I hope that some posters here are theists/believers & some are without such beliefs. There have been at least two movies in which a soul was taken from a person not destined to die at that time. In the two movies I saw, the protagonist was a top notch athlete whose reflexes would have saved him from a fatal accident. The angel of death thought he was saving the man from the agony of dying & snatched the soul prematurely. The rest of the plot involved a heavenly "fixer" & the angel of death trying to find a suitable body for the soul. Throughout the movie, the protagonist is aware of his circumstances & accompanies the "fixer" & the angel of death. At the end of the movie the soul is put into another body to live out its allotted 50 Plus years. However, the protagonist's memory is erased & replaced with the memory of the original owner of the body. For me, this does not compute!! How can the original protagonist be considered to be experiencing life using the other person's body & memories? I view the original owner of the new body to be the one who is alive & experiencing the 50 plus years.
Was one "Here comes Mr. Jordan" and the other "Heaven Can Wait"? (Both were movie adaptations of the same play.) I agree with you, I find the end resolution quite unsatisfactory. What good is it to live out another 50 years when there is no continuity with the previous life? It not "you" any more, it's another person.
That's because the author - and various adapters - didn't consider mind and soul to be the same thing. The heavenly roll-call is satisfied, but the wife, relatives and wrongfully killed man are not. There are some other stories - including a major theme in The Ghost Whisperer, of all ridiculous series! - where the dead man's memory, feelings and personality manifest in a borrowed body.
It's just like amnesia, except that instead of having no memories, you have completely different ones.
Each and every body is grown for the exact, unique, and particular condition of every soul, unlike a car which is simply made for the condition of what one can afford. The body in which the protagonist inhabited, is tuned for another condition, so the memories of his previous experience need's to be erased especially if he/she has a very different condition. That is my attempt at an answer based on my understand of scriptures. Coming back to our previous conversation, Job's body would have been perfectly suited to his condition which is why he was not emotionally angry, but more concerned as to why God would treat him that way. jan
This is in conformance with some of the Eastern religious beliefs. Reincarnation works that way. If you've been bad, you might come back as a dung beetle, but you won't remember your life as a human. You'll just be wondering how big an a**hole you must have been to have this happen. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Even if you come back as another human you won't have any memory of that life. The soul is not part of the brain and so does not carry thoughts and memories. The brain is natural, the soul is supernatural. It's only the crazy Americans who believe they can channel back to their previous lives. Have you noticed that they were always aristocrats, priests, scholars, royalty, etc.? They don't understand that before the Industrial Revolution, 99% of humans were farmers! If they go back far enough, say into the Roman or Greek or Egyptian empire, there's a real good chance they would have been slaves!
Janus 58 gave the right answer, but I would like to add there was a third movie with Chris Rock called "Down to earth which is basically a third remake. Here are trailers in order... Here comes Mr. Jordan (Black and white version) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckUDcWIm4DQ This Warren Beatty version is the more popular and known version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAQ828xEADw Chris Rocks... (also very good, and is my favorite version with an all star cast) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTIqcVKAjsA As far as the plot goes. There needs to be an ending like it did, to create a problem to overcome. I am sure that when the real god screws up and needs to put souls in others bodies they don't get their memories wiped. Just look at the large number of Napoleons that have been sighted as proof. He is just trying to live out his days and they go and throw him in mental institutions where he is forced to trade in his bodies for new ones. (Now There is a movie).
