaining Heaven and Hell
2) Sabbath for Christians or Sabbath for Jews? 
3) Sabbatarians' Scripture-mangling Skills

The late Ps Patrick Lopez, to the far left

At 4.34am on 12^th Nov., 2011 I received a phone call from the wife of Pastor Patrick Lopez saying that he had just passed away.  I was asked to go over to help.  When I reached there, she was alone and grieving tremendously.  And we went ahead to wash the deceased and change his clothes, with the help of Raymond who came a little later.  It was my first experience touching the body of a deceased person.  But there was no fear.  Just a little sense of discomfort.  I had just lost a good partner in scriptures, for Pastor Patrick was an exceptional proponent ….. knowledgeable and gracious.

Well, it just so happened that for the 2 days preceding his death, I had been debating a gentleman called Geoff, the webmaster of  http://www.thetruthabouthell.net/ on 2 issues over the internet, one was whether keeping Sabbath was necessary and the other was “Is the soul immortal”?  To Geoff, the soul of the wicked is burnt to ashes ( or annihilated; poof! vaporized into nothingness ) upon death and only hell fire is permanent. 

You see, the cultists like 7^th Day Adventists and Jehovah Witnesses came up with the idea that the soul dies together with the person.  In fact, the Jehovah Witnesses copied that idea straight out of the 7th Day Adventists!  They also believe that the dead person is resurrected on judgment day and the unrighteous are annihilated in hell fire.  It is only the fire that is eternal.  Not the punishment.  

Now, are you able to catch the illogical reasoning from the above?  You can’t, can you?  The cultists are actually presenting 2 irreconciliable positions!  On the one hand, the cultist say that the soul dies and disappears, and on the other, they are also saying the dead without the soul can be resurrected!

But what does the bible teach?  Let me first explain here what the bible teaches and in the next article, I will demolish for you all the deceptions in the explanation given by the cultists.  Geoff was absolutely upset when I called him a cultist.  Boy, was he mad!!

What The Bible Clearly Teaches

Now, the bible says we are made in the image of God.  God is a trinity, so are we.  We are body, soul, and spirit – 3 in one.  Here is what happens to the 3 components of our being:

1. The body returns to the earth and becomes dust ( Gen 3:19  … for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. )
2. Spirit being the breath of God, returns to Him (  Ecc 12:7  Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. )  also (G en 2:7  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.  )
3. The soul rests in paradise or suffers in a place called hades ( see Luke 16:19 – 31, the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man  ) awaiting either a resurrection into a new body for the final judgment for rewards or for eternal damnation ( see Matt 25 - Mat 25:41  Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:   )

 

The bible makes it so simple to understand.  But cultists must differentiate themselves in order to draw their own members.  So they resort to splitting hairs, writing lengthy explanations using semantical tricks and acrobatics, playing on verses and focusing on words taken out of context to support their views.   Reading through their material easily confuses and impresses the person who is not familiar with scriptures and their human logic can sound so convincing; until you take the trouble to check against the bible verses in their context, that is.

So I found Geoff playing on the word ashes, replacing the meaning of eternal punishment with eternal punishing (!!??)  and so on, and twisting the interpretation of the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in order to deny the meaning of it.

After a few exchanges of email with Geoff, he started calling me names, describing me as stupid, and so on.  Well, he studiously avoided my challenge to him to pray to and seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.  In fact, I told him all his explanations were “canned” from standard cult literature.  Much of what Geoff used as his materials are in fact taken out of the standard teachings of 7^th Day Adventist and the Jehovah Witnesses, although Geoff denies that he is affiliated to them.  In fact,  I told him he is a Judaizer of the type condemned by Paul in Galatians, the only difference being that he tries to differentiate between “moral law” being the 10 commandments alone  and “Moses’ Law” being the ritualistic laws.  He ignores my challenge to him to check the fact that “The Law” or “Torah” always refer to everything inside the 5 Books of Moses.

Jesus says in John 8:32, "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."