Welcome to answers to the big questions. I'm your host, Allen Sonter, and I'm glad you could join me. In the last episode, I talked about who Satan is and told you that he's a rebel angel who claims to have a better system of government than God has.
God's government is based on love, but Satan's is based on pride, coercion and deception. Satan is fighting against God because he wants to take God's place as ruler of the universe. I also mentioned rather briefly the plan that God made to save us from the results of our first parents obeying Satan and giving him control of this world.
You'll remember that God said we would eventually die if we obeyed Satan. God is the Creator, and only by obeying Him can we continue to live. But what really is this thing called death? To answer this question, we need to go right back to the beginning of this world's history.
God created life in all its many forms, and his final work was the creation of human beings. Sometime after creation, Satan came into the garden where Adam and Eve lived. And in Genesis chapter three and verse five, we learned that he told them that the reason why God had instructed them not to eat the fruit of that special tree was that God was jealous and didn't want them to become as wise as he himself was.
Satan said that eating the fruit would make them wise, knowing both good and evil, and they would become like God. Part of what Satan said then was true. Eating the fruit did enable Adam and Eve to know both good and evil, but that knowledge didn't do them any good at all.
It didn't make them wiser, but resulted in their destruction. And they certainly didn't become more like God, except in knowing what evil was. Satan directly contradicted God telling Eve that if she ate the fruit, she would not die.
That was a direct lie. And from that day to this, Satan has been trying to convince the human race that what he said was true. He's been trying to get us to believe that we don't really die, but that when we apparently die, we really pass on to some higher state of being.
Satan's evil angels help him to deceive us by impersonating people who have died and by appearing to their loved ones, telling them all kinds of lies about where they now are. God warns us in Deuteronomy 18, verses nine to twelve, about this kind of deception and tells us to have nothing to do with those who pretend to be the spirits of the dead. God, through the wise man Solomon, tells us very plainly in Ecclesiastes chapter nine, verses five and six in the Bible that the dead don't know anything and they don't have anything to do with those living on the earth.
At this point, I need to tell you about another tree that God planted in the garden of Eden. He called it the Tree of Life. It appears that God intended that had people always been loyal to Him, they would have eaten regularly from this tree and would never have grown old and died.
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, he barred them from eating from the Tree of Life. So from that point they began to grow old and die. Nobody since then has ever eaten from that tree.
So all of us grow old and die. We die because we are deprived of something that is in the fruit of the tree of Life. That substance, whatever it is, is the secret of eternal life.
And for the present, only God knows it and he isn't telling. And I'm sure that's just as well. Imagine the misery if some selfish and cruel crime boss learned the secret of eternal life and could continue terrorizing us for thousands of years.
It's possible that another reason we grow old and die is that sin has caused fear and stress which causes our bodies to break down because God didn't design us to live with this kind of stress brought about by sin. But now we come to a puzzling thing about death. Sometimes God calls death asleep.
When a friend of Jesus Christ called Lazarus became sick and died, jesus told his disciples in John chapter eleven and verse eleven that Lazarus was asleep. The disciples misunderstood what he meant and said that if Lazarus was asleep, it was a good sign that he was getting better. But then in John eleven, verse 14, Jesus said clearly, Lazarus is dead.
Why should there be this confusion between sleep and death? The fact is, one kind of death is very much like sleep, especially the way God looks at it. Sleep is a time when we know nothing and we're not conscious of the passing of time. But then we wake up.
The kind of death we all experience on this earth is like that too. At death, we lose consciousness and we aren't aware of the passage of time. And then we wake up when we are raised to life in the resurrection.
That is the picture the Bible gives us of the death that God calls asleep. From this death, everyone is resurrected. Those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior are raised to life when Jesus returns to this earth a second time.
We are told that in one thessalonians four verses 15 to 17, this happens when God sees that Satan's experiment with his type of government has gone on long enough. In the book of Revelation, this resurrection is called the first resurrection. Those who are raised to life in the first resurrection never die again.
According to Revelation 20 verses four to six, they're given eternal life by God and they will live in heaven, accepting God's rulership forever. Of course, only those who are unselfish and loving will be happy to live under the rule of a loving God who cannot allow selfishness in his universe. Those who have not accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior and who want to live selfish lives without caring for others, are raised to life 1000 years later in a second resurrection spoken of in the bracketed part of Revelation 20, verse five.
Then Satan persuades them to join him in one last desperate attempt to unseat God from his throne and set up Satan himself as the permanent ruler of this world, as described in Revelation 20, verses seven and ten. But this attempt will fail, and Satan, all his evil angels and everyone who has accepted his rule and followed him while living on this earth, will finally be destroyed in a lake of fire. This death is called the second death.
In Revelation 20, verse 14, there's no resurrection from this second death and this second death is never called asleep. The apostle Paul, when he wrote his letter to the Christians in Rome, called this second death the wages of sin. And we read that in Romans, chapter six, verse 23.
In a recent survey made in the United States by Time magazine, it was found that about 85% of those surveyed indicated that they believed in some form of life after death. Most of these believed that they would go directly to heaven when they died, despite the fact that the Bible gives a clear indication that this first death we all die is an unconscious sleep. Why is the matter so misunderstood? I believe it's misunderstood because, as I mentioned earlier, Satan has always tried to deceive us into believing his first lie.
That is, that we won't really die. Most people who believe they go directly to heaven when they die believe that human beings have an immortal soul. That's usually understood to mean that there is some conscious entity that leaves the body at death and goes to heaven to continue some form of conscious existence.
But the Bible tells us that God formed man from the clay and then breathed into him the breath of life and man became a living being. It does not say in Genesis two seven that man was given a living soul, but that he became a living soul. It also says in Psalm 146 three and four, that when a person dies, his breath goes from him.
He returns to the earth and he knows nothing. Solomon, the world's wisest man, writing under the influence of God, tells that once a person dies, he has no further feelings of any kind and can have no further part in anything that happens on this earth. He says in Ecclesiastes chapter nine, verses five and six, that the dust returns to the ground it came from.
The breath of life returns to God who gave it. So there is no conscious entity or spirit to continue its existence. The two components, clay or dust from the earth and the breath of life from God combine to form a living person or a living soul.
At death, the breath of life returns to God, the dust or clay returns to the ground, and the living soul ceases to exist. I believe that this breath of life may be something like a file of our whole life that God uses to recreate us at the resurrection. The way the Bible describes the creation of humans and the death of humans is like an equation, and it looks like this at creation, we have clay from the earth plus breath from God equals a living soul or person.
At death, we have the living soul or person minus breath, which goes back to God, and that equals clay, which returns to the earth. Some people think that a fictitious parable Jesus told in Luke chapter 16 and verses nine to 31 about a rich man and a beggar, Lazarus, who both died and went to hell and heaven respectively, was a true story. But Jesus told the story only to teach a spiritual truth, not to describe what really happens when people die.
He simply used a traditional story in much the same way as we tell humorous stories about Peter at the Pearly Gates. Only Jesus turned the story around to teach an important lesson. The story couldn't be literally true because according to this story, heaven and hell are within shouting distance, and both the rich man and the beggar have bodies that feel pain and have fingers and other physical features.
Not even those who believe in the spirit going to heaven think that they take their bodies with them. Those who believe they go directly to heaven when they die usually think that they have an immortal soul. This soul is considered to be a conscious entity that can exist apart from the body.
But if the soul is immortal, then it can have no beginning and no end. In the Bible, the apostle Paul, when writing to his friend Timothy, says in one Timothy Six, verse 16, that God alone is immortal. The implication of that is that anyone who is immortal is God.
That you remember was part of Satan's first lie he told Eve that if she ate the fruit, she would become as God. It was a lie when Satan told it then, and it's still a lie today. Man is not God, and he has no immortal soul and he is no immortal soul.
So that's the truth about death. The first death is asleep from which we are raised to life again when Jesus returns the breath. We all die this death because we cannot now eat the fruit of the tree of life.
Those who have accepted Jesus Christ are raised at the first resurrection and never die. They live forever. Those who have not accepted Christ are raised to life a thousand years later, only to die the second death when they are destroyed along with Satan and his evil angels in a lake of fire, as described in revelation, chapter 20, verses nine and ten.
The second death is the wages of sin and is not paid to those who accept Christ as their Savior because he died in their place. The last few chapters in the Book of Revelation in the Bible outline these details. When Satan and all his followers are destroyed, god will clean up the mess Satan's terrible experiment has caused.
All those in the universe who have not followed Satan will then live forever in a heaven where no suffering or death will ever come. My friend, if you've never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, why don't you do so now? Just tell him that you're sorry for your sin and want to be on his side, not Satan's, and that you intend to learn to love him and get to know him as your friend. Then you won't have to worry about the second death.
And the first death will have no fear for you either. You'll awake from it when Jesus comes and calls you to everlasting life with him. A moment ago I mentioned that there will be no suffering when God puts an end to Satan's work.
But there is suffering now. And perhaps one of the most vexing questions people ask is why does a good God allow suffering? In the next episode, I will try to answer that question. I invite you to listen again to find out about this vital topic.
You've been listening to answers to the big questions. I'm Allen Sonter and I hope you can join me again next time.
if you have any questions or comments in relation to today's program, you can call 3ABN Australia Radio within Australia on 024-97-3456 or from outside of Australia on country code 6124-973-3456.
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behold, I tell you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we shall be change. For this corruptible must put on incorruption.
This mortal must put on immortality. So sleep sweetly until he comes. He's coming soon to wake you up.
Sleep sweetly until he comes and we are together forever and ever more. Soon Jesus Christ will break to the sky with a trumpet sound and an angel choir. He'll call out wake up, my dear children, and we will arise.
So sleep sweetly until he comes. He's coming soon to wake you up. Sleep sweetly until he comes and we are together forever and ever more.
Close sam, I do not want you to be ignorant concerning those who have fallen asleep. Let you sorrow and others who have no. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again god will remain close by the word of the lo that we who are alive and remain the coming of those who are asleep.
For the Lord will it from heaven shout and with the Lord I'll be argangel and with a strong here is only is coming soon and the dead in Christ will rise every me. Shall we go together with them in the Lord in the end? And we shall. We shall always be with the Lord.
You ram you watch Jesus waking all the heart of heaven shaking keep your lamps all dreams and burning ready for your noise returning Lord the seven trumpets sounding loyal jesus rain only going home in a little while in a little while we shall cross up in our soul we shall be with our eyes in a little while with the hallelujah speaking to the sun with the hallelujah singing to the sun in a little while in a little while we shall cross up in we shall be with our eyes. In a little while we are to the right before us. You will be home soon.
We shall check the streets of all when we what a day I think that will be when we all be Jesus we'll see. I shall victory. You have been listening to a production of three ABN Australia radio.
