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* “Man is ‘spirit, soul and body” – 1 Thes 5:23.
Woefully erroneous is the belief disseminated by the churches that spirit and soul are synonymous terms. In fact they have nothing more in common than has man’s underwear with his physical body! Wherever in Scripture are we told that God is A SOUL? Or that His angels are ‘souls’? Not once! The closest approach thereto is in that He said ‘for the SPIRIT should fail before me, and the SOULS which I have made’ (Is 57:16.) But observe, the soul was ‘made.’ Since we have been told that He is the Father of spirits (Heb 12:9 and Zech 12:1), we know that the spirit was BEGOTTEN – never ‘made’.
The spirit is the deathless, integral part of God Himself: out of His own intrinsic substance: it is that which comes into being when God becomes a FATHER. While the ‘soul’ may be subject to death, for, ‘the soul that sins, it shall die’ (Ezek 18:4,20, and in Mt:: 10:28 reaffirmed by Jesus.)
Fire – as we know it is the closest approach to the illustration of spirit. The spirit-fire has produced all that is seen as well as unseen. A virgin spirit is but a naked flame of spirit-fire in the silhouette of the Father.
As the spirit-fire has produced all substance both tangible and intangible, so similarly does the spirit-flame which a virgin spirit is, commence to build about itself a sheath which becomes a garment, which in turn develops into a crude vehicle and finally into what we might term a fully developed ‘body’. THAT vehicle is what scripture refers to as ‘soul.’ But as in the physical world, it called for ageless cycles of time to develop the ever increasingly complex forms of life which culminated in the perfect man, so similarly did it call for even greater cycles of time to develop a fully perfected vehicle: engine or ‘body’ by the virgin spirits (or any spirit) before it could be said thereof as in Ezekiel 28:13, “The workmanship of your tabrets and of your pipes were prepared in you in the day that you were created,” (that is, fully fashioned and properly developed).
On the earth plane of being, man has ‘what we may well consider an absolutely perfect ‘engine’ of flesh, blood and bone: even a body perfected by the hand of the Master Artisan Himself. Because this is the densest and last, that in itself implies that the ‘soul’-body preceded it in time in the superphysical realms. Wherefore it follows that at the birth of a human infant, that indwelling spirit not only has a physical body but also a more finely knit, tenuous and interpenetrating vehicle which is termed the ‘soul’-body.
That LIFE process which built the physical body, did of necessity – first build a SOUL body. This is precisely in keeping with the same LAW as has been observed by thousands of medical scientists and recorded for us that the human fetus first develops in form according to the order in which life appeared on earth that is the sea life, the reptilian, and then the mammalian.
The soul-body built up by a spirit (dwelling in the spirit world) thru countless cycles is, under normal conditions, a permanent and deathless body, (or vehicle for its expression). The physical body of man was also built to endure thru vast eras of time – but only under those ‘normal conditions’ prescribed by its Maker. When those ‘normal conditions’ were changed thru what has been termed sin ‘man’s fall’, then the physical body became subject to death and disintegration.
Wherefore, it follows again that as a ‘soul’-body had been formed and built up in much less than a solar year, directly as a result of the especially prepared physical conditions under which the LIFE-processes brought forth a physical body: so is that soul-body contingent to, or dependant on its physical counterpartwhich gave it LIFE. If then, its counterpart in flesh and blood meets with DEATH, so does that cut off the source of the soul-body’s energy, and sets a pattern for the disintegration of the soul. Therefore was it written, “The soul that sin it shall die.”
In Scripture we find precisely the same words used in connection with the lower life-waves of the sub-human mammals, birds and fish. That is, they were created ‘LIVING SOULS.’
Therefore, as millions times multiplied millions of animal bodies came to death on earth, so animate SOUL-bodies were liberated, and carried on for varying periods of time in that realm of their own affinity which, for lack of a better term we will call the ‘SOUL-world.’
In course of time, the energy animating such soul-bodies ran out: they too died. Thus were formed about the world, and even interpenetrating the earth to considerable depth, a strata dense in soul substance – both animate and inanimate. We might somewhat liken it to an expanse of land with a very deep humus soil – flourishing with vegetation. That deep layer of black soil is itself the product of decayed vegetation, processed thru thousands of years.
As most plant-life ‘will flourish more profusely in such a humus soil than it ‘will in a very sandy one, so similarly could and did the virgin spirits build for themselves much more rapidly a SOUL-vestment from out of this soul-strata, while they were ‘working with the multitudinous lower life-waves manifesting on earth. This was a part of the Father’s Plan ‘whereby to HASTEN the development and progress of the myriad life-waves of countless virgin spirits He had begotten.
