Outside of our holy scriptures, there are numerous theories on the origin of humankind. Both scientific and imaginary thoughts have been advanced to explain our creation. Atheists have discounted the notion of a Heavenly Creator, and science has promoted the idea of an evolutionary process that resulted in the way we look today. What cannot be disputed is that at some point life started to exist on our planet Earth. How this planet was also formed is another matter for debate.
BY PROSPER TINGINI
Biblical narration tells us how man and woman were created by a living supernatural spiritual power whose existence predates all other lives. Depending on the nativity of language, various names are given for the God of the Universe, the Lord of both the Heaven and the Earth. Scriptures tell us that this supernatural Being created all other beings. He decided to create a species that resembled Him in the spirit. He thus thought of a formation of a man, which He moulded out of the dust of the earth, and then breathed the life of His Spirit into it. We can also build imaginations of other things from clay, whether of living creatures or non-living objects; but our own creations from the dust cannot be infused with a life, as there is an absence of the spirit.
Life is spiritual, hence all life is Godly. God is the owner and creator of all life in living things. There is therefore no life without the spirit within. Anything without this spirit is a dead thing; just an object. Let us learn how He turned a lifeless form of clay into life. Genesis 2:5-7 reads: ‘In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had sprung up for God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground: but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground; then the Lord formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being’.
God is obviously a programming super-genius who makes conceived imaginations turn into real life, through His breath. A prearranged formation bursts into life the moment the ‘breath’ is breathed into it. So it was with man’s creation. The breath is the Spirit, in the likeness of God. So what is a person or man? 1 Thessalonians 5:23 says; a person is Spirit, Soul and Body. St. Paul writes, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. A next question would then arise. Are the spirit and soul different things, or are they one entity i.e. the same thing? To me the soul is the engine that drives the thoughts within our spirit. It is of one formation interlocked in nature, just as the brain and the head are one. So a person is composed of both the flesh and of the spirit. Flesh originally came from the dust of the earth and the spirit is the life that was breathed into the formation of man to bring up a living Being.
The life or the spiritual breath inclusive of nutrients and oxygen circulates through the body via the blood which was originally derived from the mist (moisture). It mixes with the ‘dust of the earth’ i.e. flesh, to make a living man. Numerous proclamations by the Lord our God attests to this link of flesh and blood.
Leviticus 17:12-16 teaches us, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood. And I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life.” He proceeds to say, “The life of every creature is in the blood of it.” This explains why all sacrifices to God were signified by the slaughter of a living creature. The life in the blood of the creature is the actual offering. For us Christians, the life or the blood of Christ is the offering for the atonement of our sins. This is the divine theory of life.
What is death? The complete separation of the flesh (body) and the spirit (soul) results in death. Blood supply shuts down, hence life supply is disconnected. However despite the cession of the blood supply, the life or spirit in the blood does not extinguish. In layman’s terms we can simply say the life in the blood returns to the Heavens, back to the Sender. It is no wonder that everything that dies dries up because the ‘blood of life’ is sucked out of its flesh. Eventually when the carcass is buried underground, it transforms back into the hard solid crust (dust) by losing the original moisture (mist). The spirit, which is the life in the blood, goes back to where it came from i.e. to God.
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Life is in the blood and the blood carries the life into all the flesh of man. Life belongs to God who is the supplier of life in all living things. The final question to ask is, What happens after death? Is there life after death? I would answer that question with either a YES or a NO, depending on the inclination of the question. There are two fronts to the question, as the living person is composed of two main things i.e. the body (flesh) and the spirit (soul). On the death of a man, the two components originally brought together by God then separate from each other, going back to their original states and places of rest. The body (flesh) is led to rest onto the ground from which it came. The spirit goes to rest in the Heavens. Rising up on Judgment Day is another matter, when the two will reunite again. Exactly what happens there in the heavens is a private matter for the Lord our God, but it is with God where the spirit will dwell and rest, in whatever sphere.
People still speculate on the composition and status of the Heavenly domain. Some say there is a spirit stopover called purgatory which is a dormitory station where a person’s spirit awaits a judgement in accordance with one’s deeds on planet earth. Other versions talk of varying imaginations and theories of what happens to the spirit after it leaves the body. There are other Christian denominations who will argue that there is no life after death completely, whether of body or spirit. Whatever the belief, we will all find out the truth when death comes knocking on everyone’s door, on our way to wherever is the reality.
l Prosper Tingini is the scribe of the Children of God Missionary Assembly — God’s messengers. Contact details: 0771 260 195. Email address: [email protected]
