A Belief in "Resurrection"

In writing about the Algonkin tribes in a letter dated August 16, 1683, William Penn wrote:  

"They believe in a God and Immortality, for they say, there is a King that made them, who dwells in a glorious country Southward of them, and that the Souls of the Good shall go thither, where they shall live again. (MGM, p. 94). 

One of the Thompson Indian myths relates the following: 

"The Old Man says to the Coyote: `Soon I am going to leave the earth. You will not return again until I myself do so. You shall then accompany me, and we will change things in the world, and bring back the dead to the land of the living." (Ibid., p. 91.)

In 1922, Sir James George Frazer wrote of an experience he had with the Incas of Peru- he wrote that they:

  "took extreme care to preserve the nail-parings and the hairs that were shorn off or torn out with a comb; placing them in holes or niches in the walls; and if they fell out, any other Indian that saw them picked them up and put them in the places again. I very often asked different Indians, at various times, why they did this, in order to see what they would say, and they all replied in the same words, saying, `Know that all persons who are born must return to life' (they have no word to express resurrection), `and the souls must rise out of their tombs with all that belonged to their bodies.'". 

In the same paragraph, he writes of a virtually identical belief held by the people who today inhabit the exact same area that Noah and his family lived:  

"Similarly the Turks never throw away the parings of their nails, but carefully stow them in cracks of the walls or of the boards, in the belief that they will be needed at the resurrection. The Armenians do not throw away their cut hair and nails and extracted teeth, but hide them in places that are esteemed holy, such as a crack in the church wall, a pillar of the house, or a hollow tree. They think that all these severed portions of themselves will be wanted at the resurrection, and that he who has not stowed them away in a safe place will have to hunt about for them on the great day." (GB, p. 236).

In the Americas, we also find most of the ancient myths and legends to contain a tremendous amount of sheer nonsense, full of mythical monsters and gods in the forms of animals. But much can be learned from their legends concerning their original beliefs as to where they came from, the flood, creation, and etc. As Solomon said, "There is no new thing under the sun."- only variations on a theme. By studying the ancient beliefs of the Americas, we can clearly see they began with the knowledge possessed by the ancestors of these people who originated with Noah and his descendants.

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