Death is Real
There is no escaping the reality of death. When it comes suddenly, unexpectedly, as the result of an accident or heart attack, we are shaken. Similarly when someone still "in the prime of life" dies of cancer or kidney failure. Such events are so common that we all experience them. We are overcome by the sense of our own helplessness: we cannot reverse what has happened. All human resources are powerless to restore a dead person to life. The grieving relative is not easily comforted.

How do people react to the fact of death? The young frankly do not treat the matter seriously. When they have the occasional shock - a friend is killed in a road accident, for example - it is just "bad luck". The tragedy is soon forgotten. The middle-aged do not care to contemplate death. It is too far off yet to seem a real danger: "Better face it when it comes." Older people become more aware that here is a reality they will not escape. Their friends and relations pass off the scene. Failing eyesight and hearing, growing physical ailments remind them that the human frame eventually perishes.

Survival?
Many people find some comfort in the idea of survival. A mysterious inner life called "the soul" is thought to pass out of the perishing body and to go to "heaven", where the personality continues to live--in bliss. This view is not so confidently or so widely held as once it was; it is now often more a pious hope than a strong conviction. And it is very vague, as is shown by the prayer uttered each Christmas Eve at the famous Lessons and Carols service in King's College, Cambridge. The leader prays that the congregation may be joined with those "who rejoice with us, but on another shore and in a greater light" - he means those who have died. If we were to ask, What is this "greater light"? Where is this "other shore"? we should be unlikely to get any very definite answers. The hope is vague.

The view which used to be held, as a necessary counterpart, that the "souls" of evil people go to "hell", there to suffer torments, is now very generally abandoned, except for the Catholic Church, which maintains belief in hell, purgatory, limbo and paradise. It must be said that there is a certain lack of reason in the popular attitude here. For if the "souls" of the righteous go to heaven, where do the "souls" of the wicked go?

An increasing number of people today are frankly pessimistic. They accept the fact that death is the end of life. "I shall soon be pushing up the daisies", as one acquaintance put it. The view has unfortunate consequences, for the person holding it is strongly tempted to argue that his life is all he has; it is his own to do as he pleases; and he may as well "eat, drink, and be merry", for tomorrow he will die. This view of life has a serious effect upon the kind of life to be lived, which can become self-indulgent and self-centered, with the disastrous results for society which we are seeing today.

Messages from the Dead?
The inescapable fact is that since the dawn of history millions upon millions of human beings have lived, died, and been laid in the grave. If they have in fact survived in some new form, would you not have expected to hear from them some word of consolation for the bereaved, some information about their state, or some warning for the living? Yet we never hear anything from them. Not a word. Is not this strange? And where are all these millions anyway? There are people, called Spiritualists who believe in survival and claim to receive messages from the dead. But thorough investigation will reveal how unconvincing the claims are. Years ago the present writer attended seances and read widely in the literature. The alleged messages from the dead were so trivial and commonplace as to require no "spirit" explanation. The descriptions of the after-life were filled with gardens, streams, fruit-trees and sweet smelling flowers, enjoyed in blissful idleness. Quite clearly this is just an idealised picture of human longings. C. E. M. Joad, a serious investigator in psychical research, commenting upon the poor quality of alleged spirit communications, robustly declared: "It is evident that if our spirits survive, our brains certainly do not!"

Then there is "the pity of it". Men and women sometimes living worthy lives, humanly speaking, being helpful, kindly and intelligent; some even learned and expert in their field. Need all this just be lost for ever? Is there no way in which the life and character which is of real value can be preserved? Naturally this raises the question, What is real value? We shall come to that later.

The Vital Question
How do we settle this question about what happens after death? Where do we go for a thoroughly reliable and truthful answer?

Do we trust to our own feelings or "intuition"? How do we know we are right? How could we expect anyone else to accept our view on our own authority? How can any man or woman anywhere tell us the answer? How do they know, anyway? Do we accept the views of religious leaders, either of individuals or of Councils or Synods? How do they know? And what are we to think when prominent religious leaders are seen to be divided among themselves on important issues? One prominent bishop has declared that Christ did not literally rise from the dead; others declare the Resurrection to be one of the foundations of the Christian faith. Who are we to believe-and why?

These questions, when sincerely faced, lead us to this inescapable conclusion: the opinion of one human mind is, of itself, of no more value than that of any other. In other words, human thinking cannot give us the answer. From this a very important conclusion emerges; since no human mind can pronounce with authority on what happens after death, then clearly we need an authority coming from outside and above mankind-that is a super-human authority.

The Answer
Such an authority exists among us. It is the Bible which from first to last declares that it is a message to the human race from God-the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and of mankind.

The Bible writers never claim to speak on their own authority, but only "the word of the Lord". "I have put my words in thy mouth", as God said to the prophet Jeremiah (1:10). Jesus accepted the writings of "the law and the prophets" (Our Old Testament) as the Word of God. He himself declared that the words he spoke were God's words. The apostles said the same thing: Paul declared that "all scripture is inspired of God" and used a term which means "God-breathed". The "breath" (or Spirit) of God is in what is written, and so what the Scriptures say is truth. The earliest believers in Christ, from those who knew the Apostles personally, accepted the Old and New Testaments as the true and reliable Word of God. For centuries the teaching of the Bible has been the foundation for Christian belief.

Just think what the Bible does. It records how the human race came into being and it explains in clear terms why there is evil, suffering and death in the world. It tells us positively what happens after death. And it also reveals the new kind of life which can be ours, if we will only pay attention to its message.

There is no other book in the world which does all this. In fact there is no book anywhere which shows so many signs of being produced not by human minds, but by the mind of God. Over 100 years ago Henry Rogers wrote a remarkable book entitled The Superhuman Origin of the Bible Deduced from Itself. He declared: "The Bible is not such a book as man would have written if he could, nor could have written if he would." The reason is that it is a message to us from God. That is why it deserves our sincere attention.

The Bible and Us
It is most important that we should understand what the Bible has to say about us, our origin and our nature. It is the only authoritative account anywhere of how we came to exist.

The book of Genesis is about our origin. It tells us clearly that man was a created being: that is, he depended upon a Creator for his very life. He was not responsible for his own origin. This is how it happened:

"The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7).

Notice man's lowly origin: from the ground. Genesis tells us also (at 6:17 and 7:21) that the animals too share "the breath of life" with mankind. But it is the expression "a living soul" which claims our attention and teaches us the first and essential condition for understanding the Bible: we must understand Bible terms in its own sense, and not in ours. Now to many people "the soul" suggests some spirit within man which "survives the death of the body". But that is not at all how it is used in Genesis, where the word translated "soul" is used of the animals as well. In Genesis 1:21,24 it is translated "living creature". The Revised Standard Version (R.S.V.) renders "living soul" as "living being". So does the New International Version (N.l.V.). The New English Bible (N.E.B.) has "a living creature".

The conclusion is clear: Genesis is telling us that by origin and nature man was created a living being. Of course, he has greater powers of mind than have the animals, but basically his nature is the same as theirs.

The Coming of Death
The question as to how man's life might come to an end is treated very early in Genesis. Adam was told by God that if he disobeyed the commandment he had received, he would die. He did disobey, and this is the judgement which was pronounced upon him:

". . in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return" (3:19).

The record is devastatingly simple: death is not a door opening to a new life--it is a judgement for disobedience. Man returns to the ground. So in the Genesis record of the Flood, when "the earth was corrupt before God and filled with violence . . . for all flesh had corrupted his (God's) way upon the earth" (6:11-1 2), the waters of judgement came, and men and animals perished in the same way:

"All flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, of cattle, of beast . . . and every man; all in whose nostrils was the breath of life ...died" (7:21-22).

Man and Animals
The Bible frequently compares the nature of man to that of the animals. The Psalmist declares, speaking of both:

"Thou (God) takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust" (104:29).

The writer of Ecclesiastes is quite categorical: he desires men to see

"that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath . . . All go unto one place: all are of the dust and all turn to dust again" (3:19-21).

Men and animals have by nature the same fate: they all return to the ground. Some may object that the next verse gives a different sense, but all modern versions (R.V., R.S.V., N.I.V., N.E.B.) put it thus:

"Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth?" (v.22).

That is, who can tell whether there is any difference? Incidentally, the word translated "spirit" here is the very same as is rendered "breath" in v.1 9; which shows that "spirit" here is the life resulting from breathing. It ceases when breathing stops.

So the "soul" can die. The Psalmist, speaking of the judgement God brought upon the proud Egyptians by the ten plagues, says: "He (God) spared not their soul from death"; and then immediately adds: "and gave their life over to the pestilence" (Psalm 78:50), showing that the soul and the life are the same thing.

Twice God declares through Ezekiel: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezek. 18:3,20). Samson, in his final appeal to God, prays: "Let me die with the Philistines" (Judges 16:30). But the margin of the A.V. shows that what Samson literally said was: "Let my soul die . . ."

The soul then, is the person, the living being. When he perishes, the soul, or life, perishes with him.