On death and dying and the Future Hope

"Longing for a better world, people have painted for themselves many ?paradises? in which they would like to live. For example, in 1933 English novelist James Hilton released his book," Lost Horizon", which a few years later was turned into a film under the same title. featuring a Tibetan version of a paradisiac valley of Shangri-La." Mankind always seems to look for an alternate route to utopia, from the Egyptian pyramids preparing their dead for the "journey". To searching for the fountain of youth, etc.

But the Bible has the only answer to this quest for immortal life and utopia.

These lessons deal with the great controversy issues and the ONLY solution which is in Christ our Savior, who obtained and offers salvation from death and sin and an everlasting paradise to all who come to Him.

Link for this weeks lesson
This week the lesson covers the following:


Rebellion in a perfect heaven
Creation of a perfect world

The spread of doubt
The price of pride
Doubt giving way to unbelief

And the big question -- Why did God give His created beings free choice?
Does free choice mean all choices are good and acceptable?


THE REBELLION IN HEAVEN

Isaiah
14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, you who didst weaken the nations!
14:13 For you have have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14:14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
14:15 Yet you shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

Ezekiel
28:12 You sealed up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
28:13 You have been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
28:14 You were the anointed cherub that covers; and I set you that way: you were upon the holy mountain of God; you have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
28:15 You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, till iniquity was found in you.
28:16 By the multitude of your merchandise you have filled the midst of yourself with violence, and you have sinned: therefore I will cast you as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
28:17 Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, you have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness: I will cast you to the ground, I will lay you before kings, that they may behold what you are.
28:18 You have defiled your holiness by the multitude of your iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of you, it shall devour you, and I will bring you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.

Revelation
12:7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
12:8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

1 Peter
5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour:

CREATION OF A PERFECT WORLD
by a God Who is Holy, Righteous and Love

Revelation 4:8, 11
Holy, holy, holy, LORD God Almighty.... Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

The modern attempt to harmonize the biblical revelation of a holy and loving God with evolutionary theories in which death weeds out the weak, and violence produces the progression of strong creation, are constructing dangerous hybrids that blaspheme God and distort His holy and perfect character.

Ecclesiastes 7:29
Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.?

Psalms 145:5 I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works.
145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.
145:10 All thy works shall praise thee, O LORD; and thy saints shall bless thee.
145:17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.

Psalms 33:6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.
33:8 Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
33:9 For he spake, and it was there; he commanded, and it stood fast.

Geneses 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

1 John 4:7 Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knows God.
4:8 He that does not love, does not know God; for God is love.
4:19 We love him, because he first loved us.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Why did God give the angels and mankind the freedom of choice though knowing it would be abused?
And what do we mean by "based on Love"?

Our society is full of messages to "love" and accept everyone. But it seems society's definition on how to show one loves the "sinner" means one needs to love the sin. To define something as sin, is considered unloving and cruel.
But is this the love scripture is talking about?

Yes, God loved us sinners so much He gave His Son to take our sins upon Himself and die a horrible death so we can be forgiven and have eternal life. All the resources of heaven are poured out to redeem and reclaim mankind for God. That is wonderous love !!!But God does NOT love sin. Sin seriously mars His Creation and disrupts His relationship with His created.

And yes, God wants a relationship with us based on love and a desire on our part to walk and talk with Him! In Eden, Christ came in the cool of the evening to walk and talk with Adam and Eve. There was an intellectual relationship as well as a deep spiritual and loving friendship. God desires us to have a love that communicates, shares experiences, interacts in positive ways. None of that can happen in any meaningful relationally way with robots.

Loving one another is very important, but there is another "love" God desires to see growing in our hearts as well. A love for His ways, His righteousness and a love for the His law and all the principles that it holds.

Like David our love needs to include:
119:75 I know, O LORD, that thy judgments are right,
119:97 O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.

In order to have created beings whose hearts and minds were delighted to be in close friendship and relationship with Him, God had to give freedom of choice.
But in the beginning no one, except God, knew the chaos, pain and utter misery and desperation, which rejecting God's ways and law would bring.
Thus we see Satan, and Eve under his influence, thinking God's rules were arbitrary and that God had made them only to benefit Himself at their expense. They could see that God made beautiful things, but why? Were they themselves, and all these pretty things made to be just objects for God's amusement, or was God actually desiring a close and loving, relationship with His created beings.

So God puts a perfect pair of people in the garden and gives them freedom of choice. God allows sin to wreck its havoc in the world and demonstrate the results of sin, while pouring out all the resources of heaven to open wide the door to salvation for all who will respond.

The reason sin will never again rise its head, is because everyone in that grand kingdom will have made the choice full convinced...
1. God's ways are righteous and perfect and we love His law!
Satan's lies are LIES! There is no happiness outside God's way, and law.
2. God is a god of love, and with hearts full of love, the saved have one desire which is to be with Him, serve and obey Him forever!

Future Hope and Present Belief
Or the spreading of unbelief

What happened when sin first entered the universe? Lucifer moved away from present belief to some vague, imagined future hope built up by his imagination.
Instead of believing in God's goodness, justice, love, and righteousness in the "now", he projected the thoughts of the angelic hosts away from God's goodness in the "NOW" into some vague, imagined future hope of something better.

What the world calls hope, is not really hope at all. It is weak and powerless and vague, simply relegating what is considered "good" into something which may or may not be in the future. For most, "hope" really has nothing to do with belief, "hope" is simply "wishing" for something better or different in the future.

Belief, faith, or hope in the Biblical sense is based on assurance!

"Now faith is the assurance of the things we do not see and the conviction of their reality" Heb 11:1
Our belief is to be NOW, with assurance that God is good, loving and righteous NOW. It's an assurance that God is working right now for our eternal happiness and salvation. He is trustworthy.

As we read in Psalm 71 we can say,
3 You are my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort: you have given commandment to save me; for you are my rock and my fortress.

5 For you are my hope, O Lord GOD: you are my trust from my youth.

And Jeremiah 17:7 Blessed is the man that trusts in the LORD, and whose hope is in the LORD.

Yes, Satan comes with his doubts wanting us to trust ourselves, instead of trusting and believing God, but blessed is the person who trusts in the LORD -- that trust gives REAL hope and victory in Christ.

Second Lesson -- Death in a Sinful World

God says -- If you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.
Satan says -- you will not surely die, you will transcend from being mere human to being like God.

But things began to die after Eve and Adam ate of the tree.
The result of sin ending in death became rather obvious.
Satan's lie was exposed as they saw animals die, and then Abel, the first human to die, lost his lives in death. Death soon became a fact of life!
Now Satan had to cover his lie and make it sound like truth. So he came up with all sorts of scenarios that somehow life didn't end when the body died.
He would continue the deception that mankind has life within him/herself that could not be extinguished by sin or by the failing of the fleshly body.

This "immortality" led into several other strange, unbiblical doctrines, such as
-spiritualism, with the spirits of the dead communicating with the living"
-Necromancy in which human mediums supposedly call up the dead on behalf of the living.
-ancester worship
-worship, and praying to saints (people who have died}
-new age concepts spiritualism
-reincarnation
- the idea the dead are alive in either heaven or hell

That concept of life continuing in some other form after death seriously changes key doctrines:
-- no need for an investigative judgement
--the second coming loses it's power, for why raise dead bodies, if the person is already in heaven?
--the death of Christ would not be a real death



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Question
Some believe that 2 Cor 5 proves that people have immortal souls that just continue living even when the body dies.
Does this text prove such a stand?

The assumption is that as soon as one is dead they are with the Lord. The soul keeps on living? But isn't this also talking about having a new body, not about some disimbodied soul?
And look what else Paul wrote:

Paul tells us when people receive their new bodies. At the last trump when Jesus comes. And yes.we long for that day.

With this error so prevalent, it is no surprise that this deception will play a crucial role in the final events of human history.

Does God need this corruptible body in order to give us an incorruptible body?

Remember the text:
Matthew 10:28 Do not fear those who can kill the body but not the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul.

Apparently our bodies can be killed without killing our soul? Is this confusing?
It depends on how one understands the concept of the soul.
But I think the text gives light on the answer to the question in quote box above.

The way I understand this:
Don't worry about dying in this present life, don't worry about suffering the first death. Someone may even kill you and totally destroy your present body, but if you are hid in Christ, you will live again.

In our modern world we now have computers and technology that might help us understand.

God has all our characteristics and everything that makes each of us the person that we are, on record in some unfailing heavenly system. That information of our complete identity on the heavenly computer chip (something far beyond our technology) is not alive, but it has every detail of our being, it is our very identity. Our identity does not perished in the first death, our "soul" is safely stored in the heavenly computer, completely asleep, inactive, with no consciousness, till the resurrection when Christ will reactivate your identity in your new, glorious body and you will be ALIVE again forever!!!.

Actually everyone, the unsaved as well as the saved, will live again, but they come up in different resurrection.
John 5:28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
5:29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
The unsaved who come up in the second resurrection will have their full identity reactivated in a restored body as well. (Though it won't be a glorious body) They will remember how they reject Christ and His offer and provisions for eternal life and His power to cleanse their lives. They will remember their past life, but they will again face death.
The second death is the death we do need to fear, when the "soul" or identity, will be wiped out forever.
Thus those not hid in Christ when they die the first death, face the second death in which body and soul perish -- their identity gone forever.

This has been the belief and faith of martyrs who chose death rather than give up their faith in Christ, knowing that the first death was not the end. Why give up one's faith and an eternity of life with Christ, just to be able to live a few more years, or days, in this sinful world.


Matthew 10:28 Do not fear those who can kill the body but not the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul.
3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The huge contrast in Isaiah 26

The chapter gives us the sad result of those who reject Christ's redemption and renewing power. They don't want to follow His ways.

Once sin is fully dealt with they perish, gone forever

26:14 They are dead, they will not live;
They are deceased, they will not rise.
Therefore You have punished and destroyed them,
And made all their memory to perish.


But through Christ we don't have to be in that group!
God has different plans for all who reach out for His deliverance!

26:19Your dead shall live;
Together with my dead body they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust;
For your dew is like the dew of herbs, And the earth shall cast out the dead.

25:8 He will swallow up death forever, And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces;
The rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth;
For the Lord has spoken.