DEATH, THE INTERMEDIATE STATE, THE RESURRECTION AND THE FINAL DESTINY — page 5

Three Groups of People Who Will Not Die

There are at least three groups of people who will never experience physical death:

• Christians who are alive on Earth when the Lord comes – the Rapture (1 Thess. 4:15-18). They will be called to heaven without experiencing death.

• Those who are on Earth at the time of the Appearing of Christ (at the end of the great tribulation) who have rejected the gospel of God's grace will be taken at that time by the angels and cast alive into the lake of fire (Matt. 13:40-42, 49-50; 24:40-41).

• The saints of the Millennium (Jews and Gentiles converted by believing the gospel of the Kingdom during the Millennium) who will be transported from this present Earth to the “new Earth” at the end of the thousand-year reign of Christ (2 Pet. 3:12-13).

Death Is Not the End of Existence

People like to think that death is the end of a person's existence so that they can live as they please and escape the consequences of their sins after death. However, death does not mean extinction. The entire content of the Word of God assumes that there is life after death. The Bible teaches that all the dead “live to Him” (Luke 20:38). Even if the body dies, the soul and spirit still live. The human body is mortal – that is, it is subject to death (Rom. 6:12, 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:53-54; 2 Cor. 4:11), but the soul and spirit are immortal – they are not subject to death. When God created man, he became “a living soul”, not a dying soul (Gen. 2:7). The term “mortal” is never used in the Bible in connection with the soul.

The Scriptures say: “It is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment [judgment – JND]” (Heb. 9:27). This clearly shows that there is a future after a person dies. For those who die in their sins, it will be judgment. But there can be no judgment for something that has ceased to exist! The Lord's account of the rich man and Lazarus confirms this fact (Luke 16:19-31). It clearly indicates that there is life after death. Ecclesiastes 12:7 tells us that a person's spirit does not cease to exist when he dies, but that it returns to God to give account of his actions as a person (Rom. 14:12).

The Lord Jesus affirmed this fact when the Sadducees confronted Him. He quoted Exodus 3:6, when God said to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Matt. 22:32). If those patriarchs had ceased to exist when they died, God could not have announced Himself as their God. Furthermore, the Lord told the thief about to die that he would be with Him in paradise after he died (Luke 23:43). The apostle Paul also said: “we would rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8 – TB). To be “present with the Lord” after someone dies means that the person is definitely alive.