Does He Believe the Bible?
A Spiritualist friend, who claims to believe the Bible, writes us that he thinks we have “never investigated Bible Spiritualism;” and further says:— That is true—the dead know nothing; but it is strange that one of your intelligence should so misrepresent the Bible as to say, man dies. There is a separation, not a literal death. But what does the Bible say?—“Man dieth, and is cut off; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down, and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.” Job 14: 10–12, margin. “The Lord said unto Moses, All the men are dead which sought thy life.” Ex. 4: 19. “The Lord spake unto Joshua, saying, Moses My servant is dead.” Joshua 1: 1, 2. “There was a dead man carried out.” Luke 7: 12. Jesus said, “Your fathers did eat manna, and are dead.” John 6: 58. “Jesus said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.” John 11: 14. “Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom Jesus raised from the dead.” John 12: 1. It is said of many of the antediluvian patriarchs, “He died.” Gen. 5: 5, 8, 11, etc. “And Joseph died.” Gen. 50: 26. “Aaron died.” Deut. 10: 6. Such passages of scripture could be greatly multiplied. Does our friend believe them? It is no argument to say that the death and lack of knowledge refers to the body, “the shell,” “the husk;” for when did the body ever know anything? Neither does the Bible put it that way. It does not say, “The body dies.” It does not say, “Moses’ body died,” but “man dieth.” “Aaron died,” the whole man. Furthermore, we are expressly told, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Eze. 18: 4, 20. Now why not believe the Bible? To do otherwise makes the resurrection from the dead through Jesus Christ of none effect; and to say that man “never dies,” makes his salvation inhere in himself, and makes of none effect the Gospel of Christ. God’s angels minister to God’s children. Heb. 1: 14. They have been associated with His servants through all the past. Rev. 22: 9; Dan. 8: 16, 17; 10: 10–13; Luke 1: 19. But the angels are not dead men, or spirits of dead men; they existed before sin entered, before man fell, therefore before man died. Job 38: 4–7. Some of them rebelled, sinned, “kept not their first estate,” but fell with their great leader, Lucifer. 1 Peter 2: 4; Jude 6; Rev. 12: 3, 4. And the great deceiver and his angels, “which deceiveth the whole world,” are operating now as never before. They deceive men into believing that he would not die, tho he did die, and they have deceived a great part of the human family into believing that all the dead still live and think and know and feel, when the Bible declares, “The dead know not anything.” “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” Yet our Spiritualist friends, who profess to believe the Bible, tell us that all these statements refer to the body, which, according to their own view, never did think or love or hate or envy, while the souls or spirits exist conscious and come to us, flutter about us; are pained at our neglect, rejoice at our success, weep over our sins and failures. The devil and his angels, knowing that men believe this, knowing the garb and manner of the dead, come in the guise of deceased relatives and friends, and thus delude the souls of those who receive their messages. It is not a new thing for Satan to come as “an angel of light.” 2 Cor. 11: 14. “Be not deceived.” Belief in the immortality of the soul as a conscious entity, capable of conscious existence apart from the body, is responsible for more error and corruption than any other perversion of truth. It has led to deification of the dead, and all the ancestral and idolatrous hero worship of the past,—metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, saint worship, beast worship, purgatory, eternal torment, Mormonism, Spiritualism, and other perversions of truth. The belief makes of none effect Christ’s death and resurrection, the judgment, and His second coming. It makes the messages from the supposed spirits of the dead paramount to the Word and law of God, and so opens the soul that receives them to every delusion of the devil. We appeal to our readers to simply believe the Bible.