Death's Masquerade Shattered: Biblical Writers Expose the Myths and Superstitutions of Death

By Charlotte M. Nabors

This book is about gaining a biblical understanding of death. Whether you are Christian or not, you may see things in a whole new way and gain an understanding of the many theories you have heard over the years.

This book is valuable to anyone who has had questions about God's justice or injustice, hellfire, or where we go when we die. Learn about suicide, euthanasia, ghosts, the crucifixion, and many more insights. The wisdom within is heavily supported with biblical texts and the personal experiences of the author and others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449734282

Charlotte M. Nabors

Charlotte M. Nabors spent over thirty years in the business community before she decided to change careers. She became a certified nursing assistant, working her way through the university. Eventually she decided to change majors from the BSN program to the theology program. She earned a BA in religion with a minor in nursing home Administration from Southwestern Adventist University in Keene, Texas, in May 1999. The following month she was on her way to South Korea where she spent the next seven years as a missionary, teaching ESL, Bible classes, and co-preaching sermons with the Korean pastors. The sermons had to be translated from a rough draft of Korenglish into English for the foreigners in attendance. She learned about their culture and religions. One year was spent in Taiwan teaching ESL and learning about their culture. During the time spent overseas, she signed on with Yahoo! to become one of the resources for answering questions for visitors who were looking for some understanding of religious issues. She returned home in 2006 to the American lifestyle in Arizona. Ms. Nabors also enjoys photography as a hobby, which she learned while living in South Korea. She is a pianist for her church and Bible teacher for adult classes as well.

Book preview

Death’s Masquerade

SHATTERED

Biblical Writers Expose the

Myths

cover%20text.tif

Superstitions

of Death

Charlotte M. Nabors

logoBlackwTN.ai

Copyright © 2012 by Charlotte M. Nabors.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011963161

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-3429-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3430-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3428-2 (e)

Printed in the United States of America

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/20/2011

Contents

World Religions

Created For Something Better

The Beginning

What Does Solomon Have to Say

The Creation of Man

Mortal or Immortal

What The Dead Don’t Know

The Soul

Jesus and the Crucifixion

Who Is Communicating To Us?

When Did This All Begin?

What Is Satan’s End

Absent From The Body

Baptisim For The Dead

The Rich Man And Lazarus Parable

Suicide and Euthanasia

What Does the Bible Say About Suicide?

Hell Fire—Is It Biblical?

God’s Counsel On The Occult

Resources Used

GLOSSARY

World Religions

Looking at ancient cultures around the world we find vast differences in the worship of many deities, wars, battles, and communal life due to a variety of influences. Today, archeology has frequently discovered advanced feats of engineering completely unexpected by men of science. However, what we have discovered among these cultures is a preoccupation with their comforts and pleasures in the afterlife. This preoccupation spans across time and civilizations for thousands of years. Something we all hold in common regardless of culture and religious backgrounds. We all have the need and compelling desire to worship something or someone. We all have the need and desire to love and be loved. We can’t live without either one and sometimes find we are uncomfortable living with these needs as well.

Archeologists and anthropologists have found evidence from primitive cultures of the worship of various gods and deities, demonstrating the fierceness and terror through their designs and clues in the burial pits. From the earliest of cultures it has been found that worship plays a strong role in shaping cultural values, traditions, civil laws and family structures of a nation, tribe or clan. The veneration of the dead is still very much alive in societies of today as well, including the Christian culture.

This need to worship and love is the same among all people and religions from the beginning of time thousands of years ago to the present day. We all want the same things out of life for our families in this life and the next one.

There is one common belief among all religions that impacts how a society views death. What is this one thing we all have in common? It’s the belief that when you die, you don’t really die. The afterlife is presented as being more wonderful than the life we are now living. Many societies also believed to some degree that the afterlife is a modified extension of our present life. We have been taught that we don’t really die but crossover or pass on to another realm in a spirit form which has been in the world from the beginning of time to this very day. The tradition that man has a separate soul that lives beyond the death of the physical body is not new. The desire or compelling need to worship something or someone that is embedded in our psyche is evidenced by these ancient cultures down to our time.

Where did this idea that we have an immortal soul come from? It came out of ancient pagan religions and has been embraced by the Christian religions of today.

I have found it very interesting that in ancient pagan religions, the world religions today and the Christian world of today all believe that when we die, we don’t really die. They all teach existence after death may be continued through reincarnation, or as Christians believe, by going to heaven immediately. Some teach you go to a place called paradise. I haven’t been to a funeral yet where someone goes to hell but it seems that everyone goes to heaven. This is the teaching of immediate reward which is not biblical.

Some Christian religions teach that people go to hell immediately and start burning in hell fire forever and ever. Is this biblical? How can a loving God have no compassion or mercy for the them? Are we going to watch people we love burning forever? This teaching has turned many young men and women away from the loving God of the scriptures because they didn’t understand what the Bible actually teaches.

Another observation is that most religions focus on going to a blissful, wonderful existence. In some religions, the rewards are far better for men than for women. In Islam for instance, when they sacrifice their life by blowing themselves up for Islam, the men will be rewarded in the afterlife by being married to 72 very beautiful dark eyed virgins and will be waited on hand and foot. When a woman suicide bomber surrenders her life for the Jihad, what’s in it for her? What’s her reward? Apparently, according to some of their teachers, the woman is promised that she will be recreated into a very beautiful woman who will be able to serve her husband throughout eternity. I don’t think that would be very encouraging to most women.

Recently I was reading a book on Fundamental Latter Day Saints by Ms. Flora Jessup who wrote about her experiences growing up in this religious group. She mentioned in one chapter the reward for men when they die is to go to paradise where they will be served by their wives for eternity. The wife’s reward is that she gets to be a servant to her husband for eternity. No blissful joy, no freedom from the lifestyle she is compelled to live while under the influences of the FLDS in this life. Is this what the bible teaches? Absolutely not!

Could there be some social injustice or inequities in a community that are based in a belief system that is flawed with the lustful sins of man being fulfilled in the after life? Is it more of an expressed fantasy than a true reality? There are many variations among the thousands of religions of the world today but one of the constants is the teaching and belief that man has an immortal soul and it doesn’t die. Life is believed to be cyclical or recycled on different planes. This one belief brings all religions together under one umbrella. Think about it! There are actually only three or four Christian denominations that do not teach this unbiblical doctrine.

Archeologists and anthropologists have discovered the veneration of the dead in the ancient tombs of China, Egypt, Israel, South Korea and other countries In the tombs are found objects of gold, silver and precious things that were put in the tombs when the person was buried so they would be more comfortable in the after life. They have even found the skeletons of the servants who were put to death and put into the tomb with the king when he was buried so they could serve him in the afterlife. Well, if you believe that the person is no longer a person but a spirit that floats about what use would these things have in the new state? We find them on this side of the great abyss. They are not transported across to the other side to be used at all. The mummified body is there and the skeletons are there and the boats, lamps, clothing, etc… are all there. The only thing that is really missing is the breath of life. Think about it.

In Taiwan there is a celebration for the dead. The relatives go to a special shop to purchase ghost money and ghost ships, incense wands, and other paper gifts for the ghosts of their departed families.

However, the items are purchased with real money. Strange… the shopkeepers will only take real money. They don’t accept payment in ghost money. The customers take these things home and have a special ceremony on behalf of the dead. They have a metal container that looks like a small kitchen wastebasket in which they put the ghost money. They set it on fire and as the money burns and the smoke ascends, they believe the ghosts of their departed ones are receiving this money to use in the afterlife.

Since we are unable to actually see the ghosts, I often wondered how do they know which ghosts are getting the money? After all, thieves die and supposedly become ghosts as well. Are their ghosts hovering around the fire as well, waiting to reach out and grab the smoke thus capturing the money and presents being burned?

During one of the celebrations, the families in the surrounding neighborhood were burning ghost money and other paper sculpted gifts for their dead relatives. It began to rain lightly at first then about five minutes later the rain came down hard. I was surprised to see the fires didn’t go out. The rain began to pour down and the fires burned brighter. The rain was acting like gasoline to the fires. After a few minutes I realized why the fires were not going out and I prayed to the Creator God that He would put out the fires so He could be glorified and Satan would be defeated in the worship of the dead. Instantly, all the fires went out—at the same time. The intensity of the rain had not changed. I just stood there, stunned amazed at what I just seen and experienced. I quickly ran around the corner and saw every fire out on the back street behind the dorm as well. The people that had been dancing around and feeding the fires with their paper gifts were suddenly getting soaked from the pounding rain. They looked puzzled and confused then quickly one by one went into their little store front/homes. I wondered about that for a moment. I realized that the closer to the fire they were, the rain was very light as though some unseen force was protecting the fires and the people. I was standing only about four feet away under a protective porch to keep from getting soaked while they were dry and in the open.

It was not unusual for my young students to tell me about the ghosts of some relative visiting them and talking to them. A journalist wrote an article in the newspaper about the economy based on the worship of the dead in Taiwan. The article stated that approximately 35% of their economy is directly related to the worship of the dead. I happened to think about the Apostle Paul’s experience in the city of Ephesus. You can read about it in Acts 19. When Paul began preaching the gospel in Ephesus a significant number of Ephesians accepted and embraced the Christian gospel. The shop owners who made their living off the manufacture and sales of the statues of Diana and other objects used in their pagan worship, began losing substantial income. They were in danger of losing their business. The Ephesians not only rejected the statues and the idols, they even began bringing their books of the occult practices and the books on the dead to the open town center and had one huge bonfire. They began burning all their pagan books. Acts 19:19 states the cost of this act came to about 50,000 pieces of silver. This was no little fire, my friend. They fully divested themselves of all practices of false religion and committed themselves fully to the Creator God of heaven.

Does man have an immortal dimension to his earthly body now or, is man mortal and actually, completely dead which is the cessation of life?

To find the answer to this question and many others regarding man’s state at death we need to go to the scriptures to find the answers. God has told us that all doctrines and teachings must meet and agree with biblical truth. Isaiah 8:16, 20 Bind up the testimony, Seal the law among my disciples. (20) To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. Isaiah 28:10, 13 tells us that Precept must be upon precept, . . . Line upon line, . . . Here a little and there a little . . .

The Bible is understood and believed to be the true Word of God. It is the testimony of Moses, the Psalms and the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles and writers in New Testament. The law is the 10 commandments and by these two books (old and new testaments) the standard is set by which all doctrines and teachings of the Christian faith and all other religions are to be judged in heaven and on earth. Without the Bible fallen man is left to believe whatever is deemed right in his own eyes, out of his own resources (his own wisdom or knowledge and not God’s) regardless of the consequences. There is no other standard, no other baseline to set Truth by other than God’s Word. In John 14:6 Thomas asked Jesus… how can we know the way? Jesus said of himself, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: NO MAN COMETH TO THE FATHER, BUT BY ME. From Genesis to Revelation all prophecy and all scriptures were given to man by God and reveal God in all His ways. Ps 25:8 Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation. John 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. Ps 119:140 Thy word is pure: . . . 151 . . . and all thy