DEATH AND BEYOND

Souls and spirits
in the Old Testament

• reincarnation,
• heaven and hell
  
• purgatory or other half way places
• paradise for everyone
• various levels of paradise
• nothing to follow at all
• absorption into God

We have to be aware that we are truly in a war between God’s ways and teachings, and Satan’s philosophies and methods. God shows His way from the Bible. Satan uses cultures, people and organisations. In this instance, he laid his foundations with the teachings of Plato. This is where these ideas took root and were established as intelligent thinking. This was then accepted by the Roman church, which worked hard to unite the various parts of the Empire by appealing to religious thought. The theories of the pagan cultures were accepted into institutional Christianity as a way of uniting a fragmenting and diverse Roman ‘church-state’. The greatest deception for Christians today is that these Greek ideas have been accepted in Christendom, using verses from Scripture as ‘proof.’ They did not begin in the Bible, just as Sunday worship did not begin in the Bible. They all began with philosophy or pagan religions but have been made acceptable later in time by looking for Bible texts that seem to uphold pagan views. Today women’s ordination is going through the same process. It began long ago with female priestesses in pagan religions. Now committees are meeting with the brief to find Bible proofs foe female ordination. Gradually as the passage of time lends authority to a concept, ideas in religion are accepted as main stream, and are generally accepted and taught by all.

True comfort and understanding is to know for a certainty what God says. He gave life and He knows what happens to us after our life here.