3083.—The Spirit at Death
By Editor
Will you please tell us what becomes of the spirit when one dies? Does it still live, or does it go direct to God? B. To this question Eccl. 12:7 furnishes a good reply: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” The real trouble regarding spirit or soul is a wrong conception of what spirit is. “Spirit” used in this sense simply means life and only life. It came from God life, it goes back to Him life, just as the body came from the dust and goes back to dust again. It does not go back a living, breathing body in the dust; it simply disintegrates and goes back to dust. The spirit is the life-giving power of God in that body, the breath of life which God breathed into it. Gen. 2:7. When the body dies, God takes that life back to Himself, and holds it there until the resurrection. The idea that man is dual, that he consists of two parts, one of which can exist separately from the other, is entirely unscriptural. It comes down wholly through paganism from the author of that first falsehood, “Ye shall not surely die.”