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Universal Death
By John R. Gavazzoni
Just short of the mid-19th. century, a religious movement emerged in the United States predicting the time of the (supposed) second coming of Christ to be sometime between the Spring of 1843 and the Spring of 1844. The movement came to be called, the Millerites, after its leader, William Miller. The prediction was finally narrowed down precisely to Oct. 22, 1844. When the date came and went with no second advent appearance, Miller, and his followers suffered great ridicule, even in newspapers of the time. Such was the "conviction" and zeal of Miller's followers, that many sold all their possessions, with some dressing themselves all in white awaiting immortality without dying.
Though evidently a false expectation, nevertheless, groups such as Seventh Day Adventists continue to this day to hold to similar spin-off eschatological expectations. Around the same time, the dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby took root within evangelical Christianity, with a similar expectation of a "rapture" event, i.e., a secret coming of the Lord, before the final second coming, in which all believers, those having died, and those alive and remaining would be caught up into the air to meet the Lord. The latter, those not having died, would be raised immortal, escaping death.
Though not admitting so, the movement led by Darby, really posited three comings of the Lord: the first, His incarnation, the second that secret coming to rapture all believers, and the final which would usher in the last of seven "dispensations," the dispensation of the kingdom on the earth. The movement is known theologically as dispensationalism. Common in one form or another in the general history of Adventist presumptions is the expectation of gaining immortality without dying. The Darby version spread like wildfire through evangelicalism to the extent that probably today the majority of those who call themselves evangelicals hold to one form or another of that theory.
Strange indeed is the above, given that scripture clearly lays out the necessity of all men dying, as in, "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment." There is an attempt to get around that statement by saying where it appears in the Book of Hebrews it is only referring to the Levitical priesthood that is a feature in the context of the statement. That's pure, clever, nonsense in the face of Paul's explanation re: how universally pervasive is the consequence of Adam's disobedience, i.e.,"......death passed upon all men....." Yes, the apostle was very clear: "for as by one man's disobedience sin entered the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon ALL men....."
Paul addresses the same issue from another, complementary perspective, as in, "since One died for all, therefore all died." This is integral to the Pauline theological paradigm by which the apostle sums up salvation in Christ as a matter of all those destined for salvation being in Christ, but also having Christ in them. Man in Christ and Christ in man, is a major theological construct in explaining the outworking of new covenant relationship with God. In Christ, all humanity having been created in Him... by the way, without any means of getting out of, or being removed from, Him... we have all been included in the entirety of His human journey from incarnation to glorification......THROUGH DEATH. In a word, what is true of us all in Christ, is worked into us by Christ in us which Paul describes in Ephesians as "God who works in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
All things, having been created in Christ, when He, the singular, historical Person, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of the living God, came into the world that had been created in Him, all things continued in Seed form in Him. Or we could say, in the contemporary language of science, He was and is the DNA of all things, with all mankind being at the head of the whole. He is the Seed-essence of the whole of creation, so that, as went Jesus, so we all went in Him. As He sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high, so we sit in Him. I have written of this as being made complete from completeness. We are proceeding to completeness from completeness. We are on the subjective journey, by Him in us, to where we already are objectively in Him. Who we are becoming will ultimately arrive at who we are, for then, "we shall know as we are known." ".....we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is," and we shall see Him as inclusive of us all. We shall thusly perceive, and by that perception, be changed into the Reality into which we have all been gathered.
Since, one died for all, therefore all died; therefore all must die in order to experientially realize the death that is ours in Him. This truth has been mostly hidden from us by the concept of Jesus dying for us in the sense of His dying instead of us. Wrong! His death was not an instead-of death, it was an all-inclusive death. He died so that we all, in Him, should fully and finally die, to be raised, in Him, to newness of life by His resurrection. You see, were it not for the Last Adam, the death of the first Adam, being passed on from generation to generation, if that were possible, would have no end. But in Him, death has been died. Note, in Genesis, the accurate description of the consequence of Adam's disobedience was described by God as, "dying, thou shalt die."
As many, many translations have it, for example, the NKJV: NASB; AMP: ESV; NIV, being only a few among a long list of like-translations, Paul wrote of "the death He died....." The death Jesus died....note the language....the death He died (He died the death, and now lives the life). Contrary to common understanding, as life is lived, death is died. The action of life is living, and the action of death is dying. Again: "dying, thou shalt die." Death keeps on dying feeding upon life. Since Jesus died the death (from the Greek) "over" us, "over" our sin and the resulting death, He fully died the death of us all, and since what was done in Him, must be worked out by Him in us, we all MUST die.
His death is our death, but likewise, our death....all of ours....is His death. Listen: that incontrovertibly includes Enoch. God took Enoch by death. It's right there in the eleventh chapter Book of Hebrews, in the same chapter that says of him that he was translated that he should not see death. Check it out: included in the list of the "heroes of faith" who died not having received the promises is Enoch. "These all [including Enoch] died in faith." Not seeing death does not equate to not dying. Death can be such that one, as it were, might find himself on the other side of death's door, without the perception of what has happened from one moment to another. One moment, alive, the next, "absent from the body," in contrast to death entered into gradually, as in gradually falling asleep.
From Genesis: "Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him." Enoch took a last step in his exemplary walk with God in this life, and by that step walked through death into life beyond. I believe an accurate and meaningful inference is to be drawn that Enoch's translation was without the kind of crisis-disturbance that one would experience who has not walked with God as Enoch did. Enoch just continued walking with God as he always had. I'm inclined to think that Enoch, not only did not see death when he died, but he didn't even see it coming. If it were possible for anyone to escape dying, then it would not be true that, "since one died for all, therefore, all died." He died for all, as in over all, so that we all should, "once for all" die.
Brethren, there is no resurrection without death. Life through death to the more abundant life of resurrection, is the only Way. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me," What about the matter of our Lord as the Way to the Father? It's by "the manner of death He should die." "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." "This spake He of the manner of death He should die." That's God's way, actually dying the death that is ours in Christ. It is only in the actual experiential, existential death of all men that the death of Christ finds fulfilment. His death is ours; our death is His. It works both ways. All death is His death, but only in the power of His resurrection do we experience the benefit of His death.
There is only one death, not two different deaths. The death passed on to all men from Adam is the same death that Jesus died. And the death Jesus died is the death passed on to all men from Adam. The death of the first man, and the death of the Second Man, are the same death, the latter summing up, and consummately ending the death of the former. That death of the Second Man, is the second death spoken of in the Book of Revelation. The lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death, is the all-consuming, death of Christ, consuming all that is alien to who we are in Him.
For more thoughts about Death, see, What Happened to Enoch, by Jonathan Mitchell
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