Man

When man sinned he lost his spirit

Jack Hyles, the late pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana (FBCH), taught that God made man body, soul, and spirit, but when man fell, he lost his spirit and became only body and soul—on the same level as an animal. He said that when man falls, he is no longer human, but becomes an animal, arguing, ‘Man in his unregenerate state is not human.’

Victor Paul Wierwille taught the same thing, for He said: ‘The spirit which God originally created in man was given on a condition …. In not fulfilling the conditions which God had prescribed, man became a two-fold being of just body and soul’ (Are The Dead Alive Now, pages 109-110, Old Greenwich, CT: Devin-Adair Company, 1971), ‘Adam’s mistake was cataclysmic …. The spirit disappeared. The reason the spirit was called dead is that it was no longer there …. From that very day Adam and Eve were just body and soul as any other animal. Man, being body and soul, had to rely solely on his five senses’ (Power For Abundant Living, page 258, New Knoxville, OH: American Christian Press, 1971).

Confutation

According to the Holy Scripture, after man sinned he continued to have a spirit in his body. In the book of Numbers God is called “the God of the spirits of all flesh” (Numbers 27:16 – NKJV) and men are included in ‘all flesh’ (the NIV reads “all mankind”). In the book of Proverbs we read: “The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness. But who can bear a broken spirit?” (Proverbs 18:14 – NKJV) and also: “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart” (Proverbs 20:27 – NKJV). In the book of Ecclesiastes we read: “Remember now thy Creator … In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low; Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity. And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs” (Ecclesiastes 12:3-9). And Paul says to the Corinthians: “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11 – NKJV).

Therefore, a man, even if he is not yet a Christian, has a body, a soul and a spirit. Therefore man is not on the same level as an animal, first of all because man is a creature God made in His own image and likeness while animals were not made in God’s image; secondly because animals don’t have a soul, which at death goes either to paradise or to hell, animals have a spirit but not a soul (therefore those who teach that an unregenerate man has not a spirit but only a body and a soul as any other animal are mistaken even when they say that animals have a soul).

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