Wednesday, August 23, 2023

SCARED HALF TO DEATH

 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” (Wikipedia 2023), or life form. Since the last organ to go is the brain, death is when the brain ceases to function. Outside technology can keep the heart beating and the person breathing, and dialysis can eliminate the poisons, but when personal thought ceases, the person is braindead whether the other systems continue or not.

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)

 “Follow me,” indicates animation or what we think of as life. However, Jesus was not speaking of following Him part way or quit before arriving, but to follow Him to death. That is known because He would say, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mat 16:24).

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!

 (picture credit; Deviant Art; "Zombie")

 

 


 

 

 

 

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