I suppose by now everybody knows I’m a big critic of the Theory of Evolution. I had the audacity on the second essay I ever posted on this website to argue that Genesis rebutted Darwin’s theory on the origin of man. A certain number of Darwin devotees ganged up on me and tried to make me feel foolish that I actually believed in what was said in the Book of Genesis. They not only accused me of being a biblical literalist but claimed my arguments were contrary to the Magisterium and that I don’t know enough about science to argue against Darwin. Those are fighting words.
Believing Genesis
My acceptance of the truths of Genesis as authentic, even though Genesis is presented in a simplistic fable-like manner, emboldened me to claim that man was able to converse with God as soon as God created man, that God formed Adam out of clay (the ninety-two elements everything material are made of) and that God created Eve out of a rib of Adam. God made both of them human by blowing His breath into their nostrils.
In believing Genesis, I drew certain conclusions: that man is special; that men (human beings) have spiritual souls; that man was given dominion over every creature that crawls on the surface of the earth; and that one of Adam and Eve’s descendants will punish the devil for tempting them to disobey God.
Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they lost the immortality that God meant for them and all their progeny to experience, and death entered the world as the common destiny of all mankind. That’s a lot for a biblical literalist like me to conclude simply by believing Genesis. Practically the whole Catholic faith is supported by what I gleaned from Genesis.
In My Defense
I still had to defend myself from the accusation that I was against the Magisterium. So I wrote a follow-up essay where I showed that I did not contradict the Magisterium. Every conclusion I drew from believing in the truths of Genesis is affirmed by the Magisterium as well as a few others I had not mentioned. I was surprised also to see that the Magisterium did not cave in to the evolutionists as some of my opponents had claimed.
After my research into magisterial teaching, I suddenly saw that there is a bigger flaw in Darwinism in that it does not recognize what is spiritual in what God created. Darwin’s theory and Darwinists consider everything to be physical, which is why they so vigorously defend their position that humans evolved from apes and were probably not created special by God.
So I wrote another essay about the fatal flaw in Darwinism. Now, I would like to carry my arguments farther.
Egyptian Civilization
Everybody knows that the world’s first truly civilized society, Egypt, believed in some form of resurrection. Their religious expectations caused them to go to extremes to prepare themselves for a better life in the next world. Where did they pick up this idea of resurrection?
I searched the Internet to see if our scientific community had any teaching about it. I couldn’t find a scientist or Egyptologist who linked resurrection to Genesis where Scripture plainly reveals that Adam and Eve knew they were created to be immortal and lost immortality because they listened to Satan and disobeyed God.
When searching for the opinions of Egyptologists on reincarnation, the following passage is typical of what I found:
If cellular transmission is the all sufficient explanation, materialism is inevitable, and there is no necessity for the theory of the soul. If it is not a sufficient explanation, the theory of an individual soul bringing into this life the experiences of the past is absolutely true. There is no escape from the alternative, reincarnation or materialism. Which shall we accept?
It looks to me like; some Egyptologists are unable to take a position on this issue.
I found many articles claiming that devils and resurrection are based upon fables not reality. Modern research into near death experiences leads some scientists to reconsider their opinions about death. “For millennia, death was considered irreversible, and nothing could restore life, etc.”
Here again, scientists, Egyptologists, evolutionists, anthropologists, virtually all of them, have no teaching on spiritual beings or on resurrection.
But the descendants of Adam and Eve would have known about what happened to their parents. It would have become folklore stemming from Adam and Eve’s sad experience of disobeying God. Why have so few scientists or Egyptologists recognized this? Not only Egyptians believed in resurrection; people in India and China believed it. Some Native American tribes believed it, even Eskimos believed it. Probably most races of man believe it. I certainly believe it because I believe Genesis.
Egyptologists
Ancient Egyptians buried their dead with the hope that their dead would rise immortal in the next life. We also bury our dead with the same hope. The next life won’t happen until this present world ends when God will raise every human being He created and judge them. The righteous will enter the kingdom of heaven with resurrected bodies, and the wicked will be confined in hell, also with resurrected bodies.
Egyptians, being human, are descendants of Adam and Eve and will share in the resurrection along with the rest of us. Have anyone reading this article ever been interested in Nefertiti or King Tut? Did it ever occur to you that you might one day meet them? That is, if both you and they wind up in God’s heavenly kingdom? Did you ever offer a prayer for the repose of their souls, like Blessed Mother encourages us to pray for all departed souls?
If they were not wicked enough to deserve hell, their souls have already experienced the first resurrection which the Church teaches happens immediately after death together with our particular judgment (CCC, 1022). They would have met Christ when He descended into hell and rescued all the righteous that were awaiting the resurrection, as He promised the good thief when He told him: “This day you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
The Spiritual World
When God created the angels, there was nothing else in existence except God. They are His first-born. There was no physical universe nor even the laws that govern the physical universe. Angels are pure spirits, just like God. They exist in the spiritual realm and do not need a physical body to do anything. They were all created at the same time. At one moment there was only God. In the next instant, a multitude of angels along with God.
Angels came into existence with full capacity of mind and will. They did not have to grow up and mature as physical creatures do. I’m sure they all knew they suddenly came into existence, and I’m sure – because of their great intelligences – they all wondered why and how they suddenly appeared out of nothing.
God identified Himself to them and gave them a situation to test their willingness to submit themselves to His will. Nobody knows exactly what that test was, although the Fathers of the Church had several plausible ideas based on the types of sins angels would have committed (pride, envy, greed). The evidence of scripture, however, is that one-third of them refused submission to God (Revelation 12:4).
Our spiritual nature is like that of angels but of a lower level because we are bound to the flesh. My point in this entire essay is that we never hear of any acknowledgement of our spiritual nature from the scientific community and those who control our culture. Instead, we hear all kinds of explanations about how human consciousness, human religious beliefs, human personhood simply evolved very slowly as our physical nature evolved.
But this is contrary to common sense let alone religious faith. Humans have a deep-seated longing to be united to God and to be in harmony with God and the rest of creation. All of this stems from our spiritual nature. I do not accept the speculation that our spiritual nature is nothing more than highly evolved physical nature.
Looking At This in More Detail
It seems very logical to me that Adam and Eve were created fully human when God breathed a spirit into them. They were able to commune with God right away. He warned them that they could eat from every tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This was undoubtedly a test to see how willing they were to obey God.
Lucifer right away seduced them. They must have known that they were immortal, because God told them that the punishment for disobeying was death. As an element of their punishment, God added exile into a world already compromised by the revolt of the devils where all humans would thereafter have to earn their food by the sweat of their brow. Contrary to Darwin, humans were able to speak with God, and they were tempted by devils from the beginning.
Back to Egypt
As we noted above, the first civilized empire humans built was Egypt. Early humans began gathering along the Nile River about sixty-five hundred years ago. Around nine hundred years later, the Egyptians had already established the Old Kingdom and built huge pyramids. By then they had learned much about the wandering of planets and the constellations of the night sky, and they developed engineering skills to build massive buildings. They also developed a written language and left a fairly detailed record of their civilization.
Being tempted by devils, however, they presumed the sun and planets were gods and worshipped them. Where did they get the intelligence to perceive these things and to accomplish the skills they developed so quickly? Such intelligence is innate to the human person. It is one of the God-given gifts of our spiritual nature.
Contrary to Darwinism, humans did not experience a slow progression from brute animals finally becoming human after thousands of years of evolution. Apes, on the other hand, have been on earth for several million years, and not a single ape, even today, thinks the planets are gods. And they don’t worship anything.
I think Darwinism made the mistake of trying to fit all forms of life: angels, devils, and human beings into the constraints of materialistic Darwinism. Spiritual beings obviously do not fit into this category.
Longing For Immortality
The punishment for defying God must have broken the hearts of Adam and Eve, losing immortality and being exiled into this world, so corrupted by the sin of devils and humans. I’m sure they told their children all about it, and their offspring had to wait thousands of years before God provided a permanent remedy for it in Christ. No wonder the Egyptians and so many other humans spent so much time and effort trying to regain immortality. They wanted some permanency in their lives. They wanted to rise again and live forever.
That’s what the Egyptians wanted. That’s what all humans want. There is only one way to get it. We don’t have to carve gigantic tombs within mountains or build impressive megalithic temples.
Conclusion
I had no idea, when I first started defending my conviction of God’s authentic revelation, that our culture is so steeped in denial of God’s revelation.
My concluding challenge to my readers is this: Are you able to recognize that the evil one is still trying to seduce humans to reject the very simple conditions God has placed in order for you and everyone else to achieve union with God and gain immortality in His heavenly kingdom?
All anyone has to do is believe God’s revelation, choose to love God and obey Him. And God will do the rest.
13 thoughts on “Man’s Innate Belief in the Resurrection”
Very interesting presentation.
https://youtu.be/zRPIlF3IEOs
Hello M. Solange,
Thanks for your comment on my article. I’m pleased that you read it. I have always been interested in history, science and God’s revelation; but I do not generate the truth in any of those subjects. People who launch deeds into God’s creation launch history. God launches science, and God launches the truth about himself. I’m very interested in those subjects and have an interest in learning as much as I can about them, but only God knows what is true in all things.
I try to learn as much as I can, but find it difficult because there is so much misinformation about these subjects in the world. On this website, I like to explain these subjects as best I can, but I could be mistaken, in which case I am always open to consider the facts and change my mind. After all, my quest is to discover the absolute truth and not merely voice my opinion.
Thanks again for reading my article and commenting on it.
Maurice A. Williams
Hello Robert
Here is a quick answer to your question about King David
https://defendinginerrancy.com/bible-solutions/Acts_2.34.php
ACTS 2:34—IS DAVID IN HEAVEN OR NOT?
PROBLEM: Peter seems to imply here that David was not in heaven. He wrote, “David did not ascend into the heavens.” Yet the Bible indicates that David was one of God’s choice servants (Acts 13:22) who obviously went to be with his Lord when he died (cf. Matt. 22:42–46).
SOLUTION: Peter is not speaking of David’s soul here, but of his body. David’s soul is in heaven along with all other believers, but his body is still in the grave (Acts 2:29). Since David’s body has not yet been raised, it is clear that he has not yet “ascended” bodily into heaven either. It is for this same reason that Jesus said to Mary, “I have not yet ascended to My Father” (John 20:17). The day He died, Jesus’ spirit went to be with the Father (see Luke 23:43, 46). So, His spirit had been with the Father, but His body had not yet ascended into heaven when he spoke to Mary. The bodily ascension took place several weeks later (cf. Acts 1:3, 9–10). (See also comments on Eph. 4:9.)
This link is from defending Inerrancy, which is not a Catholic Website. I think no Christian thinks King David is not in heaven. Also please note that Christian Inerrancy also argues that King David’s soul is in heaven, which agrees with I said about the first resurrection.
Thanks for your response.
Where exactly does it say in scriptures that the “soul” is immortal? Paul says in 1 Timothy 6 about the appearance of Jesus Christ, who is “the King of kings and Lord of lords who alone has immortality”.
Or where is it in scripture that the dead believers are already in heaven? If so, why would Jesus tell his closest followers that he will come back for them in John 14?
What we have are various scriptures that say the opposite. Job 14 comes to mind. So does Ecclesiastes 9. And Daniel 12:10-13.
Your statement about Luke 23 can refer to the “breath of life” that is given to us by God, as described in Genesis 2:7.
Hello Robert
I saw your question to Mr. Darcy concerning Muslims finding salvation. I think I can answer that myself.
With our governments, there is a saying “Ignorance of the law is no excuse!” I think this is unfair, especially with governments that issue laws in conflict with God’s laws. But with God, ignorance is an excuse. Otherwise, nobody would escape damnation because we are all, through concupiscence, very wicked in the private depths of our souls.
So God, being gracious and merciful (as the first verse in the Koran puts it) gives each one of us the benefit of the doubt. If we sincerely try to honor and reverence God and try to obey him, even if we are mistaken on some issues, because we are honest and sincere, God is not going to condemn us to eternal damnation because we tried our best to please God, but did not know enough to be absolutely certain of what God requires of us.
I happen to be convinced that there are many Muslim people that really try to please God and are compassionate with other human beings as God requires all of us to be. The problem is that not many people know exactly what God desires.
The church always taught that people that act from clear conscience to please God will be accepted by him. The problem is to be a saint one must be correct in their understanding of what God wants
I think there are two basic destinations when people leave this life (1) eternal damnation for the wicked (2) God’s heavenly kingdom which has at least two categories: (a) heaven (the Mystical Body) for those who know what God wants and tries to accomplish it and (b) paradise for those God accepts no matter how compromised their lives were. The good thief was told by Christ himself that he would be with Christ in paradise.
However, everybody who does escape eternal damnation and winds up in God’s heavenly kingdom will by then know only the truth about God and creation.
Hope this clarifies the answer to your question.
Scripture is pretty clear about those who deny that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
So in addition to inventing history and science, you’re now inventing theology? Not particularly convincing, that.
Hello Robert,
It took me a while to be sure I had the correct answers to your questions.
Concerning the first and second resurrection. We all know Christ will make two appearances in this life. The first when he arrived as a Child in the womb of his mother, the second at the end of this world when he will come in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Human beings, most of them, will experience two resurrection; one when the victorious Christ descended into hell to conquer the Devil just before Christ died, signifying that Christ defeated the Devil through his human flesh. It was Christ’s defeat of the Devil that opened the gates of heaven. Prior to that, no human being was able to enter heaven. All human beings who died before the victory of Christ went a special place (not heaven and not eternal damnation) to wait the victorious Redeemer. This is the first resurrection when these departed souls are taken into God’s heavenly kingdom. The second resurrection occurs at the end of the world when all the righteous are taken body and soul into God’s heavenly kingdom.
The Apostle’s Creed contains a list of all the important tenants of revealed faith that all Christians should accept on faith. One tenant is “He descended into Hell.” That’s when Christ defeated the devil and released the righteous for the first resurrection.
The Holy Spirit guides the Church through Scripture, of course, but also through tradition where He inspires Church Fathers when they explain difficult points of Scripture. All the footnotes you saw on CCC 1022 are references to how Church Fathers dealt with explaining the faith. The Church is very careful in how they guard tradition. You brought up Magisterial teaching before. Magisterial teaching is part of the tradition that is inspired by the Holy Spirit.
If Jesus told someone in John 3 that no one has gone to heaven, He is speaking truthfully. Nobody can enter heaven until Jesus has redeemed us through his death. Jesus was still alive in this world when he spoke. The same is true for King David. Even David could not enter heaven until after the death of Jesus.
I think paradise; particularly “The Garden of Eden.” was created special by God to house Adam and Eve before they were tested. If they had refused to sin, I think God would transformed the whole world into paradise. But since they did sin, God drove Adam and Eve out of paradise into the wicked world already compromised by the sins of the fallen angels. I know some people have searched for paradise, but I don’t think paradise exists anymore anywhere on earth.
I think 2 Thessalonians 2 refers to first the coming the resurrected Lord and second is the coming of the Saints of the Church gathered with the resurrected Lord to judge the living and the dead.
Hope this helps.
Maurice:
Thanks for the response.
You seem to describe a first resurrection for “souls” that takes place before Jesus rose from the dead. That is completely contradicted by the Bible. Paul tells us a different story in 1 Corinthians 15. And there is nothing in scripture that tells us about Jesus taking souls with him to heaven.
Peter tells the Jews on Pentecost, which occurs after Jesus ascended into heaven, that King David is not in heaven.
If Jesus defeated Satan on the cross, then the entire Book of Revelation is not correct, right? Yet, according to the 20th chapter of the Book of Revelation, Satan is not thrown into the abyss until after Jesus returns and is then released after 1,000 years before he is finally thrown into the pool of burning sulphuric. Or how about 1 Peter 5, warning that “the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour?” Both of these books were written after Jesus returned to heaven to take his seat at the right-hand of God.
It is these type of statements, which are contradicted by scripture or not even mentioned in the Bible, that make me frustrated with the Catholic Church.
And I have heard some things from priests in their homilies that make me cringe. An example for you: At a recent funeral of a relative who died from a drug overdose, the priest told us to pray for him. Then, he followed by saying we should pray TO him. That’s blasphemy!
I pray to God for discernment regarding his scriptures, not the CCC.
Suggest that you do the same.
Mr. Darcy:
Since the Bible, not the CCC, is the original source document for our faith, why is it a “Cheap shot and very dishonest” to question the paragraph written by the author of the article? I used scripture to point out my questioning of the statements.
There are numerous sections in the CCC that contain footnotes lacking scripture references. An example is CCC 841, which I states that Muslims share in our salvation. How can that possibly be when Islam denies that Jesus is the Son of God? And Jesus will judge each person (Revelation 22:12-16)
Since you seemed to engage in a personal attack, just wondering where your intellectual honesty is?
The development of ethics and spirituality can all be explained by evolution.
Hello Captcrisis,
Thanks for reading my article and commenting on it. I’m afraid I don’t agree with you that the development of ethics and spirituality can be explained by evolution.
I think this subject is a thorny one because the argument depends so much on minute details of skeletal structure and DNA. I’m much more comfortable relying on God’s revelation.
Jesus established His church to clarify what he taught and He sent the Holy Spirit to guide His church unerringly in future generations, through magisterial teaching.
I know you are familiar with magisterial teaching because it came up in some of my other articles. So if my understanding of science is not up to the task of defending God’s revelation, I can always depend on the magisterium. After all, the magisterium is endorsed by God and He certainly knows the truth about what he created.
Thanks for reading my article and commenting on it
Maurice A. Williams
As a Catholic who reads more and more of the Bible, I am perplexed by the teachings of the RCC. In your article this section caught my attention.
“If they were not wicked enough to deserve hell, their souls have already experienced the first resurrection which the Church teaches happens immediately after death together with our particular judgment (CCC, 1022). They would have met Christ when He descended into hell and rescued all the righteous that were awaiting the resurrection, as He promised the good thief when He told him: “This day you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).”
The CCC 1022 has a number of footnotes, none of which are scripture.
The Bible seems to teach that the first resurrection occurs at the coming our Lord. See 1 Corinthians 15:20-23. Later in the same chapter Paul shares a mystery with us; verses 50-58. Immortality occurs at the last trumpet. The first resurrection is also described in Revelation 20.
Jesus tells us in John 3 that no one has gone to heaven. Later, in John 14, He tells his closest followers that “I am indeed going to prepare a place for you, and then I shall come back to take you with me, that where I am you also may be.” If the disciples are already in heaven, why would Jesus have to come back for them?
In Matthew 24, Jesus tells us that after the Tribulation his angels “will assemble his chosen from the four winds”. This is also described in Revelation 14.
Peter told the Jews on Pentecost that King David was not in heaven; Acts 2.
Jesus told us that he would spend three days and three nights in the grave. Nothing about going to Hell to rescue the righteous.
With respect to Luke 23:43, some suggest that the comma is misplaced. Others suggest that paradise is a secret location. Or it could be a garden or cemetery. But Revelation 20, 21, and 22 describe it, but it is a future event.
One further point, Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2 that our gathering to the Lord takes place after two events. Have these two events occurred?