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4 Hope of Israel Ministries BIBLE Correspondence Course Lesson 24

Greeks have at different periods of time adopted
as their own" (Euterpe, chapter 123).
The Greeks adopted this doctrine from
the pagan Egyptians, not from the Bible!
It was Socrates, the Greek philosopher
and pervert, who traveled to Egypt and
consulted the Egyptians on this very teaching.
After his return to Greece, he imparted the error
to Plato, his most famous pupil. Now compare
the present-day doctrine of the churches with
what Plato wrote in his book, The Phaedo. Plato
wrote: “The soul whose inseparable attribute is
life will never admit of life’s opposite, death.
Thus the soul is shown to be immortal, and since
immortal, indestructible....Do we believe there
is such a thing as death? To be sure. And is this
anything but the separation of the soul and
body? And being dead is the attainment of this
separation, when the soul exists in herself and
separate from the body, and the body is parted
from the soul. That is death....Death is merely
the separation of soul and body."
Head of the pagan philosopher Plato. A student
Sounds like the ordinary church cate-
of Socrates, young Plato was the first to
chism, doesn’t it? Of course! The DOCTRINE
popularize the “immortal soul” fiction among the
was formulated by Plato! -- not the apostle Paul!
Greeks.
To Plato, the student and intimate
acquaintance of Socrates, death did not really
chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its
mean death! Rather, he conceived it to be the
principle exponent, who was led to it through
separation of the “soul” from the body.
Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in which
You, too, were probably taught to
Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely
assume this same doctrine. You were probably
blended."
told it came straight from the Bible -- but it did
It came from the PAGAN GREEK
not! It came out of pagan speculation!
PHILOSOPHERS who acquired it from Egypt
After Plato came Aristotle who
and Babylon -- NOT FROM THE BIBLE!
perpetuated the theory. Then the Roman poet
Let us trace how the speculations of the
Virgil (70-19 B.C.) popularized it throughout the
pagan world regarding the soul’s supposed
Roman world.
immortality surreptitiously crept into the pro-
fessing Christian church.
Paganism Falsely Labeled “Christian”
The speculations about the soul,
remember, entered the western world FROM
The introduction of this pagan super-
EGYPT. Herodotus, the famous Greek historian,
stition into the churches was a gradual process
who lived in the fifth century before the
lasting centuries. As the great conspiracy spread,
Messiah, admitted: “The Egyptians were also
the early Catholic “fathers” became divided on
the first that asserted that the soul of man is
this subject. As late as 160 A.D., Justin, the
immortal....This opinion, some among the
philosopher-turned-professing-Christian, wrote:
DEATH -- Where Is Your Sting?