Immortal!

Today I was driving to town and decided to listen to the radio. The usual Christian station I like to listen to was playing music that I wasn’t so interested in at the moment so I started flipping through the stations. Another Christian station was having a program of questions and answers. Listeners could call in and some theologian would answer their questions. Many questions were coming in but one caught my attention not only because of the question but also because of the answer.

The listener said that as he was reading the Bible he came to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. You can read about it in Genesis 18:16 - 19: 29. God looked at those wicked cities and decided that they needed to be destroyed. After talking with His friend Abraham about it, God rescued Lot from those bad cities and burned them down. The listener said that he found out that even though the Bible says that Sodom and Gomorrah would be burning forever, they obviously aren’t, so he wanted to understand this better.

The theologian then went on explaining his idea of hell and that even though the cities weren’t burning for ever, the souls of the wicked people were. He said these people have been tormented in the fire of hell since the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now this idea does not come from the Bible for the Bible doesn’t teach that. And how unfair of God that those who go to hell now don’t suffer as long as the wicked people who died long ago. Somehow the theologian was able to explain this belief using his reasoning and not God’s word. Now what struck me was that the lady who was facilitating the program added some of her thoughts on the matter and ended up saying: there are only 2 things that are immortal, God’s word and us!

Her comment really saddened me because if there is one thing that we are not is immortal! Only God is immortal. In the garden of Eden God told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would certainly die and that’s exactly what’s been happening to us since that fateful day. Satan is the one who has been deceiving us into thinking that no, we will not die, but we will be like God. And generation after generation we’re taught that we don’t die, that we are somehow immortal. And we explain this by separating our body from our soul even though God’s word makes no such separation. 

Now the good news is that one day we will receive immortality. By dying on the cross Jesus defeated eternal death and provided a way for us to have eternal life. One day Jesus will come to get His children and take them home and on that day He will get rid of our mortality and in the twinkling of an eye, in a flash, we will be transformed and clothed with immortality. I Corinthians 15:51-54 And those who have died believing in Jesus as their Savior will rise to meet their Lord face to face and live with Him forever. Can’t wait for that day!

I know this is subject of a longer study. There’s so much to learn about hell, immortality and what happens when we die, but I hope one thing. I hope that listener went back to his Bible and searched God’s word for the truth for only there will he find it. And that goes for me too. It’s obviously ok to talk with other people and learn of other people’s walk with Christ, but we need to be like the Berean Jews of Acts 17:11 who “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

Now what about going to your Bible and see if what I’m saying is true as well? :)

“God, the blessed and only ruler; 

the King of kings and Lord of lords,  

who alone is immortal 

and who lives in unapproachable light, 

whom no one has seen or can see.”
I Timothy 6:16