Immortality of the Soul
Trinity
Soul
The Truth about
Man's Nature
Preliminary
Genesis 35:18
1 Sam. 28:8-15
1 Kings 17:21
Ecc. 12:7
Matthew 10:28
Luke 16:19-31
Acts 7:59
1 Thess. 5:23
Hebrews 12:23
1 Peter 3:19
Revelation 6:9
Heaven
Hell
Satan/Demons
"Saved"
Baptism
Resurrection
Antichrist
Unique
Catholic
Mormon
SDA
JW
British Israel
Church
of Christ
Pentecostal
Islam
Science
Miracles
Evolution
Creation
Carbon Dating
Inspiration
Partial
Contradictions
& Inaccuracies
- 1 Kings 17:21
- "And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again."
- Problem:
- Only the hard pressed resort to this passage to prove the immortality of the soul. It is argued that when the child's soul left him, his immortal entity departed to heaven.
- Solution:
- The passage neither states nor implies that the soul decribed is immortal or that it would depart to heaven. Such views must be read into this passage. They are assumptions for which this passage offers no support.
- The personal pronoun "him" describes the lifeless body. If the real child was the immortal soul tabernacling in a mortal, earthly body, then the pronoun should have been descriptive of the soul and (as it is) of the body.
- It was not the child that had departed, neither was it the child which returned. The child was dead. He died when life was lost, he became living when life was restored. The Hebrew word, "nephesh" translated "soul" in this passage is translated "life" in Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:11; Deut. 12:23.
- If, as some argue, that the soul of the child went immediately to bliss in heaven, would it not have been better for the prophet to have left the soul of the child to enjoy bliss in heaven rather than to recall it to the travail of earthly life, and possible later consignment to the fires of hell?