The common exclamation, “You scared me half to death," contains some truth! Let me explain.
Death has a different
meaning than is thought. Over the years the legal definition of death has
changed. Now, “death is the irreversible cessation of all biological
functions that sustain an organism”
Science changes its assertions in
the process of time. In the last century, death was the cessation of the
heartbeat, but not pacemakers can keep the heart beating, even after a person
is braindead. An acquaintance of mine had his pacemaker removed, so that after
he died, he was all the way dead!
Nowadays meats and processed
foods are stamped with an expiration date; so is mankind. God issued a warning
to mankind before the Noahic deluge, “My spirit shall not always strive with
man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty
years” (Gen 6:3).
Some believe that was the time it
would take to build and fill the ark. That may be, but it too is the “shelf
life” of mankind. Some argue that point. However, an expiration date does not
mean the produce will go bad exactly on that date, but in general, do
not expect much longer. Many patriarchs in the Bible lived longer because their
genetics were the genes of God. Sacred literature verifies that since the time of
the flood, people can expect to live no longer than 120 years. Because
of grace, many others have.
Now examine God’s assertion. His
Spirit shall not always strive with man. That is the grace that Noah found
(Gen 6:8). Translated “strive,” it means to “contend” with the progeny of Adam
(Hebrew; ‘adam). He included the race of both Seth and Cain by pointing
back to Adam. To strive or contend with man meant that God would no longer
compete with His creatures for supremacy. If you recollect, Satan spoke the
truth, back in the Garden; God had warned Adam (the female of that kind), “For
God does know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened,
and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5).
In that passage, it is not “gods”
to whom God was referring but Himself. It was mistranslated in the English as ‘elohim
is used in both instances. God feared that they would think of themselves superior
to Him, and by the time of Noah, that was the situation. Each “Adam” (man) was as
God, and each were “gods” in their own minds. Each person had created an
individual sphere wherein he or she were the “Cosmos.”
God would no longer contend with
them, acting as if they were each the Supreme God — the LORD GOD.
The Maslovian concept of
self-esteem and the peak experience now operationalizes what God would no
longer contend. More so than loving God so many people endeavor to love
themselves. That was Eve’s problem. She died because she loved herself more
than God, and now self-love is the New Age thinking, or doctrine. Again,
mostly the women of the species seek self-love.
The root cause of death, then is anyone
thinking that he or she is God or loving themselves more than God. The Hebrews
of the Bible never totally abandoned God but added other gods in His Face.
That is the literal translation of the First Commandment. That was the commandment
that applied to the first humans (Gen 3:5).
As it turns out, Jesus was the
true “Face” of God but still most of the people of the world, put on that false
face. Therefore, God will no longer contend with people placing themselves
above God. That was the first and original sin of Eve who also placed herself
above Adam to whom she was meant to be a helper (Gen 2:18). Radical
feminism is the female of the species still endeavoring to place themselves
over both the male and God.
So, contending with God is the
root-cause of death, but again; what is death? It is dying. The case
could be made that death is the opposite of living. God had breathed life unto
Adam, hence death might be that God siphoned life out of Adam’s kind to cause
death. That is essentially what God did with the flood. Mankind, just like George
Floyd, might have thought, I can’t breathe, as the flood waters
displaced the air in their lungs and they each gave up the Spirit of God.
In the Hebrew mut is dead,
but it is written twice — mut mut signifying certain or all the way dead!
There is no root verb for “to die” — “die” means to die, and saying it
twice makes it certain, without any other recourse.
Everyone has always thought of
death as the flesh. The brain is not only the flesh but the organ that makes
homo sapiens “wise men.” The brain is the vessel of the mind, called a “faculty”
because it facilitates, or makes the organisms function. Thus, the mind is the “heart”
of man, not that it pumps blood but it directs life!
When God spoke, “My spirit shall
not always strive with man,” what was He saying? Because He added, “for that he
also is flesh” clarifies the substances existing in mankind, and the Creation
for that matter.
God apparently created the souls
of the two Adams first in chapter one of Genesis, then the fleshes of
the two in chapter two. Adam and his mate gained their soul with the Image of
God within, and soon after, flesh was made to animate them.
So, which is “life”? That mankind
is of two substances: a soul with the Spirit of God within along with flesh of
the same shape (Luke 3:22). That is the physical “vessel” for carrying the
Spirit of God.
God was saying that He would
remove His Spirit; that was death in His Lexicon. What happened to each of the
two substances? The flesh was flushed down the “drain” and the souls of mankind
in the time of Noah perished. Thus, utter death is of the Spirit and not of the
flesh. Hence, the root-cause of death is when the desires of the flesh give way
to the Will of the Spirit, or as Jesus said it, “The spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak” (Mat 26:41).
So, death is of the soul but the
flesh is “weak” or frail and dying; perhaps already dead!
On another occasion prior to that, Jesus had again spoken the truth about death:
21
Another of His disciples said unto him, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury
my father.” 22 But Jesus said unto him, “Follow Me; and let the dead
bury their dead.” (Mat 8:21-22)
Thus “life” is endurance to the
end (Mat 10:22). Taking up the cross is God killing the flesh when the
time comes. Nobody can expect to live longer than 120 years to this day. Hence,
plan on carrying the cross of Jesus until the Death Angel comes for you.
Carrying the Cross of Jesus is life.
Following Jesus is really alive! Those who fail to carry the cross for
Jesus’s Name, are the dead. If they never take up the Cross of Jesus and
sacrifice their flesh for Him, then when they die, they are dead dead. Both
their fleshes and their souls are dead and in Hell.
Those who remain evil are not
regenerated, their feel alive but have the same dead flesh that somehow
God keeps alive in Hell. That is dead dead; always dying but never all
the way dead in a physical sense.
Jesus said, “Fear not them which
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is
able to destroy both soul and body in Hell” (Mat 10:28).
It is learned from the Book of
Job that Satan can harm only the body and not the soul. Jesus is the Judge
of the “threshing floor.” He is the One who can destroy both the body and soul
in Hell. Perhaps, the Holy Ghost that Jesus gave up, accompanied Judas with
Satan in him to Hell on the day of the crucifixion. There, in Gehenna (the
entrance to Hell) was where Judas was buried. Judas went to a place where the
soul never dies but is always dying, and Satan went with him. Jesus is Name of the
Spirit that did that!
So, by God’s standards, death is
not the cessation of body functions but when the soul is depleted of the Spirit
of God.
(Man is not totally but mostly
depraved for they are worth saving.)
The man who followed Jesus was
alive in that he walked as Jesus walked. Those who failed to take up their
crosses and follow Jesus were spiritually dead. Although they remained
animated, they failed to walk with Jesus and were spiritually dead. “In
Christ” when living is alive alive!
In the Garden, the flesh of Adam
and his mate were glorious; it was incorruptible because they were the Image of
an Incorrupt God. They had the same Identities as their “Father,” not that God
sired them, but they had the Genome of God encoded within them that made them
like Him.
With sin, that Genome was
removed. They were no longer the Image (Selem) of the LORD GOD, but the
image (nahas) of their new “lord” Lucifer (Gen 4:1). (His plan was well
in place at that time to replace God as the Creator; Isa 14:12-14).
Because of sin, of course, their
souls died and like Jesus said, so did their bodies; not that they became inanimate
but that their kinds were changed from the Image of the LORD GOD to the image
of the Serpent. Because their new flesh, of which they were ashamed, was corrupted
genetically (original sin), God put onto them His “coats of skin” to preserve
them in the world (Gen 3:21). Perhaps those skins are what men wear to this
day, but when they fail God, their flesh is removed from the soul, and they
would die; but not die die until the end.
Therefore, perhaps the living who
do not follow Jesus are the dead, and in the end, they will be the dead
dead, just as Adam and Eve in the beginning.
By grace, one of the “dead’s” was
removed for they could be saved. Jesus did that because of the Cross; “The
graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came
out of the graves after His Resurrection, and went into the holy city, and
appeared unto many” (Mat 27:52-53). No longer is Adam dead dead, but alive
alive in the Bosom of the “Last Adam” — Jesus.
Just as the “bosom” of Abraham
was surely the source of the seed of Abraham — His genome — so the Bosom of
Jesus would be the Genome of God, or the Image of God again. Adam was regenned
when Jesus was resurrected, and he is alive alive in Paradise because he
has Christ in him.
Of course, “to die” was said
twice “mut mut” because death is of the flesh and the soul. Sin causes the
death of both, so to die to die is what sinners shall do. But if in Christ, “To
die is gain” (Phil 1:21), not “to die die” is gain but only “to die” a
physical death!
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