A criminal who has been sentenced to die for his crime is referred to as a “dead man walking.” His crime and his future death become public knowledge. Everyone who knows him or knows about him is aware of what he has done and what is to happen to him as a result. He is a walking dead man–a spiritually dead being housed in a physically living body.

Such is not the case outside of the social legal system. Some of the most dead people appear to all who know them or know about them to be the most spiritually alive. They themselves “know” that they are at one with the Lord and are not aware that they are serving God’s enemy. I know, for, as I pointed out in the previous posting, I was once one of them–a spiritual “dead man walking”–alive outwardly but dead inwardly. Like the Apostle Paul, I am allowed to serve the Lord today only because of His incredible patience and longsuffering. Like Paul, I was chief of sinners–a reprobate upon whom God showered His matchless grace. I was a super religious, God-called minister who did not know the God he thought he was representing. I was a dead man walking. Which beings up an important question.

When does the believer die? At what point in his life does he die spiritually? Adam and Eve provide the earliest Scriptural answer. In Genesis 2:16,17 we find God telling Adam that he could eat of every tree of the garden, “… but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat … FOR IN THE DAY THAT YOU EAT THEREOF YOU SHALL SURELY DIE.” Note the time element relative to death–Adam would die as soon as he sinned. This is borne out in Isaiah 59:2 where God tells us that sin separates us from Him. In both cases the Lord is referring to spiritual death initially, followed by physical death when one has used up his allotted time. Separation from the Lord is spiritual death. Immediately and without fail, sin causes a separation. For the honest Truth-seeker, this death is tantamount to living in a present, earthly hell. The merely religious, though equally dead, are not aware of the separation. Adam and Eve, having been in God’s presence, realized immediately what had happened, causing them to hide from Him. The Lord’s rhetorical question: “Who told you that you were naked,” combined with the fact that they were hiding, reveals that they understood what they had done and knew the penalty–separation from Him. Resigned to their fate, they voiced no questions or arguments when He cast them out of paradise and left them to their own devices. Their story provides their descendants with a blueprint for determining when one dies spiritually. Let us examine other Scriptures relative to when spiritual death/separation occurs in a believer. As we do so it will be noted that in the vast majority of cases the believer is not aware that the separation occurred immediately following one’s initial contact with the Lord which supposedly resulted in instant salvation and rebirth. This was immediately followed by Satan’s track-switching slight-of-hand as he lured the trusting God-seeker away from God’s gate and way and toward his (Satan’s) gate and way (Mat. 7:13,14). It is at this point that spiritual death took place and Satan’s false life took over. This age-old phenomenon continues to take place hundreds of times each day as people follow false prophets into a religious life that takes him ever farther away from the Lord and ever deeper into false religion. The new convert, unaware of what is happening, enters into Satan’s Institutional Church System where he remains until physical death. Unless, that is, he decides to study the Scriptures for himself, believe and obey them. This is an extremely rare occurrence due to the repercussions that inevitably follow. For this reason few, God tells us in Matthew 7:13,14, choose to go the God-commanded route. To be continued. L.J.