Is the idea of reincarnation supported in the Bible?

There are two major beliefs about reincarnation, neither of which is supported in the Bible. The first is the idea that you have an immortal soul that survives after your body dies and that can come back as another person. The second is the belief that people can make themselves pure through their own actions.

Almost half the people on Earth believe in reincarnation, the teaching that the soul never dies but is instead continually reborn in a different body with each succeeding generation. However, the Bible says, “The living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten” (Ecclesiastes 9:5).

The Bible teaches that when a person dies, they return to the ground. “You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust” (Psalm 104:29). After we die, there is no spirit entity that has mental powers to think. “His spirit (breath) departs, he returns to his earth; in that very day his plans perish” (Psalm 146:4).

Satan invented the teaching that the dead are still somehow alive. Reincarnation, channeling, communication with spirits, spirit worship, and the “undying soul” are all inventions of the devil, with one aim to convince people that when you die you are not really dead. When people believe the dead are alive, they can be deceived and led astray.

People have always tried to make themselves good by their actions and somehow attain to a higher state. But the Bible teaches, “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). The apostle Paul says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23, 24).

There is no support in Scripture for the teaching of reincarnation. As Hebrews shows, after we die we will face the judgment. We are not given a second chance to “come back” and make ourselves better.

Key Bible Texts

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: (Hebrews 9:27 KJV)