ON DEATH

It is at this time on the seventh day of February in the year of our Lord 2024 that my precious niece left this world. This is not about her, but for the hope of Christians.

“It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27). We all have an appointment with the angel of death. Judgment comes after this.

How can this be for it is written, “Death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death” (Rev 20:14). “The sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works” (Rev 20:13).

Judgment comes after death and the second death is judged guilty. In the beginning there was no death, but sin brought on, not just one to die, but “surely die” (Gen 2:17). Adam and Eve if they trespassed where they should not go would have an appointment with death. Not just “surely die” but literally mut, mut, mut in the Hebrew, or to die, die, die.

Adam physically died after 930 years. He spiritually died immediately, and at the propitiation of the blood of Jesus, he was quickened, or made alive. Adam may have been one of the saints that arose and resurrected along with Jesus (Mat 27:53). Adam will be judged when all sinners are judged. If he is judged righteous, then he will not die the second death.

However, Adam was created glorious and alive. We are born spiritually dead but have a choice in how we die. We are either quickened by rebirth – “born again” (John 3:7) or not. We must die to be born again.

Where am I headed with this? If born again, your soul should never die, but your flesh must die to receive new, incorruptible flesh. Thus death, for the Christian, is indeed gain just as Paul wrote, but there was a contingency, to die in Christ (Phil 1:21). In Christ is the person engendered by Him — ‘born again.’ That is the critical survival event... the time that you realize that you cannot save yourselves but Jesus, as God, can and will, given your trust in Him.

You can only die once because the immortal soul never dies. The ‘second death’ is not just dying but forever dying whereas once born again, unless aborted by apostasy (Heb 6:6), your soul never dies but is eternally secure once it is freed from the body.

So, what kills humans? Our flesh does that. Something happened to Adam and his mate in the Garden of Eden. They put on flesh and were ashamed. Before they had been glorious but afterward inglorious. Their flesh was just like animal flesh.

When they were in the Garden Paradise, they were dead to the world. It could be that one of the three die, die, dies; was them being cast out into the world. They would have been essentially already dead if they had not the Garment of God covering them by grace.

We all are born cast out already. The world is not heaven, neither Hell nor Paradise. It is as much an invisible prison with us in bondage until the truth makes us free (John 8:32). Hence, the death is the release of the soul and the rapture the release of the body, both from a virtual prison of sorts.

Yes, the Earth is a prison. Look at its economy: one of false hope… to make you wise and hope for something better than what you had (v. 6); shame (v.8); fear (v. 10); deception (v. 13); hatred and conflict with each other (v. 15); desire of wrong things, lust, and control for power (v. 16); poverty and a struggle to survive (v. 17); thorns and thistles (v. 18); hard work and death (v. 19); a domineering demeanor and adultery… the meaning of the name ‘Eve’ (v. 20); feelings of superiority and invulnerability (v. 22); all from Genesis chapter three.

Perhaps superiority and invulnerability are the worst of the worst; that we are gods and shall live forever is the source of mythology.

Since the beginning of time, and I think that beginning was with the first sin, mankind would wither in the world. It took Adam and his mate 900 plus years to wither and die.

Right now, because of the economy of the world, you are withering away until your death. However, we think these bodies will live forever and most think that they are masters of their own domain. They think as if they will never die, and while we are thinking that way, we are walking the road to death. It is not a distant trip because the ‘door,’ or portal, to heaven is death itself. It will deliver us to heaven, but to where in heaven? is the question.

The soul is immortal. It cannot die, remembering that there is but one death. The soul of a sinner is as if they are dying, but with a never ending death in torments. Consider the rich man and Lazarus, once they died and passed through the portal to heaven, they were separated. The righteous man went to Paradise in heaven and the unrighteous man went to Hell in heaven, the two places separated by a great gulf (Luke 16).

Yes, we all are going to heaven, as the song goes. The problem is whereto in heaven shall we go? Death is the portal to Paradise, and the portal to Hell as well. The second death is the judgment; which way we shall go.

Hell is just that. It is much more than separation from God but torments. The economy on Earth that Adam endured was just a taste of torments. They only died once and then they were alive by the grace of God. Torments is continually dying but never succumbing to death.

The guilty will have a sort of incorruptible flesh as well; however, it will continually be corrupted but never burned. That continual process of never dying but tormented as if you are dying, will never cease.

With that said, the first death is easy even for the sinner. It lasts only a few moments as they squeeze through the portal to heaven. It is the second death that is so agonizing for it never ends!

God is merciful; we are appointed only to die once. That is what He wills for us. Unfortunately, few even think they just might die twice with the second death never ending.

With that said, the first death should be no more feared than a gravity drop device at an amusement park. It is the second death that we should dread, because it is in a dark time tunnel that never ends the agony. Just as with the death-defying ride, it is those who love you that fear for you more so than yourselves.

Funerals are for the release of fear, or anyhow, it should be. The funeral is more for us who are alive to grieve. The immortal soul remains alive and as the young girl in the Bible revealed, the soul is just a moment away from the body once released from the world. There is an impenetrable wall where the dead cannot see the grieving, or it would not be ‘Paradise.’  And we cannot see there because it would increase the grieving process.

Heaven is for the dead. However, the soul never dies, so remember the dead person as a beautiful image full of vitality with flesh like the glorious risen Jesus (John 7:39).

Hope is more than ‘hope so’ but that eternal life is there for all who desire to have it. If there is a second death, there must be a second life?