Whe Does Get a Room Start Up Again on Brava

Question from a reader:

What are your thoughts on when the spirit leaves the body? With modern day technology, many people can be resuscitated and kept alive artificially. How does a Christian reply the skeptic who says this proves the spirit doesn't go to Heaven or a misguided Christian who says this proves "soul slumber"?

Answer from Randy Alcorn:

I believe the spirit leaves the body when true death happens, and that true death isn't the aforementioned as "he hasn't been responsive for months" or "nosotros can't detect brainwaves."

I can't prove this of class, just as no one tin can prove their viewpoint since we can't demonstrate when the spirit leaves the body even though we can often subjectively know for sure when it has happened.

I talk about that in In Lite of Eternity when I tell the story of inbound the room after my mom had died and being overwhelmed with the sense of her absence, fifty-fifty though she'd barely moved or responded for a few months. The difference wasn't in response, but in the fact that "the glory had departed." She had been in that room every day I had visited her and at present was evidently and dramatically gone.

My key text is Hebrews ix:27, "Everyone must die one time, and later on that exist judged by God" (GNT). Obviously it was spoken in a day where giving food and drinkable and medicines to a person who would otherwise dice was almost the extent of the intervention, and there was no fashion to go on someone's animate past artificial means (beyond breathing oxygen in for a few minutes, which I suppose was rarely done in those days).

But I even so believe the essence of Hebrews ix:27 remains true, that while someone may be shut to death and announced to die for seconds or minutes or even hours, they actually die only once, at the signal God takes their spirit out of their body. And except in miracles, He doesn't put their spirit dorsum in their bodies. I think such miracles are rare. If they were normal, they wouldn't be miracles.

I've been present twice when I believe I knew within seconds when the spirit left the body, once with my friend Jerry Hardin and again when my dad died. They both stopped breathing, and in my dad's instance the monitor showed his heart had stopped beating. Death was obvious and I'm convinced it was at that betoken—not before, though they were both unconscious for days previous—when expiry actually occurred.

Comas are not decease, unconsciousness is non death, "vegetative states" are non death. Decease is death. In comas and vegetative states (I hate that term, every bit it'southward and so dehumanizing) there'southward evidence of neurological functions. Patients can ofttimes breathe on their own, their reflexes all the same function, and they might respond to light or sound. In those cases, despite inability to communicate, I would surmise decease hasn't occurred and their spirits are even so nowadays.

I also always assume they can notwithstanding hear and may sympathize much of what's happening, as people who have come up out of comas frequently adjure. Minutes earlier he died, I read Revelation 21-22 to Jerry, and later on I read "God will wipe away the tears from every middle," a tear went down his cheek and I wiped it abroad; though he'd been "unresponsive" for days I'thou convinced his tear was a response to God speaking in that passage. (Hither is a chapter from In Calorie-free of Eternity that talks more about this.)

But with both Jerry and my dad, efforts could have been made to artificially sustain their breathing and hearts beating. Would those medical efforts have kept their spirits from departing? Part of me says no, God would have taken their spirits at their appointed time; the other part is less sure. Could artificially prolonging physical death really imprison a spirit in a trunk it would accept left when a person's life would have naturally ended? It's a difficult question and impossible to reply, merely information technology should heighten questions for family unit members of believers who may at some betoken be "playing God" by non allowing natural death to happen (others, of grade, play God by intervening to have the life; I deal with both of these in this article on euthanasia).

Even though I've been told the brain can yet function for a few hours afterward the heart stops, I think a stopped eye that remains stopped may be the about objective way to view expiry. The brain can't function long without the flow of blood from the beating heart and the oxygen it delivers.

But a eye that is kept chirapsia by artificial means, thereby preventing encephalon decease, obviously makes it more difficult to discern. When a heart can no longer beat on its own, lungs can no longer breathe on their own, and at that place appears to be no encephalon functions over a significant menstruation of time, a person tin be considered dead. Without knowing exactly when the spirit departed, information technology would seem that at some point this may have already happened, and if non, information technology's time to no longer forestall a decease when there'southward no hope of recovery and time has been allowed for this to be certain and/or for God to perform a miracle.  (He doesn't need fourth dimension for miracles, of course, but sometimes He doesn't practise them immediately.)

Just of form the question is "How long of a expect is sufficient?" And this is where it gets really subjective, though most people feel at that place's a point where God makes information technology clear the time has come up to permit death to occur if He so determines. (In some cases the ventilator is removed and the patient continues to breathe on his own, suggesting to me the spirit is still present.)

Some people who've told me they've died twice refer to their eye stopping on the operating tabular array, or in the ambulance. But then they're revived. But to say that every time a heart stops a person dies is to say that some people die hundreds or thousands of times, which to me isn't meaningful.

When someone experiences the "irreversible cessation of all functions of the brain," they are considered legally dead. Of form, the operative give-and-take is irreversible, meaning that sufficient fourth dimension must pass for that to exist determined. When brain functions return, past definition information technology hasn't been irreversible, unless this is a phenomenon such equally the raising of Lazarus. I believe in such miracles, of grade, but it'due south easier to mensurate when no artificial means such as ventilators have kept people alive or appearing to be live.

Someone who is "brain dead" can appear alive in that they are animate with the help of a ventilator, and their eye can be kept chirapsia. Many bodily functions can keep going for weeks and months after they're considered medically and legally expressionless. But that's subjective too because in some cases people considered medically and legally dead "come dorsum to life," which in my stance means they were never dead (once more, unless there's a phenomenon, and that may be hard to determine).

So I think when someone is restored to life through medical means, or is kept alive by medical ways when without them obvious and truthful death would have occurred, my belief is not that their spirit was RETURNED to the body, only that their spirit never left their body in the first place. Defining death equally a permanent abeyance of earthly life, but undone in the case of miracles, not a diversity of medical interventions, makes most sense to me.

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Come across links to these related resources below:

• Do We Remain Conscious After Death? Or Does the Bible Teach Soul Sleep?
• Practise We "Go to Sleep" When We Die?
• Questions and Answers Related to Near-Decease Experiences: Randy and Jim Hendershot speak nearly the difference between near-decease experiences and actual death.
• Euthanasia: Mercy or Murder?: This is Randy's long newspaper on euthanasia which he wrote in seminary, and updated 24 years agone. It has a lot of related thoughts that could be helpful for family unit members trying to figure out what constitutes death and what doesn't.

Photo pastMartha Dominguez de Gouveia onUnsplash

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Source: https://www.epm.org/resources/2018/May/23/when-does-spirit-leave-body/

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