Bio-genesis

Our biological makeup in the biblical account & clearing up misconceptions.

By Neetheam Al-muhaisen

Mankind in the Biblical account

God formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. The dust itself emerged from out of nothing, for the earth was ‘formless and void’, but was wrought from the word of God, saying, and it being. God spoke to the void, from beyond, ‘hovering over the face of the waters’.

Man, being a material creature, is one way the material world is able to cry out for the necessity of God and the Spiritual. Man is one way for the material world to openly, professedly, and directly worship God. Non-living material things can attest to God, but not at the capacity of Man. He can love and think. And God said, speaking of the creation of man, “very good”. But so frequently man chooses to view himself as a collection of atoms and nothing more, this is anti-life. He lives as if God had not put his Spirit within him. He reverts to animal barbarism and sensual pleasure above all else. There Is no morality attached to anything, he is no more than a rock or stone. He worships natural forces and rejects faith.

Naturalism, that is, that all is merely natural processes, and God and the Spirit is out of the equation, is the religion of non living things. We have consciences. We are sentient. Spirituality is for us as much as it is for any Angel. Not because we are Spirits, no we are as material as any rock or stone, but because we are living. God made us alive. And gave us powers of intellect to know him more deeply and closely than any animal.

A purpose for the material world

As is the case with a torch, the mechanical components interact all in the endeavor to produce light. God built the man machine, powered him up, to emanate spiritual principles. Man’s ability to express himself using his mind and heart means he can live out spiritual principles, thus giving them form, and demonstrating their beauty. What is it to believe in the principle of love, but have no ability to express it, in word, in deed, in empathy one towards another? All that requires the physical components of the human machine. What is it to believe in the principle of order and the laws or logic, and not see it expressed in a well functioning machine or electronic device? And what is it that intelligence is, without it being expressed in the careful, penetrating, and intuitive looks and thoughts of a student seeking to understand a complex problem? You see, the material world exists to reveal the beauty of spiritual principles in form, or the repugnance of principles, also in form. The invisible is seen in the visible, but the visible is not seen in the invisible, that requires creative production. Creation is made up of the material world. It overwhelms us. It is everywhere. And while the invisible world constitutes more than the visible world, every atom, every invisible cell, and deeper still, every ministering spirit, serves to minister to creation, the spirits themselves propagate principles to man, that he may carry them fourth as seen by the angel coming to Daniel to reveal to him hidden truth concerning a vision, or in another example, what is termed “Doctrine of demons”, the ideas that come from demons propagating false principles to deceive and destroy, or war against the order of God through man. The invisible is a servant to the visible as a father would be to a wayward child. And in turn, the visible will do all it can to reflect and honor the invisible world in the upholding of our own civilisation and values inspired from the Spirit above who gifts all peoples, or the destruction of ourselves by latching onto spiritual wickedness propagated by the powers of the abyss. Selfishness is repugnant when we see its effect. The bitter remonstrations of an ex partner. The destruction of the world through wars of greed. While man can express good he can also express evil. In both cases he shows what the outplay of such things will be. Confusion, destruction, disease, from a violation of God’s natural and spiritual laws, or happiness, fulfillment, and love, by conforming to the spiritual principles he always knew to be true. Obedience, respect, kindness, generosity, expressed in man’s physical and mental attributes, outplayed using his physical being.

Outplaying of infinity

In chess, physical pieces, bound by the confines of the rules of the game, and the squares of the board, are able to make endless combinations, and positions. We could say that the chess pieces and board is the created embodiment of possibility. Humanity, and all creation, have an infinitely more complex possibility mechanism than even the set up of a chess board. And because it is infinite, all creation and its possibility, it is a living revelation of eternity. It is therefore possible, and noble, for the infinite one to become a living part of creation with its endless possibilities. Yet again, man and creation, the visible, is a revelation of the invisible world. Uniqueness is another reality manifest in form. Every person is their own individual being with the privilege of existence. Uniqueness is therefore embodied by things like human individuality and will. And how infinite is uniqueness? Well, is it possible for the created order to reach a limit on the individuals it chooses to introduce into the world? In each living thing there is endless uniqueness through the development of offspring. So three things attest to the infinite in creation. Endless possibility in the human interaction of the created world, the interaction of matter itself in the created world, and the uniqueness of each individual, ever revealed in new individuals that are birthed into the world.

You are special. A creature of matter able to attest to the Spirit. Matter able to receive and reciprocate God’s breath, allowing us to live. Fearfully and wonderfully, you are made.

Clearing up misconceptions:

How am I a living thing?

Genesis 2:7

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Man does not have a soul. He is one. A living soul is simply what is when the body and the breath are united. No-body, you die. No-breath, you die. Life cannot exist in mankind if any one, the breath or body, is separated. So the dead no not anything because the body has been destroyed beyond repair and/or the breath has been snatched away, there is no life of the dead, but all await a bodily resurrection from Jesus Christ when he comes again in the clouds of glory. Man does not have immortality in him. Man is a living soul as the bible says, and that soul dies. And our breath then returns to God, but is not a living being in and of itself. In humanity, to be living the body is just as important as the breath, we need both. We are not spirits in flesh. We are flesh, with the breath of God in us, that we received from God, that sustains and powers us, and yes, that even gives us understanding.

No ghosts of departed loved ones to haunt us, no torment, only death. There are good and evil spirits though, and we must be aware of that, but they are not human nor come from man.

Man is not a spirit, rather man has a dependant body. We may possess all the vital organs, but without the breath we are non-living, so we must have the breath of God, or we become no better than stones. But God, and only God, can make the stones cry out. He has. The creation of man from the material of the earth, creating a being who could receive and reciprocate God’s breath and therefore become living, is evidence of that. As stated, naturalism, that all nature exists from a purely natural cause, that natural processes are all that is. That there is no God, no divine, no Holy Spirit, is merely the religion of non-living things. A religion for and of the dead. A process that can never bring life from non life.

Eternal hell not compatible with our bio-genesis

What has made more atheists, heathens, and deniers, is the doctrine of an eternal hell. The Lord is made out to be a torturer of the most sadistic kind. This idea comes from paganism and entered the Christian church. This idea is predicated on the assumption that man has an eternal soul but as stated, this is not really the case. No, man does not possess immortality that he can burn forever. For the corruptible must ‘put on’ incorruption, and that is a reward for the righteous. ‘Putting on’ entails that he does not currently possess it. Our bio-genesis (our biological makeup according to Genesis) is clear on two accounts.

1) Man is a soul which is the totality of biological matter and breath, and is no more if any one of these components vanishes, as is the case with death.

And 2) That man (the sinner) was/is shut out from immortality therefore he cannot possibly live on after the grave to burn forever.

These two facts mean several things. Firstly, God would have to resurrect the dead in a literal, material, bodily resurrection which explains why Jesus needs to come back to resurrect the righteous dead since they are not in heaven yet. And secondly, that the wicked cannot possibly burn forever having been barred from immortality, and any hell would therefore be a permanent destruction into nothingness, referred to as the ‘second death’. This is a ‘second death’ because the unsaved, having died unsaved, will be resurrected in the resurrection of damnation to receive retribution therefore coming back again from death only to die the second time completely. Unlike the righteous, who come back again from death in what is called ‘the resurrection of the righteous’, and do not die hence fourth, having received immortality. In other words, the saved die once, and the wicked die twice.

“Blessed is he that has part in the first resurrection of whom the second death has no power”.

See: Revelation 20: 4-6 of the New Living Translation for more clarity.

Genesis 3: 22-24

22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

God barred man from the tree of life lest he should become immortal while in sin, so how is it that man possesses an immortality within him? This was restrained by God in the beginning when he drove man out of paradise and put a guard to the tree of life.

Does God let sinners eat from the tree that they may burn forever? No, it is the righteous that shall be granted permission to eat from the tree of life as we inhabit heaven, and dwell on the new earth, for all eternity. We shall come to the tree of life to replenish our being ever as we ought.

If anything, Satan wants us to burn forever and not God. He would have had it that man partook of the tree of life while in sin. But God barred the way.

The awaiting for a resurrection of the body is the hope of all who believe but now sleep in the grave awaiting the trumpet blast to call them fourth.