The Radiant Word
Once to Die
Excerpt from
Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity
by Elizabeth Clare Prophet
The passage that is most often cited to prove the Bible’s opposition to reincarnation is Hebrews 9:27, 28: “Since men only die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, too, offers himself only once to take the faults of many on himself.”… *
What does the author mean by saying “since men only die once”? The easiest explanation is that he is referring to the fact that our mortal bodies die only once.…
And “after that comes judgment” can refer to life reviews such as those reported in near-death experiences. But a postlife judgment does not preclude the possibility of the soul’s returning to earth in another mortal body. For the passage does not say, “It is appointed unto man once to live.”…
What dies once and only once is the “carnal mind,” as Paul termed the human ego. He wrote in Romans, “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” The carnal mind is a mind that is set on “the things of the flesh.” It refers to the portion of us that must die in order for us to “put on” our “immortality.”
Sometime, somewhere, in order to achieve eternal life, we must fully and finally slay the carnal mind. It doesn’t happen all at once. Paul said, “I die daily.”1 The unreal self dies a slice each day until it is finally dead. And we put on our immortality a slice each day. The death of the ego is a process, just as achieving immortality is a process. Until we have accomplished this, we continue to embody and continue to experience a judgment (though not the final judgment) at the conclusion of each life.
But when we have put on our immortality, we come to the end of living and dying. As Paul wrote: “When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”2
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* Jerusalem Bible
1. I Cor. 15:31.
2. I Cor. 15:54.
The book Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity by Elizabeth Clare Prophet with Erin L. Prophet is available online.
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