“You Will Surely
Die!” ... Reincarnation?!
“The greatest fear of the living is dying.
Death cannot be denied; it never takes no bribes; and the moment we enter this
world we are beginning on our way out of it” (Martin Lloyd-Jones).
God said to Adam,
You are free to eat from any tree in the
Garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
for when you eat of it you will surely die. (Gen. 2:16,17)
In time, Adam and his wife did eat of that
tree. God had a dilemma on His hands,
This man has now become as one of us [i.e.
the Trinity], knowing good and evil. (Gen. 3:22)
Many people would think it is a good thing
that the man is able to discern between what is good and what is evil. But you
will have noticed that throughout this chapter, Genesis 3, there is a marked
contrast between God on the one hand and man on the other. The promise which
Satan extended to the woman was that if she partook of the forbidden tree she
would be like God, - this was the overwhelming desire that influenced the woman.
The man and woman now could identify with God in knowing the difference between
good and evil, - to that degree they had become like God; therefore they must be
expelled from the Garden. However, man’s possession of the knowledge of good and
evil is seriously flawed because he gained his knowledge through disobedience.
He had sought to be like God; like God he had become, but in a perverted sense.
Man had become the slave of evil,
You love evil rather than good, falsehood
rather than speaking the truth. (Ps. 52:3)
The possession of the knowledge which the
man and woman stole from God’s perfect Garden was the ground for the action to
be taken by God. God knew what man would do next, ...
He must not be allowed to reach out his
hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever. (Gen.
3:22)
The Garden was the abode which God had
prepared for man, and in the centre of that abode, was God Himself. Man’s being
was to be centred on God. All his life was to be devoted to glorifying God and
enjoying Him. But it was impossible for the man and woman to enjoy what God had
previously prepared for them, because God could not accept their sin, - the sin
of wanting to be like Him. They believed a liar who told them,
You will not surely die. ... For God knows
that when you eat of it your eyes will be open, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil. (Gen. 3:4,5)
They took Satan’s word over God’s Word, -
God told Adam and Eve, “You will die”; Satan, in effect, called God a liar and a
deceiver. Yet, throughout His Word, God holds fast to His claim,
Man is destined to die once, and after that
to face judgment. (Heb. 9:27)
This aspect of the deceit of Satan, - “You
shall not surely die” - has been known down through the ages as
reincarnationism. It has always been considered a teaching that has come
from the East. As we have just seen, it has come directly from the lips of
Satan, in the Garden of Eden, hence King Solomon’s words,
What has been will be again, what has been
done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything
of which one can say, Look! This is something new? It was here already, long
ago; it was here before our time. (Eccles. 1:9,10)
According to the majority of Eastern
religions (e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism), many lives are required to reach oneness
with the One: salvation is a multi-lifetime process of progression and
digression. Karma is the term used to describe the quality of actions which
determine our future condition: ‘good’ karma means that we ‘come back’ in a good
or even better state of life, ‘bad’ karma produces future punishment. “What you
will sow, you will reap.” Eventually one may leave the cycle of birth and
rebirth entirely through the experience of enlightenment, - when the true self
has been discovered, Nirvana, etc..
In modern Western society there has been a
new interest in reincarnation. It has not only been adopted, it has also been
adapted to suit the capitalist mind. There is very little, - if any, - mention
with regard to ‘bad karma’. The whole concentration is laid upon becoming God,
therefore death is not an actual or a real concept. Consequently, there is
nothing to fear. There is no real death, ... no hell; there is not even an
‘afterlife’, but there is a life after this life, - another life, most likely,
on earth, until we reach the Ultimate.
Satan’s lie, “You will not surely die”,
has been reintroduced and interpreted to allow for the body dying, but the soul
passes on to the next existence without any apparent changes in one’s
personality; death is to be accepted as the consequence of cyclical time. There
is no personal God to whom we must give an account, and so we can delete fearful
contemplations about death from our imagination. It encourages people to
continue to live ‘any old way’ because they do not have to admit their sin and
helplessness before God. God is irrelevant! At death, He simply does not show
up. There is no personal accountability, no judgment, ... just the opportunity
to go around one more time trying to “get it right”. So, in the end (if there is
such a thing), everyone wins.
However, the Word of God refutes and
condemns the modern lies and deceit of Satan whether they are expressed with
modern-day articulate dexterity and ingenuity or whether they are expressed
rhetorically as they were in that perfect Garden of Eden when Satan chose to
speak through the serpent. The channel of the message may have changed but the
erroneous content has not. Scripture teaches that there will never be another
opportunity to go around once more to “get it right”. Satan’s claim is a
damnable lie, in every sense of the word. Reincarnation is a complete
contradiction of the words which God said to our first parents. In the end, the
Bible is clear that not “everyone will win”, for the simple reason that some do
not deserve to. The Word of God affirms that the presence of sin in the life of
every person is repugnant and completely unacceptable to a sinless and perfect
God. Yet, even in the very worst of cases mercy can be received in this life
that enables us to escape the wrath of God. This is not because God is lenient
and indifferent to justice but because Christ bore the consequences of sin for
all those who would believe in Him (Rom. 5:1),
Therefore being justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through the Son of God even the murderer
and the rapist can take advantage of the payment for sin which Christ made on
the Cross. However, if that opportunity is not taken in this life it results in
that opportunity being forfeited for ever. Nothing man can conjure up, even with
the help of Satan, is able to reverse the dictates of God. The Bible tells us
that there will be people who have a form of godliness, but yet deny its power,
... always learning but never able to
acknowledge the truth. (II Tim. 3:7)
Ezekiel also spoke about these types of
people (13:8,9),
Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord
says: Because of your false words and lying visions, I am against you, declares
the Sovereign Lord. My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions
and utter lying divinations. They will not belong to the council of My people
... .
The Bible clearly teaches redemption and
not reincarnation in any shape or form. We can never become God, but the Bible
emphasizes His relationship to all who do believe in Him,
How great is the love the Father has
lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! (I Jn. 3:1)
... And His decision to love us is
unmistakably underlined in Scripture,
For those God foreknew He also predestined
to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He [the Lord Jesus Christ]
might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined He also
called; those He called He also justified; those He justified, he also
glorified. (Rom. 8:29,30)
There is not even a hint of truth from the
lying tongue of Satan that reincarnation is remotely associated, or even loosely
identifiable, with anything God said. Paul spoke about the Gospel, and the power
of God,
who has saved us and called us to a holy
life - not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and
grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time ...
.II Tim. 1:9.
The lies of Satan can never - and must
never - be acceptable to the Church of God. The truth of the Word of God is
absolutely clear with regard to the state of the Christian who has departed from
this scene of time,
Absent from the body, present with the
Lord. (II Cor. 5:9)
