Did Adam start living because he started breathing or did he start living because he received the Breath of Life? This is the 64 000 dollar question.
What is the Breath of Life?
I was about to write this article when I decided to find some consensus before I continued. I did, in fact, find something that I could hardly improve upon. I invite the reader to look at “What is the Breath of Life?” here http://www.gotquestions.org/breath-of-life.html and read it first before continuing with the rest of this article.
Evolutionary science is correct about one thing – and that is that man did, in fact, emerge from an earthy substance. God took that substance and formed the physical body of man from it and then put life into that body.
The article referred to above perfectly explains the process that took place. What needs to be understood is that the air we breathe has got nothing to do with the Breath of life. The two are not the same.
Have you ever tried speaking while inhaling? It’s impossible to do so. The air in your lungs is necessary to pass over vocal cords in order to form speech. You learned to do this not long after you were born, starting out with sounds and then speech as a result of repetitively hearing words from those around you.
The oxygen in the air that you breathe is crucial to the health of your body and this is the sole purpose of the air that you breathe – other than to form speech. However, the speech emanates from your Breath of Life (the life part of you) and is channelled to those at the hearing end using the speech centre of your brain and with instructions to release air from your lungs. Without air your body will die - but you will not die
The Breath of Life that you possess represents your very life as a living human creature. This is the you of you. This is the part of you that enabled your physical body to start taking in air. This is the God part of you and what makes you a living being or soul. When Adam received that Breath of Life his body sprang into action and started functioning, that is, it started breathing in air because it suddenly possessed or “housed” a living entity. In other words, without the Breath of Life the human body is lifeless.
The bottom line is that you do not need air in order to remain a living being/soul. It is merely your earthbound physical body that ceases to function (whatever the cause), but you will continue to exist as a living being as if you never had a body. Your new environment will be the place you booked for yourself while you still inhabited planet earth inside a physical body. “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” ( Eccl 12:7 ) Although your life is then in God’s hands, He will send you where you belong based on that “booking” you made. But this is another subject.
There are thousands of documented accounts of people who have had out of body experiences (OBE’s) - also referred to as near death experiences (NDE’s) – and who were “sent back” to complete their lives on earth. Many went to both heaven and hell and returned to testify of their horrifying experiences in the latter. A simple google search “testimonies of hell” will deliver ample evidence.
Those who are not knowledgeable about the Bible need to understand that heaven is not a permanent destination for saved living souls. They will all return to earth, reunited with their resurrected bodies, which occurs at the time of the rapture, that is, the resurrection takes place at the time of the rapture, but they return to earth later. However, their new bodies will be take on a glorified state, able to move through any solid object, just like Jesus did after He rose from the grave, bearing in mind that Jesus already had a resurrected body before He returned to heaven.
So, in answer to the question at the beginning of this article, Adam started living when he received the Breath of Life, which empowered his body to start breathing for the sake of the functioning of his physical body.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
