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”…
and the serpent said, “You will not surely die”…
and then Adam and Eve did not die…
who told the truth?
And the implications get worse:
If Abel died and immediately walked into paradise…
If the righteous float to heaven as soon as the heart stops…
If the faithful never truly experience death…
Then the serpent didn’t lie.
But if the serpent did lie—and he did—then death must mean what God said it means. Not eternal relocation. Not spiritual continuation. Not ghostly survival. But Uncreation—the undoing of life.
Everything in Scripture hangs on this.
Human nature.
Salvation.
Resurrection.
Judgment.
Hope.
The cross.
The second coming.
Everything.
Here is where the gospel becomes thunder:
If humans already live on after death, then Jesus’ resurrection is unnecessary.
Think about it.
If people are truly alive the moment they die—
if consciousness continues—
if the soul is inherently immortal—
then Jesus did not conquer anything at the tomb.
But if death is death—
if death is silence—
if death is unconsciousness—
if death is Uncreation—
then Jesus’ resurrection is the single most explosive act in the universe.
He didn’t cheat death.
He didn’t redefine death.
He didn’t bypass death.
He didn’t rewrite death as a spiritual metaphor.
He died.
And then He rose.
This changes everything.
And it forces a decision:
Will we trust the serpent or the Savior about what death really is?
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Death is not a doorway through which we slip into a brighter realm.
Death is an enemy that Jesus came to destroy.
And the only way to destroy an enemy like death was to enter it fully — without shortcuts, without divine loopholes, without the immortality of Deity shielding Him from the experience of non-being.
This is why the Incarnation matters. God did not send an angel to redeem us. He did not send a prophet, a messenger, or a celestial representative. He came Himself.
The eternal Son took on the same flesh Adam wore, the same mortality we fear, the same vulnerability that haunts every human night. He came not to observe humanity but to join humanity, to stand within the brokenness, to feel the cold breath of death on His neck, and to experience the full weight of Uncreation as a human being.
Jesus became mortal—not pretending, not symbolically, not momentarily, not theologically, but genuinely. The One who “upholds all things by the word of His power” stepped into the very world that was collapsing under the curse of sin.
The Author entered His own story. The Creator took on the fragility of creation. The Giver of Breath inhaled and exhaled like the rest of us. And when His hour came, He surrendered that breath—not partially, not metaphorically, but absolutely.
At the cross, Jesus experienced the first death exactly as Scripture describes it. No consciousness. No shadow existence. No drifting spirit. No bright tunnel. No immediate ascent.
The Bible says simply and clearly: “He breathed His last.” The last breath of the true Human. The last breath of the One who entered our Uncreation in order to reverse it.
You see, Jesus didn’t die as an immortal being who pretended to succumb. He died as a mortal who truly surrendered life. If Jesus had not really died, He could not really rise. And if He did not truly rise, you and I have no hope of resurrection.
Everything hinges on that moment of total silence—the moment when God Himself lay still.
And yet, that is not where the story ends. Because the same Jesus who entered death stepped out of it in blazing triumph. The resurrection is not God restoring a soul that never ceased to exist; it is God restoring life where life had ended. Resurrection is not a spiritual continuation—it is a physical recreation. It is not a transfer from one realm to another—it is victory over non-being.
Scripture calls Jesus the “firstfruits.”
The firstborn from the dead.
The beginning of a new creation.
Not a continuation.
A beginning.
And this is the part traditional Christianity often misses:
If believers already go to heaven when they die, the resurrection is unnecessary.
Why would Jesus need to return to raise people who are already alive and well?
Why would Paul call the resurrection “the blessed hope” if the real hope is death itself?
Why would Jesus say, “I will raise him up at the last day” if the righteous are already raised at the moment of death?
The truth is simple—and breathtaking:
We sleep in death until Jesus wakes us.
We rest until resurrection morning.
We wait, without consciousness, without pain, without fear, without wandering, without purgatory, without limbo.
We sleep in the safest place in the universe—the hands of the One who defeated death.
This is why the resurrection matters. And this is why the serpent’s lie is so dangerous. If death is not death, Christ’s work becomes unnecessary. But if death is death, then Christ’s work is everything.
Let’s bring this into life where people actually live. You’ve stood by graves. You’ve looked into caskets. You have placed flowers on the soil above someone you loved with your whole heart. And in those moments—those terrible, tender, holy moments when grief swallows your breath—you felt something deep inside. A truth you could not name, but one that gripped your soul: This is wrong. This is not what God intended. This is not life. This is not how the story should go.
And you were right. Death is the great intruder. Death is the interruption of life. Death is the Uncreation of God’s masterpiece. That is why we ache, why we cry, why funerals pierce the heart so sharply—because something inside us knows we were not created to die.
But Jesus came to restore what sin destroyed. He came not merely to save us from guilt but to save us from death. He came not to relocate us to heaven but to resurrect us into life. He came not to affirm the serpent’s lie but to expose it. When Jesus died, He did what the serpent said would never happen. And when Jesus rose, He did what the serpent said could never be undone.
Now let’s deal with something that troubles many sincere Christians: the burning fire of hell and the smoke that rises “forever and ever.” People hear that and panic. They picture endless agony, immortal sinners, flames that never cease, screams that never die.
But friend, that picture is not biblical—it is medieval. It is Dante. It is Greek philosophy. It is Egyptian mysticism. It is not Scripture.
John uses Old Testament language when he writes that “the smoke of their torment rises forever.” He is quoting Isaiah’s prophecy about Edom—a nation that burned, turned to ruins, and vanished. The fire ended. The smoke ended. The memory of the destruction remained. That’s what “forever” means in judgment texts: permanence of result, not duration of process.
Sodom burned with “eternal fire,” Jude says. Sodom is not burning today. The fire was eternal because the effect was eternal. Babylon’s smoke rises “forever,” Revelation declares. Babylon is a ruin, not a furnace. The smoke is the testimony of a finished judgment, not the ongoing suffering of immortal rebels.
And the wicked cannot burn forever because they are not immortal. Only God has immortality. Sinners do not possess eternal life—only Christ gives it. If the wicked lived eternally in torment, the serpent’s lie would be right: “You will not surely die.” But they do die. They experience the second death—not eternal life in flames.
Hell is not eternal life. Hell is eternal death. Hell is not unending torment. Hell is final destruction. Hell is the moment when sin ends forever.
And what is left after the smoke clears? Not a divided universe with half in heaven and half in hell, but a restored universe where love is the only eternal survivor.
Now, beloved, we are approaching the decisive moment—the moment where this truth must move from the head to the heart. Because this is not just theology. This is your destiny. This is your hope. This is your resurrection. This is your eternity.
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And here is where we turn towards you and
your life.
Your grief.
Your questions.
Your hope.
Your eternity.
Because the lie the serpent told is not just ancient theology—it is the very lie that keeps human beings from surrender, from trust, from repentance, from clinging to Christ.
As long as a person believes they cannot truly die,
they will never truly need a Savior who gives life.
As long as a person believes death is simply a transition,
they will never grasp what Jesus accomplished at the cross.
As long as someone believes their soul goes marching into heaven the moment their heart stops beating,
they will never long for resurrection,
never hunger for Christ’s return,
never understand the magnitude of grace.
The serpent’s lie removes the necessity of Christ.
The serpent’s lie diminishes the power of the cross.
The serpent’s lie makes resurrection optional.
The serpent’s lie makes sin survivable.
The serpent’s lie makes death a doorway instead of an enemy.
But today—right now—you have seen the truth:
We die.
And Jesus alone can make the dead live again.
This is not morbid.
This is not despairing.
This is not bleak.
This is the brightest hope you will ever hear.
Because if death is exactly what God said it is—
the cessation of life—
then resurrection is exactly what God said it is—
the restoration of life.
And Jesus is exactly who He claimed to be — the Resurrection and the Life.
My friend… this means your future does not depend on some immortal essence inside you. Your future does not depend on your strength or worthiness or goodness or morality. Your future depends on a single question:
Do you belong to the One who can raise the dead?
You cannot save yourself from death.
You cannot outrun it.
You cannot philosophize it away.
You cannot medicate it.
You cannot hide from it behind religious language.
But Jesus can shatter it.
Jesus can break it open.
Jesus can call you out of it.
Jesus can give you a life that survives the grave.
This is why Scripture constantly points forward:
“I will raise him up at the last day.”
“The dead in Christ will rise first.”
“We shall all be changed.”
“This mortal must put on immortality.”
“In a moment… in the twinkling of an eye.”
“We look for a new heavens and a new earth.”
“There shall be no more death.”
The entire New Testament leans into that great morning when Christ returns and humanity is reborn. That moment is the great contradiction to the serpent’s lie. That moment is the undoing of the Uncreation. That moment is the victory of the Lamb. That moment is the restoration of Eden. That moment is the global resurrection.
Somewhere in that crowd of the redeemed will stand your loved ones who died in Christ. They are not floating anywhere today. They are not watching you. They are not wandering. They are not conscious. They sleep the sleep God gave them. They rest from their labors. They wait in peace. They await the voice of Jesus.
And the next conscious moment they will know,
the next sensation,
the next heartbeat,
the next breath,
the next awareness…
will be resurrection morning.
Think of that.
Your loved one will close their eyes in death
and open them to the face of Jesus.
Not because they were immortal.
Not because death was kind.
Not because their soul escaped.
But because Jesus conquered death
and shares that victory with every child who trusts Him.
This is why the doctrine of death matters.
It is not an obscure point.
It is the center of the gospel.
It tells us what Jesus actually accomplished
and what He will accomplish still.
It shapes your hope.
It shapes your grief.
It shapes your courage.
It shapes your eternity.
And that leads us to the appeal.
Because now that you see the truth—
now that the serpent’s lie has been exposed—
the question is not merely,
“What do you believe about death?”
The question is:
Have you surrendered your life to the One who alone can give it back to you?
Because if Jesus is not your resurrection now, He will not be your resurrection then.
If He is not your Life now,
He cannot be your Life then.
This is not fear.
This is invitation.
This is grace.
This is gospel.
Today, you can choose the truth.
You can reject the lie.
You can turn from Uncreation.
You can step into Re-Creation.
You can say:
“Lord, I believe You.
Not the serpent.
Not tradition.
Not culture.
Not philosophy.
Not my own assumptions.
I trust Your Word.
I trust Your death.
I trust Your resurrection.
I trust Your return.
I want the life only You can give.”
If that is your desire,
I want to pray for you right now.
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THE PRAYER
Father in heaven,
we stand today in the light of Your truth,
and we confess we have too often listened to the serpent’s whisper
instead of Your voice.
We have softened death because we feared it.
We have repeated lies because they comforted us.
We have spoken words that sound hopeful
but are not grounded in Your Word.
Forgive us.
Correct us.
Redeem us.
Jesus, thank You for entering our Uncreation.
Thank You for dying the death we fear.
Thank You for resting in the silence of the grave.
Thank You for rising in glory.
Thank You for breaking the power of death from the inside.
Thank You for promising to come again
and raise to life every child who trusts in You.
Break the lie from our hearts.
Seal the truth in our minds.
Give us courage to believe the gospel
as You actually revealed it.
And when You come again—
with the trumpet, with the shout, with the voice of the archangel—
call our names.
Raise our bodies.
Restore our lives.
Make all things new.
This we ask
in the name of the Resurrection and the Life,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
