After A Person Is Brain Dead And Then Put On Ventilator, Will A Person's Spirit Still Be There Within Him?
Question : Praise God. Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to you all. Hope you are fine and in good health as your soul prospers. We all are fine by the grace of God. I want to ask question and hope God will bring the answer through you. My question is "When the brain death occurs, suppose patient is on the ventilator machine , will his spirit is with him while he is on ventilator?" In the medical term brain death is something that his brain is dead but body is working on the ventilator machine. Just because this machine gives artificial breath, their life prolongs. Some times many days patients are kept on ventilator until a decision is taken by the medical specialists and their family to stop the machine finally and let them die finally. Once this is done, later after few minutes he or she is declared dead. How about their soul life, if they die without knowing. How they might be made accountable by God for not able to believe Him because of their inability to think and clearly accept God at the last moment of their lives in which they could have believed and received salvation if their conscious life has been there? In the case of a believer dying like that, they also could have repented of their sinful indulgence to God before dying. Who knows? May God give you insight and bring the answer for His glory. God bless you !
Answer : Greetings to you in Jesus Wonderful name! Praise the Lord! Yes we are all fine by the grace of God and He is indeed good to all of us because we trust in Him. He makes our soul prosper like a "watered garden" as we extend our soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul spiritually by supplying His Word as a food for their soul (Isa 58:10-12). Praise the Lord that He is keeping you all fine and fit for His Glory! Yes indeed, "there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets" (Dan 2:28), who has promised to reveal all the things which are revealed and hidden as gold and diamond deep within His heart, which He also wants to make us understand if we sincerely desire His counsel to walk in this earthly life through His Word which He has honored even above His mighty name (Deut 29:29; Psa 138:2). I believe that He will give us understanding in this matter!
A medical ventilator (or simply ventilator in context) is a machine designed to mechanically move breathable air into and out of the lungs, to provide the mechanism of breathing for a patient who is physically unable to breathe, or breathing insufficiently.
God has prohibited the Israelites not to eat the blood of all living things because the "blood sustains its life" and therefore God considered it as a sacred thing (Lev 17:14). The life of the flesh that surrounds our body is in the blood for the life to sustain within it (Lev 17:11). In another place in Deut 12:23 God says about animals meat by saying, "....Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life; you may not eat the life with the meat." The above verse gives us a clear picture where life is hidden within animals, the blood is the life and that life should not be considered lightly because God is the one who has put the life within the meat of animals so that its sacredness should not be defiled by anybody eating the life blood with the meat of animals.
We and all the animals were created on the sixth day in which God created us all (Gen 1:24-28, 31). The only difference between us humans and the animals are that we have been breathed personally by God to put within us His Spirit within our nostrils, while the animals breathe were put within them supernaturally by God's spoken word without ever touching them or coming in to contact with them personally (Gen 2:7). In other words, if man does not connect to God to understand his unique likeness of God, he slides in to a state of living life like an animal on earth. According to God He has clearly instructed Noah to feel free to eat all flesh of animals and birds after the flood, but without "its blood" because in it is "its life" (Gen 9:3-4), and then warned about spilling the life blood of humans on earth which demands a bill for the debt amount that is due to be paid to God by both animals and humans because of the holy sacredness of the blood of humans in which the soul life of them is sustained in the exact likeness of the image of God. God has surely put that judgment for killing the life of humans with in the direct judgmental institution of Himself to fulfill the vengeance against the persons who kill a human who is in the image of God (Gen 9:5-6). In other words, our soul once separates itself from our body by the death of the life within our living cells with in our body, it is then preserved by God under His very supervision because of His supernatural vision and hope to raise us up one day in Rapture with a glorious body that He has prepared for us already in His mind (Rev 6:9-11; Rom 8:20; 1 Cor 15:51-54). Flesh and blood is in our present earthly body, but flesh and bones will only be in our future glorious body which Jesus demonstrated to His disciples after His resurrection. The Spirit of God will directly supply nourishing life to the glorious body instead of the present blood to which the Spirit supplies life by sustaining the breath of God in it (1 Cor 15:42-49, 50; Luke 24:36-43). Now God is working with man in partnership to sustain his life within their body. But then in the glorious body God's life will sustain the new man's life directly and eternally. We now know that if a person gets in to accident, the first thing a para-medic will try to do is to stop the blood flow out of their body and will try to infuse the blood of the same group in to them to sustain their life within their body or else that accident victim will die even before reaching the hospital for medical care. In other words, now God has chosen voluntarily not to work without us humans to sustain our lives because of His covenant with man in giving them the dominion to rule over the earth during creation (Gen 1:26; Psa 115:16), and we cannot work to save someone's life without God showing mercy to sustain them in their sickbed (Psa 68:20; Php 2:27). Now nothing is impossible as we humans will learn to work in partnership along with God even in saving lives from dying before His appointed time for them comes (Matt 19:26). Jesus Himself expressed that in medical profession it is God and man working together to save a man's life from sickness and death before God's appointed time for Him to die comes at the right time (Matt 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31; Psa 68:20; Heb 9:27). We know that God has already decided the length of our lives, He knows how many months we will live, where we should live, and we are not given a minute longer than His pre-appointed time for us in His perfect will, but because of our lack of co-operation with God we might die before time due to parking ourselves outside of the perfect will of God (Job 14:5, 14; Acts 17:26).
God says in the Bible, "6 Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well. 7 Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it." (Eccl 12:6-7). This means God wants all humans to remember Him and call upon Him when they have enough consciousness and time to think about Him and His great salvation from sin. Or else God symbolically says in the above verse that when the blood stops flowing within veins actively, when the mind stops working from having self consciousness, when the fountain of blood pot which is the heart that pumps it and purifies it all to keep it flowing get shattered because of high pressure or heart attack, then the spirit within us which works as the wheel that brings fresh water and understanding from God to our life gets broken and separated from the body once and for all time to take away the soul with it, then God says our body returns to the dust of the earth from which it had come, and our spirit returns to the jurisdiction of God who has initially given it to us when we were born in our Mother's womb. God confirmed the above point to say, "human beings, life breath is in their nostrils...." (Isa 2:22, ISV). I mean until naturally or mechanically the breathable air goes into and out of the lungs, the life of any person will be sustained to keep the spirit and soul together within the body, but once the breathable air stops in our lungs the human dies.
Usually some preachers and teachers of the Word of God say to the people who they expect to respond to their gospel message by saying, give your heart to God. One person whom I know jokingly asked me, why preachers say every time, 'Give you heart to God, give your heart to God...what does the heart do except pump the blood of people?' I said to him, the Bible says that the life of a person is in the blood of people, so in a way when they plead people to give their heart to God, they are asking them to give their life in to the hands of God to take over from that point of time and save them from their impurity, sin and self. This particular person never opened his mouth again to ask the same because he understood that he was wrong in joking about a sacred thing.
Brain death can be confusing, particularly for families who are confronted with the sudden death of someone they love because a brain dead person on a ventilator can feel warm to the touch and can look "alive and well," when in fact they are traveling very fast towards the point of no return in this life to enter in to the afterlife, but in truth they are alive physically. The heart is still beating and the ventilator is pushing oxygen and air into the lungs making the person's chest rise and fall to make the life of that person to sustain within the body as much as possible.
In livescience.com the writer Rachael Rettner has written in a article named "Life After Brain Death: Is the Body Still 'Alive'?" saying that, "A person is considered brain-dead when he or she no longer has any neurological activity in the brain or brain stem — meaning no electrical impulses are being sent between brain cells. Doctors perform a number of tests to determine whether someone is brain-dead, one of which checks whether the individual can initiate his or her own breath, a very primitive reflex carried out by the brain stem. The heart's intrinsic electrical system can keep the organ beating for a short time after a person becomes brain-dead — in fact, the heart can even beat outside the body. But without a ventilator to keep blood and oxygen moving, this beating would stop very quickly, usually in less than an hour. With just a ventilator, some biological processes — including kidney and gastric functions — can continue for about a week....The body of a brain-dead person is usually not supported for very long. Doctors sometimes provide support (in the form of a ventilator, hormones, fluids, etc.) for several days if the organs will be used for donation, or if the family needs more time to say good-bye...Today, with ventilators, blood-pressure augmentation and hormones, the body of a brain-dead person could, in theory, be kept functioning for a long time, perhaps indefinitely, Greene-Chandos said. But with time, Greene-Chandos added, the body of a brain-dead person becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, and the tissue is at high risk for infection."
Thus from the above discussion we come to understand that whether it is natural sustaining of the life by the body itself or artificially sustained breathing through a ventilator or other modern method of retaining life, the soul leaves the body only when the whole body of the person shuts down. Starting with the heart it is a process where death continues further up to cellular level in which it takes some time to disintegrate after which the death of a person completely occurs. However, once the brain stem has permanently stopped functioning, the medical community believes that there's no way of reversing it and the heart will eventually stop beating, even if a ventilator continues to be used. After brain death, it is said that it is not possible for someone to remain conscious because brain stem is responsible for regulating most of the body's automatic functions like breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure, swallowing that are essential for life.
I believe doctor's extending life artificially may not be appropriate in every case all the time without medical basis of recovery, doctors should apply all available methods if they decide to resuscitate and try the best to bring back a person. If it is not possible, it is better for them to let go in to the Creator's hands who has given that life as a gift to that person, and by the way it should never be done without the doctor's trying their best if there is any possibility of resuscitation.
We see that in the New Testament "...when Jesus had cried -out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit." (Matt 27:50, cf. Jn 19:30 and Acts 7:59, Luke 8:55, II Cor. 5:8). When someone dies there is a separation of the spirit/soul from that person's body. We see in the New Testament where the great apostle Paul said, "May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Thess. 5:23b). The above verse clearly conveys that man is a tripartite being, so there is a place where a human being decides to give up one's life where actually the spirit gives up fighting to survive and the soul leaves the body to go in to the Creator's hands of control who had given it (Prov 18:14; Acts 7:59-60). At death the unity of the tripartite individual is disrupted, thus separating the physical from the spiritual parts where the physical body dies and disintegrates, the soul and the spirit together as one is then kept under the jurisdiction of God (Matt 10:28; 2 Cor 4:16; Eccl 12:7; 9:10; Cross.Ref Gen 35:18; Luke 1:46-47; Rev 6:9-11; 1 Cor 6:17; 2 Cor 5:6-8; Luke 8:55; Ezek 18:4; Psa 6:5; 115:17; 146:4; 104:29-30). Every human after his physical death, their soul will either enjoy God if they are saved by His salvation or will horribly realize that they have lost for eternity the goodness of the privilege of living with the goodness of the Lord God to be isolated and lonely without His beautiful Presence forever (Psa 35:9; 27:13; Luke 16:23-24). This disruption is eventually restored to all people in either the resurrection of believers if a person is saved or the resurrection of the lost if that person is unsaved (John 5:21, 28-29; 6:39-40, 44; 1 Cor 15:21; 1 Thess 4:14-17; Rev 20:12-15). The saved will live after their resurrection, with the Lord in New Jerusalem, then after the Millennium rule of Jesus along with His saints on this present earth, then they will live forever in the New Heaven and New Earth which God has prepared for them eternally (Rev 21:1-4). But the unsaved will rise up in their physical bodies to go in to the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels originally, to be without God and His Presence for eternity ahead because of their own choice which they had taken on earth when they were alive and had the ability and consciousness to take a decision for Christ, which will make them stay doomed there for eternity without God and His goodness (Rev 20:11-14, 15; Matt 25:41; 10:28; Mark 9:43-48).
Death is more than the lack of readings on an electroencephalogram (EEG) that monitors the brain activity, it involves the departure of the person's spirit from this life to another realm of the supernatural unknown world of God. There are certain factors according to the Bible that confirms a person has died, and then their spirit and soul have departed together, they are the following :
1) The Bible says that, "...Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age." (Gen. 25:8, cf. Gen. 49:33; Job 27:3; Luke 23:46; Mark 15:37). This shows that respiration failure or the heart stops before a person dies for His spirit and soul to leave the body officially according to God. So the ventilator must be removed officially, only then we can truly determine that the person who is critical have already indeed taken their last breath to no more be able to return to brain reactivity by failure of the heart (Job 10:21; Psa 27:13).
2) As we already discussed in details, the Bible says, "Because the life of every creature is its blood." (Lev. 17:14; cf. Gen. 4:10; 9:4-6; Deut. 12:33; Acts 15:29; Rev. 16:3) the scriptural focus for life in the body is not the brain but rather the blood. Breathing or respiration takes away the waste C02 gas from the blood and replenishes it with life giving oxygen, a process that is mandatory to the survival of the body. The blood, through the circulatory system cleanses, nourishes, and brings disease antibodies and clotting agents to every part of the body. So once when the cell structure starts to disintegrate rapidly, then we know that life giving blood has failed to reach the cells and members of the body to die and shut down one system of the body after the other to cause a total shut down of life in a few minutes rapidly. In Revelation 16:3 we find an important observation. "The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died." (see also Ex. 7:17,18,21). This above verse clearly describes that the blood of a dead person cannot nourish life to the body instead it rots very soon to cause extensive contamination and decay within the place where it is present.
3) The Bible says, "If it were [God's]...intention and He withdrew his spirit and breath, all mankind would perish together and man would return to the dust." (Job 34:14,15, cf. Gen. 2:7, 3:19, Ps. 104:29). This above verse clearly shows that even though our human physicians and para-medics determine that the life within the body is no more when the brain activity shuts down, yet according to God He determines a person to be dead only when his spirit and breath stops naturally or artificially with its activity in the body during which time it will also leave the body. A person who is truly dead will exhibit it naturally by the heart stopping, the vascular system collapsing, respiration halting, the color of their body turning bluish or gray, body temperature approaching room temperature, all reflex movements disappearing from it completely. In a short time rigor mortis [i.e. Latin: rigor "stiffness", mortis "of death": which means officially a dead corpse with no sign of life or movement but only a rapid process of decay] sets in, followed by all the usual signs that death has happened which are increase in weight, a very bad deathly odour, etc..will be seen as time passes on. As the Bible says, this decay is the process when the body which has been formed with the dust of the earth returns to the earth by becoming dust again. In any case where a comatose individual is still alive, while his or her future is uncertain, we must be patient and help those who are weak (Romans 15:1). So the bottom line is that Physicians who honor the sanctity of human life must wait for the completion of dying lest they would do harm to the human life that is still present.
4) The prophet Zechariah spoke of Jehovah, Who “stretches forth the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him” (Zech 12:1). In some fashion, then, God has placed within man a portion of His own essence—in the sense that man possesses a spirit that will never die. In 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul wrote: “...but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day,” thus separating the physical entity from the spiritual entity that separates them at death. In James 2:26, James observed that “the body apart from the spirit is dead.” Thus in death the spirit of a human departs with the soul of him that has within it the conscious information of a whole life lived out on earth, just like as the black-box of a plane has information regarding the life of a plane before it crashed and went bust. In other words we can say, that if the body is alive, according to God who spoke through James the apostle, the spirit is present. When the spirit is present, Is the person who is ill or might be ready to die is still alive? Yes. The spirit and soul cannot be separated according to the Bible and it will be done only on the day of last day of judgment by God through the Word of God (Heb 4:12; John 12:47-48). So when a spirit and soul of a person is present within the body even though they might even be brain dead, God commands us, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13; Mark 10:19), and it has never been revoked back or rescinded to remind us all that a person has never originally died until they become breathless naturally even after ventilator has been used and all the necessities supplied for the life with the body to sustain itself as much as possible. A person who is dying is still alive, even a moment before death, and must be treated as such. King David pleaded with God: “Forsake me not when my strength fails” (Psa 71:9), would not the person who is dying if they were able to speak to the physician or para-medic would speak the same words to those who are helping them? Considering these things, medics should always give priority to life and life at all cost rather than death.
5) God’s Word tells us that death is an appointment by God to meet Him face to face under God's jurisdiction in heaven if they are believer (Php 1:21; 2 Cor 5:8; 1 Thess 4:16-17), or Hades where a unsaved soul is kept by God until the white throne judgment that will take place, after the destruction of the present earth and all that is in it through the fire of God (Luke 16:22-23; Peter 3:7; Rev 20:11-15), and is a earthly fact of life for all humans (Hebrews 9:27). Ecclesiastes 3:2 points out that there is “a time to be born, and a time to die.” At times, the laws of man are of little use, since what is legal may not be what is right in the eyes of God (Gen 9:6; Acts 4:19-20). Similarly, our instincts and insights may be of no use, since they often are clouded by pain or emotion which is expected by God to be given to Him in exchange for His peace and joy to rule over our lives in crisis (1 Peter 5:7; Php 4:6-7). Therefore, we must prayerfully request the wisdom that God has promised to give to those who ask in order to do the right thing as a medic, para-medic and family members who is stressed out financially and emotionally in caring long enough for our dying loved ones (James 1:5). Mature Christians understand that through suffering, we can inherit great reward from God and also can become blessed to be a blessing to others who are going through similar trails in their lives (James 1:2-4; 2 Cor 1:3-7). It is always important to give dignity to the human life before we can allow them to die naturally and let them go in to the hands of God.
Regarding the last moment repentance of a believer or a last moment salvation of a unbeliever is an uncertainty at any cost if they lose their consciousness and therefore are either at a vegetative state or a brain dead state, therefore God has already told in the Bible to all humans to remember their Creator in their days of their youth when they have so much time to think about God and ask Him for their salvation (Eccl 12:9). Every day of consciousness in a man's life is a day of opportunity that God has given that person to turn to Him, when all these times of mercies are wasted I don't think that person deserves a spectacular miracle and a extended time to take a decision for Christ, or even if given a extended time by God there is no guarantee that person will take a decision for Christ or will repent (2 Cor 6:1-2; Luke 16:31). As a righteous God and a righteous judge, God will never allow a person to go in to such a vegetative or unconscious state without giving them enough time for repentance from sin to receive salvation (Psa 7:11; Matt 5:45; Eccl 8:11). But at the same time, as God is a omniscient One which means all knowing God, he knows a person's end from the beginning and therefore if He had fore-seen an opportunity in which a unbeliever would get saved by believing and accepting Christ or a believer using their last moment to repent of their sins to get delivered from their wrong doing, He would have either done a miracle to give them consciousness for a time to get saved or would have extend their life by allowing them not to go in to that brain-dead state (Acts 15:18; Isa 45:21). God authenticates his omniscient existence by recounting the past and proclaiming the future in the present time (Isa 44:7). So it is better to praise God when we are conscious enough and spread the good news of the gospel through our words and our lives, because that is the best work we can do now, once dead we cannot do that and no turning back is ever available except to live forever the appointed heavenly life where the reward of our already lived out earthly life will only be recounted and rewarded back in honor and glory, to live for eternity to be just like that with no change in hierarchy or promotion. We can only be changed again to live for eternity with God if we are saved, or receive the condemnation of hell fire to live without God if any human person has died unsaved (Psa 115:17; Isa 38:18-19; John 3:18-20; Mark 9:43-44; Heb 9:26-28). O Lord have mercy!!!!
Much Blessings....
Answer : Greetings to you in Jesus Wonderful name! Praise the Lord! Yes we are all fine by the grace of God and He is indeed good to all of us because we trust in Him. He makes our soul prosper like a "watered garden" as we extend our soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul spiritually by supplying His Word as a food for their soul (Isa 58:10-12). Praise the Lord that He is keeping you all fine and fit for His Glory! Yes indeed, "there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets" (Dan 2:28), who has promised to reveal all the things which are revealed and hidden as gold and diamond deep within His heart, which He also wants to make us understand if we sincerely desire His counsel to walk in this earthly life through His Word which He has honored even above His mighty name (Deut 29:29; Psa 138:2). I believe that He will give us understanding in this matter!
A medical ventilator (or simply ventilator in context) is a machine designed to mechanically move breathable air into and out of the lungs, to provide the mechanism of breathing for a patient who is physically unable to breathe, or breathing insufficiently.
God has prohibited the Israelites not to eat the blood of all living things because the "blood sustains its life" and therefore God considered it as a sacred thing (Lev 17:14). The life of the flesh that surrounds our body is in the blood for the life to sustain within it (Lev 17:11). In another place in Deut 12:23 God says about animals meat by saying, "....Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life; you may not eat the life with the meat." The above verse gives us a clear picture where life is hidden within animals, the blood is the life and that life should not be considered lightly because God is the one who has put the life within the meat of animals so that its sacredness should not be defiled by anybody eating the life blood with the meat of animals.
We and all the animals were created on the sixth day in which God created us all (Gen 1:24-28, 31). The only difference between us humans and the animals are that we have been breathed personally by God to put within us His Spirit within our nostrils, while the animals breathe were put within them supernaturally by God's spoken word without ever touching them or coming in to contact with them personally (Gen 2:7). In other words, if man does not connect to God to understand his unique likeness of God, he slides in to a state of living life like an animal on earth. According to God He has clearly instructed Noah to feel free to eat all flesh of animals and birds after the flood, but without "its blood" because in it is "its life" (Gen 9:3-4), and then warned about spilling the life blood of humans on earth which demands a bill for the debt amount that is due to be paid to God by both animals and humans because of the holy sacredness of the blood of humans in which the soul life of them is sustained in the exact likeness of the image of God. God has surely put that judgment for killing the life of humans with in the direct judgmental institution of Himself to fulfill the vengeance against the persons who kill a human who is in the image of God (Gen 9:5-6). In other words, our soul once separates itself from our body by the death of the life within our living cells with in our body, it is then preserved by God under His very supervision because of His supernatural vision and hope to raise us up one day in Rapture with a glorious body that He has prepared for us already in His mind (Rev 6:9-11; Rom 8:20; 1 Cor 15:51-54). Flesh and blood is in our present earthly body, but flesh and bones will only be in our future glorious body which Jesus demonstrated to His disciples after His resurrection. The Spirit of God will directly supply nourishing life to the glorious body instead of the present blood to which the Spirit supplies life by sustaining the breath of God in it (1 Cor 15:42-49, 50; Luke 24:36-43). Now God is working with man in partnership to sustain his life within their body. But then in the glorious body God's life will sustain the new man's life directly and eternally. We now know that if a person gets in to accident, the first thing a para-medic will try to do is to stop the blood flow out of their body and will try to infuse the blood of the same group in to them to sustain their life within their body or else that accident victim will die even before reaching the hospital for medical care. In other words, now God has chosen voluntarily not to work without us humans to sustain our lives because of His covenant with man in giving them the dominion to rule over the earth during creation (Gen 1:26; Psa 115:16), and we cannot work to save someone's life without God showing mercy to sustain them in their sickbed (Psa 68:20; Php 2:27). Now nothing is impossible as we humans will learn to work in partnership along with God even in saving lives from dying before His appointed time for them comes (Matt 19:26). Jesus Himself expressed that in medical profession it is God and man working together to save a man's life from sickness and death before God's appointed time for Him to die comes at the right time (Matt 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31; Psa 68:20; Heb 9:27). We know that God has already decided the length of our lives, He knows how many months we will live, where we should live, and we are not given a minute longer than His pre-appointed time for us in His perfect will, but because of our lack of co-operation with God we might die before time due to parking ourselves outside of the perfect will of God (Job 14:5, 14; Acts 17:26).
God says in the Bible, "6 Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well. 7 Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it." (Eccl 12:6-7). This means God wants all humans to remember Him and call upon Him when they have enough consciousness and time to think about Him and His great salvation from sin. Or else God symbolically says in the above verse that when the blood stops flowing within veins actively, when the mind stops working from having self consciousness, when the fountain of blood pot which is the heart that pumps it and purifies it all to keep it flowing get shattered because of high pressure or heart attack, then the spirit within us which works as the wheel that brings fresh water and understanding from God to our life gets broken and separated from the body once and for all time to take away the soul with it, then God says our body returns to the dust of the earth from which it had come, and our spirit returns to the jurisdiction of God who has initially given it to us when we were born in our Mother's womb. God confirmed the above point to say, "human beings, life breath is in their nostrils...." (Isa 2:22, ISV). I mean until naturally or mechanically the breathable air goes into and out of the lungs, the life of any person will be sustained to keep the spirit and soul together within the body, but once the breathable air stops in our lungs the human dies.
Usually some preachers and teachers of the Word of God say to the people who they expect to respond to their gospel message by saying, give your heart to God. One person whom I know jokingly asked me, why preachers say every time, 'Give you heart to God, give your heart to God...what does the heart do except pump the blood of people?' I said to him, the Bible says that the life of a person is in the blood of people, so in a way when they plead people to give their heart to God, they are asking them to give their life in to the hands of God to take over from that point of time and save them from their impurity, sin and self. This particular person never opened his mouth again to ask the same because he understood that he was wrong in joking about a sacred thing.
Brain death can be confusing, particularly for families who are confronted with the sudden death of someone they love because a brain dead person on a ventilator can feel warm to the touch and can look "alive and well," when in fact they are traveling very fast towards the point of no return in this life to enter in to the afterlife, but in truth they are alive physically. The heart is still beating and the ventilator is pushing oxygen and air into the lungs making the person's chest rise and fall to make the life of that person to sustain within the body as much as possible.
In livescience.com the writer Rachael Rettner has written in a article named "Life After Brain Death: Is the Body Still 'Alive'?" saying that, "A person is considered brain-dead when he or she no longer has any neurological activity in the brain or brain stem — meaning no electrical impulses are being sent between brain cells. Doctors perform a number of tests to determine whether someone is brain-dead, one of which checks whether the individual can initiate his or her own breath, a very primitive reflex carried out by the brain stem. The heart's intrinsic electrical system can keep the organ beating for a short time after a person becomes brain-dead — in fact, the heart can even beat outside the body. But without a ventilator to keep blood and oxygen moving, this beating would stop very quickly, usually in less than an hour. With just a ventilator, some biological processes — including kidney and gastric functions — can continue for about a week....The body of a brain-dead person is usually not supported for very long. Doctors sometimes provide support (in the form of a ventilator, hormones, fluids, etc.) for several days if the organs will be used for donation, or if the family needs more time to say good-bye...Today, with ventilators, blood-pressure augmentation and hormones, the body of a brain-dead person could, in theory, be kept functioning for a long time, perhaps indefinitely, Greene-Chandos said. But with time, Greene-Chandos added, the body of a brain-dead person becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, and the tissue is at high risk for infection."
Thus from the above discussion we come to understand that whether it is natural sustaining of the life by the body itself or artificially sustained breathing through a ventilator or other modern method of retaining life, the soul leaves the body only when the whole body of the person shuts down. Starting with the heart it is a process where death continues further up to cellular level in which it takes some time to disintegrate after which the death of a person completely occurs. However, once the brain stem has permanently stopped functioning, the medical community believes that there's no way of reversing it and the heart will eventually stop beating, even if a ventilator continues to be used. After brain death, it is said that it is not possible for someone to remain conscious because brain stem is responsible for regulating most of the body's automatic functions like breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure, swallowing that are essential for life.
I believe doctor's extending life artificially may not be appropriate in every case all the time without medical basis of recovery, doctors should apply all available methods if they decide to resuscitate and try the best to bring back a person. If it is not possible, it is better for them to let go in to the Creator's hands who has given that life as a gift to that person, and by the way it should never be done without the doctor's trying their best if there is any possibility of resuscitation.
We see that in the New Testament "...when Jesus had cried -out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit." (Matt 27:50, cf. Jn 19:30 and Acts 7:59, Luke 8:55, II Cor. 5:8). When someone dies there is a separation of the spirit/soul from that person's body. We see in the New Testament where the great apostle Paul said, "May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Thess. 5:23b). The above verse clearly conveys that man is a tripartite being, so there is a place where a human being decides to give up one's life where actually the spirit gives up fighting to survive and the soul leaves the body to go in to the Creator's hands of control who had given it (Prov 18:14; Acts 7:59-60). At death the unity of the tripartite individual is disrupted, thus separating the physical from the spiritual parts where the physical body dies and disintegrates, the soul and the spirit together as one is then kept under the jurisdiction of God (Matt 10:28; 2 Cor 4:16; Eccl 12:7; 9:10; Cross.Ref Gen 35:18; Luke 1:46-47; Rev 6:9-11; 1 Cor 6:17; 2 Cor 5:6-8; Luke 8:55; Ezek 18:4; Psa 6:5; 115:17; 146:4; 104:29-30). Every human after his physical death, their soul will either enjoy God if they are saved by His salvation or will horribly realize that they have lost for eternity the goodness of the privilege of living with the goodness of the Lord God to be isolated and lonely without His beautiful Presence forever (Psa 35:9; 27:13; Luke 16:23-24). This disruption is eventually restored to all people in either the resurrection of believers if a person is saved or the resurrection of the lost if that person is unsaved (John 5:21, 28-29; 6:39-40, 44; 1 Cor 15:21; 1 Thess 4:14-17; Rev 20:12-15). The saved will live after their resurrection, with the Lord in New Jerusalem, then after the Millennium rule of Jesus along with His saints on this present earth, then they will live forever in the New Heaven and New Earth which God has prepared for them eternally (Rev 21:1-4). But the unsaved will rise up in their physical bodies to go in to the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels originally, to be without God and His Presence for eternity ahead because of their own choice which they had taken on earth when they were alive and had the ability and consciousness to take a decision for Christ, which will make them stay doomed there for eternity without God and His goodness (Rev 20:11-14, 15; Matt 25:41; 10:28; Mark 9:43-48).
Death is more than the lack of readings on an electroencephalogram (EEG) that monitors the brain activity, it involves the departure of the person's spirit from this life to another realm of the supernatural unknown world of God. There are certain factors according to the Bible that confirms a person has died, and then their spirit and soul have departed together, they are the following :
1) The Bible says that, "...Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age." (Gen. 25:8, cf. Gen. 49:33; Job 27:3; Luke 23:46; Mark 15:37). This shows that respiration failure or the heart stops before a person dies for His spirit and soul to leave the body officially according to God. So the ventilator must be removed officially, only then we can truly determine that the person who is critical have already indeed taken their last breath to no more be able to return to brain reactivity by failure of the heart (Job 10:21; Psa 27:13).
2) As we already discussed in details, the Bible says, "Because the life of every creature is its blood." (Lev. 17:14; cf. Gen. 4:10; 9:4-6; Deut. 12:33; Acts 15:29; Rev. 16:3) the scriptural focus for life in the body is not the brain but rather the blood. Breathing or respiration takes away the waste C02 gas from the blood and replenishes it with life giving oxygen, a process that is mandatory to the survival of the body. The blood, through the circulatory system cleanses, nourishes, and brings disease antibodies and clotting agents to every part of the body. So once when the cell structure starts to disintegrate rapidly, then we know that life giving blood has failed to reach the cells and members of the body to die and shut down one system of the body after the other to cause a total shut down of life in a few minutes rapidly. In Revelation 16:3 we find an important observation. "The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died." (see also Ex. 7:17,18,21). This above verse clearly describes that the blood of a dead person cannot nourish life to the body instead it rots very soon to cause extensive contamination and decay within the place where it is present.
3) The Bible says, "If it were [God's]...intention and He withdrew his spirit and breath, all mankind would perish together and man would return to the dust." (Job 34:14,15, cf. Gen. 2:7, 3:19, Ps. 104:29). This above verse clearly shows that even though our human physicians and para-medics determine that the life within the body is no more when the brain activity shuts down, yet according to God He determines a person to be dead only when his spirit and breath stops naturally or artificially with its activity in the body during which time it will also leave the body. A person who is truly dead will exhibit it naturally by the heart stopping, the vascular system collapsing, respiration halting, the color of their body turning bluish or gray, body temperature approaching room temperature, all reflex movements disappearing from it completely. In a short time rigor mortis [i.e. Latin: rigor "stiffness", mortis "of death": which means officially a dead corpse with no sign of life or movement but only a rapid process of decay] sets in, followed by all the usual signs that death has happened which are increase in weight, a very bad deathly odour, etc..will be seen as time passes on. As the Bible says, this decay is the process when the body which has been formed with the dust of the earth returns to the earth by becoming dust again. In any case where a comatose individual is still alive, while his or her future is uncertain, we must be patient and help those who are weak (Romans 15:1). So the bottom line is that Physicians who honor the sanctity of human life must wait for the completion of dying lest they would do harm to the human life that is still present.
4) The prophet Zechariah spoke of Jehovah, Who “stretches forth the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him” (Zech 12:1). In some fashion, then, God has placed within man a portion of His own essence—in the sense that man possesses a spirit that will never die. In 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul wrote: “...but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day,” thus separating the physical entity from the spiritual entity that separates them at death. In James 2:26, James observed that “the body apart from the spirit is dead.” Thus in death the spirit of a human departs with the soul of him that has within it the conscious information of a whole life lived out on earth, just like as the black-box of a plane has information regarding the life of a plane before it crashed and went bust. In other words we can say, that if the body is alive, according to God who spoke through James the apostle, the spirit is present. When the spirit is present, Is the person who is ill or might be ready to die is still alive? Yes. The spirit and soul cannot be separated according to the Bible and it will be done only on the day of last day of judgment by God through the Word of God (Heb 4:12; John 12:47-48). So when a spirit and soul of a person is present within the body even though they might even be brain dead, God commands us, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13; Mark 10:19), and it has never been revoked back or rescinded to remind us all that a person has never originally died until they become breathless naturally even after ventilator has been used and all the necessities supplied for the life with the body to sustain itself as much as possible. A person who is dying is still alive, even a moment before death, and must be treated as such. King David pleaded with God: “Forsake me not when my strength fails” (Psa 71:9), would not the person who is dying if they were able to speak to the physician or para-medic would speak the same words to those who are helping them? Considering these things, medics should always give priority to life and life at all cost rather than death.
5) God’s Word tells us that death is an appointment by God to meet Him face to face under God's jurisdiction in heaven if they are believer (Php 1:21; 2 Cor 5:8; 1 Thess 4:16-17), or Hades where a unsaved soul is kept by God until the white throne judgment that will take place, after the destruction of the present earth and all that is in it through the fire of God (Luke 16:22-23; Peter 3:7; Rev 20:11-15), and is a earthly fact of life for all humans (Hebrews 9:27). Ecclesiastes 3:2 points out that there is “a time to be born, and a time to die.” At times, the laws of man are of little use, since what is legal may not be what is right in the eyes of God (Gen 9:6; Acts 4:19-20). Similarly, our instincts and insights may be of no use, since they often are clouded by pain or emotion which is expected by God to be given to Him in exchange for His peace and joy to rule over our lives in crisis (1 Peter 5:7; Php 4:6-7). Therefore, we must prayerfully request the wisdom that God has promised to give to those who ask in order to do the right thing as a medic, para-medic and family members who is stressed out financially and emotionally in caring long enough for our dying loved ones (James 1:5). Mature Christians understand that through suffering, we can inherit great reward from God and also can become blessed to be a blessing to others who are going through similar trails in their lives (James 1:2-4; 2 Cor 1:3-7). It is always important to give dignity to the human life before we can allow them to die naturally and let them go in to the hands of God.
Regarding the last moment repentance of a believer or a last moment salvation of a unbeliever is an uncertainty at any cost if they lose their consciousness and therefore are either at a vegetative state or a brain dead state, therefore God has already told in the Bible to all humans to remember their Creator in their days of their youth when they have so much time to think about God and ask Him for their salvation (Eccl 12:9). Every day of consciousness in a man's life is a day of opportunity that God has given that person to turn to Him, when all these times of mercies are wasted I don't think that person deserves a spectacular miracle and a extended time to take a decision for Christ, or even if given a extended time by God there is no guarantee that person will take a decision for Christ or will repent (2 Cor 6:1-2; Luke 16:31). As a righteous God and a righteous judge, God will never allow a person to go in to such a vegetative or unconscious state without giving them enough time for repentance from sin to receive salvation (Psa 7:11; Matt 5:45; Eccl 8:11). But at the same time, as God is a omniscient One which means all knowing God, he knows a person's end from the beginning and therefore if He had fore-seen an opportunity in which a unbeliever would get saved by believing and accepting Christ or a believer using their last moment to repent of their sins to get delivered from their wrong doing, He would have either done a miracle to give them consciousness for a time to get saved or would have extend their life by allowing them not to go in to that brain-dead state (Acts 15:18; Isa 45:21). God authenticates his omniscient existence by recounting the past and proclaiming the future in the present time (Isa 44:7). So it is better to praise God when we are conscious enough and spread the good news of the gospel through our words and our lives, because that is the best work we can do now, once dead we cannot do that and no turning back is ever available except to live forever the appointed heavenly life where the reward of our already lived out earthly life will only be recounted and rewarded back in honor and glory, to live for eternity to be just like that with no change in hierarchy or promotion. We can only be changed again to live for eternity with God if we are saved, or receive the condemnation of hell fire to live without God if any human person has died unsaved (Psa 115:17; Isa 38:18-19; John 3:18-20; Mark 9:43-44; Heb 9:26-28). O Lord have mercy!!!!
Much Blessings....
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