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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 54. No Change in God
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No Change in God
Plainly enough death here means separation in spirit from God. It has a beginning. It continues as a process, intensifying in character. It is a final result. It affects the man's spirit toward God at once. It comes, by and by, to affect his body.
The hold of the human spirit on the body in which it lives is affected. Bodily conditions are affected. And that grows and intensifies until the spirit and body can no longer hold together. The separation of spirit from God comes to include bodily conditions.
It is noticed further that there is in this picture no change of action or attitude on God's part. The separation is a grief to Him. He continues His creative sustaining touch just as far as he is allowed to. The separation is wholly on man's part. It is in his spirit. It is in his will. He wants to get away. That finally results in the full separation that eventually brings bodily death.
Let it be noted very keenly that here death is an unnatural thing. It is a break in the natural order. It clearly enough was not in the original plan. It couldn't be. It is a direct result of break of touch with God. God never planned separation of any sort from man. And, at the core, that's just what death is. Life is full contact with God. Death is the reverse, a break in that contact. Plainly if the wire's cut the current can't get through.
It will be noticed that in this pictured definition there are two stages to death. There is the present or immediate. This is in one's spirit, or inner attitude toward God. There comes a change there at once when the break with God occurs. And God calls it death.
Then there is the second stage, the death to the body. That did not come till. long after-wards. It is really a less thing than the other. Though it is the big thing in our common thought of death. The deeper, more serious thing, was in the inner spirit. That happened at once, and went on increasing in its grip and influence.
Here then is the pictured definition of what death means. It is the reverse of life. Life is full touch of spirit or heart with God. Any break in that touch means the loss of life, in some measure, and that is called death. This death is a thing of growth.
It moves from one stage to a deeper. It eventually comes to include death of the body. That is the big thing in our common thinking, but not in this Book. Now, this gives the meaning of death throughout this old Book of God. Put in so distinctly at the very beginning it dearly set the standard of meaning throughout.