PART 2

LIFE AND DEATH  

          As we turn now to the Bible to examine its inspired teachings regarding the condition of man in death, let us make sure our definitions are correct.  We are unwilling to accept either forced and unusual meanings for the basic terms we are examining or the figurative meanings of traditional theology.  Our words life and death are Bible words.  Let the Bible place its own meaning on them, and all is well.  But all is not well if they are given meanings that force them into supporting preconceived theological dogmas.  The plain, simple, literal meanings of the words themselves must be allowed to prevail.

            With regard to the words life and death, however, they are among the phenomenal words that require no definition or explanation.  They designate and describe phenomena with which we are quite familiar.  Etymologists and metaphysicians may analyze their derivation and interior signification, and argue about the real source, essence, and meaning of the terms.  But for all practical purposes they require no definition.  Their meaning is so obvious that any attempt to define them only obscures the subject and confuses the mind.

            Life is a phenomenon of nature.  It is everywhere visible.  So is death.  They are all about us continually.  The one is set over against the other.  Consequently, they are called antithetical terms.  They explain each other.  If we know one, we must also know the other.  

THE ANTITHESIS OF LIFE  

            Death, however, is not merely the antithesis of life, as darkness is of light, and cold is of heat.  It is more.  Death implies a previous life.  It denotes the loss of what was once possessed.  It would not be accurate to predict death of a stone or a lump of clay.  They were never alive.  Consequently, they never died.  Rather then being dead they are lifeless.

            Death is also an absolute and ultimate term.  We cannot predicate degrees of death as we can of many other terms.  Nothing is dead that contains any life.  It may be almost dead, or about to die, or dying, but it is not dead until all life is gone, completely extinguished.

            No words of the Bible have suffered more than these two words, life and death.  They are its most important words.  If they are allowed to have their plain, obvious meaning, we shall experience no difficulty in ascertaining the meaning, nature, and condition of death.  But when the literal and ordinary meaning is taken out of them, and they are tortured into meaning something else, then confusion and error are bound to ensue.

            Why should anyone be unwilling to believe that Scripture means exactly what it says when it employs the words life and death?  It sets forth death as the certain result of sin.  It declares perpetuity of life to be the portion only of the righteous.  When God promised Adam perpetuity of life on one condition, obedience, He meant just what He said, and just what Adam must have understood Him to mean.

            Adam could not have understood these words in any other sense than simple life and death.  Nor did he understand them otherwise until the great deceiver, the “liar from the beginning,” suggested another meaning, a figurative meaning, which is not the true meaning at all, but which has come to be accepted by most of Adam’s descendants, and, unfortunately, has found its way into the theology even of Christian churches.

            God plainly meant, and Adam understood Him to mean, that when men die as a consequence of sin, they actually die.  They do not live on somewhere else.  They die, really die.  And death is the exact opposite of life.

MAN NOT DEATHLESS  

            But the devil’s philosophy meant, and still means, that God was wrong, that man would never die but live on with a perpetuity of life like that of God.  “Ye shall not surely die.” but “shall be as gods.” ( Genesis 3:4, 5. )

            The devil taught that man is a deathless being; that he is not mortal and transitory, like all other things in nature with which we are acquainted.  He cannot lose his life.  Whether sinful or holy, saved or unsaved, man will live on and on, as long as God Himself shall live.

            That teaching originated with the devil.  He has met with the most phenomenal success in having it accepted by mankind.  It is taught now in Christian churches.  But it is just as much the devil’s lie now as it was when he originated it — wherever it is taught.  It was a lie to begin with.  It has been a lie ever since.  It is a lie now.  No amount of acceptance in the creeds of Christendom will ever make it anything else but a lie.

            The Christian Scriptures teach the exact opposite — and they teach the truth.  In the plainest possible words they teach that man, though he might have lived forever had he lived without sin, fell under the sentence of death the moment he sinned, and became a mortal, transitory creature.  When death overtook him as a consequence of sin, and he passed into its realm, he would not live somewhere else, he would not live in torment and misery, he would not live at all, in any condition whatever, good or bad.

            The Scriptures plainly teach that man, with this mortal, transitory nature, possesses no hope at all of continuing life save through redemption from death by a divine Saviour; that under sentence of death as he is, he may nevertheless find a new life, but only through Christ, who has died in man’s stead.

THE BIBLE EASILY UNDERSTOOD  

            The Scriptures plainly teach that all those who die unredeemed, all the wicked, are “lost,” shall be “cast away,” shall be “blotted out of the book of life,” “shall be destroyed,” "shall be burned up," "shall be consumed,"  "shall utterly perish in their own corruption."  This is taught in every variety of language possible, throughout the whole Bible, from beginning to end, and in the plainest words that can be used.

            It takes no special learning or education to understand words such as the Bible uses to explain the meaning and condition of death.  The reader of Holy Scripture does not require a theological training to take in the meaning of the plain words of the Bible.  The Word of God was not written especially for preachers or philosophers or theologians or poets, but for men of all classes and conditions of life.  It teachings are for all men, and it is adapted to the understanding and mental grasp of all men.  Although it contains poetry, prophecy, parables, and proverbs in which the use of figures of speech, symbols, and types should be expected, such as are common in other similar writings; nevertheless, by far the larger part of the Bible is in clear, simple, easily understood prose.

            It was written for the people generally, and it may be, and should be, understood without the aid of highly trained exegetes and metaphysicians.

            Unfortunately, many theological schoolmen, commentators, and creed makers have contrived to make "the Word of God of none effect" by inventing fantastic meanings for plain, simple words of Scripture, meanings directly contrary to the words themselves.  It is an old device.  Christ denounced it in His day.  Jehovah condemned it in Job's time when He asked the searching question, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?"

            As a matter of fact, the practice may be traced back to the beginning of the human race, to the Garden of Eden, where the great adversary of truth is seen endeavoring to convince our first parents that God falsified when He declared death to be the consequence of sin.  The "liar from the beginning" did this by construing the threat of death to mean, "Ye shall not surely die: . . . ye shall be as gods," who are immortal.  That lie is being taught as truth today — and in Christian churches and Christian creeds.  Instead of being believed, it should be driven out of existence, certainly out of the Christian church, by the plain testimony of the Word of God.

THE DEVIL'S LIE  

            Many Christians have been led to believe the devil's lie that death does not mean death but rather life somewhere else.  Man, they claim, is immortal, just as Satan declared.  He cannot actually die.  The death which the Creator threatened cannot mean actual death.  It must mean something in the nature of "an unchanging, eternal state of misery and wretchedness" or something else.  Anything but death.

            But Jehovah said death, not life in misery, or in any other condition, but death.  And death is not life — anywhere.

            It was against this sort of perversion of the plain meaning of the Word of God that Paul warned the early believers when he wrote: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."  ( Colossians 2:8 ).

            Paul refers specifically to this very act of the devil by writing "I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."  ( 2 Corinthians 11:3 ).

            Honest treatment should be given the Word of God.  We may be warranted in indulging our fancy when fiction or poetry is read.  The authors invite us to do so.  But when we read a volume of history or law or science or biography, we are bound to construe the language in its plain, literal sense.  That is what should be done when the Bible is read.  No man will be led into paths of error who will make that the rule of his reading.

            Who would think of giving a fanciful, "spiritual," meaning to the Constitution of the United States, or to the laws of the country?  When the law declares death to be the penalty for capital crimes, who understands that to be a figurative expression for some other punishment?  When a judge solemnly pronounces the sentence of death upon a guilty criminal, who understands him to mean perpetual and lifelong imprisonment with torture?

A FALSE THEOLOGY  

            But when many read the constitution of God's government and the laws which He has instituted and declared in the most solemn manner, they construe His words in exactly this fanciful way.  They understand the penalty of death which He threatens, as meaning, not death at all, but rather "the destruction of the sinner's well-being," "a forlorn and wretched existence endlessly perpetuated.

            Some understand death to be endless torment in the fires of hell; others, endless life in the bliss of heaven; others, the wretchedness of purgatory.  What a strange understanding it is that requires death to mean life, somewhere!  But that is what follows the practice of putting strange and fanciful meanings on the plain words of Scripture.

            The salvation which is offered in the gospel is not salvation from torment, from suffering; it is salvation from death.  "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."  (James 1:15).  There are pains and sorrows and miseries, of course, that sin produces, that are sin's inevitable accompaniments and results.  But these are not the death which is threatened.

            And it is from this death that Christ saves those who accept Him.  These two words, life and death, are the crucial words, the principal words, the distinctive words, that mark the difference between the two classes of mankind known in the Scriptures, the righteous and the wicked.  These are referred to by a large variety of titles, such as the righteous and the wicked; the children of God and the children of the world, or of the devil; spiritual men and natural men; the saved and the lost; the elect and the reprobate.  But the specific reward promised to the saved is life, life forevermore, life without end; and the specific doom of the lost is death, death.  These are the words used throughout all the Bible to declare the lot, the portion, the end, of these two classes.  The word signifying "to die," or death, occurs at least one thousand times in the Scriptures; and the word signifying "to live," or life, occurs nearly as many more.

            Though there are examples in Scripture of the figurative use of life and death, because there are parts of the Bible which are wholly figurative and use metaphors, it does not follow that its plain, sober prose, its didactic instructions, its judicial utterances, its gospel promises, are to be treated as tropes and metaphors, and that the plain, ordinary meaning is to be taken out of them and another put in.

            No book more than the Bible demands of its readers honest, reverent treatment.  We should come to its perusal saying, "I will hear what the Lord will speak," and be determined to lay aside all human philosophies and traditional dogmas, and come as children to the reading of the Scriptures, desiring to know what the Master Himself would teach us.  Then we shall believe the divine word that "the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."  (Romans 6:23).

 

TO DIE IS TO STOP LIVING  

            It is not alienation from God, with torment, which is the wages of sin; it is death.  It is not union with God, with happiness, which is the reward of righteousness; it is life itself.

            So when a man dies he does not live somewhere else.  He is not in heaven, not in hell, not in purgatory.  He is not alive at all, anywhere, in any condition whatsoever.  He is dead.  And to be dead does not mean to be alive.

            To be dead does not mean to go to heaven; it does not mean to go to hell; it does not mean to go to purgatory.  Indeed, it does not mean to go anywhere at all.  It means simply an end of life.

            Death is not a modification of life.  It is not life at all.  It is not a continuation of life in altered conditions.  It is not a release into a fuller life.  It is not life in misery, or life in happiness, or life in any condition.  To die is not to live.  It is to stop living.

            Death is a cessation of life, an absence of life, the exact opposite of life.  So in death there is no life.  The man does not live; the body does not live; the soul does not live; the spirit does not live; the mind does not live.  Intelligence ends, consciousness ends, memory ends, knowledge ends, thought ends.  All that has comprised man ends.

            This does not mean that there will be no future life.  That will be discussed later.  It is not now under consideration.  There will be a future life.  But this will not be a continuation of the life that now is.  It will be a new life, another life.  And it will begin, not when a man dies, but when he is raised from the dead, at the resurrection.

            Between death and the resurrection where are the dead?  This too, is fully answered in the Bible.