There is no place in the Bible where death means the cessation of existence. Instead, it’s always an issue of separation.

Visiting Manhattan this weekend, I ran into a friend of a friend yesterday when I was walking up Fifth Avenue in the 20s only a few blocks from where I’d just passed the huge Museum of Sex they’re now preparing to open (which sports photos in the windows of lesbians kissing and a woman wearing a Cabaret-style get-up).

He was shocked when I told him I left New York for northeastern Alabama. He asked me if I missed the city.

I answered, “I think this visit’s confirming for me that I’ve really had my fill of the place. I don’t expect I’ll ever need to move back here.”

We talked about how New York seems to be the favorite haven for America’s atheists and he told me he didn’t consider himself an atheist, just someone who didn’t believe in the Bible, didn’t pray to God and didn’t know where he’d go after death.

When I asked him if he believed in hell, he said he thought hell was here on earth. I told him there was no way he was going to heaven without believing in the God of the Bible and that his body wasn’t just going to go in the grave because his soul was eternal.

He said, “Well, you’re not making any points with me using that message. You’re scaring me.”

I said, “I don’t care if I’m scaring you. The truth is the truth. Wouldn’t you rather be scared hearing about your soul in hell forever than deal with the scariness of actually being there and having no way out? I mean, why not deal with the fear of God’s Judgment now while you can still do something about it, rather than be upset with me for bringing such a ‘distasteful’ subject up that you never want to be reminded about?!”

He didn’t answer, and spent most of the rest of our 15-minute conversation (at a bench on the edge of Madison Park) giving me the same spiel he and his friend always give me. It always goes something like, “I just can’t understand why a loving God would allow suffering. The Bible is written by a bunch of men. Show me some evidence. Everybody is just programmed by whatever religion they were raised to believe. Don’t you think the Muslims say the same things about the Koran? Who’s to say your God is God and that He’s not the God of the Hindus? . . . ”

After I departed and resumed my trek up Fifth, I thought, “He’s never once thought about anything I’ve ever said to him. How many times I’ve gone through all the issues he just laid out, answering them in detail, and he still just spouts the same laundry list like he doesn’t remember us ever discussing any such stuff ever before! He’s a broken record living in a thick cloud where he doesn’t even listen to himself!”

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A person’s soul is the seat of self. It’s what makes us self-aware. One of the facets of the soul is volition, so the soul is not only the seat of our will, it’s the seat of our emotions. The emotions are designed to stimulate activity of the will.

“Your inner man lives inside a house—a tabernacle, a house of skin—that is the vehicle that carries this inner man around,” says my pastor, Richard Jordan. “This is your home for the inner man. Death is your inner man leaving your outer man and that produces physical death.

“It’s obvious soul and spirit are not separated when they leave the body—they go together. Your spirit is part of your personality; a part of your person. It’s not a generic thing that you can share with everybody; it’s a distinct part of you that shares your mentality—your thinking processes—and that’s why it’s called the inner man.”

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How do you explain the apparent failures of the Word of God, such as when Jesus Christ promises in Matt. 7:7, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find it; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”?

“Ask, seek and knock—the first letters of those three words spell ‘ask,’ ” says Jordan. “You turn on the television and hear that message proclaimed all across the country and the world. I answer phone calls from across the country, and mail from across the world—people confused, people broken-hearted, people just ready to quit because what they’ve been led to believe God wanted them to do isn’t working.”

In Matt. 21: 22, Jesus Christ assures, “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”

Jordan says, “Has there ever been a time in your life when you looked at God and prayed, ‘Lord, I look to you; I’m yours. I belong to you and I’m looking for an answer. And I want your help and intervention’? Jesus says in John 14:14, ‘If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.’

“Sincere believers are encouraged by verses like that to expect physical healing and daily employment and deliverance from temptation and supernatural divine intervention for anything from ‘traveling mercies’ to daily meals.

“Preachers will tell you that if God doesn’t hear or answer your prayers it’s because there’s sin in your life. And what do you do when there’s sin in your life? You say, ‘I’ve got to confess them,’ but the preacher just said he won’t answer if there’s sin in your life?! I’ve seen the people who go around and try and straighten up to get out from under the clouds of doubt, and discouragement and bitterness against God.”

“Remember (preacher) Doug Dodd’s testimony abut the confusion and disillusionment he experienced for years until he discovered that that isn’t what God’s doing today. He would pray, ‘Lord, you said if I have the faith of a grain of mustard seed I can move mountains. I don’t want to move Lookout Mountain but how about just a little rock? Just show me that I’ve got the faith it takes to serve you.’

“Doug’s thinking was, ‘If I’ve got faith enough to trust Christ as my Saviour, that’s got to be faith as a grain of mustard seed,’ but do you know why those passages don’t work today? God never told you he was going to do that for you and you’re not going to make God do something He didn’t tell you He was going to do.”

The reality is what you find in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is a Jewish Christ—a Jewish Messiah—come to fulfill the promises made to Abraham and David. You don’t find any gospel of grace. You don’t find any Jew and Gentile reconciled together in one body. Instead, you find a Kingdom message with the King giving the rules and regulations of His Kingdom.

Jordan says, “The message of most of Christendom today is a Kingdom gospel with the Kingdom commission, the Kingdom signs, the Kingdom laws and the Kingdom promises. No wonder the multitudes are miserable, broken-hearted, unable to find the secret to a victorious life—unable to find the peace and joy that the gospel holds out.

“If you’re going to keep to yourself everything in that Book, and insist on not recognizing the distinction between Israel and the Body of Christ—between the Kingdom program and the Dispensation of Grace—you’re going to have to develop all kinds of theological gimmicks to explain the failure.”