God who saves the people.

God who saves the people.
9.for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Duncan Macdokell who have been worked in a nursing home. He came into the spot light because of a unique study that was featured in the American Journal of Medicine.  His study started from a hypothesis that a human’s soul is material and thus when the soul leaves its body, then there should be a change in weight.

Doctor Macdokell measured the weight of 6 patients who were passing away over four hours. Surprisingly, they all lost their weight by 21g.He shared the results to the American Journal of Medicine and claimed that the weight of a soul is 21g.  And he did the same experiment with 15 dogs. However, the weight of the dogs did not change unlike those of the humans. He concluded that humans have souls but animals like dogs don’t.

After 100 years later, in 2007 Dr.Lunde’s team from Sweden verified the hypothesis with a fine computer control system. They found out that when a human died his/her weight changed by exactly 21.26214g. Dear congregation! I did not mean for you to believe this study result and the claim. It has a criticalBiblical error. The error comes from the hypothesis that thinks that soul is material. By claiming that a soul has a weight, the scientists are treating soul as a matter or material. However, we know that soul is spirit. Once we accept the idea thatsoul is material and has a weight, this causes serious problems.

Therefore, his argument is far from the Biblical thesis about soul. The key point is that there is such thing as soul in our body. When a human dies, our body goes back to earth. However, our soul leaves the body and goes to either God’s eternal kingdom or hell.  Then it is very important to understand this invisible, intangible, and yet existing soul clearly and thoroughly. Today I want to talk about the existence of soul and the relationship it has with our faith through today’s text.

You have come to God from the five seas and the six continents this morning. I hope that you believe the existence of soul, which is invisible, and the concept of the relationship between the soul and the faith in this earthly life. I May you live a blessed life with this belief.

1. The soul and body.

There is a realm of visible things. There are beautiful natural sceneries, animals, rivers, and seasons. For those who came from the South East Asia, winter scene is surprising and sometimes even overwhelmingly awesome. The reason for them to be surprised is because these brothers and sisters do not have winter clothes since they are from countries where there is no winter. Thus, for these brothers and sisters, getting winter clothes has become an important issue to solve and even our Kyung Dong church treats this as a fateful mission to find winter clothes.

Korean brand apparels are quite pricy yet still very popular. It doesn’t getwrinkled even after washing it several times. It doesn’t deform easily, it is fashionable, and it keeps us warm. For those reasons, many people prefer the Korean brands. However, because of its high price it’s burdensome to purchase Korean brands apparels, so people buy clothes that are out of season or style, and in wrong sizes.

Beautiful and nice clothes elevate the quality of life. This is one of the beauty you can find in a visible world. With the help of science we can also see what’s not visible. There are numerous virus and germs on our hands. However, they are not visible with our eyes. If we could actually see all the germs on our hands, we’ll feel powerless and miserable. 

Not being able to see everything may also be one of the conditions to gain happiness. There is a wild eagle that flies up Mongolian plains like no other. It was raised and trained in a human’s hands from the beginning. When it is released to the Mongolian plain, it begins to flies down towards the earth with a full speed with its wings closed. This means that it found a game. Eagle’s vision is 6.0 whereas human’s is 1.5 on average. That is amazing.

Moreover, though they are not visible to our human eyes, with help of the science, there are numerous planets and stars in this universe. The Hubble space telescope is the best telescope made in the history so far. The biggest achievements it established was to capture the collision of Pluto and Shoemaker-Levy comet. The Hubble could catch what was happening at a billion light years away. The collision of Pluto and Shoemaker-levy had happened a billion light years ago from when we first saw it. This is the power of science. Hallelujah!

However, what I am trying to talk about today is eyes that see beyond our human’s vision and the power of science. If we do not have these eyes, then we would be like dessert without any oasis.  If there is no oasis in a dessert, that means it would be a truly a deserted, dead area. I am talking about the spiritual eyes. The book of Genesis in the Old Testament tells us that humans are made in God’s image. A special about human’s creation story is that God formed us with earth and he blew the spirit into it. Let’s all read Genesis 2:7.

7.the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

When we say we are alive and we exist, we are saying that both our body and our soul coexist. When we say we are dead, that means that our spirit have left our bodies. The body then will go back to where it came from, the earth, and the soul will go to eternal places like heaven or hell.

There is no one who’d go to hell, but there are many people who don’t know how to go to heaven though they want to. There are quite a bit of you even here in this time who do not quite know how to enter the kingdom of God.

the proof of existence of soul / Jesus Christ the only way to enter the kingdom of God

Let’s read the text one more time.
9.for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls
아멘. Amen.
There is a young man named Hosung, Lee. He happily lives with his parents, his brother’s family, and a 10-year old nephew at a 2 story-house in Seoul. He is a very ordinary person except that he cannot really control his body because of his disability. One day, this young man became one of the worst criminals at the time and went to a jail. His crime was murdering his father, mother, brother, sister-in-law, and the nephew and burying them on the front yard.

The policemen had hard time believing this at first. It was unbelievable to think that this disabled man who cannot control his own body could kill four adults and a 10-year-old child who are superior in physical strength and control. Moreover, it was hard to believe that this man dug a 5m x 3m hole in a ground.

It could have taken a bit of time even with a Poclain, so it is crazy to know that this disabled man had dug a wide and deep hole on the ground with only one shovel. The police failed to do preliminary investigation and just arrested the man to the jail. At the Seoul jail, there was a good elder of a church. His name was Hyojin Park. He has heard the story of Hosung Lee from news and been wanting to meet him. And Hosung Lee came to the Seoul jail.

The elder Park was surprised at how the criminal seemed so innocent, shy, and ordinary reflecting on the horrible things he has done. The elder began to wonder how these horrible murders had happened, because he had been working here for so long that he could actually guess people’s crime quite well.
And for him, he could not see how the criminal could have committed such crime. The first words the elder spoke to the criminal was this: “it was not you, was it?.

The criminal was so shocked. All the people he’d met so far asked questions like “who is the accomplice? Who did you commit the murder together? Tell us quickly? Who is he?”However, this elder’s first words were “it wasn’t you, was it?” This elder knew that though the criminal might have committed the murders, the criminal could have been driven by a dark, evil spirit, which was invisible.

The criminal was so shocked, because he himself had hard time believing what he had done and was so shocked, and this elder seemed to know that.
At that moment, the criminal began to mumble with tears coming down from his eyes, “huh…how…how did you know? I cannot even believe this. Somebody whispered in my ears telling me that I had kill my parents and my brother’s family.

It gave me a knife in my hand. I cannot even control my body usually, but at that time my body wasn’t like my body. And then the voice said, “grab a shovel!! Grab a shovel and dig the ground.” So I dug the ground and it was so easy like digging some sand. I wasn’t on my mind and even during the time it was so strange and interesting.

When I finally came back to my mind, I was horrified by what I have done. I was going mad. What’s more crazy is that the voice was now telling me this:
You have killed your parents, your brother, his wife, and his kid! Do you think you can still live? You are not a human! You should also die. You should pay what you have done. 

The elder shared the gospel with this criminal. Though what he had done was immoral and horrible this man also needed salvation. For this man, the gospel sounded useless, because he could not accept the truth thinking that, “my sin is too heavy and horrible that I cannot be saved and go to heaven.”

The criminal thought that he had to go to hell. He was this much moral and good man who thought he deserved to be punished. This criminal kept disagreeing with the elder. However, the criminal suddenly decided to believe Jesus Christ. What was his reason? He could not bear the fear that the evil spirit would come back and torture him again. He could not express how bad the torture was.

That evening at 2am in the morning, the young man believed Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and received the good news. Hallelujah! Do you know what happened few days after his salvation? Something amazing has been happening.
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The criminals in the jail had been really scared of hearing that Hosung Lee, the worst murderer, was coming to their jail. Those who shared the same cell were dreaded. Hosung’s arms and legs were all binded, so he could not even stretch his arms or stand up.

But this horrible, merciless murderer was just reading the Bible all day in that pose with tears. The inmates were all confused with this murderer who was crying out while reading the Bible. Knowing that this murderer was sharing their room was scary and bad enough but now this man is reading the Bible all day and crying.

One day Hosung tells his inmates the following: “I didn’t commit the murders.” Then the criminal shares his story with the inmates. What’s more surprising is that he shared that the evil spirit that has been torturing him had left last night.

 This made the inmates feel more scared. Why? Because they thought that the evil spirit might have left Hosung, but it might have not left the Seoul jail. They thought this was worse than having Hosung in their cell. The inmates after all began to believe Jesus because they were afraid that the evil spirit would come to them. They were asking Hosung what to do to prevent the evil spirit to come to them. There was even an episode when the head of inmates made everyone who wanted to believe Christ to put their hands up and declare that “I am believing in Christ now so don’t even be near me, evil spirit!”

What’s amazing is that ever since the Seoul jail had been made, there had been 400 converts because of Hosung. Hosung gained freedom, which he could have never by declaring “with the name of Christ Jesus, leave me, the evil spirit!” Let’s all say, “with the name of Chirst Jesus, leave me, the evil spirit!”

9.for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Let’s read the text again.
Amen.

Hosung lee ended up was executed. However, the day of his execution, the jailers had never seen such person like Hosung in several decades who looked peaceful and bright and even comforting the jailers before his death.  It is mind-boggling. Everyone dies. However, after death there is heaven and hell. I hope that all of us go to Heaven, but we can only go to heaven when we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. This belief, this faith can only be demonstrated while we are living on this earth. Hosung received the gospel while he was alive in his cell. We only consider what’s visible in front of us most important.

However, we should remember that what’s visible is not everything that exists. The invisible God is spiritual and eternal being. Our soul is also invisible, but it exists. Satan tries his best to allude our soul to commit sins and distract us from coming to God and worship Him.

However, the Holy Spirit helps us to live faithfully in this earth and essentially live as a people of God’s eternal kingdom in this earth because He loves us so much.I pray that the blessing of salvation flows over you today. Hallelujah!