Did God Die?
by Angela Moore
This Sunday, most churches spread across the land, will be celebrating Easter Sunday, with perhaps a Sunrise service, or a traditional breakfast, and most definitely a sermon that centers around the fact that Jesus died and was resurrected from the dead. But, what they say they are celebrating, does it really jive with their theology that they profess?
You see, you might not have ever thought about this before, but most churches believe and expect you to believe also, the doctrine of the Trinity. This is basically a belief that states that God is really one God made up of three different persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; a doctrine that was created by a council of bishops who met together in the Roman Empire back in 325 A.D., and a few more times, as they ironed out this doctrine, resulting in what they would call ‘orthodoxy.’ The problem with this Trinity doctrine is, there are all kinds of holes in it. One of which, is saying that Jesus is God, but yet professing at the same time, that he died on the cross for our sins. They are, in fact, teaching that God died on the cross for your sins. The problem with this teaching is, the Scriptures tell us in
I Timothy 6:16 that God “alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen or can see.” You see, if the Scriptures say that God is immortal and cannot die, then how could Jesus have died on the cross for our sins, if he was God and can’t die? It’s definitely a problem for all Trinitarian churches.
Immortality is something that was given to Jesus (he didn’t previously possess it before he was resurrected from the dead by God, or he wouldn’t have obviously been able to die) and is what will be given to us as well, when we will be resurrected from the dead at his return to the earth to set up his rule and reign over all the earth. I Corinthians 15:43 says, “For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.” Jesus was a mortal man, who died, and was raised immortal. Jesus was the first one to be raised from the dead to live forever, and“after that, those who are Christ’s at His coming.” I Corinthians 15:23.
When we see Jesus, we get a foreshadowing of what awaits us. He wasn’t (isn’t) a supernatural God-man elevated and exalted to ‘God-dom’, but a supernaturally conceived man, who was obedient to His God, so that he was exalted and given every name and authority and power that was God’s, to be his as well. Extraordinary!
This Easter, many preachers will stand in their pulpits to proclaim that Jesus died for our sins, which he did, of course! However, they will not explain how they want you to believe that Jesus was God the Son, as opposed to the Son of God. They won’t detail their theory of dual nature (which if you find this in Scripture, please note your reference, because I can’t find it anywhere), where Jesus is sometimes acting as a man, (where he can die), but Jesus is also acting sometimes as God (where he didn’t really die), yet still 100% man and 100% God, because it is so confusing, they don’t teach it. They only have this theory available, for those of us who ask, and wonder how Jesus could be both a man and the Almighty God, yet die and not die? It really is a mess, if you start delving into it. They will attempt to explain that as Jesus, the man, his body died. But, as Jesus, our God, his spirit did not die, so he didn’t really die, and can still be God. They believe this, because they teach we never die either, if you buy into this “spirit never dying Platoism” that is not supported by Scripture. Most churches will teach you that your body dies, but your soul or spirit (many use these words interchangeably although there is a difference) goes to either heaven or hell, until the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. The problem with this is, that makes all of us immortal and none of us ever really die, thus we are buying into the deception that Satan told Eve in Genesis 3:4, “You surely shall not die!” This explanation also makes our hope for the resurrection rather pointless, since we have already been rewarded with immortality and supposedly already dwelling with God in heaven. The Christian hope subtly changes to going to heaven when you die, rather than what Jesus and the apostles preached ~ the resurrection of the dead.
The truth of the matter is found clearly in Scripture:
- Jesus was uniquely born, by God begetting (creating) him in the womb of Mary (Luke 1:35);
- Jesus was a man when he died on the cross and a man after he was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God to be our mediator (I Timothy 2:5);
- Jesus really did die. (Romans 8:34).
- God raised Jesus up from the dead (Acts 2:32).
- Our hope isn’t that our soul will fly off down under or up to heaven, but a solid one: the resurrection of the dead (I Corinthians 15:12-14) because, sad as it is, we really will all die, and we will need to be brought back to life, awakened from the sleep of the dead.
- There will no longer be any death only when the Kingdom of God is established, the earth is made new, and when God will finally dwell with mankind (Revelation 21:4). This has yet to occur.
The Bible teaches us that there will be two resurrections.
- The first one, at the return of Christ Jesus, of all those who belong to Jesus, and who are asleep (dead) at his return. These will be resurrected from the dead, brought back to life, just as Jesus was, to live eternally from that point on. (I Corinthians 15).
- Then there will be a second resurrection (Daniel 12:2) after Christ’s millennium rule, where the wicked and righteous [that is, those judged "righteous" who had lived during & after the millennium] will both be raised from the dead, one to a resurrection of eternal life, the other to judgment and death in the lake of fire (John 5:29; Revelation 20:4-5).
You see, the Spirit of God who “raised Jesus from the dead, will also give life to our mortal bodies, through His Spirit who indwells you.” (Romans 8:12). Our hope as believers in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, is that we will inherit eternal life in the kingdom of God. Our hope is based on being resurrected from the dead (unless we are still alive at his coming), to be changed in the twinkling of an eye, to become imperishable and immortal, to never die again.
This Sunday, at our church and I hope at yours as well, we will be teaching the basic Bible truths for which Paul was imprisoned for: Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead (Acts 24:15, 21). We will teach what Scriptures teach: That Jesus, the Son of God, died for our sins. We will teach the resurrection of the dead, for without this resurrection of Jesus, and this future hope of ours, our faith is in vain. We have no hope. We have no future. We have no reason to be saved from our sins. It all hinges on the fact that Jesus really did die, that God raised him from the dead to eternal life, and that this is our hope as well.
Without it, the story is only westernized Plato folklore, that distorts what God asks us to believe and hope in and wait for. Until that day, I will stick to what Paul preached and longed for ~ that Jesus is truly the Messiah sent from God, who will return and we will be resurrected from the dead to reign with him on this earth. This is the Easter message. This is the Good News. This is the Gospel that we are to share and shout from the roof tops and proclaim with confidence and boldness. This same Jesus, who died for our sins on a cross, really truly died. Our God raised Him from the dead! We will be raised, too, and this we hope for, live for, die for.
This is our prayer: Come Lord Jesus, Come, for we are longing for this day! We are longing for the resurrection of the dead!
“Now God has not only raised the Lord Jesus, but will also raise us up through His power.”
I Corinthians 6:14
Life After Death
by Angela Moore
With last Sunday being “Resurrection Day” or “Easter,” it has caused me to take the time to reflect upon Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, and ponder the question,
“Where did Jesus go when he died on the cross?”
I Corinthians 15:20, 23 plainly tells us that “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who are asleep … but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, after that, those who are Christ’s at his coming.”
In other words, we can safely figure that whatever happened to Jesus first, will happen to us later.
Some people assume that Jesus went to heaven for the three days between the time of his death and his resurrection. Some people think so because of Luke 23:43 when Jesus says,
“Truly I say to you today you shall be with me in paradise.”
They tell me that this obviously means that Jesus will see the other man who is dying on another cross beside him, that very day in paradise.
The problem with that is two-fold. One, they take this verse out of context. In the preceding verse, the [criminal] on the cross is making a request of Jesus, “Remember me when you come in your kingdom!” The [criminal] knew that Jesus’ kingdom was yet to come and its location would be here on a newly restored earth (a.k.a. ‘paradise’), where Jesus would be King of the Jews (and every tribe and nation) reigning on the throne of David out of Jerusalem. He wasn’t asking Jesus if he’d “see him in heaven!” Not only that, there were no commas in the original text, so we can either read it,
“Truly I say to you today, you shall be with me in paradise,” or that “today you shall be with me.”
The second-part of this problem, is that we know for certain that “today” Jesus did NOT see this man in heaven upon their deaths, because later, after Jesus is resurrected from the dead, he tells Mary in John 20:17, “Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.” Jesus had yet to ascend to heaven to sit at God’s right hand. He has been resurrected from the dead, yet at this point, clearly hasn’t been to heaven. The disciples will later witness his ascension to the heavens, in Acts 1:9-11.
Was the man on the cross beside him in paradise waiting for him to appear up in heaven, when he got there? Was there any other Old Testament ‘Greats’ like Abraham, Isaac, Moses, or David, in heaven too? For if this is where paradise is, and where people go after they die, would we not assume they would be there also? This is not the case. In fact, Acts 2:29-36 tells us that David died, and was buried in his tomb, and is still there buried with his forefathers in the grave or sheol. It was not David who was exalted and ascended into heaven, but Jesus, the Lord Messiah. So, we can conclude that no one is in heaven right now, except God, His Son Jesus, and the angels. Acts 3:20-21 tells us that Jesus will remain in heaven, at the right hand of God until the period of restoration of all things, which God spoke of through his prophets in the Old Testament scriptures.
So, if Jesus did not go to heaven when he died, others suppose Jesus went to hell based on Acts 2:27, 31 “Because Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay… he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades nor did His flesh suffer decay.” When people read “hades,” they think of the modern terminology of a hell, somewhere under the earth, where dead people’s souls go to burn in torture, without dying, and without burning up. However, the Bible’s “Hades” is more accurately defined as ‘gravedom’ or “the grave” or the place of the dead. It is definitely not paradise, nor is it the “gehenna fire” or the “lake of fire” (mentioned in Revelation 20:14) where the wicked will be cast, upon their resurrection of the dead at the judgment of Christ on the earth (which is the resurrection Daniel, the prophet speaks of in Daniel 12:2).
Jesus was not abandoned to the grave, but God raised him from the dead on the third day.
Hades is the earth, the grave, or the tomb where Jesus was buried.
Jesus likens his three days of being dead, to Jonah’s “three days and nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Matthew 12:40. Jesus was in the grave when he was dead, as mundane or boring as this may sound to our conditioned ears and minds which have been raised to believe we’ll see some action when we are dead, whether it be with harps & celebrating (heaven) or torture, fire & pitchforks (hell). Rather, in the Bible, Jesus likens the death state to that of being asleep, just as when he speaks of Lazarus’s death in John 11:11, 13, 14:
“Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, that I may awaken him out of sleep…Lazarus is dead.”
We NEVER hear this terminology anymore, for it has been replaced with “they are in a better place now.”
When Jesus died, he was buried in his tomb, and just like being asleep, he was awakened from death, to eternal life. He was neither in heaven, nor in hell, as our western culture tends to believe and propagate, but rather, the Scriptures teach us that he was dead. He ceased to have any thoughts or activity for three days and nights, as he slept the sleep of the dead in the “abyss” or sheol (grave) of the earth. Then, God awakened him to immortality with a resurrected, imperishable, glorified body which we too, hope to inherit “at his coming!” Our reward, the Bible tells us repeatedly, is on that day (the day of Christ’s return to the earth, everyone at the same time…not individually as each person dies and floats up to the pearly gates, as you, too, may have supposed before you read this blog!). Our hope is the resurrection from the dead and the return of Christ. These two events are intertwined and will usher forth an everlasting kingdom in which we will be entering with our newly resurrected bodies, for if we are not clothed with our immortal, righteous, perfected bodies, we certainly cannot inherit this promised land!
The more I study this concept, the more clearly it becomes of what I am to have faith in God for, in fulfilling His promise to me. This is what I look forward to and hope you see clearly, if not fully now, as if in a mirror dimly, but then face to face:
“So man lies down and does not rise, until the heavens be no more. He will not awake nor be aroused out of his sleep. Oh that Thou wouldst hide me in Sheol that Thou wouldst set a limit for me! If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my struggle I will wait until my change comes.”
And that change will come, in the twinkling of an eye! “And as for me, I know my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself shall behold and whom my eyes shall see and not another.” (Job 14:12-14; 19:25-27)
Clearly, I will be seeing God, on the earth, in my flesh (resurrected body), with eyes to see and a brain to process my thoughts. And then God will finally dwell with mankind! [Rev. 21.2-4, 22.4; Matt 5.8]
There is life after death! Real honest to goodness, living and breathing life, standing on two very real legs upon a newly restored earth, seeing with my perfect vision my Almighty God, Savior, Redeemer, Rock, Shield, Creator of the Universe, Ancient of Days, my Adonai YHWH, the one and only living God.
[As well as seeing our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Messiah.]
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying,
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men,
and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His people,
and God Himself shall be among them.”
Revelation 21:3
