How NEVER to Die!

 Got your attention?!

 

There are incalculable benefits from not reading and studying The Bible as merely a collection of 66 books and 1,189 chapters! Perceiving it like a lengthy itinerary for a very long journey, broadens my mind to the multi-millennial arc of its story line, chock full of valuable insights. Reading and studying it with a narrow chapter/verse mentality, guarantees we will miss its unwritten inferences and nuances that communicates far more than just what’s written in print. For that reason, The Lord, Who inspired and preserved it over the ages of our history, makes the Spirit of His Mind—the Mind of Christ, available to his bona fide saints. His mysteries remain unavailable to, and unperceived by all others. 

 

A key set of inferences and nuances relate to death, namely:

 

There are 2, uniquely different types of death, 

and 2 ways some humans will avoid both types of death!

Imagine that!

 Yes, it’s TRUE!! 

Wanna know HOW?

Wanna know WHO??

Wanna know how you can be in at least ONE of these groups?!

 

Genesis 1:27 declares God, (later revealed to be Jesus, The Lord God Almighty), created man in His own image. The Bible later revealed that, like Him, we are all created as tripartite beings—spirit, soul and body. ¹ Before Adam and Eve sinned, they were fully immortal. Their sin subjected their bodies to physical death. Their spirit and soul, however, remained immortal, but became subjected to what The Bible calls the 2nd death, which isn’t anything like what we know as death. Since all people inherited Adam’s sin nature, we are all ‘subject to’ both kinds of death.

 

Though the second death is mentioned 4 times in the Bible, it is uniquely defined in the last 2 mentions, as being cast into The Lord’s brimstone-lit lake of fire, as fully tripartite, fully immortal (forever alive!) human beings! That’s the place He created to punish satan and every devil (fallen immortal angels) who rebelled against everything Heaven calls righteous. And all of us who will have been deceived by them to live unrepented, sinful lives, will share their declared, eternal judgment. 

 

In Salvation, an Internship (Poem), I explain Heaven’s salvation is essentially a free gift or opportunity to join its internship program, in which, in this life, we are expected to be diligent in learn how to mature and demonstrate fidelity to what The Lord requires. ² Since we have the opportunity to drop out of this program—as many have done, His award of eternal salvation is only made when our physical life ends. Sadly, devils have worked hard to sow the seeds of errant teaching that eternal salvation is a free gift with no strings attached! The Bible, and Jesus, Himself, iteratively disprove that lie. It also iteratively conveys, in a variety of ways, that passing Heaven’s salvation internship program, is the only guaranteed way to avoid what it calls the 2nd death! That is the only way we can personally influence whether, in the afterlife, we will avoid or experience the 2nd death. Period! 

 

In Bible Raptures – Types and Timings (Series), I explain how Heaven has strategically planned a variety of individual and group rapture events across human history, that effectively, translate/transfer alive people directly into Heaven, thus avoiding physical death. Heaven has not afforded us any way to influence whether we will experience one of these rapture events. However, The Bible gives us a wealth of signs and cautions about the rapture events it has planned at the ends of the 3rd, 4th, and 6th ages of our history. See Salvation in the Millennium (Series) to learn why I intuit here might not be a group rapture event for people who become saints during the 5th age—The Millennial Reign age. That will be when Jesus will be Earth’s global king, accompanied by all of His then glorified, immortal saints from the first 4 ages of our history. Since that age will clearly last only a thousand years, He and His  will return to Heaven. Isn’t that a type of rapture?! ;o)

---------- 

¹ Though we tend to understand a person’s soul and spirit are the same entity, Hebrews 4:12 reveal are indeed separable, thus further affirming our tripartite nature.

² The free gift became available to all people early in this current, 3rd age of our history. That’s when Father God qualified the sacrifice of Jesus, Who, as Christ, died a cruel, substitutionary physical and spiritual death on behalf of every human who would receive it as such.