[Announcer] (0:00 - 0:17) Think about the Bible like you never have before. You're listening to Christian Questions. Access more audio, videos, and Bible study resources at ChristianQuestions.com.
Our topic is: "Do I Have an Immortal Soul?" Part I. Here's Rick and Jonathan.
[Rick] (0:19 - 0:27) Welcome, everyone. I'm Rick. I'm joined by Jonathan, my co-host for over twenty-five years.
Jonathan, what's our theme scripture for this episode?
[Jonathan] (0:28 - 0:37) Genesis 2:17: "But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
[Rick] (0:37 - 1:40) The most fundamental question in understanding the nature of man is: Are we as humans innately physical beings or spiritual beings? If physical, then our life would, by definition, begin and end based upon its physical, tangible aspects. We would "come to life" when we are biologically alive, and we would cease to exist when our biology ceases to support life.
If we are spiritual beings, then the biological part of the human equation would simply house the essence of that intangible spiritual existence. Many religions firmly support this latter idea of humanity being inherently spiritual by having an "immortal" soul. As Bible-believing Christians, we need to look at this human identity question solely through the lens of biblical teaching.
The good news is the Bible is profoundly specific with its answer!
[Jonathan] (1:40 - 1:46) For this episode, we will focus only on the Old Testament teachings regarding the human soul.
[Rick] (1:46 - 1:51) In our next episode, we're going to solely focus on the New Testament teachings.
[Jonathan] (1:51 - 1:58) The best place to find the biblical truth about the nature of humanity is at humanity's creation.
[Rick] (1:58 - 2:13) We're going to go through several Old Testament Teachings. Our first Old Testament Teaching will be: Human life was created in God's image, and man became a soul or a being. We find this in Genesis 2:7:
[Jonathan] (2:13 - 2:30) "Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." In the King James Version, it says "man became a living soul."
The word for "being" means literally "a breathing creature."
[Rick] (2:31 - 3:23) You have a very straightforward definition of a very straightforward word. "Man became a living being." This straightforward Genesis equation for becoming a soul is: Body + the breath of life = a living creature.
What does that actually mean? How does that translate? Is it a physical thing, or is it a spiritual thing?
Let's move on to the next baseline of Old Testament Teaching. Jonathan, here's something that many of us perhaps have never even considered. Old Testament Teaching: Humans and animals are all referred to as souls or beings or creatures.
In other words, all are referred to exactly the same way. Let's look at Genesis 1:20-21:
[Jonathan] (3:23 - 3:48) "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature (meaning a being or a soul) that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
[Rick] (3:49 - 4:42) In these verses, when it says "the waters" brought forth "the moving creature," and "God created...whales and every living creature," that word "creature" (Editor's addition: in verse 21) is the exact same word as in "man became a living being" or a living soul. It's exactly the same word in the same context of God's grand creation. These scriptures indicate that man and animal are of the same makeup, meaning all are physical beings.
(Editor's note: In verse 20, the structure of the sentence includes Strong's #5315, "nephesh," but the Hebrew word for "creature" is Strong's #8318, "sherets," meaning an active mass of minute animals, a swarm. In verse 21, "creature" is Strong's # 5315)
What we're saying here is it's not a spiritual thing, it's a physical thing in all cases in these verses. Their lives are a result of the combination of their body and God's breath of life. You look at that and say, okay, well, wait--
we're saying that man and animal are all exactly the same? Isn't there a difference?
[Jonathan] (4:42 - 4:47) Well, Rick, I have a question. Is there a difference between humanity and animals?
[Rick] (4:47 - 5:00) Yes, there is. There's a huge difference, but we just said, well, they're described exactly the same. Yes, they are. Let's understand where that difference comes.
Let's look at Genesis 1:26:
[Jonathan] (5:01 - 5:15) "Then God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule (have dominion) over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
[Rick] (5:15 - 6:33) In these verses, it says, "let Us make man in Our image," after "Our likeness." Jonathan, that's a massive difference from the previous verses, because in the previous verses it says "let the waters bring forth abundantly," and "God created...whales and every living creature," and God did all of this. You have God in this incredible creation, creating these living beings, but then when it comes to creating humanity, two things;
it says he's created in God's image--doesn't apply to anything else--and he is given dominion over all of the rest. While the physicality of man and animal is the same, the station of man versus animal is very, very, very different. All humans and animals are referred to as being souls, beings, or creatures.
Okay, that's that Old Testament Teaching. Let's move forward now. Let's go to another Old Testament Teaching.
These are very specific teachings, with very specific scriptural backgrounds to show how they fit together. Moving forward with humanity, God's test of obedience introduced death as its consequence. Jonathan, this ends up being huge, as we will see.
Let's look at Genesis 2:16-17.
[Jonathan] (6:33 - 6:59) This is from the Young's Literal Translation: "And Jehovah God layeth a charge on the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden eating thou dost eat; and of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou dost not eat of it, for in the day of thine eating of it—dying thou dost die."
The word "die" or "dying" means "to die" or "to kill." It's the absence of life.
[Rick] (6:59 - 8:11) "Dying thou dost die." You will die. Essentially, that's what it's saying.
What you're saying is that word means the absence of life. Here's what we have in Genesis 2:16-17; this proclamation, this potential consequence.
Mankind, Adam and Eve, had free access to all the trees in the garden except for that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God stated a clear, decisive consequence for any disobedience in relation to that particular tree, and that consequence was death. That death, the way it was written in that Young's Literal Translation, "dying thou shalt die," indicates it's not like you eat the fruit and you just drop dead.
It's a process of dying. "Dying thou shalt die"-- that's what we have in terms of consequence.
Death is introduced as the consequence. Now, the interesting thing is, Satan--because he's Satan--deliberately contradicted God's stated consequence when he was tempting Eve. It's very interesting the way this all unfolds.
Let's look at what he says very briefly to Eve in Genesis 3:4-5.
[Jonathan] (8:11 - 8:28) Again, this is from the Young's Literal Translation: "And the serpent saith unto the woman, Dying, ye do not die, for God doth know that in the day of your eating of it—your eyes have been opened, and ye have been as God, knowing good and evil."
[Rick] (8:28 - 11:56) Look at that. It's saying, oh no. God said, "dying thou shalt die?" No. Do you think God's going to keep His word, really?
No, dying you won't die. I mean, think about this. It takes the words and directly turns them backwards and inside out.
Then he brings on other things. Well, your eyes will be opened. That was true.
You'll understand more of good and evil. That was true. But the consequence, the consequence was also true, and Satan directly contradicted that.
You have that direct contradiction. As we look at the nature of man and the concept that man IS a soul--he wasn't given a soul, that some ethereal thing that floats--it's all part of the biological person. To really put that in order, let's now go to what actually happened, because this makes it very, very simple.
The question, how do we know for sure what happens with this consequence of death? I mean, how do we know that death isn't just the separation of the soul out of the man? Well, God explains it.
Folks, you've got to be clear on listening to how God unfolds these things. Genesis 3:17-19:
JONATHAN:
"Then to Adam He said, Because you... have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Rick, did you know that "you" or "your" are mentioned twelve times in these verses! RICK:
That's crazy.
I never added it up. Now that you mention that, that makes these verses all the more clear. Because what God is telling Adam, as a result, here's the consequence. You've disobeyed,
so you; you, mankind (not your body); you, not just your soul--that some of us may think floats away--you, mankind, will return to the elements. You, that means ALL of you, from which you were created. It's not just about the biological body, it's about you. When it says "you" or "your" twelve times, it's saying this is what happens to you.
"You return to the ground" from which you came, because "by the sweat of your face you will eat bread," because you sinned. It's all about you. Death is here defined as a pre-life state of non-existence.
Before God created man from the dust of the ground, from the elements of earth, there wasn't any inkling of man. God is basically saying, death is your consequence. Your consequence is to go back to what was before I created you.
We've got this next Old Testament Teaching that is resounding in this light. It says death is the absence of life. A description of this condition of the absence of life is shown to us further in Genesis, but this is many years later.
This is after the flood. What are the results of the flood in the earth? Let's take a look at this description of those conditions in Genesis 7:21-22:
[Jonathan] (11:57 - 12:17) "And all flesh died (which means to breathe out, expire) that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died."
[Rick] (12:18 - 12:42) You've given us this very panoramic view of the clarity of the same end result was for all. All flesh, like you said, breathed out, expired. I love the way it says it in verse 22 "in whose nostrils was the breath of life."
The breath of life stopped feeding the life. Because the biological creatures had died, they all died.
[Jonathan] (12:42 - 13:09) An additional scripture from Solomon which confirms this is Ecclesiastes 3:19-20: "For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other;
indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust."
[Rick] (13:09 - 13:44) When you think about it from a scriptural perspective, it's all very, very logical. You don't have to add a lot of extra dimensions. God just puts it in place.
I created man from the dust of the ground. Here's your opportunity for eternal life on earth. If you sin, you go back to the elements that I created you from and you are no more.
This next Old Testament teaching builds on that idea of death as the absence of life. The next Old Testament Teaching is simple: There is no activity on any level in death.
No activity. Let's go to another Ecclesiastes scripture, Ecclesiastes 9:10:
[Jonathan] (13:44 - 13:55) "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."
[Rick] (13:55 - 14:18) Where you're going, there is nothing. It's completely empty. There is nothing.
Let's go to another scripture. Let's go to Job 14:13-14. Of course, now Job is lamenting all of the tremendous losses that he's had in life, and he's despairing.
This is part of his great and deep despair.
[Jonathan] (14:18 - 14:43) "Oh that You would hide me in Sheol (the grave), that You would conceal me until Your wrath returns to You, that You would set a limit for me and remember me! If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my struggle I will wait until my change comes."
Job is referring to something in the future. Something's going to happen later. God will remember him.
[Rick] (14:43 - 15:08) That's an interesting point, because he's saying, "Oh that You would hide me in the grave." Oh, that my life would end, because I am so overwhelmed with my grief. He's saying, "I will wait until my change comes."
Will God remember? Yes, yes, He will! Jonathan, we should be able to understand this, because for those of us who use computers, many of us, when we go to save our documents and files and things, we save them in the cloud, right?
[Jonathan] (15:08 - 15:08) Sure.
[Rick] (15:09 - 15:35) Did you ever wonder where the cloud is? That's a different question, but we're not going to go there.
What happens is, the memory of humanity is not saved in the cloud. It's saved above the clouds. It's saved in the mind of God in heaven.
That's what this Job verse is alluding to. It's the memory that's saved, and that is what the miracle of resurrection will bring. There is no activity on any level in death.
Let's go to Psalm 115:17:
[Jonathan] (15:36 - 15:48) "The dead do not praise the LORD, nor do any who go down into silence." There is no sound in death. It is completely quiet.
We've all heard the phrase "dead silence."
[Rick] (15:48 - 16:22) Yeah, you're right. Dead silence. Let's go a little bit further.
Let's go to the next Old Testament Teaching: The absence of life being death is universal to all of God's creations. It's universal.
It happens to everyone. We're going to look at Numbers 16:29, and we're dropping into this very, very dramatic story of the sons of Korah who were rebelling against Moses. Basically, they're standing against Moses, and the earth is going to swallow them up into a pit.
This is the context of what you're about to read in Numbers 16:29:
[Jonathan] (16:23 - 16:37) "If these men die the death of all men or if they suffer the fate of all men, then the LORD has not sent me." The word for "death" in this verse literally means "death (natural or violent); concretely, the dead."
[Rick] (16:37 - 17:05) What Moses is saying is, if they just die in a natural course of life, then God hasn't sent me. But if something very dramatic happens, you know this is God's doing. Of course, the earth literally opens up, and they die.
They fall into the pit. You have the absence of life. They're done.
It's over. It's gone. Another Ecclesiastes scripture--
Jonathan, I got to admit, this is one of my favorite Ecclesiastes scriptures when it comes to talking about life and death and so forth. Ecclesiastes 10:1:
[Jonathan] (17:05 - 17:21) "Dead flies make a perfumer's oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor." Rick, dead flies are just like dead men. It's the same condition, an absence of life.
[Rick] (17:22 - 17:35) That's the point. It uses the same word. Folks, we have to understand, you follow scriptural meaning to understand scriptural teaching. That's where we want to get to. Another very straightforward scripture on the soul being mortal is Ezekiel 18:4:
[Jonathan] (17:35 - 17:53) "Behold, all souls or beings are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die."
[Rick] (17:53 - 18:06) That's pretty straightforward. "The soul who sins will die." "As in Adam all die"--we're in that situation. All of the above scriptures that we just read indicate that man and animals are all subject to death, the absence of life.
[Jonathan] (18:07 - 18:08) Even insects, Rick.
[Rick] (18:09 - 18:53) Well, yes, you're right. You look at that and say, well, wait, you mean death--the death of a mosquito is like the death of a human being?
The answer is yes, in the sense that it all comes to nothingness. Of course, we understand the plan of God and His capacity and ability to raise us out of nothingness into life. He created Adam out of just the elements.
He can raise people out of death. That's the beauty of all of this when we look at the big picture. Here's a question, Jonathan.
If these Old Testament Teachings that we've talked about, about the clarity and the finality death are true, then how do we explain these next verses? These next verses throw a little bit of a wrench into things here. Let's look at Genesis 25:17:
[Jonathan] (18:54 - 19:04) "And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, one hundred and thirty and seven years: and he gave up the ghost and died; and was gathered unto his people."
[Rick] (19:04 - 19:14) "Gave up the ghost and died." Okay, that sounds a little different than what we've been saying. Let's pile on.
Let's add another scripture to that. Genesis 35:29:
[Jonathan] (19:15 - 19:34) "And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, being old and full of days: and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him." Remember back in Genesis 7:21, the word "died" meant "breathe out" or "expire."
This is the same Hebrew word here for "give up the ghost."
[Rick] (19:35 - 20:11) Okay, so it's the exact same word "to breathe out" or "expire." You're getting a sense that there's a consistency if we understand the actual language. We're going to save our comments on that for just a moment.
Let's talk about the other part of this verse that people look at and say, well, there's got to be life after death because they were gathered unto their people. It said it twice. As a matter of fact, that phrase "gathered unto his people" is used several times in the Old Testament.
What does it mean? Well, let's look at another verse that helps to unfold this. This is Deuteronomy 31:16:
[Jonathan] (20:12 - 20:37) "And the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land..." It's important to remember the Israelite families brought the remains of their loved ones to a final resting place with their forefathers.
They were buried together in tombs or graveyards with their families. That's what these verses describe.
[Rick] (20:38 - 21:28) It's a respectful act of remembrance. When they were gathered unto their people, to bury those of family orientation together is to have that continual remembrance of who they were. It has nothing to do with some convention going on on the "other side."
It's all about gathering them in the remembrance to their people. We do that to this day. You go to how many graveyards and you see family plots, because we have that same sense of continuity in understanding it.
Now let's go back to the giving up the ghost part of this discussion. It's interesting that Job describes it for us. He tells us what it means. Job 14:10-12:
[Jonathan] (21:28 - 21:34) "But man dieth and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"
[Rick] (21:35 - 21:40) Okay, see, now this is the big thing.
"...and where is he?" Okay, here it is. Here's the answer.
[Jonathan] (21:40 - 22:02) "As the waters fail (evaporate) from the sea, and the flood decayeth and dryeth 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." Remember, giving up the ghost means breathing out your last breath.
You're dead. The penalty of disobedience to Adam was death.
[Rick] (22:02 - 23:26) When he talks about giving up the ghost, he says "he lieth down and riseth not." They're not going to awake. It's done.
It's been finished. Life, the course of life, has come to an end, and now there is nothing. Now folks, look, for a lot of us, you're listening to this saying, wait a minute, wait a minute!
This is not what I was taught, or this is not what I thought the scriptures teach. Listen to all the scriptures, and listen to the clarity, and to the definitions. The Old Testament is very clear, and very, very specific.
We need to--if we are Bible-believing Christians--believe in what the scriptures tell us. Our final Old Testament Teaching here, till we wrap up, is this: There is no inherent life after death for humanity.
No inherent life. Now look, as Christians, we know that Jesus changed things. When we get to part two, we'll talk about that piece.
But there is nothing built into the human framework that demands it. That's what we're saying up to this point. We've given strong scriptural proof that the human soul dies.
Again, as radical as this might sound to many, it's clearly written as a teaching in the Old Testament. Will it hold true for the New Testament? Well, our final two scriptures that we're going to talk about today will link the Old and New Testaments together, because we're going to read the Old Testament version and see how it's quoted in the New Testament.
Jonathan, let's go to Psalm 16:10.
[Jonathan] (23:27 - 24:06) We know this is prophetic of Jesus being raised from the dead by God's great power. "For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell (meaning the grave); neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption." It's strange how the translators translate the word "Sheol."
It's translated thirty-one times as "grave," thirty-one times as "hell," and three times as "pit." They put good people in the grave and bad people in hell. Why?
It's the same word. There's a lack of integrity on their part. They even put Jesus in hell instead of in the tomb in this verse.
[Rick] (24:06 - 25:03) It's interesting the way you describe that, because folks, if you were to do a word study of the Old Testament, the word "hell" in the Old Testament, that's what you'd find. It's giving an assumption where it's exactly the same word at the end of no matter whose life it is. We need to have--and I appreciate the fact that you use the word integrity--we need to have integrity in our understanding of what the Bible says and grasp and embrace what it's telling us rather than what I'd like it to be telling me.
Big difference between those two things. Now that verse, Psalm 16:10, is directly quoted in the New Testament, and the quotation in the New Testament gives us the Greek words that will exactly coincide with the Hebrew words that we've been discussing. We will pick up those Greek words in Part II of this conversation in our next episode.
Jonathan, let's look at Acts 2:27. There's going to be no surprises here.
[Jonathan] (25:04 - 25:18) "Because Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption." You're right, Rick. This proves that "soul" and "hell" from the Old Testament correspond with the New Testament words.
[Rick] (25:18 - 25:51) What we have is the Old Testament giving us a very solid, clear foundation of what life and death is in relation to humanity. It puts things out there. We spent this particular episode just going through scripture after scripture after scripture after scripture that all say exactly the same thing. Those that come across a little bit questionable, when you put them in the context and you look at the meanings, it all agrees.
Jonathan, as our final Old Testament Teaching, what have we got as we begin to sum this all up?
[Jonathan] (25:51 - 26:15) God created humanity as physical beings to have dominion over the physical earth. According to God's plan in the Old Testament, our lives as human beings are clearly mortal. This mortality proves God's sovereignty, and because of Jesus' sacrifice it will be a powerful learning tool in God's future kingdom for every human being who has ever lived.
[Rick] (26:15 - 27:24) We've got the clarity of what the Old Testament teaches us. It puts it in perspective, it makes it clear, it makes it understandable. Jonathan, it's very, very sensible.
There's nothing here that we're looking at and saying, Well, that doesn't make any sense. If we can take ourselves out of our--perhaps our preconditioned--thinking, and just look at Old Testament teaching, there is a very strong, clear, undeniable message that says to us: God created mankind to be on the earth, to live eternally. He created them and gave them the responsibility of obedience.
He told them, if there is no obedience, then the life that you've been given will be taken away. It's that simple. Of course, we know the New Testament brings Jesus, and that brings a whole different dimension.
That's what we'll be talking about next week. When we think about the soul, it is mortal. Think about it.
Folks, we love hearing from our listeners. We welcome your feedback and questions on this episode and other episodes at ChristianQuestions.com. As we mentioned, coming up in our next episode, "Do I Have an Immortal Soul?" Part II.
Final Notes: copyright @2025 Christian Questions. In addition to this transcript, we provide comprehensive CQ Rewind Show Notes for every episode. They include every scripture quoted during the podcast, as well as graphics, illustrations and bonus material. Click the "CQ Rewind Show Notes" button near the audio player or sign up to receive these weekly at ChristianQuestions.com. This transcript was created using artificial intelligence. While we believe it to be accurate, we apologize for any errors that may exist.