Doug Wilson's right about this

Here Doug Wilson is on-the-mark. Though I understand the Westminster divines intentions in putting the matter as they did; not wanting to speculate or explain what the Bible leaves in mystery, etc. Also, the divines were right in an ultimate way, whether they intended it that way solely or not; so the confession, it can be argued, is not faulty there, necessarily.

Here is a post I wrote in Oct. '05 explaining - yes, explaining - it all. Recurrence is not reincarnation, I have to say over and over. Recurrence means your time is living, and is perceived by God - not by you or any other humans, but by God - as a living NOW. All the parts of your timeline are alive and 'present-tense' to God. Even though you die. The Bible refers to the second death for a reason. Ultimate death occurs, if it does for you, at the end of the age. Prior to that unregenerate people recur. Cycle down and up from Hades, so to speak (any language you use is weak and inefficient to describe what is just simply beyond our perception or ability to think about. We have to think in terms of 'revolutions' or a circle of time, but that is not it. From God's perspective, which is eternity, our birth-to-death timeline is alive in all its moments and years and events, and God can effect us at any point of that time-line from eternity. The Holy Spirit can regenerate at any point of that time-line. Even when we have, to the perception of other humans beings, died. And really died.

Recurrence contains all that we can conclude about what death might hold for us. Annihilation, reincarnation, continued existence in a higher or lower world. Annihilation because recurrence is death itself simply because those who recur are by default (still) dead in sin. Reincarnation because there IS a sense of living again, yet unlike the popular belief(s) in reincarnation you don't become another person or animal or whatever you remain essentially who you are now, in your same time. There may be differences in degree, maybe differences that would even seem dramatic that can be speculated on (gender, family, etc.), yet essentially you are still the same being in the same time. And as for continued existence in a higher or lower world that possibility is in the hands of God, or God's decree still. The potential is still there, until the White Throne Judgment, or harvest.

Read the two links above for the fuller context and picture...