## [13] What is physical death?

Solomon tells us that the dead are conscious of nothing and David tells us that their thoughts have perished...

5 For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten (Ecclesiastes 9).

3 Do not put your trust in nobles, nor in the son of earthling man, to whom no salvation belongs.
4 His spirit goes out, he goes back to the ground, in that day his thoughts do perish (Psalm 146).

So the dead are not conscious and their thoughts perish. At first thought, as a human, one thinks that this means the dead have their brains switched off, so they do not think at all. One thinks that their thoughts perish on the day that they die. But the bible is not written like that. Their thoughts perish on the entire 'day' of their being dead in the correct interpretation. Because we should interpret this scripture in the same way as we interpret the scripture...

17 But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively
die (Genesis 2).

Now Eve did not die judicially on the literal day she ate the fruit although Adam did. But both died during the 1,000 year first day of the 7,000 year week during which we all eat from that tree and die. Likewise the thoughts of those in the first death, physical death, perish all through the 'day' of their being dead, however long that 'day' may be. So the physically dead do think, actually in their dreams, but those thoughts are subconscious and they perish as do all unremembered dreams.

Two of the people that Jesus resurrected during his ministry, Jarius's daughter and Lazarus, he himself described not as being dead, but as being asleep.

39 And, after stepping in, he said to them: Why are you causing noisy confusion and weeping? The young child has not died, but is sleeping.
40 At this they began to laugh scornfully at him. But, having put them all out, he took along the young child's father and mother and those with him, and he went in where the young child was.
41 And, taking the hand of the young child, he said to her: Talitha cumi, which, translated, means: Maiden, I say to you, Get up!
42 And immediately the maiden rose and began walking, for she was 12 years old. And at once they were beside themselves with great ecstasy (Mark 5).

11 He said these things, and after this he said to them: Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am journeying there to awaken him from sleep.
12 Therefore the disciples said to him: Lord, if he has gone to rest, he will get well.
13 Jesus had spoken, however, about his death. But they imagined he was speaking about taking rest in sleep.
14 At that time, therefore, Jesus said to them outspokenly: Lazarus has died (John 11).

When Jesus said that these people were asleep, even though of course they were not in fact physically asleep but were dead. Jesus was not lying because Peter tells us that Jesus neither lied nor sinned...

21 In fact, to this [course] you were called, because even Christ suffered for you leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely.
22 He committed no sin, nor was deception found in his mouth (1 Peter 2).

So Jarius's daughter and Lazarus were indeed both physically dead, but they were also 'asleep' and therefore 'not dead' in some other sense. When the Christian Martyr Stephen was stoned in Acts 7 the bible says...

60 Then bending his knees, he cried out with a strong voice: Lord - do not charge this sin against them. And after saying this he fell asleep (Acts 7)!

This wasn't because Stephen was getting so bored with being stoned that he decided to take a power nap as the Sanhedrin was pelting him with rocks! Stephen truly fell asleep when he died. But what actually falls asleep in death? It is not the human body. But there is only one other vehicle for the human spirit and that is an angelic body. A dead person is almost precisely like a person under a general anesthetic except that a dead person cannot remain in his human body which is destroyed. So his or her spirit must be asleep in an angelic body. There is no other option.

Looking at this from our own experience, when one has an anesthetic one wakes up from a dream and one remembers the very end of the dream (especially if the nurse is talking to you and asking you what you are doing in your dream, which has happenned to the writer). So even under a general anesthetic one continues to dream. Of course during sleep we all dream and we only remember dreams when we wake up during them for some reason. Jesus is telling us that sleep prefigures death so we would expect to dream during death. But since our thoughts perish, these dream of course will not be remembered since one is never woken up whilst one is physically dead, at least not until one is resurrected.

### Philosophy

At last we have solved the great puzzle of faith in God's capability to carry us through death that Gordon had been wrestling with for 15 years. How do I know that a resurrected me is actually me? We knew that something had to keep going, there needed to be a continuity of some type for if I stop then I can be cloned and that clone would be identical to me but would not be me. But what is it that keeps going, what is it that defines my life? What is the heartbeat of the brain or the spirit.

Well the answer is that when your spirit leaves your physical body and stops experiencing physical reality, then it starts experiencing virtual reality instead, in your dreams. You continue to exist in your dreams just as you existed in the physical construct of the universe. To the mind, nothing much has changed. Your spirit lives by continuing to make decisions in the virutal reality of your dreams. These dreams do not occur in the human brain any longer, but in the angelic brain, where your spirit resides during the first death. The angelic brain is a superior cognitive mechanism to the human brain of course. Presumably your dreams are in higher resolution!

So death really could be described as an improved dream.

Definition: A living spirit never stops making decisions in some kind of environment (physical reality, angelic reality or virtual dream reality).

So free willed life is a continuous decision making process. Plant life is something else. Although we do not own our bodies we merely lease them, we all of us have the freehold deeds to our everlasting spirits.

Definition: A spirit in the first death dreams and does not remember its dreams other than perhaps the last one at the moment it is resurrected.

So the first death is truly angelic sleep which to us will be indistinguishable from human sleep or a general anesthetic. So there is absolutely no need at all to be scared of death. - unless one is bound for Gehenna upon resurrection.

Solomon refers to this as follows...

5 Because [a] man is walking to his long lasting house and the wailers have marched around in the street.
6 before the silver chord is removed and the golden bowl gets crushed and the jar at the spring is broken and the waterwheel for the cistern has been crushed.
7 Then the dust returns to the earth just as it happened to be and the spirit itself returns to the [true] God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12).

Obviously Solomon is using metaphor here. He is talking symbolically. The man of Ecclesiastes 12:5 has died. His long lasting house that he is walking to is his angelic body, the wailers are the funeral attenders. The human body is mainly plumbing for blood which represents our spirit our life. We are walking fluid dynamics. And Solomon is explaining our physiology in these terms. The Golden bowl is his head, the jar at the bubbling spring is presumably the circulatory system for the lungs which are the spring. The waterwheel is the heart and the cistern is the circulatory system for the body. The silver chord is an umbilical connection to a mother. This mother is the holy spirit, the heavenly woman, God's wife. When the umbilical cord is cut then the baby is born. This baby is the long lasting house, the angelic body. Gold means first (in time here) and silver means second (in time). Gold has a higher financial value than silver, and is used symbolically to represent a higher temporal value. So the golden bowl of the human vessel exists before the silver cord of the angelic vessel. So the human body precedes the angelic one for mankind.

But the silver angelic umbilical chord is cut and the angelic body is born before the golden bowl is crushed and the human body fails. This enable the spirit of the man to go into the angelic vehicle before it loses its human vehicle.

Putting this another way the man or woman is born again as an angel in an angelic body before he or she dies as a human in a human body. So everyone is born again when they die if they have not been born again whilst they were alive. But no one realises this at the time since they are unconscious. However out of body experiences in near death situations are widely reported.

44 It is sown a physical, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one (1 Corinthians 15).

Well that is very good news, especially if one's physical body is a bit knackered! So we all get a spiritual body eventually. Those who are born again whilst they are living, and maintain their faith under test, get a permanent angelic vehicle of their own before they die. The rest of us get to borrow one when we die until we are resurrected into another human vehicle of our own.

Being born again due to faith, becoming God's son, means having an empty angel waiting, with your name on it as your possession so long as you pass the test. If you die without being born again then you are put into a temporary angel with no name on it, and then later resurrected back to a plain old human with no associated angel. But all human resurrections require an angelic stage to bridge the gap between the two human bodies. This is why Paul says 'it is raised a spiritual body'.

Historical Note:

Tony and Gordon, two of the first Lords' Witnesses, first realised that spirits of humans enter temporary angels when they die, when they considered the following situation: Let us suppose that Gordon died, and that as the Jehovah’s Witnesses then believed, his character was stored in God’s memory. If God resurrected him by sticking his exact character back into another human body, then would he still be Gordon? Or would he merely be a perfect copy from a character standpoint of Gordon? A clone of Gordon.

If he was merely a clone, then Gordon himself would actually still be dead, and would have not benefited at all from his own resurrection. Although no one would actually know whether the clone was Gordon or not, since the clone would be a perfect copy. In order for Gordon's resurrection to be of some use to him, there needs to be a continuity of his life between his first human body and his second human or angelic body. This continuity can only be provided angelically because God possesses no other souls for the human spirit, other than the human soul and the angelic soul.

The point is that God's memory would return an exact copy of what it stored (we argued), but the returned character would not have been asleep in an angel and therefore would have had no continuity of its own individual life. And therefore would not be the person that entered God's memory. God's memory would return a perfect copy of what was put into it. But it would not be the same person without a continuity of life. Sleep is that continuity and one sleeps in one's own body, not in God's memory.