Hi Earl,
For there to be a ressurection of billions of people for the White Throne Judgment wouldn't they have to be reconstituted exactly as they were at their death?
I think you have this about right. Here is an email and a couple excerpts where Ray speak on this.
http://www.forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,655.0.html ----
The consciousness is not in the body, and it is not in the spirit. The consciousness of man is in his soul, and his soul is resultant outcome of our spirit being united with a body. God breathed the breath and spirit of life into the man formed from the dust of the ground, and the man then BECAME a living soul. He BECAME conscious of his own being. At death we are no longer conscious of our being or our death. Our spirit must be reunited with a new body in resurrection before we will regain the soul and consciousness that we had before we died.
http://bible-truths.com/lake16-D5.htm -------------------------------
And so Jesus' soul (like the patriarchs of old), did not go to any physical or geographical location, but rather went to the state or realm of the dead. They put dead bodies into graves, but they don't put souls ANYWHERE. Until the spirit of man is returned to a new body, his soul does not exist anywhere, but rather is in a condition of non-existence until his spirit which returns to God is reunited to a new body.
As C. S. Lewis said: "You don't have a soul, you ARE a soul, you HAVE a body." In other words, there is no soul without a body. That is total unscriptural and pagan nonsense. That is straight out of "The Book of the Dead" from the Egyptians, not the Holy Scriptures of God.
v
Jesus died, and was DEAD. When they put Jesus' body in the tomb, they put JESUS in the tomb. When Jesus died for the sins of the world; Jesus was dead, not just His body. And when Jesus rose from the dead, it was not just His body. It is JESUS Who is the "Saviour of the world," and not just a corpse, a body, a cadaver? Christians have taught the world that man can't die. That he has an immortal soul that cannot die. That when people die they are not dead. That at death people "go somewhere." It is all unscriptural pagan nonsense.
Jesus' soul, His sentient being, His intellect, feelings, emotions, and heart, which define the human soul, went into a state of "imperceptibility." His soul was in the realm or state of hades which means "the unseen, the imperceptible," the state of death, the realm of the dead, the sheol of the Hebrew.
http://bible-truths.com/kennedy2.htm ---------------------------------
BODY
When a man dies his body (if not disintegrated) goes into a grave or tomb (Jn. 11:38) where within a few days it begins to smell and decompose (Jn. 11:39), and it returns [Heb. shub] to the dust of the ground from which it was taken (Gen. 3:17-19, Job 10:9, Psa. 9:17, etc., etc). The "person" is said to be where the "body" is and the "person" is resurrected from the place where the body is (Mat. 28:6). Only in a figurative or symbolic sense does a "body" ever go to sheol (Jonah 2:2). Jonah was not "literally" in hell [sheol], but in the fish, and besides he didn't even die. I'm sure Jonah's loss of perception inside the fish resembled his knowledge of the word "sheol."
SPIRIT
When a man dies his spirit returns to God Who gave it (Lk. 23:46, Psa. 104:24-30). The "spirit" is never said to go to hades or sheol, and the "soul" is never said to go to Heaven at death. Men and beasts have the same spirit [ruach] and they go to the same place (Ecc. 3:18-21). There is no getting around this: when God takes away a living soul's spirit, it always dies. The spirit "gives life." No one can live without "spirit," no matter how young and healthy he may be. There are no exceptions. If there are, where is the Scripture? A dead person cannot experience anything-not pleasure in Heaven or pain in a fabled hell. This is a serious thing. Rom. 14:23 says: "Now everything which is not out of faith is sin." If one doesn't have Scriptures that show people go to eternal hell fire after death, then it is a sin to teach it.
SOUL
When a man dies his soul goes to the unseen or imperceptible [Gk: hades, Heb: sheol]. We also know that when man is in this condition (dead) it is likened to "sleep" (Psa. 13:3, Dan. 12:1-2, Jn. 11:11-14). God Himself likens death to sleep,
"The Lord said unto Moses [concerning his imminent death], Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers ... " (Deut. 31:16)
This is substantiated by the fact that:
"The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything" (Ecc. 9:5,6).
Again:
" ... for there is no work, nor device [contrivance, intelligence, reason], nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in sheol." (Ecc. 9:10).
Do we think all of these Scriptures lie? According to what we just read in Ecc. 9:5,6,10, do dead people know anything? And these verses are correctly translated.
The words "soul" and "spirit" have become corrupted through theology so that they are now used interchangeably, as if they were synonymous. They are not synonymous. There may be certain similarities between soul and spirit, but similarities do not make them one and the same.
The "soul" is the seat of sensation, consciousness, and feelings, not the body or the spirit. It is the spirit that imparts life to the body and the body then becomes a living soul (Gen. 2:7).
A thorough study of the word "soul" in the Scriptures proves that it is used of consciousness, feelings, and emotions. Hence, "sensation" is a good word to define its usage.
� souls can touch (Lev. 5:2)
� souls have knowledge (Pr. 2:10)
� souls have memory (Lam. 3:20)
� souls can love, and be joyful (Psa. 35:9; 86:4)
� souls can hunger and thirst (Deut. 14:26)
� souls can sin (Lev. 4:2)
� life can be given to a soul (Job 3:20)
� souls can die (Ezek. 18:20)
� souls can be converted (Psa. 19:7)
� none can keep alive his (own) soul (Psa. 22:29)
� honey is sweet to the soul (Pr. 16:24)
� even God has a soul (Lev. 26:11, I Sam. 2:35, Jer. 32:41)
� souls can hear (Acts 3:22-23)
� souls can experience pleasure (Heb. 10:3)
� souls can be purified (I Pet. 1:22)
� and souls can receive salvation (I Pet. 1:9).
These verses show the wide range of emotions and sensations that "souls" experience, but dead souls experience nothing in the unseen or imperceptible (hades). We need to pay close attention to the meaning of words. Hades comes from the Greek a(i)des. The a is a prefix which is equivalent to our un- and the stem -id means perceive. Thus we have UN-PERCEIVE, or imperceptible: the unseen. Etymologically, your doctrine of torment in hell falls flat on its face. From the words that God chose to call this condition of the soul after death, one thing is crystal clear: There is absolutely no perception there. And the soul has everything to do with perception and sensation as clearly seen from the verses above.
So why do you teach that there is perception in death? The very meaning of the word itself (hades) is unseen or imperceptible, so how can a dead soul have perception in a condition of imperception? God Himself chose this word which teaches us that hades is UN-perceptible or IM-perceptible (NO perception).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
mercy, peace and love
Kat