8 Verses That Will Change Your Mind About Jesus' Death and Easter!
God's Word can't be clearer. "I passed on to you as most important... Christ died for our sins... He was buried, and he rose on the third day... in line with the scriptures... If Christ hasn’t been raised... you are still in your sins, and what’s more, those who have died in Christ are gone forever." (1Corinthians 15:3-4,17-18,CEB) Obviously, embracing what the Bible really says about Jesus' Death and Resurrection makes all the difference in our salvation and our hope of seeing our loved ones again. When scripture surprises us, do we trust it as God's own voice helping us understand His great plan? Or, do we hold to traditions we've heard since childhood? Let's see.
A. HALF-DEATH DOESN'T SAVE. "Now that we have been made righteous by His blood, we can be even more certain that we will be saved... We were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." (Romans 5:9-10,CEV) Yet, the most prominent Death tradition in America and Western societies asserts that when someone dies it's only half-death. You know the concept, bodies die but spirits are released to keep on living. Theologians even label the released spirits "immortal souls," meaning they cannot die. Unknowingly, almost all of us have grown up
embracing a pagan Greek understanding of death that's incompatible with Biblical salvation! It robs sinners of the Savior's full death. The theory offers only Jesus' physical death while an ethereal part of Him escaped into thin air, never dying at all. Either Jesus fully died or we are not saved! Half-death distorts the most sublime gift in universal history and leaves us with a Christ Who didn't really die and a Savior that didn't really save.
Classical Greece is to blame for the fact that popular Christianity contradicts scripture. Plato said, "That's not a chair. An ax can splinter that! If it can be destroyed it's faulty. Physical items are only the faulty mani-festations of their realities. The real chair is in your mind's eye, pristine and perfect, not physical and faulty." Smart guy, Plato, went further. "That's not a person. They have a body. It can get sick. It's physical and faulty. The real person is in your mind's eye, separate from the body. It can't be harmed. It can't get sick. It cannot die." Thus a sinister lie was born. People do die, and they need a Savior! Platonic philosophy replaced the Old and New Testaments as our source of truth and the immortal soul concept originating in Greek paganism has captured Christianity. Old Plato has influenced Western thought for so long that most Christians read scripture Plato's way rather than the Bible's own way.
B.SCRIPTURE TEACHES FULL-DEATH.Careful Bible readers list a preponderance of straight-forward passages proving full death, physical-mental-spiritual:
1. Dust + Breath = Living Being. "The LORD God formed
man [Adam] of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." (Genesis 2:7,NKJV) To create human life, God added two ingredients together, a body formed from dust plus the breath of life. When combined, there was human life.
2. Body - Breath = No Life. "Human beings and animals share the same fate. One dies just like the other—both have the same life-breath... All go to the same place: all are from the dust; all return to the dust." (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20, CEB) Dying is the reverse process of creation. When the breath of life leaves the body, there is no life, only a lifeless body. "You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust." (Psalm 104:29, NKJV) Nothing of the original life goes on living.
3. The Dead Have No Brain Function. "The dead know nothing; they don’t even have their memories. Whatever they did in their lifetimes—loving, hating, envying—is long gone, and they have no part in anything here on earth anymore." (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, TLB) Man's brain dies with the rest of his body. They are dead intellectually and emotionally, too.
4.No One Thinks or Plans in the Grave. "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no...knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going." (Ecclesiastes 9:10, NKJV) This verse doesn't say that only bodies of the dead go to graves while their spirits are released to go on living. It does not say "in the grave where your body is going." It says, "in the grave where you are going." Again, no mental activity or consciousness is described for the dead. When a man dies, "in that very day his plans perish." (Psalm 146:4, NKJV)
5. The Dead Are Not in Heaven Praising & Thanking God. "The dead do not praise the LORD, nor any who go down into silence." (Psalm 115:17) "In death there is no remembrance of You; in the grave who will give You thanks?" (Psalm 6:5) "Sheol [the grave] cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down to the pit
cannot hope for Your truth. The living , the living man, he shall praise You, as I do this day." (Isaiah 38:18-19) The Bible describes magnificent praise and adoration of Our Father in Heaven. If the dead were there, surely they'd be praising and thanking God. The answer to this puzzle is simple. The dead don't go to heaven when they die. They're not there so they are not part of the celebration until Resurrection Day when the grandest reunion celebration of the ages is planned!
6. Evil Angels Are Busy Drawing People to Satan. "We aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens.... Stay alert!" (Ephesians 6:12-18,CEB) Every year, several patients recount a very moving sensual experience to me as their chaplain. They're sure one of their cherished deceased family members has visited their bedside. But this blog is soaking us in Bible evidence that their visitors cannot really be dead loved ones no matter how authentic the masquerade seems.Both Testaments are replete with inspired warnings
against involvement in spiritualism. Our entertainment
media is saturated with warlocks, mediums, supernatural heroes, and communication with the dead. What parent wouldn't warn their children about red-hot stove-top burners or a coiled rattlesnake at the mailbox? Jesus has warned us of the devil's deceptions. To those of us longing to see the loved ones we miss so grievously, Plato's free-floating soul concept actually recommends involvement in the Spirit World! The Bible's teaching about Death and The Resurrection is Jesus' careful warning against spiritualism.
7. Jesus Didn't Go to Heaven While He Was Dead. "On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning... Jesus said to her, 'Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:1,17,NABRE)
Crucified on Friday, Jesus didn't ascend to heaven to confirm His saving sacrifice until His resurrection on Sunday. Neither Jesus, nor Lazarus, nor Jairus' daughter, nor the widow's son from Nain, nor any other person recorded in scripture as being resurrected from the dead described seeing the celestial courts of glory while they were dead.
8.Rewards Are Given on Resurrection Day. "All these people won approval for their faith but they did not receive what was promised, since God had planned something better for us, so that they would not be perfected without us." (Hebrews 11:39-40) Something better for sure! What a day! We're all going together--all
the great faith heroes, the risen saints of all the ages, my precious mother released from her Parkinsons, my Dad in-law without his Leukemia! The saved of earth will enter "Sweet Beulah Land" altogether!! God has planned a Welcome Home like no One else could!
Does this topic really make that much difference? Ask Paul again: "If Christ hasn’t been raised... you are still in your sins, and what’s more, those who have died in Christ are gone forever." (1Corinthians 15:3-4,17-18,CEB)
Yes, getting this topic right matters supremely! This isn't just a doctrinal debate. Trusting tradition over the Bible on this topic invalidates two essential Promises of God.
Essential One: By faith in the full death of Christ, sinners receive forgiveness and salvation from their sins!--NOT SO IF JESUS DIDN'T FULLY DIE!
Essential Two: Because Jesus rose from the dead, all who have died in faith will rise in the great Resurrection!--NOT SO IF JESUS DIDN'T REALLY DIE AND REALLY RISE AGAIN!
Those two promises are way too precious to give up in order to hold on to a tradition imported from ancient unbelievers! I bet you agree.
Your friend,
