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Berserk
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Angie's suicide NDE lends independent support to Betty Eade's NDE revelation that the doctrine of reincarnation is false. In the presence of God, a Being of Light brighter than the sun, Angie learns:
"While I was NOT remembering details of a life before my mortal birth, I was reacquainting myself with the life that I shared with the Father, a spirit life that seemed to extend to the beginning of the universe."
Similarly, Betty Eade's NDE teaches her: "I also learned that we do not have repeated lives on this earth ("Embrdaced by the Light," p. 93)." But like Angie, Betty discovers that our souls do preexist:
"I saw how desirous these [mature] spirits were of coming to earth. They looked on life here as a school where they could learn many things and develop the attributes they lacked. I was told that ...we had actually chosen many of our weaknesses and difficult situations in our lives so that we could grow (pp. 89-90)."
Like the NDEs of these women, the Bible implies the soul's preexistence, but not reincarnation:
"As Jesus went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, `Rabbi, Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' `Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' replied Jesus, `but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life (John 9:1-2).'"
Notice that it is Jesus' disciples--not His opponents--who pose this question. Their question assumes that the blind man might have sinned during his prebirth existence and implies that our pain in this life may be a function of preincarnational mistakes. Conversely, our special purpose in this life may be a function of our preincarnational service: e. g.
"The word of the Lord came to me, saying, `Before I formed you in the womb, I KNEW YOU, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5)."
The wording here seems to imply not just divine foreknowledge, but the soul's preexistence. The most most unequivocal biblical allusion to the soul's preexistence can be found in the Wisdom of Solomon, a book in the Catholic Old Testament:
"I was a boy of happy disposition. I had received a good soul as my lot; or rather, being good, I had entered an undefiled body (8:19-20)."
This text seems to imply that the demonstration of moral goodness prior to birth can lead to a "happy disposition" in this life. Angie's discovery that our souls were created at the dawn of the universe is confirmed by a Jewish text from the biblical period: "All souls are prepared for eternity before the formation of the earth (2 Enoch 23:5)."
There is no reincarnationism in biblical teaching. In Hebrew and Aramaic Jewish literature, the idea of reincarnation first appears in the writings of Anan ben David (6th century AD), the founder of the Karaite sect. This sect employed the term "gilgul" which means "turning" or "rollling over", to refer to reincarnation. Because this odd term later resurfaces in Jewish Kabbalism, the Karaite sect looms as a likely source for Kabbalistic reincarnationism.
Swedenborg's astral explorations eventually lead to his discovery of how astral explorers are deceived into beliieving in reincarnation. I have discussed this in detail in my earler Swedenborg thread.
Don
P.S. If there is enough interest, I will begin a lengthy thread refuting New Age attempts to detect reincarnation in the Bible. In this respect, I would be expressing the unanimous consensus of both secular and religious Bible scholars.
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