Did Satan Tell The Truth?

One Lie Began Uncreation — and Jesus Unraveled It

If there is one moment in the entire story of humanity when everything changed—when the world bent, when the soul cracked, when the fabric of existence tore—it was the moment a serpent whispered five little words into human ears: “You will not surely die.”

No thunder rolled. No storm broke open. No earthquake shook Eden. Just a lie. A theological lie. A gentle lie. A comforting lie. A lie that didn’t sound like rebellion—it sounded like reassurance.

And ever since that day, every religion built on human imagination, every philosophy born from human longing, every spiritual system crafted from human grief has repeated that same line.

Some say it poetically. Some say it philosophically. Some say it scientifically. Some say it religiously. But they all say it: “No one really dies. Not really. Not ultimately.”

What fascinates me is how often Christians say the same things without even realizing it. You’ve heard them. You’ve said them. I’ve said them. Not out of malice—not out of rebellion—but out of grief and desperation and the deep ache to comfort those who mourn.

“He’s in a better place now.”

“She’s looking down on you.”

“Heaven gained another angel.”

“He’s more alive now than he ever was.”

“She’s walking the streets of glory.”

“We didn’t lose her; God just took her home.”

“Oh, don’t say he died—he just passed on.”

We say all these things because our hearts are breaking, and we want to believe that death is not as terrible as it feels. We want to believe that what we see in the casket is not what’s real. We want a way to soften the blow, to numb the pain, to blur the edges of grief. And without realizing it, we end up echoing the first theological sentence the devil ever preached.

But here’s the question that shapes this entire message:

Are we comforting ourselves with truth… or tranquilizing ourselves with the serpent’s whisper?

Because at some point, every one of us has to decide:

Does death mean what God says it means… or what the serpent says it means?

Let me draw you into the tension with something that may surprise you: Our culture—yes, even our Christian culture—doesn’t seem to believe in death at all. We talk around it. We rename it. We repackage it. We sanitize it. We mythologize it. We turn it into a transition, not a termination. We turn it into a relocation, not a conclusion. We talk like the soul is a kind of helium balloon that just floats upward when the body pops.

We imagine Abel, the first man murdered, calmly drifting off into paradise the moment Cain’s stone struck his skull. We imagine him walking into Eden as if returning home after school. We imagine him rewarded instantly for dying young.

We imagine Cain—of all people—doing his brother a favor by sending him early to glory. And if we follow this through, we end up saying something absurd without realizing it: Cain may have hated his brother, but according to popular theology, he actually helped him.

But Scripture does not talk like that. Scripture never treats death as a doorway into a more beautiful conscious existence. Death is not the “Great Escape Room” with a glowing exit labeled Purgatory on one door and Heaven on the other.

Death is not a transfer station. Death is not a transition. Death is not a cleansing chamber. Death is not a cosmic waiting room. Death is not a spiritual elevator that goes “ding” and opens into paradise.

Scripture uses one word, and it means exactly what you think it means: Death is death.

Now that raises a problem—a massive problem—for most Christian theology. Because if death is not death, then what exactly did Jesus save us from?

If humans do not actually die, then the cross becomes unnecessary, the resurrection becomes symbolic, and the gospel becomes a philosophical metaphor instead of a cosmic intervention.

Let me be blunt: If death is not the cessation of life,

then salvation is not the restoration of life.

But if death is the cessation of life….

then the gospel becomes the most breathtaking truth in the universe.

This is where the whole story turns. Because what happened when Adam and Eve sinned was not simply a moral failure—it was an Uncreation.

God formed humans from dust and breath. Sin unraveled both. The body returned to dust. The breath returned to God. And the person—the living soul—ceased to exist. Not relocated. Not transformed. Not awakened elsewhere. Ceased.

That is the consequence of sin.

That is the wound Jesus came to heal.

That is the darkness Jesus entered.

That is the end Jesus reversed.

Before we go further, let me ask a harder question:

If God told Adam and Eve, “You will surely die”…