Greetings! Welcome back to our study of the Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead. In this post, we’re going to look at what the Bible has to say about death—how it came, how mankind was originally created as immortal beings, and how they lost their immortality and became mortal. Oh boy, you don’t want to miss this post. It’s filled with some pretty heavy thoughts. Stay tuned!

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD

First in a One-Part Series
By Karen Thompson

HOW DEATH CAME

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (v. 55)

The sting of death will come to an end when the resurrection of the dead takes place. This truth should cause us all to join in with the apostle Paul and deliriously shout for joy at the prospect of one day death being swallowed up in victory.

But do we fully appreciate the significance of what it means that “death has been swallowed up in victory”? From our study of the Bible, we are able to grasp this understanding intellectually; however, our perspective of death keeps us from making that delirious shout of joy. Why? Because death is just part of life, and we’ve grown accustomed to it. We’re used to it being part of our existence. It’s normal. We know it’s going to happen. We just don’t know when or how it will happen, but we know that we will not escape it. We even plan for it by making out wills and purchasing burial plots so our passing will not be a hardship for our loved ones who survive us. It’s hard for us to see life without death.

But if we are honest with ourselves, really honest… we would all acknowledge that we live our lives with a quiet underlying fear of death. We don’t want to die. Though it’s left unspoken, we all have fearful thoughts regarding death. We don’t want to die young. We want to live a long life. And we do whatever we can to prolong our lives—exercising, eating healthy, taking vitamins, spending money on the proverbial fountain-of-youth elixir of life. And above all, we don’t want our deaths to be horrible… no prolonged suffering. For those who don’t know Jesus as their Savior, there’s the ultimate horror of not knowing what happens after death… Is there an afterlife?

Though we’ve grown accustomed to death being part of our existence, I believe the underlining dread we feel about death is our primal instinct… an instinct that originates from our “pre-fall of mankind DNA” telling us we were not meant to experience death.

If we’re going to fully appreciate what it means for death to be swallowed up in victory, we need to go all the way back to when death entered mankind. We have to go back to Adam and Eve—back to the time of crisis called the “fall of mankind.”

Man Before the Fall

What kind of being was Adam? In Genesis, it says God made man in his own image: God said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). Genesis tells us how God formed the first man: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). The King James translation says “living soul.” God created a garden east of Eden and put His newly created “living soul” inside that garden. The garden was Adam’s home, and he was to tend and keep the garden, take care of it. The garden was filled with plants and fruit-bearing trees. It had two special trees: one was the tree of life and the other was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 8–9). About the trees, the Lord commanded, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (vv. 16–17).

Then the Lord created a woman, Eve, for Adam to have as a mate. The Father God gave Adam and Eve a commission: they were to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth and subdue it. They were to reproduce themselves to the point or filling the earth with their progeny. They were given dominion over every living thing—over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and over every living thing that moved on the earth (Gen. 1:28). In other words, they were to be God’s stewards on the earth.

And here’s a very interesting thing about Adam and Eve… they didn’t wear any clothes: “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not embarrassed or ashamed in each other’s presence” (v. 25 Amp.). Notice it says they were naked and not embarrassed or ashamed. 

The Fall of Mankind

Then we read about the fall of mankind. Satan, speaking through a serpent in the garden, deceived Adam and Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil of which God said not to eat. When they ate the fruit from the tree, their eyes were opened. Guess what the first change they noticed was? They suddenly saw they were naked! They felt shame and immediately tried to cover themselves with fig leaves. When Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden, they hid from His presence. When asked why they hid, Adam said, “I was afraid, because I was naked.” The Lord said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Gen. 3:10–11). To cover their nakedness, the Lord made for them tunics made from animal skins.

And then came the repercussions. Punishments were handed out for the serpent, the woman, and the man. And on top of that, Adam and Eve lost their beautiful home in the Garden of Eden: verse 22 says, “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” This sentence is left unfinished, as if to express the unspeakable devastation that would have occurred if they had eaten from the tree of life. They would have remained in a fallen state forever. To ensure they never ate from the tree of life, the Lord banished them from the Garden of Eden. And to make sure they could never access the garden, the Lord placed cherubim and a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life (vv. 23–24).

Now let’s talk about the issue of Adam and Eve’s nakedness. Before they sinned, they were naked yet they weren’t aware they were naked. Then after they disobeyed the Lord, all of a sudden, they saw they were naked. Why were they not able to see they were naked before their disobedience, before their sin? It has to do with how man was originally created—his original state.

To that end, let’s look at Psalm chapter eight. This psalm talks about man and his very special uniqueness. The first verse starts out, “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” Then the psalmist begins to ponder about the Lord’s creation of man.

3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, 4 What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? 5 For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, 7 All sheep and oxen—even the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas. (Ps. 8:3–8 NKJV)

The psalmist wonders, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?” The phrase “son of man” is a common Hebrew expression that means “son of Adam.” The psalmist wondered, compared with all of God’s creation, “Why is man so special to You?”

Let’s start our study by looking at the first part of verse five: “For You have made him a little lower than the angels.” In the phrase, “a little lower than the angels,” the Hebrew word translated as “angels” is the word “Elohiym.” The Hebrew word for angel is mal’ak, yet the King James translators chose to translate the word Elohiym as angels.³ The word Elohiym is the plural form of God. The Hebrew word for God is “El,” and “hiym” makes Elohiym plural. It is the same word used in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The word “God” throughout the creation story is the plural form of God: Elohiym. The trinity—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—is present all throughout the creation story.

Why did the King James translators use the word angel (mal’ak) instead of the word God (Elohiym)? Some speculate the King James translators experienced trepidation at the idea of saying that man is just a little lower than God. Furthermore, the translators saw angels as superior beings to man. However, other Bible translations do not have that same trepidation. Others translate verse five as, “You have made him a little lower than God.” This is an indication of man’s relationship with God. Indeed, God made man in His own image and likeness. In truth, we are His children.

There is another portion of scripture that gives us an indication of just how God views His creation of mankind. Talking about Jesus, Philippians chapter two says, “Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: [Let Him be your example in humility:] Who, although being essentially one with God and in the form of God [possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God God], did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained, but stripped Himself [of all privileges and rightful dignity], so as to assume the guise of a servant (slave), in that He became like men and was born a human being” (Phil. 2:5–7 Amp.) Before Jesus came to earth born as a baby, He stripped Himself of all of His Godlike qualities. He didn’t come to earth as a fully grown man, but as a helpless and vulnerable baby. And He didn’t consider it beneath Him to do so. That right there gives you an indication of how highly the Godhead views His creation of mankind.

Now let’s look at the last portion of verse five which gives us an indication of what it means to be made in God’s image: “You have crowned him with glory and honor.” The Hebrew word translated as “crowned” is atar and it means “to surround.”⁴ Adam was crowned, or surrounded, with the glory of God. What does the glory look like? There are numerous Bible examples that tell us the glory of God looks like a cloud. For instance, 1^st Kings chapter eight describes the glory of God as a cloud: “And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord” (1 Kings 8:10–11 NKJV). The glory of God which looked like a cloud so filled the temple that the priests couldn’t stay standing in order to minister. They kept falling out under the power of God, which manifested as a thick cloud.

What this verse in Psalms chapter eight is telling us is that Adam and Eve were clothed with the glory of God. In other words, they walked around enveloped by the glory cloud, and that is why they did not know they were naked. (Also, another reference to glory clouds being used as clothing can be found in Revelation chapter 10 when the apostle John said he saw a “mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud…”) When Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God, they fell from glory. Immediately, the glory cloud lifted. Their eyes were opened to the fact that they were naked. These beings created in the image of God and clothed with His glory were now without covering. They felt immediate shame. Their nakedness was proof that they had sinned. They covered their nakedness as best they could using fig leaves.

Adam and Eve’s nakedness, which was a result of sin, is the origin for the idiom the prophets used when talking about Israel’s sin. When they rebuked Israel for its sinful and backslidden state, they often used the phrasing, “the shame of thy nakedness.” For instance, the church of the Laodiceans in the book of Revelation was rebuked by the Lord for its backslidden state. He rebuked the Laodicean believers saying, “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear…” (Rev. 3:17–18). The phrase “the shame of thy nakedness” is used to describe their backslidden and sinful state. It hearkens back to Adam and Eve’s nakedness after they sinned. Another example is Lamentations 1:8: “Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness…” In other words, they have seen her backslidden state.

A ritual that originated from Adam and Eve’s sin was animal sacrifice. Adam and Eve’s sin resulted in them being naked when the glory cloud lifted off of them. To cover their nakedness, the Lord sacrificed the lives of two animals to make Adam and Eve skin tunics. That is the reason why people in the Old Testament sacrificed animals to God as a covering for their sins. Burnt offerings to the Lord began long before the Israelites. One of the oldest recorded burnt offerings was by Noah. When he exited the Ark, the first thing he did was offer a sacrifice to the Lord. “And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar” (Gen. 8:20).

In the oldest book of the Bible, we see Job making burnt offerings to the Lord just in case his children sinned against God. Job 1:1–5, “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. … Job … rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts…” (KJV).

Now let’s get back to the subject of death. Remember, Adam was told not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If he disobeyed God’s command by eating fruit from that tree, Adam was told he would surely die. About the trees, the Lord commanded, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16–17 NKJV). Satan said to Adam and Eve they would not die if they ate from the forbidden tree: “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (NKJV). They were deceived. They believed the serpent, and chose to disobey God so they could be wise. They ate the fruit. And, at first, it seemed the serpent was right. After having eaten the fruit, they didn’t drop dead.

But… something did happen to them. Though they didn’t immediately fall over dead, death did, indeed, come. Their once immortal bodies became—mortal! They were never meant to experience death. Their bodies were incorruptible, imperishable. But now they were mortal. Some day they would die. Adam did, indeed, die. It took 930 years (Gen. 5:5) for him to die, but nonetheless, his once immortal body died. That’s how death entered the human race. From that point on, all humans would know and experience death.

On the day of the resurrection of the dead, death that was brought forth through Adam and Eve will have been eliminated. Upon the fulfillment of that day, we can all rejoice with the apostle Paul shouting, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

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