The usual word for “soul” in the Old Testament is the Hebrew word nephesh. This word occurs over 750 times in the Old Testament. We find one example in Genesis 2:7: “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 ‘nephesh’ (King James Version).
In the New Testament, the Greek word for “soul” is ‘psuche’ or psyche. This word occurs over 100 times in the New Testament. One example is in Matthew 16:26: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ‘psuche’ or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (King James Version).
There is nothing in the Old or New Testaments that indicate the soul does not exist after death, nor that the soul reincarnates itself into another life form after death. Quite the opposite is found in the Bible. We are not to try to communicate with the dead nor the demons of the spirit world, as found in Leviticus chapters 19 & 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 18. The New Testament teaches believers not to deal with witchcraft, sorcery, curious arts, nor divination. Acts chapters 8, 16, & 19, as well as Galatians 5:20. The Bible teaches that once we die, then comes the judgment. (Hebrews 9:27)
The soul again is comprised of the will, the emotions, the intellect, the conscious and subconscious mind, imaginations and memories. (Mind is different than the organ called Brain)
Near Death Experiences as experienced by Dr. Eben Alexander, show that intellect and memories and consciousness exist beyond death. There is a world without time or space and the need for language, filled with love and light and beauty and acceptance.
The Bible says it another way, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the springs of life.” Proverbs 4:23 (Heart is another word for soul in the Bible)
I believe that the soul of man is the true personality, and shall live forever after it is separated from its body. The soul is malleable and impressionable from childhood on. However, the older we become the more we become set in our ways. Knowing this and seeing and hearing what this generation is watching and listening to, causes great concern for the future generations.
There is a scripture that says, “If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.” Ecclesiastes 11:3
Our life from birth to the grave is one of taking in the world around us through our five senses. This vast amount of data, together with the experiences of life, good and bad, mixed with our culture, our genetics, our education, our friends and enemies, and many other factors influence our mind and emotions and volition which are all part of the soul.
We all long for peace, security, acceptance, identity, fulfillment, safety, expression, and self-worth, with purpose. When accidents, disabilities, traumas, wrong choices, selfish others, lack of opportunities, hinder these from fruition in our life, there is a ‘mark’ left on one’s soul. By the time one lives 60 to 80 years or more, there can be a lot of ‘marks’.
We experience the world through the five senses of our body, and process those experiences with the thoughts and feelings. There is emotional pain and mental trauma involved from some of the things we experience, think, dream, and feel.
I was 10 years old and my brother and I came home after school to find Mom and Dad arguing and wrestling in the middle of the dining room floor of the farm house. Mom had a gun and was trying to shoot Dad and herself. I can see the image in my mind as plain, as if I was standing there in that room, which was some 50+ years ago.
I jumped into the fray and tried to get the gun away from Mom, crying and yelling for both of them to stop. My Mom said, “If you don’t get out of here, I will shoot you too!” That made me cry even more and broke my heart.
Somehow the fight broke up and Dad got the gun and put it away, stormed out of the house, and Mom stormed off to her room, slamming the door. My brother and I went upstairs without saying a word and buried our heads in the pillows of the bed!
This was not the first time that I witnessed talk of suicides in the family. There were plenty of arguments with Dad taking the shotgun, storming out the door, saying that he was never coming back, and Mom saying many times that she was going to the river and jumping in, or digging a hole and pulling the dirt in over her.
When I was 17 I would be invited to a church where I found the love of my Heavenly Father and a personal experience with Jesus Christ that would change my introvert to extrovert and begin the healing process of the many scars of my childhood. Dad and Mom would also find their own personal experience of deliverance and spend the remainder of their lives going to church three and four times per week. No more suicide attempts.
Jeremiah spoke of the Potter with the Clay in his hands. The Clay was ‘marked’ or ‘Marred’ and the Potter dashed it against the rocks, but He did not destroy it. Instead, He re-made the Clay into another ‘Vessel’ fit for His use. I believe this is going on in each soul that is on this planet today.
“The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. (Jeremiah 18:1-4 RSV)
I believe that our soul is a blank slate that receives a lot of input from the world around us, and if we are not ‘guarding’ our soul, we will be influenced to fulfill our own selfish agenda, while justifying our self-serving actions to ourselves and to others, when in our heart we know that our conscious is whispering that something is not right, there is still a void in my heart.
If we ignore this, we will actually ‘harden’ our hearts and ‘tune-out’ the still small voice, then we will seek another means of filling the void then the one we are currently engaged in. God created an empty spot in your heart, that only He can fill. Anything else you stuff into this empty spot will taste like what it is, ‘of this world’.
The peace, harmony, love, acceptance that we all long for comes from God, and this is what NDEs are validating for you and me. We can imitate, but we can never duplicate what can only come from the Spirit of God.
Next we will go into more detail on how the body and what it receives from this world shapes the soul of each of us for the good or the bad.