Reincarnation

2021-11-22

Reincarnation is the belief that once one dies, the same comes back and is reborn as a new lifeform in a new body. Before I was a Christian, I believed in reincarnation.

The Bible does not teach reincarnation. On the other hand, “...it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). This means we only have one life on earth. We have one chance to believe on Christ to be saved from God’s wrath.

When the rich man and Lazarus died, they each entered eternity, one to hell and one to heaven. They had their chance in life to be saved, but only one was saved (Luke 16:19:31).

One may get hung up on John the Baptist being equated with Elijah. Elijah, or Elias, was an Old Testament prophet who never died, but was taken up by whirlwind to the Lord (2 Kings 2:11). When I was a new Christian reading through the Bible for the first time, I was wondering if there was some kind of “Christian” reincarnation when I read this:

But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist. (Matthew 17:12-13)

At the end of the Old Testament, we read, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD” (Malachi 4:5).

This is not reincarnation for a few reasons. First, John denied that he was Elias: “Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not” (John 1:21). Second, the actual Elias came to speak with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration: “And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him” (Matthew 17:3). Nobody claimed it was John.

Third, Malachi 4:5 does not necessarily mean that the actual Elias was coming, but one that comes in the power of Elias, or fulfills the role of Elias. For example, Jesus says He is “he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth” (Revelation 3:7). He quoted Isaiah 22:22, but in Isaiah 22:20, we see that this refers to Eliakim, who was over the household in King Hezekiah’s day (Isaiah 36:22). We know that Jesus is not Eliakim the son of Hilkiah. Nobody would argue that He is. Jesus fulfilled something of what Eliakim was. Eliakim pictured something that was ultimately fulfilled in Christ.

Neither Christians nor anybody else are reincarnated. Once we die, our spirit is instantly with the Lord. When the Lord returns, He will raise the dead and gather those still alive on the earth: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). The key word is “changed” when concerning our bodies.

Furthermore, this is evident in our Lord when He rose from the dead. He was not in a new body. He was bodily resurrected.