DEATH AND BEYOND

Souls and spirits
in the Old Testament

therefore with breathing, and ‘pneumatic’ for tyres, meaning filled with air. Pneuma is used for ghost too, as when say the ‘Holy Ghost’.

Here are some examples of the Bible senses in which this word is used.

pneuma = spirit, meaning Holy Spirit
Talking about the holiness of the early church, Paul says,
1 Thessalonians 4:8 He therefore that despiseth, despiseth no man, but God, who hath also given us His Holy Spirit (pneuma).

Matthew 27:50 Jesus when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost (pneuma).
Acts 7:59 And they stoned Stephen calling upon God and saying, Lord, receive my spirit (pneuma)

Pneuma = wind
John 3:8 The wind bloweth where it listeth.

Again in all these verses it is clear that there is no indication of any meaning in the Greek word pneuma that could lead to a belief in an entity that lives separately from the body.

Body + spirit (breath, life) = a living soul (person).

Separately they are nothing and have no function. Even a dead body, which is still tangible after the breath and the life have both gone, has no function or purpose any more. The breath cannot be seen going anywhere. The life cannot be seen or identified. The living persons and his or her essential personality and character cannot be found or identified.

Rather than talking about us having a spirit elsewhere, the Bible, God’s Word and our source of information on life and death, speaks instead of books of record where everything about us is recorded. This is the blueprint that God has of each of us. We may sleep in death, but we are not ‘lost’. God has each one of us in His books ready to be put together again and receive life in the resurrection, to make once again a person that can be recognised.