Death What Is It?
The simplest scripture defining what death is will be found in James 2:26, “The body without the spirit is dead.” Death means the separation of life from the body. Death is never the end of existence (Luke 16:19-31).
The answer of the Lord to the Sadducees in Luke 20, when speaking of the patriarchs who had died many years before, was, “All live unto Him” (Luke 20:38). The blessedness of those of faith in the interval between death and resurrection is not revealed in the Old Testament. It has now come to light through Paul’s gospel (2 Tim. 1:9-10).
Ecclesiastes 3:19 is simply all that man could know by viewing things “under the sun.” God is showing in that book the utter inability of man to find out the things that belong to revelation.
The second death is the separation of the whole man from God forever. What a solemn voice of warning. The fact of a “second death” proves that the first one was not cessation of being. “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8).
Resurrection The common teaching of a general resurrection is not taught in Scripture. See John 5:29, Acts 24:15 and Luke 14:14.
Revelation 20:4 teaches us that these saints lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years, while Revelation 20:5 teaches that the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished, adding, “This is the first resurrection,” thus clearly teaching the fact of there being two resurrections.
This resurrection from “among the dead” was first taught by our Lord in Mark 9:9. The disciples did believe in the resurrection of the dead. It was a current Jewish belief gathered correctly from the Old Testament scriptures (Job 19:25-27; Acts 23:8). Christianity gives the precious truth of a “first resurrection” that will take place at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 4:15-18).
The Kingdom of Heaven
This is the rule of the heavens in the person of the Son of Man. It was preached by John the Baptist (Matt. 3:2) and by our Lord Himself (Matt. 4:17). Later we find it preached by the apostles (Matt. 10:7).
When Christ, as the promised King and Messiah to Israel, is rejected, it becomes the kingdom in mystery (Matt. 13:11). That is, Christ is not openly reigning, though faith is assured that God is behind the scenes moving all the scenes which He is behind (Eph. 1:19-23; 1 Peter 3:22). Wherever the seed of the gospel has been sown and men have professed Christianity, there we have what Scripture speaks of as “the kingdom of heaven.” It is the sphere of Christian profession on earth.
H. E. Hayhoe