Pierre Bittar: French Impressionist Artist

The Human Trinity Now and in Eternity

by Pierre Bittar
March 26, 2013

We know that we are created in God’s image and likeness. In Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, ...” We also know that our God is a Triune God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These three persons of God constitute the Holy Trinity.

Can we conclude from the above, that there is a human trinity? In the Scriptures, we have a confirmation that each one of us is Spirit, Soul and Body. We can read this in 1 Thessalonians 5:23“ ...May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

If we read the Bible we will have a better understanding of who we really are. In Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

So originally we are made out of dust, but have in us the breath of God. In other words, we are partly physical or natural and partly spiritual. Our natural part is our body as we know it, and our spiritual part is our Spirit and soul as mentioned above in 1 Thessalonians. We know that our physical body will live, die and finally will return to dust because what is physical belongs to this earth and will remain in it. This will not be the case for our Spirit and our Soul. They are the breath of God, so they are spiritual and eternal because God is an Eternal Spirit.

We do not know about our spirit and soul as much as we know about our physical body. The reason is that they are spiritual and our physical body cannot perceive them. They are however in us since our conception.

OUR SPIRIT
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Our spirit is within us since we were conceived. It is the breath of God in us. It is called spirit but it could also be called our spiritual body. It is totally invisible to us but it covers the total volume of our natural body. The shape of our spiritual body is basically like us. The head has a face which is like our face, the legs and arms are identical to ours. However, if our physical body is mutilated, our spiritual body can never be. If someone is born blind or deaf or loses any sense during his earthly life, all his spiritual body’s senses are permanently intact.

Although our spiritual senses do not perceive what our natural senses perceive, they can perceive inspirations and intuitions. They can also perceive all types of emotions like love, hate, joy, sorrow that cannot be perceived by our natural senses. This is to say that, although invisible, our spiritual body and all its senses are complimenting and enriching our physical body with very useful and necessary information. Obviously scientists will not agree with such explanation merely because science doesn’t believe in spirits. In their explanation for the above mentioned phenomena, scientists will use philosophical or psychological approaches which might be rich in words but cannot satisfy or convince human curiosity.

Our spirit is also the way of communication, between us and the spiritual world. When we pray, for example, it is through our spirit that we communicate with God. It is also through our spirit that good and bad spirits can communicate with us. When we are tempted by the devil to commit a sin for example, we perceive the temptation through our spirit. But as we will see later, it is up to our soul to decide whether we accept or refuse the temptation. It is also through our spirit that
we can perceive good or bad inspirations or intuitions from good or bad spirits. If for example we are blessed to see and hear Jesus, our spiritual eyes and ears will be opened although we are in the flesh. And nobody else, present with us during this vision, will see Jesus or hear His voice unless they receive the same blessing of having their spiritual eyes and ears opened. Furthermore, God willing, our total spiritual body can leave our physical body and go to visit the spiritual world. We
can, while our physical body is sleeping, visit heaven and speak with the angels or other spirits. We can also visit hell and see what and how it is. When our visit is over, our spiritual body will come back and join our natural body.

When our spirit was conceived, it received from God the seed of faith. Like any seed, in order to grow, the seed of faith needs to be nourished. It is by our prayers, good deeds and our respect for God’s commands that the seed of faith can grow. It will keep on growing till we will be born again by the Holy Spirit. But the opposite is also true. If we stop nourishing the seed of faith with our good deeds and instead turn our back on God and act with evil deeds, the seed of faith will perish. This can be confirmed by the Scriptures. In Peter 1:23, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” This is also confirmed in John 3:3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you; no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” And when He was asked how can we be born again? Jesus answered in John 3:6 “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to the spirit.” Being born again means also that we will have eternal life and enjoy being with God in His kingdom for eternity.

If the seed of faith perishes, the spirit dies with it. Now, how can the spirit die if it is eternal? The answer is, and contrary to the death of the natural body, the spiritual death is not the end of the spirit, it is rather the deprivation of the spirit from being with God.

If our spirit dies while we are living on this earth, we are considered as spiritually dead by God although our body lives. In Matthew 8;21-22, another disciple said to Him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” What Jesus meant is that the spirits of those who have to bury the dead were dead and, not their bodies. When we die, it is only our physical body that dies. Our spiritual body with our soul will be instantaneously released from the body and will live for eternity in the spiritual world where they belong, either with God in a place called “Heaven” or away from Him in a place called “Hell.” There is, however a third place called “Purgatory” as explained hereafter.

HEAVEN - Those who loved Jesus and were born by the Spirit will enjoy and share heaven with Him and His angels for eternity.

In heaven, our spiritual body will look like us when we were living in the flesh. It is comforting to know that our spiritual body will not carry our sickness nor any of our mutilations. We will have an ageless perfect healthy body forever.

While in heaven, we will recognize our parents, brothers and sisters as well as all friends who died before us. We will also discover our grandparents or great-grandparents who we didn’t have a chance to meet. We will be surprised to meet children or relatives who died very young. Angels and good spirits took care of them and they will be at their best age that they will keep forever.

In heaven we will not worry about lodging. Jesus has prepared everything for us. Those who longed to have a home near a river, facing a mountain, on a beach, overlooking a valley or a lake will have what they have always desired to have. If they miss their pets, God will bring them back to them.

In heaven we will not have to worry about food, we will find every kind of meal. Those who love to cook will cook for those who don’t cook. We will taste delicious fruits that we have never seen before. Our sense of smell will discover a variety of beautiful flowers.

In heaven we will never get bored. We can practice or experience whatever we missed doing in our earthly life. Scientists will continue their scientific research and, with God’s permission, they can inspire fellow scientists on earth and help them to progress with their inventions. The same is true for musicians. They can continue inventing music and inspire fellow human musicians. Theologians will meet with Angels and develop their knowledge. Preachers will be invited to preach those souls who are seeking heaven and are thirsty to know about God and who Jesus is. Those parents who love children or missed having children, will take care of babies who, on earth didn’t have the chance to survive and were brought to heaven by angels. This is to say that every body will be happily and willingly occupied doing what they always wanted to do.

In heaven we will be in a different realm, there is no sun that will rise and set determining a day and a night every 24 hours. There is neither an earth that rotates around its own oblique axis and in orbit around the sun once a year to determine our four seasons.

In heaven, there is no time and no space. If we desire to visit someone, we do not drive our car, catch a train or a flight. The moment we want to see someone, we are immediately in front of that person. Remember that, although we have a body similar to our earthly body, we are not natural any more, we are spirits. All this will sound strange to us and might look odd, but when we think about it and about its practicality, we will love it. No more traffic jams, accidents, speed tickets, gas
stations, credit cards etc.

Our responsibilities in heaven will not be the same. In our material world we have to work, bring food and clothing to the family, pay for our education and our children’s education, pay house and car mortgages, etc. Our life is full of responsibilities from our youth until we die. In heaven, Jesus is taking care of all that. He has for us many noble responsibilities that will be beyond our limited earthly imagination. Don’t forget that the universe has no end and God will need us as children to work with Him and participate in His unlimited future plans. It is according to our earthly experience and our skill and motivation that God will guide us towards much higher and more interesting responsibilities than we have ever experienced during our relatively short and limited earthly life.

If God invites to heaven only those who are born again it is because in Heaven sin doesn’t exist and, of course, bad spirits or devils have no existence nor influence on any heavenly spirit. Therefore, love will reign and hate or bad deeds are abolished once for all. We can imagine what a wonderful life it will be when we will be surrounded by loving people whose only desire is to help and share their happiness and joy with us.

If the Bible has restricted the access to heaven only to those who believe in Jesus Christ as our God and Savior it is precisely because Jesus is the King of Heaven. The Scriptures are rich with passages about this restriction. The following two verses confirm it.

1) Jesus is God in the Flesh (called the son of God ). In Isaiah 9:6, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,”

2) Only who believe in the Son of God will have eternal life. In 1 John 5:11-13, “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Who ever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to who believe in the name of the son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

HELL - And those who have rejected God by killing their own spirit with sins and bad deeds, those wicked people who live an evil earthly life by using their malicious plans to obtain what they wanted, no matter if it cost people their lives, possessions, or dignity. These bad persons will be judged by God and will be thrown where they belong, in a place called Hell where Satan and all the devils resides.

They will be away from God, deprived from the Sun of Heaven that propagates love through its warmness and wisdom through its light. In other words, they will be in a place where they will have the opposite of love, which is hate, and the opposite of wisdom, which is madness. What kind of life will it be in which every spirit will hate, beat, or fight every spirit? Mad spirits will be surrounded by mad spirits? The worst of all is, that their life will be like this for eternity because their last chance for repentance was on this earth before they died.

PURGATORY- Every human is a sinner and God knows it. Here is what God says in 1 John 1:8-9, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He (Jesus) is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Not all sins have the same gravity though. Murdering someone with full knowledge and deliberate intent is obviously a greater sin than stealing an apple to feed a starving child. This is to say that some sins can lead us to eternal death (mortal sin) while others do not (venial sin).

Sins can be forgiven. In Act 10:43, “All the prophets testify about Him (Jesus) that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.” Therefore if we believe in Jesus with all our heart, our mind and our strength and we pray to Him asking for forgiveness and promising to repent, our sin will be forgiven.

Those who are not Christians or have never heard about Jesus or they believe in God but not in Jesus or they believe in a god or some power or energy or ultimately are unbelievers are not rejected by God. What counts for God is not in whom we believe but rather how we behaved during our lifetime.

Spiritual bodies and their souls for Christians and non-Christians alike will go to purgatory unless they have received, while in the flesh, Jesus forgiveness.

Purgatory is a place where the souls will receive a complete purification before entering Heaven and will also acquire a full knowledge about God.

This purification is the same type of what we might have already experienced during our life in this world. We might remember a moment of repentance after realizing how bad an act that we had committed was. This feeling of strong regret and repentance might have made us cry and sob bitterly. This is the suffering of the soul that has nothing to do with the suffering of the body. This suffering that we have already experienced during our life on earth could be a prelude to what our soul will feel when it receives a final purification in purgatory. The intensity and duration depends on the state of the soul when we died on earth.

While those souls are purified in purgatory, angels or other good spirits in heaven will receive God’s permission to go to purgatory and teach them about heaven and who Jesus Christ is. These explanations and teachings will enlighten those souls during their purification for as long as required, till they are totally purified and aware of the endless love and justice of Jesus.

OUR SOUL
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Our soul is the intimate part of ourselves. We are what our soul is. Some refer to the soul as our heart, our mind or our conscience. Like our spirit, the soul is God’s breath within us since we were conceived. Our soul has received, from God, the gift of free will during its conception. Free will means that our soul has the choice to be obedient or disobedient to God.

In spite of the fact that we have a brain to think with, and a heart to feel with, it is our soul that decides and chooses between what is good and what is bad. Our soul is hidden within each one of us. No one but God and us can see what is in our own soul. Some wicked souls take advantage of this fact to hide their mean and sinful intentions by acting and behaving differently. They might eventually mislead and fool others, God knows very well their intentions and they will have to deal with Him during the last judgment.

Hence, we have to worry more about our soul than our body. If we are guilty, we better confess our guilt and receive a physical punishment instead of lying to escape from that punishment and condemn our soul.

We know that our soul has received from God the gift of the freewill. We also know that all decisions regarding a choice between good and bad are under our soul’s control. When our soul makes a decision, this decision should be followed by an action. Actions could be spiritual or physical. If spiritual, it is directly communicated to our spiritual body or to our spirit. But if it requires a physical action, the soul will instruct our brain instead, which has full control over the totality of our members. We can summarize the communication possibilities of our soul as follows:

Our soul’s decisions are expressed by two alternatives;
1) The alternative of choice between good and bad.
2) The alternative of action between physical or spiritual.

The combination of both alternatives lead to four possible cases:
a) A choice of doing something good which should be executed physically.
b) A choice of doing something good which should be executed spiritually.
c) A choice of doing something bad which should be executed physically.
d) A choice of doing something bad which should be executed spiritually.

Examples for the above four cases:
a) A physical good deed like rescuing someone from drowning. Our soul will instruct our brain to execute the rescuing action. The brain, in return, will instruct our body members to do all the necessary moves to reach that goal. Like dive, swim etc.

b) A spiritual good deed like praying for someone. Our soul will instruct our spirit to pray.

c) A physical bad deed like beating someone. Our soul will instruct our brain to execute this beating process.

d) A spiritual bad deed like cursing someone. Our soul will instruct our spirit to curse.

As we said, the soul is our intimate person. In this earthly life it is within our physical body and when we pass away it will remain with our spiritual body for eternity.

OUR BODY
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This is the only visible part of our human trinity. We were born with it and have spent our earthly life with it. We have seen it grow, age, and we know that after an unknown period of time that body will die. We all know about that physical part of our human trinity that allows us to live in this natural world. Therefore no further explanations are really necessary.

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CONCLUSION
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Knowing our human trinity in life and in eternity is the most important information for any human being, because it is upon this knowledge that will depend the status of our eternal life. Do we choose to enjoy spending it with Jesus in heaven or with Satan in hell ?

What we are trying to summarize here above, God has explained it to us, in detail, through the prophets in the Old Testament and proved it when He visited us in Jesus Christ as it is explained in the Gospel.

All the holy Scriptures of the Bible prove God’s love for us and His ultimate desire to save us from eternal death, so we can enjoy our eternal life with Him in heaven.

Our life on this earth is limited, no matter how long it is. If we want to compare it to the eternal life it will be less then a drop of water in the ocean. In spite of this reality, we grant too much importance to this short earthly life and pay less attention to our future endless life.

Although death is an undeniable fact, many good educated people don’t like to talk about it. It scares them. This is very regrettable for two reasons: First, it is not by avoiding talking about it that they will overcome their fear. Because, on the contrary and no matter what, their fear will continue to grow with them which might spoil their life instead of enjoying it. Second, they will lose a great opportunity, while on earth, to prepare themselves for this exciting final trip.

The big paradox here is: When we plan to go on vacation for couple of weeks , we plan for it long ahead. And here, for an eternal trip, we don’t bother preparing ourselves at all.

May God enlighten us, so we can see the truth and the way while we are in this life, and may He also protect us from being under Satan’s influence who wants us to suffer with his followers in hell.
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