The idea that man has an immortal soul was taught by the Greeks, but not the Bible.

"And 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  So you do not have a soul. You are a soul.

The Hebrew word for soul is Nephesh which means a living being. So man does not possess a soul. When the breath of life enters him,

he is a living being. He is alive. Preachers tell you your soul is immortal but   Rom.2:7 says  that we do not have immortality yet, but we must seek it.

"God, will render every man according to his works: to those who by patient endurance of a good work seek for glory and honor and immortality" (Rom. 2:6-7).   So if we must seek immortality, then no part of us is immortal yet.

 

 

"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit (breath) shall return unto God who gave it." (Ecclesiastes 12:7)

The word spirit in Hebrew is Ruach and means breath. So when the breath goes back to El Shaddai, the body goes back to dust.

 

 

Only El Shaddai is immortal. He the "only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality". (1Tim.6:15)

When the Last trumpet  blows it will be the Judgment day and we believers will:

"all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." (1 Cor.15:52)

So prior to the Judgment day, there is no part of us that is immortal. When we die our bodies turn to dust and our breath goes back to El Shaddai.

 

 

"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing." (Ecclesiastes 9:5

"There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave"; and the dead are described as those who "go down into silence." (Eccl. 9:10`; Psa. 115:17`)

"For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befalls them: as the one dies, so dies the other; yea, they have all one breath; and man hath no preeminence above the beasts: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." (Eccles.3:19-20)

 

The English word hell comes from Hel the norse goddess of the underworld. She has a body that is black and half covered with flesh. The prevailing Christian concept of hell comes from Greek mythology not from the Scriptures. The contemporary Christian view of hell is a place where the majority of souls go at death to be punished in flames. In this hell apostate Christians, and all non-Christians, are chained in a dark, fiery place of torment where they are punished by Satan and his demons for all eternity.

 

 

 

There are 3 words in Greek that have clumsily been translated into English as hell 1) Hadas, 2) Geenna, and 3) Tartaroo.

Hadas

Hadas means the grave, this is what the Hebrew word "Sheol" means. Unfortunately this Greek word for the grave is pre-loadedwith fables. Hadas is an underworld that is populated with conscious souls. To the Greeks Hadas,(the abode of the god Hades), was an Underworld with a complete mythology. It had the River Styx, Charon the boatman, Cerberus the 3-headed dog and variouslevels and degrees of torment. Hades (to the Romans  it was associated with the god Pluto -the rich one). Human sacrifices were made to Pluto, and he was hated and feared by all. This is where we get our ideas about the devil. Pluto even carries a pitchfork.

 

 

To the biblical mind Sheol was nothing more than the grave where the dead know nothing, and the body decomposes to dust. Fornearly 2,000 years the Greeks have soiled the Gospel with superstitions and teach for doctrines the traditions and mythologies of men. I say it's time we throw these myths into Geenna.

 

Geenna was a garbage dump where trash was always burning near Jerusalem. The corpses of Capital offenders were burned there.Geenna became a metaphor for the fate of those who died estranged from El Shaddai.

 

 

Tartaroo in Greek Mythology was the official name of the Underworld, We do not know the exact location that Peter had in mind, but we can be sure it was not the Greek Underworld." God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Tartaroo, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." ( 2 Peter 2:4)

"And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." (Jude 1:6)

What About the Good Thief on the Cross, Isn't He in Heaven?

Jesus told one thief "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:39-43) Those who teach that paradise is in heaven and the good thief went straight to heaven must deal with the following problem. Jesus did not go to a heavenly paradise that day. He died and went into the grave just before sunset on Tuesday, was dead Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (72 hours),and he rose just before sunset just as Saturday was beginning. So the thief could not have gone to paradise on that day.Traditionally Christians teach that one of the thieves repented. But Matthew  and Mark say  both thieves reviled him."The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth." (Mt.27:44).

"And those who were crucified with Him were reproaching Him." (Mark 15:32)

Allon Maxwwell, of Australia, says if we wish to understand this apparent contradiction, we must understand the second thief'stone of voice. He was mocking Jesus just like the first thief and the priests and the revilers at the foot of the cross. He was hurling mockery into Jesus's teeth.

"The SECOND thief also reviled him, by directing words of (mock) "rebuke" at the first thief, but (according to Matthew), actuallyusing the occasion (indirectly at first) to rail at Jesus. He said, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." (Luke 23:40-41)"Then he turned directly to Jesus and continued his reviling ....... yes, reviling, Matthew says!! "Jesus remember me when you comeinto your Kingdom". http://home.pacific.net.au/~amaxwell/bdigest/bd57bbs.txt.

Maxwell rightly argues that Jesus's coronation was on the throne of the cross and his crown was a crown of thorns.

That day was the first day of his official rule in his kingdom; he spent the next three days dead in the land of death.

"Today you will be with me", that was his only day to be with him. He was there on the throne of the cross with Jesus, but before the afternoon would be over, the thief would go into the earth and await the Judgment Day like all others. By being in Jesus's presene, he had had a taste of paradise,but mocked it.

 

The early English translators inherited 1500 years of Greek theology that taught that humans have a body (soma), a soul (psyche)

 and a spirit (pneuma). Plato wrote in his book Phaedo:

"The soul is immortal...when a man dies, the visible part of him, the body...will dissolve and disappear, but the soul goes to another place."

Augustine described the soul as "a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body".

The Greeks taught that a man's psyche lived in his body like a "ghost in a tent". Many said the body was the prison house of the soul.

 As a result of this early heresy, most Christians teach that the soul is immortal and will never die. It leaves the body at death, and will

live forever, either in heavenly delight, or hellish pain.

 

Jesus, like all Hebrews, taught that humans are body and breath. When the two unite, they are a psyche. When the breath leaves the body the psyche is no more. On the Judgment day your body and breath will once again reunite and you will again be the psycheyou are today. You will return to life either to be granted immortality, or oblivion, not eternal torment.

The Greek word for soul is psyche and 36 times in the NT is translated as life, sometimes as mind, but the English translators following Greek thought translated it 39 times as soul. And this unfortunately has led to great confusion.

 
Did Jesus's Soul Die on the Cross?

If my preacher friend is right and the soul never dies, then Jesus can't really be said to have died on the cross, only his body would have died.

My Preacher friend is wrong. It is important to know that Jesus was completely dead. His body was lifeless and his breath was gone.He experienced mortality and death. By inventing a story that Jesus went to hell, threw Satan to the ground, and took the keys from him, implies that he was not wholly dead for his soul was still fighting against Satan. That means the cross was not the final battlefield or;place of victory. This mythology has no basis in fact. It is a lie.

 

 

Dives wore purple, that would make him a royal ruler. Since the Greek-loving Sadducees were the ruing class, we can say that he was a Prince with Greek (and Roman) furniture who did not believe in an afterlife, who emulated gentile culture, but considered gentiles as inferior half-humans akin to dogs. Lazarus (a Greek name) was a poor beggar (perhaps a gentile truth-seeker) who died of starvation at Dive's gate. The Sadducees ruled the temple, so let's say this poor gentile was starving for the word of God, and he laid outside the temple gates, but the rulers in that day gave no crumbs to the gentile dogs. At the end of the parable, the poor truth-seeker ends up in the kingdom of El Shaddai, and Dives is shocked to discover that there is a not only an afterlife, but for people like him who live out their erroneous beliefs, the afterlife is without hope.

Some say the point of this parable is to give us a true picture of hell and heaven. They are so hung up on the details in the background that they miss the moral of the story. If you want to take it as a literal story about what the afterlife looks like, then we will sit on Abraham's chest and hear the voices of the damned and see them down in the fires of hell throughout eternity crying out for a drop of water. That's not my idea of heaven. Do you suppose Jesus was spoofing the prevalent Greek view of hell while using it as a vehicle to drive home the point that denying food to the starving, or denying spiritual food to the hungry gentiles, and holding onto erroneous racist beliefs, or false beliefs about El Shaddai and the afterlife will cause you to miss the father's kingdom?

 

 

It matters a lot because people want to know what happens when they die? The Bible tells us what to expect, but false teachers have muddied it, and twisted it, and used hell as a club to beat innocent people into fear cults, and so many millions have gone to theirgraves in terror and horror (even many with great faith, but spoiled by bad mythology).

 

 

Your breath returns to El Shaddai, your body disintegrates. You have ceased to exist. On the Judgment Day you will be reassembled with all your parts as you. Those who loved and served El Shaddai will be transformed into immortals, those who did not will go to a place of temporary sorrow and eventual annihilation.

 

 

Furthermore we must not imply that when people die, they will immediately go to hell or heaven as a soul. Their breath goes to God and their body decomposes. They cease to be living beings (souls. They are in a state of unconsciousness. To teach otherwise causes un-needed dread and pain. Often families feel their departed loved one is burning in hell and it grieves them unnecessarily. Tell them;the Bible says they have ceased to exist until the Judgment Day. That's what it says.On Judgment Day, we will all be reconstituted into our prior earthly forms of flesh and bones and breath. We will be the same living beings we once were. For the righteous, it will be a day of resurrection to immortal life (with a new spirit body), but for the wicked, it will be a day of humiliation when they will be cast into the lake of fire to be annihilated.

 

The idea that El Shaddai will torture people for all eternity in a place like the Grecian hell is a terrible accusation against our loving Father, and has had horrendous repercussions, for it portrays El Shaddai as a wrathful, cruel being who is a merciless tormentor of the wicked. This is a perversion of the Father. We must free ourselves from Babylonian and Greek mythology and free humans from this terrible bondage of fear about hell. El Shaddai is not the author of fear, but of love and truth, mercy, and forgiveness.