Lesson 13

Believing they have an immortal soul, some christians are bewildered when the Bible talks about a second death. Some think the second death is not death at all, but the separation from God that sinners experience when they enter the lake of fire. There, sinners will never die but be punished for the rest of eternity. The immortal soul doctrine eliminates any possibility of complete death, it says only the physical body dies, rendering humans extremely physically handicapped while still remaining fully conscious. The kind of body sinners will have in the lake of fire is speculative, as it lacks any scriptural clarification. Most Christians fail to comprehend that in order for there to be a second death, there must be a second life. Do you believe humans will have a second life? How do the scriptures describing Jesus descending majestically from the clouds and raising his followers to eternal life, by resurrection, fit your beliefs? This will be the first human resurrection on a mass scale. The people of faith from the Old Testament are combined with those called to be a disciple of Jesus and will receive their immortal spiritual bodies, that the second death can not harm, when Jesus returns. Once Satan is secured in chains, Jesus and his saints rule over the people still alive and begin his thousand year reign. Ruling with the love of God, they rejuvenate the world from man’s degradation for that first thousand years. Do these verses describe a second life for the faithful? If you die and are then brought back to life, will you be in your first or second life?

Philippians 3:20 International Children’s Bible
But our homeland is in heaven, and we are waiting for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come from heaven.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 Good News Translation
16 There will be the shout of command, the archangel’s voice, the sound of God’s trumpet, and the Lord himself will come down from heaven. Those who have died believing in Christ will rise to life first; 17 then we who are living at that time will be gathered up along with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

1 John 3:2 Easy-to-Read Version
2 Dear friends, now we are children of God. We have not yet been shown what we will be in the future. But we know that when Christ comes again, we will be like him. We will see him just as he is.

Revelation 20:4 New International Reader’s Version
4 (B)  They had been killed because they had spoken what was true about Jesus. They had also been killed because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its statue. They had not received its mark on their foreheads or hands.They came to life and ruled with Christ for 1,000 years.