The scientific definition of death helps us to perceive His meaning. It is as follows: “Death is the falling out of correspondence with environment.” The following illustration will help the class to better understand this subject. Here is an eye of a human being, seemingly perfect in structure, wide open, apparently able to see any object placed before it. The objects of nature, bathed in bright sunlight surround it, but there is no response from the eye. It does not see; for the optic nerve is severed. It is dead to the beauty before it.
Here is a person whose ears are completely deafened. Birds are singing, bells are ringing, voices speaking, but those ears do not respond to the sound waves that are carrying melody to other ears which are open to receive the same. They are dead to the sounds.
Upon the very day of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, sin severed the delicate intuitive knowledge of God in the spirit of Adam and Eve. They failed to respond to Him who was their Environing Presence. They were dead to God. Therefore, we see that a human being may be moral, educated, refined, strong and vigorous in mind and body, yet dead to God. He may even know many things about God and talk about Him, preach about Him, write books about Him and still be dead to Him-without response to the voice of His Spirit. This helps us to understand the meaning of such passages as 1 Timothy 5:6; Ephesians 5:14; Romans 8:6.
This classification of human beings into the groups, the “dead” and the “alive,” will appeal to the scientific man, for in like manner he classifies all objects. Were a large number of objects placed before him he would not put the objects of beauty in one pile and those devoid of beauty in another, as a child would do; but he would examine each in reference to the possession of life. Consequently one collection of objects he would label “alive,” the other “dead.”
God does not classify upon the basis of moral beauty or “good works.” Concerning each human being He asks, “Has he Life? Is he alive unto Me?”
The death process established in the spirit of our first parents was quickly manifested throughout the whole of the inner man, and after a time the possibility of dissolution of the body, which had been held in abeyance while man remained obedient and dependent before the Fall, became an actuality. The bodies so wonderfully formed of the dust of the earth and which might have been glorified, now returned to dust. The teacher should now place a black disc containing the three circles symbolizing spirit, soul and body, over the white circles symbolizing this tripartite being of man. (See Fig. 4.)
We now need to notice a phrase used several times in the account of the creative work of God as found in the first chapter of Genesis. We first find it in verse 21: “And God created great whales (literally sea monsters) and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind”; and again in verse 24 we read, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind. And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind.”
Science tells us that in the original germ of all animal life no difference is discernible. One bit of protoplasm develops into the beast, another into the bird, still another into the reptile. More wonderful still, the original germ of vegetable, animal and human life is precisely the same viewed through the microscope, or analyzed by the chemist. But the scientific man cannot tell us why one germ produces an oak, another a lion, still another a man. Evidently there is a distinct life-principle in each germ, and these various life-principles follow an unvarying law in the reproduction of the form of life which it is to manifest. What a relief to turn from the limited knowledge of the scientific world to these simply stated words of God. His creative power brought into being these various forms of life, and their reproduction is but an extension of His creative act. (See this statement set forth in the wonderful poetry of Psalm 104:30.) Many have been the attempts to prove the theory of “spontaneous generation,” but these attempts have resulted in complete failure. Theory after theory has been advanced and experiment upon experiment has been made to solve the great problems connected with the origin of life upon this planet and the mysteries of its reproduction. Evolutionists have felt at times that their elaborate researches were to be rewarded with success; but no keenly logical mind among them now desires to say that their chain is complete, for there are fatally weak links which perplex and discourage.
Bearing in mind the thought already advanced, that reproduction of life is the extension of God’s creative act, it is not difficult to perceive that a law has been established by God Himself from which there can be no deviation. Each form of life will be reproduced “after its kind,” so long as the reproduction of that life continues.
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