Bible Q & A

Q. A man was talking about reincarnation and based most of his evidence on the Bible, John 9:2 specifically. I’ve been trying to figure out just what that verse does mean. How could the man sin before his birth, unless he had lived before?
 
A. John 9:1-2 reads: “As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” This man apparently infers from this verse that people can sin before they are born, reasoning that the blind man would have had to have sinned before he was born in order to be penalized at birth.

This kind of reasoning goes totally against the thrust of the rest of the Bible. The plan of God, as outlined in the Scriptures, makes no allowance for men to pass through a series of lives before being admitted into some sort of Nirvana or paradise. The Bible shows that people have no consciousness before this present life, and none after death, until they are resurrected and given either eternal life or death.

Notice also that Christ answered His disciples in the negative: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him” (John 9:3). In other words, this was a situation planned or allowed to occur by God in order to make known to the world that Jesus Christ was His Son.
 
The Church of God, New World Ministries P.O. Box 5536 Sevierville, TN 37864