What Is After Death?!
What Is After Death?!
The Christian Belief
Christianity believes in the resurrection, in which souls are united with bodies as mentioned in (Jn 5:28–29). But in the period between death and resurrection, souls are in a place of waiting: the righteous in Paradise (Lk 23:43), and the wicked in Hades or the abyss, as said in the story of Lazarus and the rich man (Lk 16:23).
Christianity does not believe in multiple incarnations of the soul after death or in successive lives for a person, as is currently proclaimed by (scholars of) spiritism, or as was proclaimed by Indian and Buddhist religions, and by some philosophies such as Neo-Platonism, Origenism, Pythagoreanism, and others. Rather, the teaching of the Holy Bible is clear in its statement:
“It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27).
The phrase “to die once” denies the theory of “successive lives,” proclaimed by those who say that the human soul, after departing from the body, returns to another incarnation united with another human or an animal. And perhaps it enters many incarnations — once as a woman, another time as a man, once as a child, another as an old person…! It incarnates and dies, then incarnates again and dies…
Pre-Existence
Those who believe in this thought believe in what they call the pre-existence of the human being. The person who exists now had a previous existence in another human life. And by the same logic he will have existence in a following life when he enters another incarnation. They call this the return to incarnation.
Reincarnations
Concerning this, Krishma says about the return to incarnation:
“It is as if we throw away worn-out clothes to take new ones… we discard the decayed body in order to wear a new body.”
There are many books about the return to incarnation:
Among the most famous in Arabic are those written by Dr. Raouf Obeid: On the Return to Incarnation — Man Is Spirit, Not Body — The Detail: Man Is Spirit, Not Body, in three volumes.
The book Return to Incarnation by Abdel-Aziz Jado.
Books by Dr. Ali Abdel-Jalil Radi, including Christ Is Coming — Decisive Proofs of Life After Death — You Live After Death.
The book Have You Lived Before This Life by Ronald, prepared and presented by Walid Nassif.
The book Transmigration of Souls by Mustafa El-Keek.
Life After Death, translated by Ahmed Nazir Al-Sadat and Issam El-Sheikh Kassim.
The book The Body of Resurrection in two parts by Samir Hindi.
Scientific Lights on the Other World, prepared by Maurice Sharbel.
And we present before you the following books in English:
Mark C. Albrecht: Reincarnation.
Robert A. Morey: Reincarnation and Christianity.
Sri Chinmoy: Death and Reincarnation.
Norman L. Geisler: The Reincarnation Sensation.
Hans Ten Dam: Exploring Reincarnation.
Martha Knobloch: Reincarnation – The Gospel Truth.
I. M. Wilson: Worlds Beyond.
There are many books, but I will be content with this for now. As for spirit-summoning and hypnosis, there are many other books. It is astonishing that most books in Arabic or foreign languages resemble greatly in many evidences and proofs the books issued by those interested in spiritism from some churchmen as well, to the extent that they seem almost one school!
Many of these speak about Origen as one of the pillars of Christianity in believing in the return to incarnation.
They fall into historical and doctrinal errors, such as calling him Saint Origen or St. Origene, and attacking his opponents, including the Council of Constantinople of the Greek Orthodox, which was held in 553 A.D.
They claim that Origen proclaimed the pre-existence of the soul and its return to incarnation, and they attribute the same belief to other Fathers. And while some see the return to incarnation as a punishment for souls that deviated, descending to unite with earthly bodies as punishment, others see that “the repetition of earthly existence is imposed on us so that we may develop and become masters over our instincts which enslaved the ancestor of creation Adam and his descendants.” And that the short period of our earthly existence is not enough for the final victory over the instincts. Therefore, much longer terms have been given to us, separated by sleeps deeper than daily sleep. And each sleep is called death.” This is what Dr. Raouf Obeid says in his book On the Return to Incarnation. He adds: “It is true that the subsequent existence is accompanied by forgetting every previous existence” (p. 67). And he attacks the denial of this doctrine, arguing that the return to incarnation, for development to better, is much nobler than the threat of eternal fire. Yet he declares that “the vast majority of believers have stood in the West against the spread of this belief (in the return to incarnation)” (p. 70).
He sees that the doctrine of return to incarnation is completely independent from the concept of metempsychosis or the embodiment of the souls of animals and plants.
He attributes to one of the Fathers that he said: “There is a natural need for the immortal soul to remedy its vices and to develop. If it does not do that during its earthly life, the remedy occurs in the following lives and what follows them” (p. 73).
This means, in his view, the possibility of repentance after death in a following life.
We will respond to this point in a special article, God willing. It is enough to say here that if the soul were granted another life in the return to incarnation, what assures us that its state will develop for the better? It is possible that its state becomes worse than it was…
The proponents of the doctrine of “return to incarnation” try to establish their doctrine with quotations from the Holy Bible, which we will respond to in a forthcoming article, God willing.
The danger of this trend, followed by the (scholars) of spiritism, is that some churchmen go along with them in what they say and rely on the same proofs!!
In the introduction to the book of Abdel-Aziz Jado it is written: “The subject of the possibility of return to incarnation — that is, the return of the soul to its connection with a new material body after its separation from its previous body — this return is an ancient doctrine. All religions without exception contain diverse indications of it, varying in clarity and firmness. And many prominent philosophers, poets, and thinkers have proclaimed it…” (p. 12).
And Abdel-Aziz Jado says: “If we return to the ancient and modern religions — whether Hindu, Jain, Brahman, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Gnostic, Manichaean… or Islamic, Jewish, or Christian — everything these religions contain of sources of knowledge, we find them agreeing, to varying degrees, on the doctrine of return to incarnation” (pp. 19–20).
Let us therefore search together what has been mentioned in the history of the ancient Eastern religions.
Transmigration and Reincarnation of Souls
Mustafa El-Keek explains in his book Transmigration of Souls, saying: with belief in the immortality of the soul, there is a long period after death and the return of the soul to its human body to dwell in it and resume with it its second life in the world of spirit. The soul does not spend this long period in emptiness. It can, during this period, obtain a range of information and experiences, even in fields of life in the world of animals. He says: “Therefore, it incarnates in the embryos of animals of the earth, sea, and air.” And he quotes this from one of the references in books on Egyptian history. Then he speaks of the contact between the nations of the ancient world through travel and trade. And that the idea of transmigration developed in Indian and Buddhist thought. And that as a result of the desire of the soul to obtain new experiences, “to complete this acquisition, the soul of a man incarnates in the body of a woman, and the soul of a woman in the body of a man” (pp. 14–15).
He also says: “But those who want to return to earthly life for the purpose of satisfying bodily desires… these purposes depart from the original purpose of transmigration, which is the collection of kinds of experience” (p. 16).
Reincarnation among the Indians
The Indians believe in the wandering of the soul from one body to another until finally all these incarnations end and it unites with the Supreme Being in the state they call Nirvana… [See the book: The Major Religions of the World].
Reincarnation and the return to incarnation are governed by the law of karma, a Sanskrit word meaning “reward,” where the type of incarnation is determined by the good or evil a person has done during his period of incarnation. The next incarnation is a form of reward or punishment.
Reaching Nirvana does not come through good works, for these merely prepare the soul — in their belief — for a better incarnation. But Nirvana comes through severe asceticism and complete abandonment of love of matter. Then the cycle of reincarnation stops, the wandering of the soul ends, and the human no longer returns to life in the earthly world.
Concerning severe asceticism — according to the Indian belief — with deprivation from the pleasures of food and other bodily pleasures, the elimination of desires, and not harming any living being, the soul becomes freed from transmigration into another body, whether the body of a human, animal, or bird. Therefore, the great Indians — like Mahatma Gandhi and others — would not eat meat, nor kill an animal or bird or even an insect… for perhaps this living creature is the incarnation of a human being who has transmigrated into it…!
In the next issue, God willing, we will address the subject of the return to incarnation, to discuss and respond to what it addresses from the Holy Bible, and what this doctrine wrongly interprets from it…
Article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – El-Keraza Magazine – Year 24 – Issues 21 & 22 (6–6–1996)
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