Lots of people believe that everybody has a soul inside them. And that when you die, your soul lives on, and goes somewhere else, perhaps to heaven. But that’s not what the Bible teaches.

There is no mention of an immortal soul anywhere in the Bible. You won’t find those two words together anywhere.

No-one has gone to heaven. John 3v13 says:“No one has ascended into heaven except... the Son of Man.”

Even David, a man after God’s own heart, has not gone to heaven, but is still in his grave:

“For David did not ascend into the heavens” (Acts 2v34)

So what are souls, and where do they go?


The Meaning
Let’s look a bit more closely at what it means in four places which mention souls.

“The soul who sins shall die.” (Ezekiel 18v4).

So souls are able to die. They cannot be immortal then. In fact, in the letter to Timothy, Paul says that only God is immortal. It’s a very simple verse really – if you sin, you die in the end. That is the message of the Bible, that sin leads to death, and we’ll be coming back to that later.

"And they struck with the sword all who were in it, devoting them to destruction; there was none left that breathed. And he burned Hazor with fire.” (Joshua 11v11).

If you have a different version from the ESV, such as the King James version, you might see the word souls there instead of “all who were in it”. In fact the later versions have corrected this. The soul is the life of something: a mortal creature. You can see that here where it’s describing a big battle. Because soul is the mortal life of a person, it can die. So this verse again shows souls in danger of death, and dying. Soul in the Bible means a mortal creature.

In Psalm 49v15, the soul goes to the grave and dies:

"But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol” [literally translated, this means the grave].

Only God can resurrect it to life again, by recreating the body from the corruption of the grave. So this is where souls are heading.

In the whole of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for soul (Nephesh) occurs 754 times:

In 326 places it’s said to be subject to death
In 203 places it’s in danger of death
In 16 places it’s delivered from death
In 119 places it’s simply translated “life” – that which has life. Even the animals in Genesis 1v20 have souls.

So the first souls mentioned in the Bible aren’t even people! Animals as well as men are called living souls.
So we can see in the Old Testament that there is no hint that the soul is immortal. But let’s look at the New Testament too:

“And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'”
(Luke 12v19-20)

This is part of the parable of the rich fool, and it shows him talking to his soul. But of course, he’s really just talking to himself! And we can understand verse 20 as simply indicating that night he will die, and he’s foolish because there’s nothing left to enjoy his bigger barns. The soul is gone; therefore soul here is another word for life.

These things don’t make sense if we think it means something immortal.

So we get a similar thing in the New Testament

The Greek word “psuche” occurs 116 times in the NT.

In 45 places it is subject to death
In 29 places it is in danger of death
In 16 places it is delivered from death
We can see the overwhelming evidence once again that the New Testement does not teach about an immortal soul.

Summary
Soul means a living creature. It can be born and it can die. There is no Bible verse which talks about an immortal soul.

The message of the Bible is that people’s lives are very important, and what you do with your life now matters, while you still have it. Because you only get one chance. Life is vulnerable: you don’t know when it will be taken away from you. That’s what we saw in Luke 12 with the man who thought he had years left to live! The message is that when that one chance has gone, you are judged and then either rewarded or punished for your life. We also saw that if you sin (as we all do), you die. Your soul goes to the grave and dies. This helps us to think about the amazing thing Jesus did when he voluntarily gave up his life, despite having not sinned. But our future hope is not for the soul to live on, it is for bodily resurrection, just as Jesus rose from the dead.

http://www.derbychristadelphians.org.uk/the_soul.htm

noetic16: @ Frosbel

You are intentionally preaching a FALSE gospel. Why have you half-quoted John 3:13? Because it shows your fallacy and FALSE doctrine about the pre-existence of Jesus, which you deny, but FRAUDULENTLY claim to be saved by Jesus. Here is the scripture in full:

And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

Thou art an Anti-Christ and a FALSE teacher.

noetic16: @ Frosbel

You are intentionally preaching a FALSE gospel. Why have you half-quoted John 3:13? Because it shows your fallacy and FALSE doctrine about the pre-existence of Jesus, which you deny, but FRAUDULENTLY claim to be saved by Jesus. Here is the scripture in full:

And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

Thou art an Anti-Christ and a FALSE teacher.

The Jews would not have taken John's words to mean that Christ "incarnated." It was common for them to say that something "came from heaven" if God were its source. For example, James 1:17 says that every good gift is "from above" and "comes down" from God. What James means is clear. God is the Author and source of the good things in our lives. God works behind the scenes to provide what we need. The verse does not mean that the good things in our lives come directly down from heaven. Most Christians experience the Lord blessing them by way of other people or events, but realize that the ultimate source of the blessings was the Lord. We should apply John's words the same way we understand James' words 'that God is the source of Jesus Christ, which He was. Christ was God's plan, and then God directly fathered Jesus.

There are also verses that say Jesus was "sent from God," a phrase that shows God as the ultimate source of what is sent. John the Baptist was a man "sent from God" (John 1:6), and it was he who said that Jesus "comes from above" and "comes from heaven" (John 3:31). When God wanted to tell the people that He would bless them if they gave their tithes, He told them that He would open the windows of "heaven" and pour out a blessing (Mal. 3:10 - KJV). Of course, everyone understood the idiom being used, and no one believed that God would literally pour things out of heaven. They knew that the phrase meant that God was the origin of the blessings they received. Still another example is when Christ was speaking and said, "John's baptism 'where did it come from? Was it from heaven or from men?" (Matt. 21:25). Of course, the way that John's baptism would have been "from heaven" was if God was the source of the revelation. John did not get the idea on his own, it came "from heaven." The verse makes the idiom clear: things could be "from heaven," i.e., from God, or they could be "from men." The idiom is the same when used of Jesus. Jesus is "from God," "from heaven" or "from above" in the sense that God is his Father and thus his origin.

The idea of coming from God or being sent by God is also clarified by Jesus' words in John 17. He said, "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world" (John 17:18). We understand perfectly what Christ meant when he said, "I have sent them into the world." He meant that he commissioned us, or appointed us. No one thinks that we were in heaven with Christ and incarnated into the flesh. Christ said, "As you have sent me, I have sent them." So, however we take the phrase that Christ sent us, that is how we should understand the phrase that God sent Christ.

Buzzard, pp. 154-157
Norton, pp. 246-248

Source: http://www.biblicalunitarian.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=93

Pastor Kun: @Frosbel
Granted I agree with you that the trinity doctrine is a false pagan inspired doctrine that has no sound biblical basis, what I can't understand is why you deny the divinity of christ and his pre existence despite all the biblical evidence to the contrary.

Pastor Kun: @Frosbel
Granted I agree with you that the trinity doctrine is a false pagan inspired doctrine that has no sound biblical basis, what I can't understand is why you deny the divinity of christ and his pre existence despite all the biblical evidence to the contrary.

"At the Council of Lateran, in 1513, Pope Leo X first pronounced the doctrine of the immortality of the soul to be a Christian doctrine." It was this dogma, along with other errors, which enraged Martin Luther and caused him to post his 95 theses four years later.

First Corinthians 15:52, 53, records, "In a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

Commenting on this verse, the Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary says, "Here only, besides 1 Timothy 6:16, the word 'immortality' is found. Nowhere is immortality of the soul, distinct from the body, taught; a notion which many erroneously have derived from heathen philosophers. Scripture does not look for the anomalous state brought about by death, as the consummation to be earnestly looked for (2 Cor. 5:4), but the resurrection." This comment acknowledges that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is pagan in origin. It acknowledges that resurrection, not death, is the time of change and reward for the believer.

S. D. McConnell, in his book, "The Evolution of Immortality," states: "Of the early Christians, those who were Greeks brought to the new religion the Platonic idea that the soul was indestructible, and the Greek influence gained the domination in the early church. The Platonic doctrine (doctrine of Plato) of natural immortality came to be accepted. The notion was withstood from the very beginning as being subversive of the very existence of Christianity.

"Theopholis, Irenius, Hacses, Clement of Alexandria, and, most weighty of all, Athanasius, all fought strenuously against it as pagan error which brought to nought the work of Christ."

"At the Council of Lateran, in 1513, Pope Leo X first pronounced the doctrine of the immortality of the soul to be a Christian doctrine." It was this dogma, along with other errors, which enraged Martin Luther and caused him to post his 95 theses four years later.

Image123: ^
There are souls crying aloud under God's altar in heaven. Are you not a certain hypocrite who loves to post some self-righteous claim of following Christ and not men? Meanwhile you're the one who quotes articles and dead men most on thereligion section of this forum. God is watching, so am i.

Tgirl4real: Oh dear!

I was really loving this article - Man is a living soul (in summary), but that last paragraph killed the goodness of this message.

When a man dies, he (soul) sleeps - d first death. When believers resurrect, we do so with a glorious body and we (our soul) live on...

The unbeliever wakes up to judgement and God destroys the soul of the sinner in the lake of fire - the second death alongeside the devil and his cohorts.

Don't tell me we are just gonna be empty glorified bodies

Umph!

frosbel:

A Soul = Body and spirit ( breath of God ) - Genesis 2:7

When a soul dies, the body returns to the ground and the spirit returns to God.

"When You hide Your face, they are terrified; when You take away their breath, they die and return to the dust." - Psalm 104:29

" Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again" - Job 10:9

It is this body that is raised up on the last day either incorruptible for eternity or corruptible for destruction.

"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." - 1 Corinthians 15:52



Thanks.

frosbel:

A Soul = Body and spirit ( breath of God ) - Genesis 2:7

When a soul dies, the body returns to the ground and the spirit returns to God.

"When You hide Your face, they are terrified; when You take away their breath, they die and return to the dust." - Psalm 104:29

" Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again" - Job 10:9

It is this body that is raised up on the last day either incorruptible for eternity or corruptible for destruction.

"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." - 1 Corinthians 15:52



Thanks.

shdemidemi:


Frosbel, what is this?

Body raised!

Tgirl4real: Ok. I think I get what u are saying there, it's the breath of God that keeps man alive.

I will continue with a follow-up 2mrw.

Good night.

frosbel:


Was Jesus raised bodily from the grave ?

frosbel:

Hmm, souls that are dead cannot be living in heaven, it is symbolic language, otherwise we have to agree that abels blood is actually crying from the ground.


"But the LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground!" - Genesis 4:10

shdemidemi:

Did Jesus have the same corrupt body like you and I?

[quote author=Image123]
That you do not believe something does not automatically mean that it is symbolic language or a parable. What is it symbolic of? i agree that Abel's blood is cried from the ground. God said it and that settles it for me.

Here are three scripture witnesses telling us that Abel is still speaking after death. That it sounds incredulous to you like any other miraculous thing sounds does not mean it is not real.

Rev 6:9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
Rev 6:10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
Rev 6:11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

Image123: ^
There are souls crying aloud under God's altar in heaven. Are you not a certain hypocrite who loves to post some self-righteous claim of following Christ and not men? Meanwhile you're the one who quotes articles and dead men most on thereligion section of this forum. God is watching, so am i.