In Mark 7:10, Jesus affirmed Moses commandment that a child who curses his parents should be put to death. But Jesus used a curious phrase for His statement: "let him die the death." "To die" means to go through a process by which one arrives at the condition called "death." But Jesus seems to have worded His phrase to mean that death somehow has a reverse effect which causes the process of dying. In this sense, Jesus seems to have equated spiritual death with sin itself. Romans 6:23.
Jesus phrase reminds one of Revelation 6:8 where the Holy Spirit uses a vision of a pale horse as a symbol for Death. This comparison seems to indicate that Death must be a real place and not just an empty condition. This verse also states that death possesses the power to kill which indicates that death causes spiritual death in humans. This verse also states that Hell follows Death which would further indicate that Death is a real place. This place called Death can only be the same place as the bottomless pit of Revelation 20:1-3 and the prison of Revelation 20:7. I Peter 3:19 informs us that after Jesus died on the cross, his Spirit went and "preached unto the spirits in prison." This can only mean that Jesus went to the place called Death and preached to the disobedient spirits held there.
To have a spirit is to have consciousness. The place called Death can be described as absolute nothingness, a place of total darkness and emptiness where one can be conscious of absolutely nothing except one's past life and sins. Job 10:21-22. All through the Bible, it equates sin with vanity; that is, total emptiness. Death is a place of total emptiness and evil. Somehow, in some mysterious way, Death had a reverse effect on Lucifer which caused God to dissolve his positive consciousness in order to recover all of God's goodness that he had put into him. Lucifer became an emptiness filled with a negative consciousness called Satan who is totally evil. Ezekiel 28:13-19. Cain was "cursed from the earth" in Genesis 4:11. God cursed the ground in Genesis 3:17. Death and Hell, which are in the ground, have had a reverse effect on man by the agency of Satan causing sin and death in man which is a condition of spiritual separation from God. All of this evidence can only mean that the Sea, Death, and Hell must be three separate places to which Christ sentences unrepentant sinners according to His judgment following their physical deaths. Hebrews 9:27.
In John 5:21-29, Jesus displayed the same attitude toward life and death that he had with Adam and Eve when He walked and talked with them in the garden. In such verses as John 8:51; John 11:4; John 11:26; John 6:50; John 8:21-24; Matthew 8:22; Matthew 9:24; Luke 9:60; and Luke 20:37-38, Jesus ignored physical death and concentrated His teachings on spiritual death. In Genesis 2:7, God created man to be a living soul, but He did not say that man would be immortal. In Genesis 3:22, God revealed that His purpose for the tree of life was that man should eat of it and become immortal. God would have had no need for the tree of life if He had created man to be immortal. God had to ban Adam and Eve from the garden because if they had eaten of the tree of life after they sinned, that would have been a curse since they would have been both sinful and immortal. This evidence can only mean that God's punishment for Adam and Eve's sins in Genesis 2:17 had to have been spiritual death only, not physical death. In Genesis 3:19, God simply informed Adam that after a life of toil, humans would physically die and return to the dust, but God did not say that physical death would be a punishment for their sins. They were punished by the spiritual deaths of being cast out of the garden that very day and losing fellowship with God. They did not physically die until over 900 years later. Whether they sinned or not, God had always meant for them to live that long. This evidence can only mean that since their punishment had to happen on the same day they sinned, then physical death cannot be a punishment for sin. Physical death either only delivers the souls and spirits of those saved by grace to God forever, or it delivers the souls and spirits of unbelievers to one of three different places of spiritual separation from God according to the judgment of Christ. II Corinthians 5:8; Revelation 20:13; Hebrews 9:27.
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