Hebrews Chapter Nine, Death & Judgment

 

Hebrews 9:27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,

 

The Greek term “appointed” is, “apokeimai.” It means, “to be reserved, or to await.” Men await death; we are reserved for it. Why? We are the inheritors of Adam’s sin nature, and also the curse that attends it. Job says of his own race, “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble,” Job 14:1. Eliphaz, though he agreed with Job on little else, adds, “Yet man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward,” Job 5:7.

Our nature, which both Job and Eliphaz agree is defined as “trouble,” brings with it death’s curse. Separation is our end: first from our body, and then from God. The result? Eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire. Mankind dies but once, and after this the judgment. There is one life, one death, one judgment following death’s closure of any hope for change or choice. Death visits mankind with a permanence unfamiliar to us. Change is our norm; we grow and change. We learn and change. Our tastes change. Our appearance changes. Change is the only constant. Death brings a final change, but one that does not abate. It has no remorse, and does not permit a second chance. The state we enter into death (saved or unsaved) is the state we remain forever. Consider that truth very carefully, if you have not made Jesus Christ your Savior.

 

The Bible says of death, that it is not natural. Mankind was created for fellowship and stewardship, as described in Genesis chapter 2. Solomon writes, “He has put eternity in their hearts,” Ecclesiastes 3:11. In verse 9 he asks what profit the worker gains from his labor; then he testifies that men are indeed occupied with the tasks appointed (or God-given) to the sons of men. God beautifies everything in its time, Solomon tells us, but also only for a time, as the earlier part of the chapter explains. Then he culminates with this grand assertion: that mankind has eternity in his heart. We crave eternal life; we long to live forever. It is a deep-seated craving that philosophers and poets have labored to explain (or explain away) for millennia. We almost instinctively know that death is unnatural; it was not man’s intended purpose. This is why death is grievous; we understand, in the deepest, most profound way, how incredibly painful loss is, primarily because of its permanent nature. One of us has slipped from beyond the transient, changeable world into a permanent state of being, and we, for the time being, cannot follow or discern the outcome. It’s terrifying.

 

The antidote to death is resurrection. Resurrection is defined generically as bringing the dead back to life. It is defined Biblically as, through the power of Jesus Christ, those that believe in Him inherit eternal life. Our spirits, which are eternal, will be housed once more in bodies befitting them. We will be reurrected in perfected bodies, incapable of sickness or death, unable now to sin, since we are perfected by the Lord, having seen Him face to face, 1 John 3:2.

 

The opposite of resurrection, providing false hope to humanity and controverting Scripture, is reincarnation. Reincarnation is defined as a soul’s migration through a series of lives or states of being, toward perfection. Perfection, however, as defined by the sundry religions that espouse this doctrine, differs. Classical Buddhism teaches that one must reach nirvana, or nothingness, when the soul is released from the cycle of reincarnation. Hinduism seeks to be yoked with Brahman, the world soul. Dealing objectively with Hinduism’s doctrines can be difficult, since they are prolific and subject to subtle or drastic change. Brahman, however, is defined as an impersonal being, sometimes described as a principle or ultimate reality.

 

Does the Bible teach reincarnation? The short answer is “no.” Reincarnation is contrary to every doctrine of Scripture that teaches about the nature of God, the state of man, the presence of sin, and eternal life. Whereas sin is the consequence of man’s choice, leading into a state of spiritual death Christ died to deliver us from, reincarnation tends to be inexorably yoked with Karma: a strange system of cause and effect that balances good and evil. However, Karma, were it true, would be a perpetuator of evil, since those who commit evil, by karma’s law, must be punished, and those who do the punishing, commit evil by doing so, creating and continuing  an amoral system from which the adherent cannot escape. For instance, the murderer of one life becomes the victim in the next, courtesy of karma. But the new murderer, punishing the former (that does not recall the act), must now be punished for the murder karma set in motion. This is fatalism, rather than justice.

 

Besides Hinduism and Buddhism, Scientology, Rosicrucianism, the Unity School of Christianity, Hare Krishna, Theosophy and Urantia likewise embrace this doctrine. Moral improvement is what it is touted to accomplish. But how does one morally improve what one never recalls? Spiritual evolution might be a better term in the modern nomenclature. Transmigrating from life to life, being slowly perfected as we live out a hundred lives that do not, it would seem, morally improve society or the individuals that comrpise it. Evil remains, and only seems to increase, rather than decrease. And as the population grows, one must wonder where these new souls continue to arrive from. Reincarnation is a bankrupt theory, substituting the penalty of death for the illusion that death is neither permanent or unnatural, but the natural spiritual progression of mankind as we ascend into a greater, purer, form of humanity, shed of the evils we formerly enacted. In the end, reincarantion proffers self-salvation as man, like a butterly shedding its coccoon, does away with sin through many incarnations until he achieves perfection. But daily reality suggests otherwise, to say nothing of what Scripture tells us is true in regard to human death and the life hereafter.