Dead is dead. So it is said. Then it is definitely finished. Over and out. It is not so, however. People may think that death is the end of the story for a human being but it isn’t so. When the body dies, the soul and the spirit go to a destination in eternity. That destination involved pain for the rich man, and for poor Lazarus, glory in Abraham’s bosom.1 The Lord says to the thief – murderer – criminal – revolutionary – freedom fighter (not quite sure why he got the cruel death-penalty on the cross): “Today you will be with Me in Paradise,”2 Paul says that to depart and be with Christ is far better.3 Dead is not dead, but rather a transfer to a new way of living.
Some say: Okay, but if that is the case then the second death will most certainly and definitely be the end. Even that is not the case. Our ‘story’ is to be continued, in a changed mode of existence. Yes, but, they say, death and ‘Hades’ – the realm of the dead themselves go into the ‘lake of fire’ and they disappear. They will then no longer have a role to play; they have no further Indeed, for no one will die any longer, and neither will anyone be born.4 The number of people is complete. In that sense death and the realm of the dead do cease to exist. What does exist, what was ‘created’ however, continues to exist eternally because it was created by an everlasting God. Whatever has its existence in and by Him will exist forever.
Others say: Oh, but it will then certainly be the case that everyone who is cast into the ‘lake of fire’ will indeed perhaps ‘burn’ there for a while with his/her resurrection body, but they will eventually ‘burn up’. Like logs of wood in a fire that burn for some time with flames, but finally turn into ashes and smoke, disappearing like thin vapour. Thus, they will disappear and cease to exist anyway, after a long period of punishment and ‘burning’. For, they say, only angels (and fallen angels as well, therefore) live forever, and people are mortal! Once again, being mortal and dying does not mean ceasing to exist. What has come forth from God’s creative hand exists and will continue to exist. Matter itself can be reduced to pure energy, it can transmute into other forms, but it does not disappear. Everything has its being and continued existence in Him.
Yes, but, some say, the Bible does not have any notion of ‘eternity’; that is rather a Greek philosophical notion. The Bible speaks of ‘aioon’, aeons, eras, world periods, phases in world history, and when this world ‘ceases to exist’ and the last ‘aioon/aeon’ has come to an end, there then comes a timeless ‘New Heaven and New Earth’. Right? A philosophical question that people in the Middle Ages loved to debate is whether eternity is: without time? Or is eternity: time without an end? The thinking behind is that it would be best for those ‘doomed ones’ to have disappeared, instead of suffering everlasting punishment.
So they say that since ‘God is love’, everything will turn out to be alright in the end, even for the devil and his angels. The Bible gives absolutely no reason for this train of thought, however. It is human rational ‘wishful thinking’. Who would not grant such a ‘happy end’ to everyone? But again: Judgment is God’s business and God’s alone. He gives no account of His inner motivations to us, mortal beings, created, ‘formed and made’ (Isaiah 43:7) human beings, vessels of clay in His hand, Jeremiah 18:1-6. God says through Isaiah’s lips: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.”5 Refer to Romans 9:14-29. It is because He is ‘rich in mercy’ that the call to ‘repentance’ and ‘change of heart’ resounds endlessly. Peter says that this message once even was proclaimed in the realm of the dead, to those who died before the Flood.6 Judgment is coming. Whereas the present ‘Heaven and earth’ then have already disappeared, dissolved, the dead are standing there, before the throne, alive for evermore. All earthly certainties have disappeared, indeed, even the earth itself is no longer there in its present form or shape, but has fled, passed away, or perhaps it has been transformed, after having first been stripped to the core, melted into a new form, because it was kept for the fire, with all its elements.7 ‘Dying’, ‘death’ and the ‘realm of the dead’ are gone, in the ‘lake of fire’. It was never God’s intention for them ever to be there. ‘Death’ came through man’s sin,8 but Jesus’ victory on the cross caused the grave to be empty on that early Easter morning. He arose, as the ‘firstfruit’ of those who have fallen asleep, in Glory,9 and we shall rise with Him to Glory.
• There is still the question as to whether the New Heavens and the New Earth are ‘timeless’ or will have ‘time without an end’. In my opinion it is more probable that there will be ‘time everlasting’, time-without-an-end. However difficult that is to imagine!
• God is an active, Creative God, not an unmoved Mover, as the Greeks thought ‘Fate’ to be. God is a God of ‘history’. He is without beginning and without an end. Yet Creation has a ‘beginning’, when He started to ‘Create’.
• Angels were Created. The ‘Heavenly dimensions’ were Created. “In the beginning God Created the Heavens and the earth”. ‘Heavens’ in the sense of both the ‘Heavenly dimensions’ as well as our ‘space-time continuum four dimensional world’, the ‘Universe’ and our ‘earth’s atmosphere’.
• He is the ‘Alpha’ and the ‘Omega’, the ‘Beginning’ and the ‘End’, the ‘end- goal’. The ‘First’ and the ‘Last’, without an end. He continues to act. And together in and with and through Christ He will involve us in His actions, and maybe in New Creative plans forever, in perfect harmony with Him. Time is in His hands.
Bible References:
1.Luke 16:19–31 2.Luke 23:43 3.Philippians 1:23 4.Matthew 22:30 5.Isaiah 55:7–13 NIV 6.1 Peter 3:18–20 and 4:6; 2 Peter 4:2-9 7.2 Peter 3:7, 10 8.Romans 5:12, 14 9.1 Corinthians 15:20
