Satan deceived Eve about death and since that time he tried to use death to lead men away from God. What happens to a person when he dies was not readily apparent in the Old Testament. When Job asked, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14), he expressed how little was known about death before Christ came. In fact, Job in that same chapter said, “Man dies…he breathes his last and where is he?” (v. 10). References to the resurrection are vaguely found in the Old Testament, but it is in the New Testament that Christ “….abolished death and brought life an immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10).
The writer of Hebrews described this truth and how drastically Jesus changed mankind’s view of death. Jesus became flesh in order that, by His death, “…He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (2:14-15). Without His resurrection, we too would look at death so differently. This lack of knowledge about death could so easily overwhelm us when our loved ones die. Without His resurrection, we would have a fear of death, and that fear would be used by Satan to bring us under the bondage of fear. Jesus was born; Jesus died; Jesus was raised. We are born; we die; we will be raised!
Put yourself in the place of Cain, Adam and Eve. Abel had been alive, and something so strange had happened. Where was Abel? They knew where his body was, but was that lifeless body all there was to man’s existence? There are ten generations from Adam to Noah, and nine times the Bible uses the expression, “and he died,” to describe man’s existence on the earth.
The one exception to describe the end of Adam’s descendants is in the seventh generation. “So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5:23-24). At that time, men lived over nine hundred years, and some might have said about Enoch, “He died so young.”
Look at this realistically. What a hopeless view of living nine hundred years where every day of your life you dealt with a cursed ground, its thorns and thistle and spent every day dealing with the sweat of your face until your body returned to that cursed ground (Gen. 3:17-19).
Before Enoch left, he said, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all…who are ungodly” (Jude 15). This is one glimpse of the resurrection in the Old Testament. How blessed we are to know about His empty tomb and face death without any fear! We are more than conquerors over death (Rom. 8:36-37)!