When God created us, He made us in His own Image and after His likeness. (Genesis 1 :26). It is not merely our mortal bodies which we

can touch, and which God formed in our mothers’ wombs that have been made in God’s own image and after God’s likeness. It is rather our immortal being, known as the soul. The soul is the real person that God created in His own image. It is immortal just as God is immortal. It is created and known to God even before He begins to form in the womb the very body which will clothe this soul during its existence on earth. “Before I formed you in the belly I knew you” (Jeremiah 1 :5).

This world is not our home. Our real home is heaven. We are merely here on a mission, having been sent by God, our Father. We are here to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in the form of a different creature known as Human Beings. At the end of our services, we are expected to return to our home in heaven where we are to live for ever with Him in our transformed human bodies, glorified in accordance with how well we have served (1 Corinthians 15:43). Those who by the way they lived and served made good use of the talents God has given them will earn more merits and be glorified more, occupying higher places in heaven than those who have merited less. (2Cornthians 5: 10)

God has not intended any other place like hell or purgatory for us. It is rather His desire to save all and bring us all to heaven after our sojourn here on earth. Those who go to hell have chosen to go there by willfully doing what God’s laws dictate should not be done; or by refusing to do what they are commanded to do.

Before sending a soul down to earth on this mission of service, God clothes it up with a garment made of the dust of the earth. This garment is formed inside the womb and takes nine months to be fully formed. This garment is the human body. It is nothing but a garment with which God covers up the soul-the real person.

At the end of its service on earth, when God recalls it to give an account of its stewardship, the soul at once discards this garment and returns to its creator and Lord to know how well or how badly it has fared. (2 Esdras 7: 78). People of the world now regard the person as dead. But the real person that matters more is not dead. He has merely moved from this place to another place. He is not dead, because he continues to hear all that is said; see all that is happening; smell any odour around; reason and recollect or remember past events, and even know future events; and continues to feel pain, sorrow, or comfort because he is immortal. (see Immortality of the senses below)

At this moment, when death is said to have occurred, relations of this recalled person pick up his discarded “garment” and put it in a box we call coffin and bury it in the ground. Here it remains until the resurrection day. On that day, it will once again rise and re-unite with the soul. This time the reunion is permanent and inseparable. Together now, the soul with the new spiritual body will sojourn for ever wherever it now finds itself. According to what it has merited after that final judgment, it is heaven for the good servants and hell for the bad ones. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

IMMORTALITY OF THE SENSES:

When a person dies, the real person involved continues to see, hear, smell, feel, taste and reason.

The six senses of man, as commonly called, should rightly be called the ‘six senses of the soul’. This is because they, in essence, belong to the soul, and not to the soul’s garment (the human body). The reason for this is that the senses are immortal just as the soul is immortal. In other words, the senses are merely points, or outlets through which the soul manifests itself on the human body while it remains clothed
with it. This is why the body completely loses all of these six senses when the soul leaves. The soul on the other hand continues to retain everyone of the senses. Wherever the soul finds itself after the re-unification with the resurrected body, it still continues to retain all these senses. It is therefore right to say that after death, a person still continues to see, to hear, to smell any odour, to taste, to feel pain or comfort, and to reason and know what happened before, what goes on, and what is to happen in future.

The retention of the sense of sight or vision by the soul is clearly seen from several biblical instances. In the story of the rich man (Dives) and the poor man (Lazarus), who lived during the time of Moses, Jesus revealed that the rich man looked up from hell and was allowed to see Lazarus and Abraham enjoying the bliss of paradise, (even though their bodies are still lying buried in their graves). (Luke 16:19-30). (Abraham’s grave: Gen 25:9)

The retention of the sense of touch by the soul after death is also clearly seen in the same story. In verse 23, the bible describes the rich man as being in great pain, although his body was still lying buried in his grave. That the soul still continues to retain the sense of taste and hearing is seen from the request of the rich man for some water to cool his tongue. The tongue normally has tiny buds known as taste buds by means of which a person is able to tell water from wine. The soul of the rich man in hell and the soul of Abraham in heaven were able to hear each other during the dialogue.

In verse 28 of the passage, the rich man remembered that he had ‘five brothers still alive on earth. He reasoned that if someone came from the dead to appear to them and to warn of the terrible pain that awaited them if they continued in their sins, they would repent. This shows that the soul still retains the sense of reasoning after death.

The Bible described hell as a place that burns with sulfur. Sulfur is known to produce a very unpleasant smell when it burns. (Rev. 19:20). This is to further torment the souls there with this bad odour from burning sulfur. This shows that the soul still retains its sense of smell.

From what has been said so far, it is to be seen that DEATH in the sense commonly understood does not really exist, since the actual person or the real person (the soul) lives for ever and does not die. In spiritual language, a soul is regarded as dead when it has condemned itself to suffer eternally in the fire of hell. Although such a person remains alive in hell, since he still retains all the six senses mentioned above,yet he is best: , described as dead, because he will never see light again and will never experience any rest, nor peace, nor comfort. In ‘ simple language, therefore, it is right’ to say that we all live forever. “All are in fact alive’; Luke 20: 38 I

Each person begins his or her life in heaven, our original home after being created in the image of God. He then dispatches the soul into the world to render service to him for a short period which hardly lasts longer than one hundred years. At the end of such allotted period, he recalls the soul to render an account of its stewardship; then the reward, based on how well or how badly it has fared. If the soul has done well, it returns to its home in heaven where “it now lives happily ‘for ever and ever. If it has done badly, it is driven out and cast into hell, There it continues to live in everlasting torment, together, with Lucifer and other bad and disobedient servants of God.

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At this time, the soul experiences the full impact of the common saying that “in the language of eternity, one hundred million years is less than one second.” This is why wise people bother themselves, more with how to spend the remaining billions and trillions of years to come after their short mission here on earth, rather than bother about how to enjoy every minute and every second of the less than 100,. years of existence on earth. Such wise people are’ ever ‘too
ready and too willing to suffer any amount of pain, sorrow, humiliation, poverty and-sickness if such will help them secure heaven for ever, rather than enjoy all the pleasures and good things of this world, and earn as reward unending pain and discomfort in the fire of hell .