The Sunday School teacher was introducing his lesson on heaven by asking
his boys if they wanted to go to heaven. One boy said, "Not me!" The teacher
was shocked and asked, "You mean to tell me you don't want to go to heaven
when you die?" "When I die? O, sure !" said the boy. "I thought you were
getting up a group to go now!" Even the Christian with the clear revelation of
God's eternal plan, and mansions being prepared for him by His Savior is not
anxious to get to heaven. The primary reason for this is due to the fact that
one must die to get there.
If we could go like Enoch and Elijah there would probably very few
Christians left on the earth. If Christians could choose to ascend to that realm
of bliss there would be a continuous rapture of the church as people were
being caught up to be with the Lord. The Apostle Paul was caught up to the
third heaven and into the very presence of God, but he says in II Cor. 12 that
he could not describe it for us. He did not know whether he was in the body,
or if it was just in spirit. He did write after that experience and say that to
depart and be with the Lord is far better. Here is a man who actually went to
heaven and returned. He knew of its glorious attraction, and yet even he
struggled within himself as to whether he should depart or remain in this life
to be of service. Paul was not afraid of death, but he knew death ended his life
of service for Christ, and he did not want to give that up. Death would rob
him of his chance to win others and build them up to be Christ like.
We see then that death itself has no attraction to the believer whether he
is a little boy in Sunday School, or the world's greatest Apostle. If this is so for
Christians who have a full and abundant revelation of the hope of heaven, how
much more must the believers of the Old Testament have dreaded death? The
greatest punishment Adam and Eve had to suffer was not pain in childbirth,
or hard labor in the field, but the sentence of death upon them with no
assurance with life after death. In verse 19 Adam is told that he came from
the dust and that he will return to the dust. Although directed to Adam this
judgment obviously includes Eve as well. I remember my mother quoting the
saying that girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but boys
were made of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails. This is a cute way to make
little girls proud and little boys mad, but the fact is, both sexes came from dust
and both will return to dust. According to the Bible the body is glorified dirt.
It is glorified by God's creative power plus the breathing in of God's spirit.
Nothing is said in this judgment about the spirit of man. even Solomon in
his most pessimistic book of Ecclesiastes says that the body returns to dust, but
the spirit to God who gave it. Nothing is said to Adam except that he shall
return to dust, and in chapter 5:5 we read, "Thus all the days that Adam lived
were 930 years and he died." God did not give Adam any revelation about
what comes after death. God has not given us any revelation either as to what
happened to Adam when his body died. We do not know if Adam was saved
or lost. One of the reasons that God allowed Adam and others to live so long is
likely due to the fact that He did not give them any revelation as to hope
beyond death. Adam lived almost a thousand years. Today we live less than
one tenth as long, but we have the hope of eternal life in Christ. I do not envy
Adam and his long life, for all he had to look forward to was the grave and
dust.
Now the reason for this is clear. God could not give Adam any hope of
eternal life, for it is God's gift to man based on perfect obedience. Adam lost
his chance to gain it. In 2:17 God said that if he ate of the forbidden tree he
would die. Adam was not made to live forever. He was made mortal with the
possibility of either dying because of disobedience, or of living forever because
of obedience to God. Here in 3:22 we see that Adam never got a chance to eat
of the tree of life and so live forever. He disobeyed and lost the hope of
eternal life. He did not lose an eternal life he originally had, but a chance to
gain it by obedience. Man was thus left in a dying state without access to the
tree of life.
This means that no man before Jesus had eternal life. Jesus Christ, as the
second Adam, won back what the first Adam lost. By his perfect obedience to
God he won the right to have access to the tree of life, and he offers this right
to all who follow Him and overcome. In Rev. 2:7 Jesus said, "To him who
conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God."
There is no way to gain eternal life except through Jesus Christ. In Him we
have the hope of everlasting bliss. Adam had only the thought of returning to
dust. Our bodies also face the death and decay that leads to dust.
Shakespeare said, "Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come
to dust." We, however, have the hope of not only our spirits returning to God,
but of the body being resurrected and becoming like the glorified body of our
risen Lord.
What this means is that Adam and most of the people of the Old
Testament did not have anything to compare with the hope of New Testament
Christians. In your reading of the Old Testament you should not be surprised
to come upon very pessimistic views of death. Job in 10:20-22 says, "Are not
the days of my life few? Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort before I
go whence I shall not return, to the land of gloom and deep darkness, the land
of gloom and chaos, where light is as darkness." David, to whom God gave
insight about immortality still had a pessimistic outlook on life after death. In
Psa. 143:3-4 he writes, "For the enemy has pursued me; he has crushed my life
to the ground; he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead. Therefore
my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled."
In Psa. 88:4-6 we read this pessimistic picture of death: "I am reckoned
among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength, like one
forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom
thou dost remember no more, for they are cut off from thy hand. Thou hast
put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep." There are
dozens of such dark passages in the Old Testament, and only a few rays of
light that flash through showing a glimpse of hope. The result of this is that
people often read the Bible and make no distinction between the old and the
new revelation. They do not see that God has spoken to man finally and fully
in His Son. They fail to see that life and immortality were brought to light by
Jesus in His resurrection from the dead. They read the Old Testament only,
and they build all kinds of false and negative beliefs upon it. Those who teach
annihilation and soul sleep find almost all of their evidence in the Old
Testament, and they simply ignore that the New Testament has made the old
view obsolete.
Poets are numerous who write of death as if there were no New
Testament light. Thomas Haywood wrote,
O man, what art thou? What more could I say
Then dust and clay,
Frail, mortal, fading, a mere puff, a blast,
That cannot last;
Enthroned today, tomorrow in an urn,
Formed from that earth to which I must return?
Adam Gordon sees also only the sentence upon Adam, and nothing of the
Gospel of the second Adam when he writes:
A little season of love and laughter,
Of light and life, and pleasure and pain,
And a horror of outer darkness after,
And dust returneth to dust again.
Such poetry is obsolete for the Christian, for we live after the second
Adam rectified what the first Adam ruined, but the fact is, such poetry does
describe the view of those who descended from the first Adam only. This was
the worse punishment men had to suffer because of the fall. It was not even
just death itself, but death without hope of continued life. Every Christian
should be aware of this for several reasons.
1. It magnifies the Gospel of Christ. If the Old Testament saints already had
New Testament hope, then Jesus did not revolutionize our relationship to God,
but only confirmed what already was. Seeing the contrast makes the new
covenant in the blood of Christ something to be perpetually joyful about.
2. Many questions arise in people's minds as they read the Old Testament, and
if you do not know that the Old Testament view has been made obsolete by
Christ, you will only confuse people rather than help them.
3. Because Christians who do not recognize progressive revelation often take
the Old Testament as equally relevant as the New Testament, and they develop
perverted attitudes about death.
Many Christians have developed such a negative attitude about death that
they are of little help to others in facing it. Studies have been done that show
dying people are dying to talk about death, but no one will cooperate. Even
the doctors do not want them to trouble themselves, and they fear to approach
the subject. The result is that many dying people feel crushed by a wall of
silence, and they die with many questions they longed to get answers to. If
Christians over come the foolish dread of talking about death they can
perform a ministry that is greatly valued. People want to know of God's
mercy for all of their past sins. They want assurance that they do not have to
face God with guilt and anxiety if they trust in Christ. We are talking about
Christians needing this assurance because they often live with a view of death
that is strongly influenced by Old Testament pessimism. It is a blessed
ministry to let the New Testament light shine through and give them the
message that will encourage them to face their final foe with assurance of
victory.
One of the paradoxes of the Christians great hope of heaven is that it adds
to life on earth. Dr. Jung, speaking as a scientist, said that patients do better
and people have better health in general who believe in life beyond. Hope of
heaven can help people recover from problems that otherwise might lead to
death. Lack of hope kills, and it leads to suicide and giving up. Hope leads to
positive attitudes that fight to survive. One might easily assume that the
opposite might be true, and that people who have no hope of heaven would
fight like mad to live, but man is so made that where there is no hope there is
no will to live. The more hope of heaven one has, the more happiness he has
on earth.
Another fact is that people who lose love ones in death want to talk about
them. Everyone tends to ignore the dead person as if they ceased to exist, and
this hurts the love ones. We should be able to talk freely of the dead if we
believe they have gone to be with Christ, but instead we often join the
conspiracy of silence and add to the problem. Adam faced a terrible
punishment when he was sentenced to return to dust, but God forbid that we
ignore the changes made by Christ, and continue to live on the level of that
judgment "From dust to dust." God likely did save Adam and Eve, and we
will see them heaven by God's grace, but it is also likely that they were not
permitted the joy of this knowledge. We have the knowledge, and so we have
the obligation to live in the joy of this knowledge, and communicate it to
others.
