Transcript Document

Hypocrites and Backsliders
Lesson 23
Spiritual Death
Simple Mitosis
Mitosis
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Meiosis in the Male
Meiosis in the
male
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Sperm
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Sperm
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Sperm
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Sperm
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Meiosis in the Female
Meiosis in the
female
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Egg
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Rejected -Polar Body
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Rejected -Polar Body
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Rejected -Polar Body
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The Three Part Man
• Throughout both the Old and New Testament,
the Scriptures reveal that man has been
created with three basic parts: the body, the
soul, and the spirit.
• This trichotomous view of man is apparent
even from the moment of man’s creation.
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The Three Part Man
• Genesis 2:7 “Jehovah God formed man with the
dust of the ground.”
• With this act, God created man’s body.
• The verse continues, “And breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life.”
• “Breath” is derived from the Hebrew word
neshamah which, significantly, is translated “spirit”
in Proverbs 20:27: “The spirit [neshamah] of man is
the lamp of Jehovah.”
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The Three Part Man
• We can thus conclude, that God’s breathing
into man the breath of lives produced man’s
spirit.
• Zechariah 12:1 corroborates the creation of
man’s spirit by telling us that just as Jehovah
stretched forth the heavens and laid the
foundation of the earth, He also formed the
spirit of man within him.
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The Three Part Man
• Genesis 2:7 concludes “And man became a
living soul.”
• The soul (man’s intrinsic person) was the
issue of the breath of God entering into the
nostrils of the body of dust.
• The biblical record of the three-step creation
of man clearly reveals him to be tripartite.
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The Three Part Man
• The New Testament continues and expands on this
revelation.
• First Thessalonians 5:23 says, “And the God of
peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your
spirit and soul and body be preserved complete,
without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
• Here Paul enumerates man’s three distinct parts:
“spirit and soul and body,” the repetition of the
conjunction “and” serving to reinforce their
distinctness.
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The Three Part Man
• Furthermore, Hebrews 4:12 specifies “The word of
God is living and operative and sharper than any
two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing
of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow.”
• All three parts are once again mentioned in this
verse: the joints and marrow pertain to the body,
and the soul is explicitly separate from the spirit.
• These Old and New Testament references
exemplify the Bible’s consistent presentation of the
tripartite man.
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The Three Part Man
• In Clarence Larkin’s book Dispensational
Truth or God’s Plan and Purpose in the Ages,
he describes man as a “trinity” made up of
body, soul, and spirit.
• He then proceeds to compare the threefold
nature of man to the three sections of the
tabernacle.
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The Three Part Man
• The “Threefold Nature of Man” may be illustrated by the
Tabernacle…The Tabernacle and its Courtyard is a type of
the “Threefold Nature of Man.” The “Courtyard” represents
his Body, the “Holy Place” his Soul, and the “Most Holy
Place” his Spirit…
• After the completion of the Tabernacle it remained empty of
the “Presence of God” until the “Spirit of God” descended
and took up His abode in the “Most Holy Place.”
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The Three Part Man
• So a man may be complete as to body, soul and
spirit, but his spiritual nature will remain
unregenerate until the Holy Spirit enters and takes
possession of the “spirit” compartment of his nature.
• This happens when the “New Birth” takes place.
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The Three Part Man
• The difference between plant and animal life
is, that the plant has not “conscious” life,
while the animal has a “living (conscious)
soul.”
• The difference between animal life and
human life is, that while animals have a “living
soul” man has more, he has a “spirit….”
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The Three Part Man
• In Earth’s Earliest Ages, G.H. Pember employs
Scripture to refute the erroneous notion that man
has only two parts as well as prove that man is
tripartite.
• “Thus in the very beginning of Scripture we are
warned against the popular phraseology of soul and
body, which has long sustained an erroneous belief
that man consists of but two parts….
• There are, however, one or two passages in which
a reference to the threefold composition of our
being could not be obscured.
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The Three Part Man
• Such is the very remarkable verse in the
Epistle to the Hebrews: “For the Word of God
is living, and powerful, and sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing even to the
dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the
joints and marrow and is a discerner of the
thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. iv.
12).
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The Three Part Man
• Here Paul plainly speaks of the immaterial part of
man as consisting of two separable elements, soul
and spirit; while he describes the material portion as
made up of joints and marrow, organs of motion and
sensation….
• Another obvious passage is the well-known
intercession of Paul for the Thessalonians: “And I
pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. v. 23).
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The Three Part Man
• Now the body we may term the sense consciousness,
• the soul the self - consciousness,
• and the spirit the God - consciousness.
• For the body gives us the use of the five senses; the
soul comprises the intellect which aids us in the
present state of existence, and the emotions which
proceed from the senses; while the spirit is our
noblest part, which came directly from God, and by
which alone we are able to apprehend and worship
Him.” (End Pember)
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The Three Part Man
• In Watchman Nee’s book The Christian Life and
Warfare originally published in 1927, he clearly
demonstrates from 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that man
has three parts.
• “The Word of God does not divide man into two
parts, the soul and the body.
• Rather, it divides man into three parts: the spirit, the
soul, and the body.
• First Thessalonians 5:23 says, “Sanctify you wholly,
and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved
complete.”
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The Three Part Man
• This verse clearly shows a distinction between the
spirit and the soul.
• Otherwise, it would not have said, “Your spirit and
soul,” but rather, “Your spirit-soul.”
• Since God has said this, we can see that there is a
distinction between man’s spirit and his soul.
• From this we can conclude that man is divided into
three parts—the spirit, the soul, and the body.
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The Three Part Man
• The first chapter of Watchman Nee’s book
The Spiritual Man is entitled “The Spirit, The
Soul, and The Body.” Here, Nee further
emphasizes and elaborates on the fact that
man is composed of three parts.
• First Thessalonians 5:23 says, “The God of
peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may
your spirit and soul and body be preserved
complete.”
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The Three Part Man
• This verse clearly divides a person into three
parts: the spirit, the soul, and the body.
• Here the apostle mentioned the believers
being sanctified “wholly.”
• This means that the whole being of the
believers is to be sanctified.
• What did he mean when he said that a
person is to be sanctified wholly?
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The Three Part Man
• He meant that a person’s spirit, soul, and
body are to be preserved complete. This is
very clear; a complete person has a spirit, a
soul, and a body.” (end Nee)
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The Three Part Man
• In order to accurately and adequately define
the spirit, soul, and body we must first identify
the sphere in which each part functions.
• First and most crucial is the spirit, the faculty
that enables man to communicate with God.
• With his human spirit, man can worship God,
serve God, and know God intuitively.
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The Three Part Man
• Second, the soul is that part which forms the
personality of man and enables him to
contact and function within the psychological
realm.
• Finally, the physical body with its five senses
enables man to relate to and communicate
with the physical world.
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The Heart of Man
• Man’s heart, as revealed throughout
Scripture, is to be a composition of all the
parts of the soul as well as of the spirit,
namely the conscience.
• It may sound odd to hear that the heart as a
separate and distinct component of man, is a
summation of several other parts.
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The Heart of Man
• Genesis 6:5: “And Jehovah saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of
his heart was only evil continually.”
Furthermore, as Matthew 9:4 reports, “Jesus,
knowing their thoughts, said, Why are you
thinking evil things in your hearts?”
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The Heart of Man
• To identify the will as pertaining to the heart, we
must consult Acts 11:23: “Who, when he arrived and
saw the grace of God, rejoiced and encouraged
them all to remain with the Lord with purpose of
heart.”
• In addition, the second half of Hebrews 4:12 speaks
of the Word’s ability to discern, “the thoughts and
intentions of the heart.”
• Both “purpose” and “intentions” are functions of the
will, indicating that the will, likewise, is part of the
heart.
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The Heart of Man
• The Bible clearly indicates that all three
components of the soul–the mind, will, and
emotion (from the body)–also affect the heart,
together with the spirit–the conscience and
the ability to worship and commune with God.
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The Heart of Man
• Several other portions of the Word prove that the
emotion originating in the body also affects the
heart.
• In John 16:6, the Lord tells His disciples, “But
because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow
has filled your heart.”
• Later in that same chapter, the Lord continues,
“Therefore you also now have sorrow; but I will see
you again and your heart will rejoice, and no one
takes your joy away from you.”
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The Heart of Man
• Since sorrow and rejoicing, human emotions,
are so evidently linked here to the heart, we
can say that man’s emotional faculty plays a
part in the function of the heart.
• Finally, the Word makes it clear that the
leading part of the spirit (the conscience) is
also integrally related to the heart.
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The Heart of Man
• Hebrews 10:22 strongly links these two: “Having our
hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.”
• Additionally, 1 John 3:20 warns, “Because if our
heart blames us, it is because God is greater than
our heart and knows all things.”
• Blame and condemnation are the primary functions
of the conscience, further proof that our conscience
affects our heart.
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The Heart of Man
• So, what is the Heart of Man?
• It is the “Doing and Being” part of man.
• Man’s decisions and actions.
• It is where Man’s decisions become part of him:
• “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he”
• After a person has ruminated the contents of his mind
(thinking), the emotional contribution from his physical body,
and made a determination as to his choice, his volition
passes it into his heart.
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The Heart of Man
• Of course, the Spiritual Function of man, his
connection to God, should have influenced the
decision-making process, but as we shall see,
Spiritual Death has eliminated this from man’s
decision making process, and therefore his heart.
• Genesis 6:5: “And Jehovah saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.”
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The Three Part Man
• Next, we will quickly review from our last 2
lessons, information about the 7 Deaths in
the Bible, and some pertinent passages
related to Spiritual Death (SD).
• Then we will introduce more pertinent
passages and add them to our knowledge
base, before we enter into a study of the
Mechanics of Spiritual Death.
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The Doctrine of Death
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The 7 Deaths of Scripture: (Thanatos)
Physical Death
Spiritual Death
The Second Death
Positional Death
Sexual Death
Operational Death
Temporal Death
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The Doctrine of Deaths
•
Spiritual Death: Ephesians 2: 1; Romans
5:12; 1st Cor. 15:22; Prov. 14:12
The Spiritual Relationship with God is
absent.
The Soul and God are separated.
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Spiritual Death
• Death is separation.
• A physical death is the separation of the soul from
the body.
• Spiritual death, which is of greater significance, is
the separation of the soul from God.
• In Genesis 2:17, God tells Adam that in the day he
eats of the forbidden fruit he will “surely die.”
• Adam does fall, but his physical death does not
occur immediately; God must have had another
type of death in mind—spiritual death.
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Spiritual Death
• This separation from God is exactly what we see in
Genesis 3:8.
• When Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord,
they “hid themselves from the presence of the
LORD God.”
• The fellowship had been broken.
• They were spiritually dead.
• When Jesus was hanging on the cross, He paid the
price for us by dying on our behalf.
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Spiritual Death
• A person without Christ is spiritually dead.
• Paul describes it as “being alienated from the life of
God” in Ephesians 4:18. (To be separated from life
is the same as being dead.)
• The natural man, like Adam hiding in the garden, is
isolated from God.
• When we are born again, the spiritual death is
reversed.
• Before salvation, we are dead (spiritually), but
Jesus gives us life. “And you hath he quickened
[made alive], who were dead in trespasses and
sins” (Ephesians 2:1).
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Spiritual Death
• Ephesians 2:1-3:
• "And you were dead in your trespasses and
sins, in which you formerly walked according
to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that
is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the
lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the
flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, even as the rest."
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Spiritual Death
• (Eccl 12:7 KJV) Then shall the dust return to
the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return
unto God who gave it.
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