In our last article we learned about the great tragedy which took place when the first man and woman rebelled against God. They defied God’s authority and turned their backs on His love. Adam and Eve decided to set out on their own, but they discovered all too late that sin has grievous consequences. They felt its effects in their bodies. How? By two means. First of all, they had lost their innocence, and sin had taken root in their minds. Never again would they be free from its power. It would tempt them from within and constantly urge them to please themselves and to disobey God. Secondly, they began to die. The process began and never stopped until they were dead. The last thing we read about Adam is:
“And he Died”
What is death? Is it the beginning of another life? Is it the time when we leave the earth and commence a new life in another place? Do we come back in another form and begin all over again? What are the answers to these questions? Let us imagine that we are going back in time through the years of our own lives. We can remember yesterday and last week well enough; last month is less clear, and last year is a strange mixture of things we remember very well and things we seem to have forgotten altogether. But go back further — five years, ten years, back, back to the days when we were small children. Hardly anything can be remembered, and if we go right back to the day of our birth we confess that we know nothing about it. And be. fore that day? None of us knows any thing by personal experience of the things which happened before we were born. We simply did not exist. It was just the same for Adam and Eve, God made them and they had no memory of what happened before they began to exist.
You will remember that the Bible describes man’s beginning in the simplicity of language: “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground . . Man is a creature of dust. The components of his body are the same as the earth upon which he walks. But he has something more than mere dust. There is something which makes him different from the lifeless soil upon which he walks or which he turns over with his plow. What is the difference? Why, it is life, life is the difference. Where did life come from? It came from God. “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostril the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
God gave the fast man and woman their life We know you like to read carefully and we would draw your attention to something of importance in the Bible quotation we have Just read It is this man Became a living soul, he was not given a soul He himself was a soul Moreover, he Became a living soul, not an ever la mg soul, something to live forever He was alive As long as he obeyed God God had given him life, and he was to have it only if he was obedient We have discovered that man became disobedient He used the life given to him by God in direct opposition to God’s will That was the fateful day His life began to slip from his grasp, until one day he breathed for the last time and lay still and lifeless What had happened to Adam? Was he still alive? If so, where? Or had his existence come to an end? Who shall say’ God alone can tell us and He has done that in the clearest possible words Listen to them. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Gene sis 3 19).
Death was to be the undoing of creation God would withdraw His breath and Adam would die Finally, when the process of decay was complete, he would have become part of the dust from which he came If you are tempted to think that the real Adam was something which could not die, then have another look at the above pronouncement by God. Five times the word thou is used God was speaking to that thou and telling it precisely what would happen in death. In any case if death was not really the end of Adam then God did not tell him he whole story Indeed he would have told him a lie, which is altogether impossible for God to do More than that the whole conflict in Eden had been expressed in two opposing declarations the serpent had said to Eve, Ye shall Not surely die, God had said, Ye Shall surely die The serpent had lied and the truthfulness of God s word was proved beyond doubt when both Adam and Eve breathed their last breath lay still and ceased to have a personal existence.
This is a gloomy subject, but let us face it without flinching It is better to know the truth than to fool our selves with lies It is better to understand that the wages of sin is death, than to imagine we can get behind death s back and escape its clutches The Bible tells us the truth about this final event in the life of man It is a truth we can under stand, even though we must find it very distasteful to accept Take a look at the following descriptions of death, and I am sure you will agree that nothing could be clearer
For in death there is no remembrance of thee (God) in the grave who shall give thee thanks? (Psalms 6:5)
Shall thy loving kindness be declared in the grave? and thy faithfulness in destruction Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? or thy righteousness in the land of forget fulness? (Psalms 88 11 and 12) What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? (Psalms 89:48)
The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence (Psalms 115:17)
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish (Psalms 146:3,4)
All go unto one place, all are of the dust, all turn to dust again (Ecclesiastes 3:20)
These things said he. Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead (John 11:11-14)
These are but a few of the many words of the Bible which confirm something many of us know, at least in part, by experience When we visit the dentist and he uses gas to put us to sleep or when we undergo an operation at the hospital under an anesthetic, we learn that it is possible for us to be unconscious when living. Many people who are involved in road accidents remember nothing about it when they return to consciousness. These and similar experiences help us to understand what happens when we cease to breathe and die. As a Bible writer puts it, quite simply, our existence as a living person has ceased.
You may well be wondering, therefore, whether death is absolutely the end. If God had not done something for us, the answer would have been “yes.” We do not survive death, we do not have any conscious existence at all when we meet our end. But there IS hope. Think of it for a moment.
Before Adam existed there was only dust. When we die we return to dust. Could not the Lord God, if He wished it, create again from the dust the living creature which has died? Truly, He could. Will He do that? That is a question with a most interesting answer, and we must reserve it for another time. But we can remember this: Jesus, when He was here, was able to awaken the dead. He could even go to a grave where a man lay buried and speak to the dead person and rouse him from the sleep of death. This is God’s power, and it was given to Jesus as a witness that He was the Son of God. This is known as resurrection from the dead: that means “a standing again,” coming to life again.
In the next article we are going to see how God found a way out of the terrible plight into which man fell. In all that darkness God shed a light. (Read Psalms 49 and 89, and John, Chapter 11.)
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One