WHAT HAPPENS TO US WHEN WE DIE

Love from God, to all his creation, is unconditional, but life comes to the living with terms of agreements. This entire universe and all that is in it, including each and every one of us, belongs to God. Every sub atomic particle in this entire universe, is animated by our creator, not one of us is in control of one single atom, neutron, proton, or electron, they all belong to God. When Jesus said, “You brought nothing into this world, neither can you take anything out” he meant just that. None of us are in a position of authority or control of our destination, neither initially, at conception, or in our deaths, life and death, ultimately, is not in our control. These things are absolute facts, and they cannot be argued. All life, ultimately, comes from God, even the life of Christ, rest in the hands of his Father. Jesus is referred to after his death as “The Eternal Father” because his death, made it possible for man to go on living eternally. It did not mean that eternally Jesus had been the Father. Jesus is not the creator, the scriptures refer to him as “the first born of all creation” being born, is the very same thing as having a beginning. Jesus called himself the Son of God, he never once referred to himself as the Father, and neither does the scriptures. Why the mention of this paragraph ?

It is because the very reason that the subject of what happens to us when we die even comes up, is because of the challenge of who God is, and what authority does he even have. The reason that this subject is so confusing to people, is because entire belief systems have been formed upon lies about God, not the truth about God, not upon the foundation of the scriptures that they claim to believe, but in defiance of the scriptures. As a rule, mankind rejects the word of God while at the very same time profess a faith in it. It is allot like saying to God’s face, “I believe what you are saying God, but you are a liar”. I can successfully argue in basic elementary terms, that a child can understand, that there does not exist an organized religion on earth today, that teaches harmoniously and completely the whole of the scriptures. And this subject of death, is the beginning of that proof, because every single religion that I know of, except two, that is to say, The Bible Students of Pennsylvania and Jehovah’s Witnesses, teach, about death, the exact opposite of the scriptures, and in so doing, call God a liar. So now let us quote from the scriptures, and see what God’s word has to say about death.

At Genesis 1:26,27 we read, “Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth.” And God went on to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.” The scriptures here tell us that it is God who made man, man did not create himself, he was created by God. Man was intelligently designed, he had a designer, he was not the designer of himself.

The Bible talks about two planes of conscientiousness, the physical universe and the spiritual one. In the spiritual universe, there is no physical danger, but in the physical universe, the laws of the physical universe must be obeyed to maintain life, there are things here that can cause death, or at the very least reduce the quality of life. So God gave instructions to man, in his very beginning, in the Garden of pleasure called Eden. We read of this at Genesis 2:16,17, “God also gave this command to the man: “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.”

Notice there that God did not say that you will die and go to heaven and be with me, nor did he say that you will go to a place of eternal torture, he said, “You will die”.

Skipping past the creation of Eve, in the 3^rd Chapter of Genesis 1-5 we read this, “Now the serpent was the most cautious of all the wild animals of the field that Jehovah God had made. So it said to the woman: “Did God really say that you must not eat from every tree of the garden?”At this the woman said to the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But God has said about the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden: ‘You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it; otherwise you will die.’” At this the serpent said to the woman: “You positively will not die. For God knows that in the very day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and bad.” Those words, “You positively will not die” have been taught by all of the religions on earth from that moment until this very day. You will go to heaven, you will go to hell, you will transmigrate to some other life form and work your way back up the evolutionary life chain, or if you are exceptionally lucky, and are a Muslim well then things get really good for you, you simply strap on a chest bomb, go into a crowed market place, blow yourself up along with 200 other innocent people, and God will reward you with eternal life in heaven, with the added benefit that he will throw in 70 virgins that you get to deflower in and orgy of lust while god sits back and is watching you. I guess that the Islamic rules for fornication and adultery don’t apply if God is in the room with you watching, or do we think that God slaughters some Imams so that he can bring them up to heaven to kill those virgins after you have sex with them for the sin of unlawful intercourse, as ruled by the Imams of all of the Islamic nations.

Adam eats the fruit, and Genesis then tells us this at Genesis 3:17,18,19,: “And to Adam he said: “Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree concerning which I gave you this command, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground on your account. In pain you will eat its produce all the days of your life. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, and you must eat the vegetation of the field. In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Notice that God did not condemn Adam to a place of eternal torment, nor life in heaven, nor start life over again as a single cell amoeba in a swamp waiting for a bolt of lightening to hit this cell at just the right time, at just the right place at just the right voltage, to make that first cell divide, then spend the next trillion years, to make it divide again. Imagine how long it would take to go from the first living cell, through all life forms that have ever been on earth, to arrive at the very last life form mentioned, an absolutely perfect man. The human mind cannot comprehend that, let alone accomplish it.

So here we have arrived that God said you can, and will die and return to the dust, and Satan says that you positively do not die, the Churches teach that you do not die. All the same as calling God a liar.

At 1 Corinthians 15:22 it reads,: “In Adam all are dying.”

At Romans 5:12- 19 in part, and broken up, it reads this in way of explanation, “That is why, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because they had all sinned, Nevertheless, death ruled as king from Adam down to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the same way that Adam transgressed, the one man who sinned. For the judgment after one trespass was condemnation, So, then, as through one trespass the result to men of all sorts was condemnation, through the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners,” This body of scriptures also points out the role of Christ to reverse the condemnation caused by Adam we know, just keeping the theme in tact here.

At Ecclesiastes 9:5,10, it tells us this, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all, nor do they have any more reward, because all memory of them is forgotten. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going.” When we die, and are in the grave, we have no knowledge of anything, we cease to exist.

At Psalms 146:4 tells us this, “His spirit goes out, he goes back to the ground; in that day his thoughts do perish.”

At Psalms 6:5 it says, “In death there is no mention of you”

At Isaiah 38:18 it tells us, “For the Grave cannot glorify you, Death cannot praise you. Those who go down into the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living can praise you,”

Ecclesiastes 3:19,20 tells us this,”for there is an outcome for humans and an outcome for animals; they all have the same outcome. As the one dies, so the other dies; and they all have but one spirit. So man has no superiority over animals, for everything is futile. All are going to the same place. They all come from the dust, and they all are returning to the dust.” The life force, spirit, and the composition of man and animals are the same. Man and animals return to the dust when they die, they do not go to heaven, there are no roaches and bed bugs in heaven, no rats, cats, dogs, or birds.

At Psalms 115:17 it says,”The dead do not praise Jah.” If man went to heaven when they die, would they not praise Jah?

Acts 13:36 says this,”David, on the one hand, rendered service to God in his own generation, fell asleep in death, was laid with his forefathers, and did see corruption.” Here we see the term falling asleep in death, mentioned of King David, who was also mentioned in scripture specifically as having not ascended to heaven. And since he was favored by God, certainly, if anyone would of gone to heaven upon death, David would have been among them. The term seeing corruption, means returning to the dust.

Ezekiel 18:4 says this,” The soul that is sinning, it itself will die” here we see that the soul can and does die. The soul of man is his flesh and blood, and his spirit is his life force that God gives to all living things.

At Isaiah 53:12 it says this, “He poured out his soul to the very death.” Once again we see that the soul can and does die. The soul of all living things, is the material object they are housed in. The spirit is the life force, the source of energy that animates them.

At Leviticus 23:30 it says,”As for any soul that will do any sort of work on this very day, I must destroy that soul from among his people.” So we see again that the soul can be destroyed.

Psalms 22:29 says this,”No one will ever preserve his own soul alive.” It is God who gives life, not we ourselves. We cannot keep our soul alive.

Joshua 10:28,”As for it’s King he devoted him and every soul that was in it to destruction.” So again, the soul can be destroyed.

Judges 16:30, “And Samson proceeded to say; “Let my soul die with the Philistines.”

Acts 3:23, “Indeed any soul that does not listen to that Prophet will be completely destroyed from among the people.” Again, the soul can be destroyed.

So we see from these scriptures that when a person dies, and the scriptures are clear, that men do die, and we have our cemeteries filled with the graves of our dead loved ones to prove this to ourselves, if only we would actually believe what we see with our own eyes, and believe the words of God, that our bodies return to the dust from whence we were formed.

But now let us draw our attention to hope for the dead. One of the main themes of the scriptures is God’s plan to undo the sentence of death brought on by Satan and our first human parents. We call this the resurrection.

At Acts 17:22-32 it says,”Paul now stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens, I see that in all things you seem to be more given to the fear of the deities than others are. For instance, while passing along and carefully observing your objects of veneration, I found even an altar on which had been inscribed ‘To an Unknown God.’ Therefore, what you are unknowingly worshiping, this I am declaring to you. The God who made the world and all the things in it, being, as he is, Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in handmade temples; nor is he served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. And he made out of one man every nation of men to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of where men would dwell, so that they would seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us. For by him we have life and move and exist, even as some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his children.“Therefore, since we are the children of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, like something sculptured by the art and design of humans. True, God has overlooked the times of such ignorance; but now he is declaring to all people everywhere that they should repent. Because he has set a day on which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and he has provided a guarantee to all men by resurrecting him from the dead.” Now when they heard of a resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, while others said: “We will hear you again about this.”

God has set an appointed time to judge the nations, that time has not come yet. The resurrection of man will happen after the kingdom of God has begun ruling on earth, it has not happened yet, no one but Christ has been resurrected to the heaven as of this moment.

At John 3:13 it says,”No man has ascended into heaven but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man.”

At Acts 2:34 it says, “Actually David did not ascend to the heavens.” God’s favorite king, has not gone to heaven, and the scriptures are clear, Jesus said that no one has gone to heaven except himself. So those people who make the claim that their dead relatives are up in heaven looking down on them are calling Jesus a liar.

At John 5:28, 29,”Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, and those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.” Practically all who have died, will one day hear Christ voice when he calls them out of the grave, but that day is not now, it happens during his kingdom. And also, judgment does not mean judging them for the life they lived under the rulership of Satan, they are judges according to how they live under Christ. God does not bring people back to life, shake his finger at them, then send them back to death.

So I will say a few more words in the next posting. Hope this helps with the question of, what happens to us when we die. The answer, we return to the dust, and wait for the resurrection.