Death Means Death: The “Easter” Story
Jesus was dead as a doornail during those three days.
I’m told today is Easter—that special holiday where Christians celebrate the resurrection of their Savior…
And also hunt for multicolored eggs that, somehow, paradoxically, belong to bunnies. (Admittedly, this was the best part of Easter, growing up.)
So, what’s my point?
I’ll tell you my point.
My point is that most Christians today don’t believe in the actual, literal, physical death of Jesus Christ.
They believe He was alive, in some other place, during those three dreary days that His body was locked away in the tomb.
Here’s a wonderful quote from Geo. L. Rogers, who laid out the situation in Unsearchable Riches magazine1, many moons ago.
Strangely enough, many do not believe that Christ really died, because they declare that “there is no death; what seems so is transition.” Many who really trust Christ for salvation and even talk about His blood-shedding, will not admit that Christ really died. He simply changed His mode of life.
It follows that if Christ did not die, He was not buried. Only His body was buried. And Christendom generally does not believe in the resurrection of Christ.
While a few believe that a whole Christ was raised from the dead, the majority assert that they do not believe in a bodily resurrection.
To think of Christ's body being resurrected is “too materialistic a conception” for the modern mind.
The majority think that the real Christ passed immediately into glory with His expiring breath. To them resurrection is reduced to survival in spite of dissolution.
A perusal of hundreds of so-called “Easter” sermons shows that many famous preachers believe in survival or “natural immortality” rather than in the gospel fact of resurrection.
No department of theology or of exegesis of Scripture is so neglected and poverty stricken as that concerning resurrection.
Death Is Non-consciousness
Before we can understand what happened to Jesus after He took His last breath, up there on the pole, or stake, we have to get clarity on what, according to Scripture, death really is.
In other words, what happens when we die? Do we go straight to heaven? Do we fly around with red-haired cherubs? Do we pluck our harps? Do we meet Humphrey Bogart’s ghost?
Thankfully, we have a Scripture verse that tells us exactly what happens.
For the living know that they shall die, But the dead know nothing whatsoever; -Ecclesiastes 9:5
When we die, we know nothing anymore. That is, we cease to exist. We lose our consciousness. We go back to the same state we were in before we were born.
Before we were born, before we came into the world, we didn’t know we didn’t exist. There was no experience.
This, right here, is what death is. This, right here, is the state Jesus entered after He was crucified. And He remained like that for three days.
There’s no bliss in death. There’s no pain in death. There’s nothing, or nothing-ness.
Here’s another verse:
His spirit shall go forth, and he shall return to his ground; In that day his reflections perish. -Psalm 146:4
Again, our reflections, our thoughts, perish at the moment of death.
The Scriptures are very clear on this point.
How about another one, just for good measure?
So a man lies down and shall not rise; Until the heavens fail, they shall not awake, Nor shall they rouse from their sleep. -Job 14:12
The Soul Is Not Immortal
Many who read the Bible believe there’s something called “immortality of the soul.” That is, no human actually dies when they die. They exist in some other form after they physically die.
They, Christians, believe death is nothing more than a transition into a new form of life.
These Bible-readers believe that, at the moment of death, people are destined for eternal bliss, or eternal torture.
But this idea doesn’t show up in Scripture. We just covered how death is the state of non-consciousness. Nothing, literally, happens in death. You, me, we, cease to exist in death.
Keeping that in mind, we arrive at the natural conclusion that our souls, whatever a soul is, cannot be immortal.
But, does Scripture agree with this conclusion?
As it turns out…
It does.
And forming is Yahweh Elohim the human of soil from the ground, and He is blowing into his nostrils the breath of the living, and becoming is the human a living soul. -Genesis 2:7
This verse is crucial for understanding what, specifically, the soul is, and how it came about, and what its future is.
Bear with me.
Consider the word “forming” here. The Hebrew word is yatsar, which means to mold or shape. Think of a potter handling clay, forming, molding, and shaping the lump into something identifiable (Isaiah 64:8).
Yahweh Elohim was forming something.
But what was He forming?
The second word we must consider is “soil.” The Hebrew word used is adamah, which is our flesh. Our guts, skin, and toenails are all made of soil.
So far, we have Yahweh Elohim forming, molding, and shaping soil, our flesh, into something.
But a flesh body, in itself, doesn’t have the necessary ingredient that animates it, gives it life. If you don’t believe me, visit your local cemetery sometime.
That brings us to the word “breath” in the verse above. The Hebrew word is neshamah, which, according to the Strong’s Concordance, is “a puff, that is, wind, angry or vital breath, divine inspiration, intellect…”
In other words, God breathed an animating “wind,” or spirit, into the inanimate soil that He was forming.
God’s animating spirit is the breath that gives us life. It’s because of this animating spirit that I can sit behind my computer, and type these words.
So now, we have Yahweh Elohim forming, molding, and shaping soil, our flesh, into something that He breathes an animating spirit into.
As a result, “the human” became “a living soul,” according to Genesis 2:7.
The word “soul”, in Hebrew, is nephesh, meaning, literally, “a breathing creature.”
It’s imperative to understand that our “soul,” therefore, isn’t a thing in itself. The soul is the product, or result, of bringing together soil (adamah) and God’s animating spirit (neshamah).
For all you math nerds out there, we can frame it thus:
Soil (Adamah) + God’s Animating Spirit (Neshamah) = Living Soul (Nephesh).
Therefore, the soul exists so long as our flesh and God’s animating spirit are entwined, or combined.
Everyone alive, even non-believers, have God’s animating spirit in them, including the snippy old lady working the cash register at the grocery store.
Now, if, at death, we enter non-existence, as we discussed earlier, that must mean something happens to our flesh and God’s animating spirit, resulting in non-life.
What is it, exactly, that happens?
The Scriptures tell us that, too.
And the soil returns to the earth just as it was, And the spirit, it returns to the One, Elohim, Who gave it. -Ecclesiastes 12:7
Pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?
The soil, adamah, returns, well, to the earth. Proof of this is your local cemetery.
The spirit, neshamah, returns to the One Who gave it, Elohim.
Therefore, our soul, nephesh, ceases to exist at the time of death. Breaking up soil and the spirit results in our non-existence.
We may conclude, then, that death is a return. We go back to the way we were before our flesh and God’s animating spirit came together to make us a living soul.
Death Is an Enemy, Not a Doorway
Scripture tells us that death is not a friend, but a foe. It’s not a doorway into eternal life, as Christendom proclaims.
There’s nothing in all of Holy Writ that even suggests this. While, for some, it’s a pleasant thought, it’s just not true.
And so, we must commit ourselves to a hard truth, rather than a flattering lie.
Paul writes:
The last enemy is being abolished: death. -1 Corinthians 15:26
How in the world would death be an enemy if, through it, we immediately enter into eternal life?
Christendom teaches that death isn’t really death. It’s just a new, better form of life, with God.
Paul tells us, explicitly, that death is an enemy. He goes on to tell us that the penalty of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
If we took Christendom’s understanding, we’d really be saying that the penalty of sin (i.e. death) for believers is an eternal reward with God.
In Genesis 2:17, God tells Adam he shouldn’t eat “from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” because if, and when, he did, “to die you shall be dying.”
God was warning Adam. The phrase, “to die you shall be dying,” is a very poetic way of describing human experience on earth.
From the moment we’re born, we’re decaying, falling apart, and eventually, at some point, we die.
That’s what this verse is teaching us. We’re ever in the process of dying, until finally, we do.
Our Hope Is to Be Roused, Not Immortality of the Soul
An accurate rendering of Scripture clarifies the meaning of death, and demonstrates why we need to be roused from the dead, if we are to enjoy a future with God.
Paul writes:
…in an instant, in the twinkle of an eye, at the last trump. For He will be trumpeting, and the dead will be roused incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. 54 Now, whenever this corruptible should be putting on incorruption and this mortal should be putting on immortality, then shall come to pass the word which is written, Swallowed up was Death by Victory. 55 Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting? 56 Now the sting of Death is sin, yet the power of sin is the law. 57 Now thanks be to God, Who is giving us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 So that, my beloved brethren, become settled, unmovable, superabounding in the work of the Lord always, being aware that your toil is not for naught in the Lord. -1 Corinthians 15:52-58
To reach incorruption, we need to be roused, or brought back to life.
This is what happened to Jesus on the third day. He was roused. The animating spirit that had returned to God, as well as His (i.e. Jesus’) flesh, were reunited, making Him a living soul once more.
King David had the same hope of being roused.
For You shall not forsake my soul in the unseen; You shall not allow Your benign one to see corruption. -Psalm 16:10
David knew he was going to die, but he also believed, through faith, that God wasn’t going to leave him there. God was going to rouse him at the appointed time.
But, for now, David is still dead as a doornail. He hasn’t been roused. The appointed time has not yet come.
In fact, the only One Who has been roused is Christ Jesus.
In 1 Timothy 6:16, Paul writes that Christ Jesus, the “King of kings and Lord of lords, Who alone has immortality…”
No human who has ever lived, aside from our Lord, has immortality. Not. One.
Not yet.
One of my favorite passages in all of Scripture is Job 14:14-15. Job asks one of the most important questions of all time. He doesn’t ask where he goes when he dies. He already knew the answer.
Instead, he asks something much more profound:
If a master dies shall he live again? All the days of my enlistment I shall wait Until my relief comes. 15 You shall call, and I shall answer You; You shall long for the work of Your hands. -Job 14:14-15
Even if, and when, we die, God won’t forget the works of His hands.
He’ll long for us. He’ll miss us. He’ll want to see us again.
This was His attitude toward Jesus. He longed for the work of His hands, and on the third day, Christ was roused.
Because He bore the sins of the world, and brought them into death with Him, He was roused, having paid the tab of sin—death itself.
Since the bill of sin has been paid through Christ’s work on the pole, or stake, we are now justified through faith in His blood (Romans 3:24-25).
If we’re going to celebrate “Easter,” let’s do it right.
With grace, and the tie of peace,
Concordant Student
George L. Rogers, Unsearchable Riches, vol. 29, p. 102.