Kingdom Ready

Finally, after way too long of a delay since posting the first third (about Jesus) of my lengthy paper entitled “A Common Sense Approach to the Biblical Presentation of Jesus, Death, & THE Devil”, here is the 2nd main topic – DEATH.

Like the first section on Jesus (started on KR here: Biblical Common Sense – Intro – What & Why), this has several sub-sections that are best published in smaller, easier to read sections here on KR.  So for my next several posts, I’ll add the sections that follow one another.  I’ll also try to provide all the links at the end of each post to the entire series just for reference.

Biblical Common Sense – Death – Patterns from Adam & Eve

Death is certainly a cold, hard reality for us as human beings.  It affects us all in some way during our short lives and will claim us at some point in time.  A lyric in the song “Do You Realize” by the Oklahoma Alternative band The Flaming Lips says “Do You Realize – that everyone you know…… someday……. will die?” It is poignant and unfortunately true. Just is a line from a famous pop culture film that says “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero”.  Again, horribly all-too-true.

For the living the death of those near and dear to us hits us like a massive wrecking ball that we never truly recover from.  It affects our lives with a profoundness that is typically life-altering.  The finality of it is un-escapable. I know the loss of my father 30 years ago when I was 15 altered my life like nothing else save for the death of my mother 8 years later.  Being an only child then left alone, her death shook me to my core and has had a lasting impact on so many aspects of my life to this very day.

What can we learn about death from The Bible? Well if we take off the blinders of post-biblical traditions and utilize a common sense approach to it, we can glean a clear picture of God’s truth about death and what it means for us.

Patterns from Adam & Eve

The story of mankind’s beginnings presented in Genesis tell us why death exists. Adam and Eve’s sin brought death upon the human race and each and every descendant of them on down to all of us alive today. We all share in that same fate.  But many people who read this story and understand where and why death came to exist, fail to recognize the biblical truths that lay out the stark simplicity of death as well as our true human makeup.

Genesis 2:7 in describing the creation of man says that God “formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul”.  Nothing from the account indicates that man was made with anything already immortal. Nothing says that God gave man a soul that was immortal. It just says that Adam became a living soul – a living being.  Further still, once Adam and Eve sinned and God told them that the penalty they would then suffer was that they would “return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19). God then took an additional step.  A scant few verses later in Genesis 3:22 & 24 we see that God made sure to not only kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, but He also stationed an angel with a flaming sword that turned in all directions to prevent humanity from being able to eat fruit of the tree of life and live forever. With the facts presented here, shouldn’t common sense tell us that man was made mortal and it was the tree of life that was the key to being able to live forever?  The details presented show that once man was denied access to the tree of life – with an angel placed to fully ensure no one ever ate from it again, mankind became completely subject to death.  The Tree of Life was the necessary element for our human parents to be capable of living with God eternally. God going to the trouble of preventing man from ever eating from the tree of life and living forever makes zero sense if humanity already had the innate capacity of living forever past the death of the body as an immortal soul.

Also noticeably absent from the story of mankind’s beginnings is any mention of what happens after physical death.  Where is the basic info of what happens after their bodies died? Where are the instructions about going to Heaven or Hell?  That’s pretty important information that God neglected to tell Adam and Eve.  If Hell is truly the ultimate penalty for sin, then why is only death mentioned?  God told Adam back in Genesis 2:17 that if he disobeyed God’s instructions (committing sin), then the penalty he would suffer was “you shall surely die”.  Shouldn’t God have told them that disobedience would lead to punishment that they would physically experience for all eternity? Why didn’t God say something like “not only are you not going to live forever here on earth in your physical body, but since I made you with an immortal soul (which is nowhere mentioned in Scripture), you will have to be tortured in hell for all eternity (or for the more modern, PC, immortal soulist – “suffer eternal separation from God in some dark corner of the universe)?” Why did God not lay this out for humanity from the beginning? If mankind was made immortal, then just being told you’re going to “return to dust” is not really the full truth.  God would have to be seen as more than just a little negligent in this all-too-important missing detail of humanity’s makeup.

I think common sense should help us to recognize that if death is explained as simply dying and returning to the base organic elements that are a part of us (termed “dust”), and this was the only penalty given by God, then such a death is all that occurs.

Next: “Who does possess immortality?”

Biblical Common Sense Series:

1. Intro

Jesus:

2. Jesus – God’s Son

3. Jesus – “This is MY Son”

4. Jesus – The Anointed of God

5. Jesus – The Messiah is suppose to be…

6. Jesus – Jesus Was Seen!

7. Jesus – Two Adams

8. Jesus – Not Equal, Not the Same!

Death:

9. Death – Patterns of Adam & Eve (current page)

10. Death – Who Possesses Immortality?

11. Death – Death is an End!

12. Death – You Shall Surely NOT Die!

13. Death – Usage of the Sleep Metaphor

14. Death – An ENEMY!

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