Death at all times seemed to man the most terrible enemy. And the most terrible were of course its invincibility and inexorability. Everyone knew that everything will end in any case with the leaving into the world of deaths, in this world of darkness, where there is...
Death at all times seemed to man the most terrible enemy. And the most terrible were of course its invincibility and inexorability. Everyone knew that everything will end in any case with the leaving into the world of deaths, in this world of darkness, where there is no real life, but is only an existence, which, maybe is the worse than the nonexistence itself.
We can notice by the way that no people of the antiquity look at death as a departure into nothingness: this idea appears later, it is necessary to consider it as the fruit of the philosophic reflections, and not the spiritual or mystic experiments. And in the experiment it was not exactly the disappearance of the human personality, but the exhaustion of the vital forces of man and the gradual disintegration of his personality: in the kingdom of the dead, in the world of darkness, the memory is gradually lost, the capacity to think is lost, almost extinguishes the consciousness, and man addresses his own shade, dwelling in a state either of sound sleep with horrible dreams, which is impossible to remove, either the delirium, from which it is impossible to come out. Like this saw the world of darkness practically all the peoples of the earth. For the plenitude of the picture, it is possible again to add that the lord of the world of darkness was usually a merciless and relentlessly spirit, whose favorite leisure was to torment those that turned out to be in his possession.
Of course, over time to certain peoples (for example, to the Egyptians and Greeks) appeared the representation of the after death less darkly and of the posthumous reward, but, at the first place, it was something all the same from the cultural point of view local, and, secondly, even such after death did not suppose the plenitude of life: because the soul is not a whole man, the Egyptians and the Greeks connected the soul with the personal consciousness, but about the physical in relation to the posthumous existence, it was usually not about: because and for the Egyptians, and particularly for the Greeks the body was rather seen as the prison for the soul, than as its house, although temporary. But here is, the yahvisme directed from the very beginning its followers not on the after death, although and joyful, but on the complete overcoming of death. It is difficult to say exactly when appeared in the yahvisme the representation of the resurrection, but already Isaiah of Jerusalem speaks (although not directly, but rather with hints) that in the messianic Kingdom there will be not only diseases, but also death.
And in the pre-captivity period, was already forming in the Judaism the representation about the general resurrection on the last day, the Day of Judgment, when everyone will return again in the world of the living to appear in God's judgment. In the first Christians Churches the situation was a little bit looked otherwise: because for the Christian the coming of Christ is this very Judgment that says the Judaism. And the Savior Himself points directly at Him as the One, to Whom God gives the whole judgment, by adding: whosoever believes in me does not come to the judgment, but whosoever does not believe is already condemned. In fact: it is about the faithfulness of Christ and of this Kingdom, which He brought to the world.
Kingdom, in which there is no place for death: because death is the consequence of sin and the evil, in which, according to the word of the Gospel, lies the world. But in our time, in the time of the Kingdom to come, when the world is transformed, but is not yet transformed till the end, and in the world, and in our life there is again a place for death. It [death] will disappear only when the Kingdom, transforming the world, will reveal itself in it totally. Then in this new world there will really already not be a place for death. As we see, that is why the apostle calls it the "last enemy", the last one in this sense that it is this enemy that will resist more than the others, till the very end, until the day of the last Judgment and the definitive triumph of the Kingdom, when it will undertake its last and complete defeat.
15
15:26 The last enemy that is destroyed is death - Namely, after Satan, Heb 2:14, and sin, Co1 15:56, are destroyed. In the same order they prevailed. Satan brought in sin, and sin brought forth death. And Christ, when he of old engaged with these enemies, first conquered Satan, then sin, in his death; and, lastly, death, in his resurrection. In the same order he delivers all the faithful from them, yea, and destroys these enemies themselves. Death he so destroys that it shall be no more; sin and Satan, so that they shall no more hurt his people.