Is Death a promotion?
The mindset around death needs to change. We have been conditioned to believe that death is a promotion to another realm and state of being, and that this is a good thing. This is how it has been presented to us.
However, when it talks about Jesus bringing life and immortality to light through this good news, and Jesus saying in John 6 that you don’t need to die… Because most people have died, it’s so hard to believe that.
Societal Conditioning
Societal means large social groups.
From virtually the moment we can talk, we are conditioned to understand that we are going to die one day. This concept is ingrained into everybody, making it not just a religious concept but a societal one.
We must deal with the physical body because our spirit is not going to die anyway. It’s only the physical body that’s the issue. We often accept the idea that from ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we are going to die some day and our body will return to dust. But that was not God’s original intention from the beginning.
However, Jesus altered that belief by saying that you don’t need to die if you eat My flesh and drink My blood.
This has become ritualized into taking communion and spiritualized to mean that you won’t die spiritually.
But Jesus meant it physically. Eating his flesh and drinking His blood meant fully embracing who He was, not literally eating His flesh and blood.
Communion is an element of that, but it goes beyond just the ritual into living with His breath and life flowing into you and giving life to your mortal bodies, as everything about Him is life and there is no death in Him.
Transformation and Renewal
Now, obviously, our physical body may have things attached to it and within our DNA which reflect our earthly inheritance rather than our heavenly one.
So, that needs changing. It’s not just a mindset change; there’s also a physical transformation of any death within our cells.
Our cells need to be renewed and not destroyed. The ability of our cells to renew themselves needs to be restored, and they need to learn how to communicate what brings about that change and restoration.
The things within us, within the normal manner of thinking lead to death. So not only our mind with, but the physical body as well. Breathing in His life constantly can put us in a state of continual renewal and restoration.
But does that mean we will have the same physical body forever? No, because there’s a limitation to our physical body that Adam didn’t have. His spirit was around his body, not the other way around.
There needs to be a restoration of the balance of the relationship between spirit, soul and body that God intended, that our bodies, spirit and soul would come back into the correct balance, harmony and design that God had for them.
Jesus, when He died, had a resurrection body. His physical body died, but He had a resurrection body with certain abilities different from His physical body while he was alive.
This body allowed him to do things differently, which shows a transformation that we will also undergo to bring about a different relationship between spirit, soul and body than we have now.
He had a resurrected body. We died with Him and were raised with Him, and we are in the process of that being fully formed in us.
Our thinking can stop this process because “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”. If you think in your heart that death is inevitable, then you will probably die.
Our thinking needs to be in alignment for the outworking to take place. It’s not just about thinking it and it will be; there’s a process of our whole body being renewed and the relationship between spirit, soul and body being transformed into what it should have been. This may have different ways of outworking – I don’t know.
The Nature of Aging
Do I have a resurrected body now? Yes, in one sense, because I have died and was resurrected with Him.
But in another sense, my mind is coming into agreement with what that means, and my thinking has an effect on that.
I am believing for new body parts which I know I have in a storehouse in heaven with my name on it. But it has not yet manifested upon the earth.
There are the legal and vital aspects of redemption. What is legally ours in Christ, must be brought down into the natural realm for it to be manifested.
Hence, the renewal of my mind to agree with God about my physical state needs to take place.
There hasn’t been a lot of history of teaching or experience to draw on regarding this.
Some people are said to be alive after hundreds of years because they have embraced this concept, but not many people have met them, making it difficult to provide concrete examples.
I believe it starts with faith, God imparting a Word to our spirit and then through belief as our thoughts and feelings come into alignment with it, which then brings about the transformation of our physical nature.
The cells of our being need to align with God’s intention. This presents the question of aging. Are we going to age?
If aging has a consequence of death, then we should not be aging to bring death.
Jesus aged from a baby to a full-grown adult. But after he matured physically I don’t believe he would have died, if he had not gone to the cross and then received a resurrection body.
But nothing in our body should hinder us from fulfilling our destiny in God. There may be some people who, like Enoch and Elijah, might be translated into another state of being without going through physical death.
We don’t know yet. Some people might know that there’s a time when they’re not going to be here. But we don’t need to equate that time with death.
It may be that I’ve fulfilled all that I need to fulfill, so this part of my destiny is complete, and I don’t need to be here any longer, therefore I will just move on.
But I think there will be a transformation in the nature of our physical being at some stage in our walk with God – or in process – whichever way it occurs.