More from Scripture Research

A Look at the book, "A Man and Two Trees:"
Is "immortality" a myth?

Immortal: (Noun) One exempt from death; (Adj.) Not subject to death.


When we speak of immortality, are we entertaining ancient myths that were handed down to us from reckless dreamers pretending that bliss is realized beyond the grave? Or was the idea of immortality an ancient invention of man's best imagination? It would be a maximum tragedy to entertain a misleading expectation that would never be realized. We must never use wrong theological medications in order to tranquilize our troubled minds?

Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung suggested that humans have a "collective unconscious" environment in the brain that must be expressed in myths. He maintained that humanity carries many religious myths in unconscious minds that dramatize events such as coming of age, marrying, meeting death and living beyond the normal life, in another world. If, on the other hand, immortality was not a myth and very real, could there possibly be tangible proofs or examples?

From the beginning of recorded history, men have visualized and written about life-after-death as either spiritual or organic in nature for survival beyond their present living conditions. What spawned the idea? An empty hope or did God unveil the concept in a tangible way? Let's not overlook the idea that it could also have been learned from written revelation?

Before the Bible was written, for many cultures, immortality was the answer to the critical question of overcoming the apparent inroad of physical death upon humanity. The great desire for deliverance from death was evident in many ancient writings. Whatever their concept was of the afterlife, it only needed a myth and a beautifully made-up dream to make it desirable and acceptable to all. In order for men to believe that immortality could be realized in the afterlife, they must have seen something or read something to that effect.

In the field of biology, it has been recently discovered that cells possess no need to die. The observation was that some living things suffered death only by accident, not the consequence of living too long. Biologists kept living cells in safely shielded test-tube environments for a very long time. The deathless existence was no myth to them. It was a surprising reality.

Dr. Charles Asbell phoned my office the other day and in passing said, "I have discovered that bacteria and many single plant and animal cells need never die." He had researched the subject and concluded that examples of immortality (deathlessness) were very present. He conducts classes on the subject.

Since the invention of the microscope, students have observed and written reports of the life cycle of the unicellular amoebae. It was noticed that life cycles endure through the moment it separates into two. However, this fracture does not exemplify the human constitution of birth, maturity, growing old and ultimately dying. In fact, this amoeboid never dies, in the ordinary sense of the word. It can possibly die accidentally. However, it never becomes old and ready to die away. Something external must be introduced in order to slay it.

The original amoeboid, as well as the paramecia disappeared, leaving behind no observable trace. At maturity, this amoeboid divides into two so-called "daughter cells," passing all its substance on and leaving no corpse behind. As a faulty example, but none-the-less helpful to the thought, boys disappear, as they become men, leaving no boy-corpse to dispose of. Many biologists, along with Dr. Arthur Custance and Dr. Charles Asbell have concluded from years of observation that cells do not die normally and amazingly, need never die. Cells are put to death by poisons or foreign substances from environmental factors that stop their biological process. Outside of the hazard factor, this sample of deathless existence is no myth for the scientific community!

In the plant kingdom we observe that some trees are of a vast age, as well as size. The death of their counterparts is only caused by external circumstances. The tree itself has nothing within it to cause its demise. Death is brought upon the tree from outer sources, like beetles, climate changes and lack of nourishment or forest fires. There is a particular tree in the Calcutta Botanical Gardens that has been sheltered artificially from many of the things that could cause its destruction. Concerning the long life of that tree, the question has been asked, "If functioning protoplasm is not, necessarily, subject to death, why does death appear?" The answer lies in the realm of induced calamity or evil.

In the first of my several visits to Israel (1969) as a tour guide and instructor, the Hebrew University pointed to a fact that one of the olive trees in the Garden of Prayer, on the Mount of Olives has been there since the first century. If that were true, it would be over 2,000 years old. Death for that tree would have had to be an invasion from without, a mishap. However, who really knew how old the tree was? No one was there from the first century to testify on behalf of the tree.

These examples give us the idea that deathlessness was never a myth in the natural. From the biblical standpoint, natural death was not a punishment that He introduced into creation because of Adam's sin. Physical death was always a natural hazard and occurs to all living plants and animals.

In the Garden of Eden, the loss of God's presence was a full-blown penalty placed upon all humanity. It was definitely a spiritual death, while living on earth. The answer for humanity alone was for God to somehow overthrow the sentence of "death" as punishment and give humanity immortality through the instrument of "resurrection from death."

We shall begin to see that resurrection into immortality was never a myth! If immortality was attainable for mortals, the big question is when was it accomplished? We know that before AD 70, everyone waited for death to be destroyed and the occurrence of resurrection in order to have immortality. Only at the Parousia or Second Coming of Christ would men receive immortality. So, after the resurrection, those who were "regenerated" and given life through faith in Christ simply "put on" immortality, which would cause their spiritual body to rise immediately at physical death into the presence of God.

Definitions taken from The New Britannica-Webster Dictionary & Reference Guide. Page 445.

Myth comes from the Greek mythos. Mythos and logos have similar meanings. Both can be translated as "word," the expression of thoughts, true stories and fiction.

Dr. Asbell phoned Jerry December 14, 2004. The conversation concerned several publications of Scripture Research. Dr. Asbell, president of Scripture Research, Inc. has taught many classes on physical immortality, taken from the life long work of Dr. Arthur Custance, "The Seed of the Woman."

Dr. Custance is a Member of the Evangelical Theological Society, a Member Emeritus of the Canadian Physiological Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

Read; 1st Corinthians 15:53 and Colossians 3:9, 10