"Will Be Near after Death"
A PHYSICIAN of some note, residing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recently died, leaving the assurance that "I will, if possible, be ever near and be of help" to all "who have contributed to make my stay on earth pleasant." It is remarkable what a strong hold the superstition that man is conscious in death has upon the human mind. Men who are masters in scientific study, and who scoff at superstitions and mysticisms, will nevertheless bow their splendid intellects before the theory that only the body of the man dies, and that a mysterious, invisible something within him escapes and lives on and on. If man has such an eternal, undying spirit, why does it not have sufficient intelligence to make itself known while the man is living? When we are talking to a live man, we do not think of some spirit within him. We think of the man himself. A single text of Scripture, if we would allow it to have weight, would forever settle this question: "For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. 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." Eccl. 9: 4-6. Observe that this text says "the dead know not anything." Furthermore, their love, their hatred, and their envy are perished; and not only so, but they do not have "any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun." Therefore they cannot come back after their death to talk with their friends. But there is an invisible spirit that the Bible represents as having been cast out of heaven, who may come back, and who does transform himself at times into an angel of light. 2 Cor. 11: 14. And some of the strongest warnings given in the Bible are against the evil spirits that will work their masterly deceptions in the last days. The majority of mankind have been trained from their infancy to believe in the immortality of the soul, and that a man has a conscious spirit which escapes his body at death and lives on. But Bible students should get beyond such theories; and certainly all thinkers, regardless of their views of the Bible, ought to be able to see the absurdity of such a superstition.