Spiritual death

“ Then spiritual death renders him heedless of spiritual realities, of the presence of God, of the value of salvation, of the closeness of eternity. Does natural death appear in utter helplessness and powerlessness? ”

“ As God lives, the soul dies not. What though the grave be silent, and the darkness of the Shadow become not peopled—to those eyes that can see there is light, light, light—to those ears that can hear the tumult of the disenfranchised, rejoicing. I am borne down not with the sense of annihilation, but with the vastness of life and the imminence of things spiritual. I know from something beyond and out of myself that we are now but dying to live, that there is no death, which is but as a child’s dream in a weary night. ”

“ Let this be our cry till the dead wake up, and the slumbering church arouses from its stupor, and the pulpit pulsates with pentecostal fire.
The last thing a person wants to meet is death. No wonder it is termed an enemy. If then death is so dreaded in the material world, why should we not abhor spiritual death? ”

“ Guide my spiritual powers.
3 He His spirit doth diffuse,
Sweeter far than midnight dews;
Lifting all my thoughts above,
On the wings of faith and love.
4 What if death my sleep invade;—
Should I be of death afraid?
Whilst encircled by Thine arm,
Death may strike, but cannot harm.
5 Visions brighter than the morn
Greet the deathless spirit born;
See, the guardian angel nigh
Waits to waft my soul on high!
[430]
6 With Thy heavenly presence blest,
Death is life, and labor, rest;
Welcome sleep or death to me,
Still secure, for still with Thee! ”

“ Spiritual death is the state of the natural or unregenerate man as still in his sins. Ephesians 2:1 alienated from the life of God Ephesians 4:18,19 and destitute of the Spirit. Prolonged beyond the death of the body, spiritual death is a state of eternal separation from God in conscious suffering. ”

“ Therefore, as the soul could never die, and the fall had brought upon all mankind a spiritual death as well as a temporal; that is, they were cut off from the presence of the Lord, it was expedient that mankind should be reclaimed from this spiritual death ”

“ But we know that the dead body has no power to hear the voice of the Son of God; and with equal certainty we may know that the dead body will never come forth from the grave. But let us read these passages as referring to the resurrection of the spirit, from the dark and gloomy grave of spiritual death, to a life of heavenly love and truth, and we see at once the truth, beauty and harmony of our Lord's words. ”

“ The reality of the natural man’s spiritual death is abundantly illustrated in human history. After man fell into sin, and died, he was given fullest opportunity to recover himself and to demonstrate thereby that he was still spiritually alive. ”

“ Because there is another death besides the death that is seen, and another life besides the life that is seen. The scripture says, She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth; and, Let the dead bury their dead; Because the dead shall not praise Thee, O Lord, but we, the living, shall bless Thee. ”

“ The body is dependent upon the spirit, and the spirit during its natural occupancy of the body is subject to the laws which apply to and govern it in the mortal state. In this natural body are the seeds of weakness and decay, which, when fully ripened or untimely plucked up, in the language of scripture, is called "the temporal death." The spirit is also subject to what is termed in the scriptures and revelations from God, "spiritual death." ”

“ For here is a twofold Death of the Body, that is common to all Men, both good and bad; and of the Soul, and the Death of the Soul is Sin. But after the Resurrection, the godly shall have everlasting Life, both of Body and Soul: Nor shall the Body be then any more obnoxious to Diseases, old Age, Hunger, Thirst, Pain, Weariness, Death, or any Inconveniences; but being made spiritual, it shall be mov'd as the Spirit will have it: Nor shall the Soul be any more sollicited with any Vices or Sorrows ”

“ Death means senselessness, helplessness, separation. No doubt we may trace analogies, very close and real, between the natural and the spiritual life and death. But still they are no more than analogies. You do not identify the physical with the spiritual. And it is felt by all that the use of the words in a spiritual sense is a figurative use. To the common understanding, a man is living, when he breathes and feels and moves. He is dead when he ceases to do all that. ”

“ Doubtless this is angels' work.
When our friends pass away from this world, when their fleshly tabernacle is laid aside, this is called death; but it is only the death of the body; the soul lives on in the Spiritual World. ”

“ "'Tis this which makes
The best assurance of our promised heaven:
This triumph intellect has over death—
Our words yet live on others' lips; our thoughts
Actuate others. Can that man be dead
Whose spiritual influence is upon his kind? ”

“ There is a radiant passage by which the soul is translated from the death which is death indeed, to the life which is life indeed. There is another passage by which we pass from life to death; i.e., fall back towards spiritual (which is not necessarily eternal) death. ”

“ And that's the great and horrible error in your religion.... But death of the soul is infinitely worse than death of the body. I have been thinking of her soul.... So here we stand, you and I. You to save her life—I to save her soul! ”

“ In another moment, the livid lips and sunken eye of the clay-cold corpse recall our thoughts to earth and to ourselves again. And while we think of mortality, sin, death, and the grave, we feel the prayer rise in our bosom, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!”
If there be a moment when Christ and salvation, death, judgment, heaven, and hell, appear more than ever to be momentous subjects of meditation, it is that which brings us to the side of a coffin containing the body of a departed believer. ”

“ What does it matter, if a man dies in the work-house—if he dies on a door-step, covered with wounds, like Lazarus—what does it matter, if his soul is saved? It is your creed as much as mine, that the soul is immortal, and that the death of the body is only its introduction, if it be saved, to a glorious future of everlasting felicity, progress, and holiness. ”

“ When, emerging from the body as from a palace suddenly given over to silence and solitude and flying through the gardens of the soul, the mind diffuses itself in God, it tastes the delights of an anticipated death, or rather of a future life, for to die is to live ”

“ For them I pour out my soul with an intensity of desire. By Thine own feeling of the pains of death, by Thine own experience of the mystery of death, by Thine own former pangs, have mercy upon them, both now and in the actual hour of death. ”

“ For when a man dies, who does not say afterwards that his soul or spirit is in heaven or in hell? And who does not say of his own infants who are dead, that they are in heaven? And who does not comfort the sick, or one condemned to death, by the assurance that he will shortly come into another life? ”

“ But that the case is altogether otherwise, I have learned by much experience and from conversation with the angels; yea, I have learned that they who renounce the world and live in the spirit in this manner, procure to themselves a sorrowful life which is not receptible of heavenly joy; for every one's own life remains after death.
But in order that man may receive the life of heaven, it is altogether necessary that he live in the world, and engage in its duties and employments, and that then by moral and civil life he receive spiritual life. ”

“ Come now, angel of rest, come take my heart and carry it to my beloved—angel of rest, leave me not so long with the dead. Is there nothing invisible around me?—Angel of death, thou must be near me, for thou hast even now torn from my embrace, two darling souls, and allowed them to ascend—I am dead too—draw my burning soul from its cold kneeling corpse! ”

“ Oh, we need that angel of death to come in, and now and then stir the pool of our family life, that there may be healing in it, that there may be blessing in it! Death, holding the hand of God through it, to those that stand by and see the sweetness of human love, the triumph of faith celestial, has a grandeur in it, like Christ's death on the cross; it hides out of sight of the people the ghastly, the doubt-creating features and elements of its external impediment—death becomes God's minister. ”

“ A dying must come upon all that would hinder God's working through us--all interests, all impulses, all energies that are "born of the flesh"--all that is merely human and apart from His Spirit. Only thus can the Life of Jesus, in its intensity of love for sinners, have its way in our souls.
Death to Self is the Way Out into a Life of Sacrifice.
This dandelion has long ago surrendered its golden petals, and has reached its crowning stage of dying--the delicate seed-globe must break up now--it gives and gives till it has nothing left. ”

“ The last of all these miseries, is death, both in respect of soul or body, a thing most terrible, for in this moment the body is disrobed of all things in this world. And the soul in this point receiveth the joyful or fearful sentence of eternity. ”

“ And if, among terrible things, death is the most terrible — because it divides the soul from the body and from this visible world — how much more terrible will eternal death be, wherein the soul is divided from Almighty God, from His kingdom, and from the invisible world! ”

“ When the time comes for me to depart from this life and go into what we call eternity, to pass through the vail, it is, simply, to leave the body to rest awhile, and blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for their sleep shall be sweet unto them. Death is merely a sleep to the body, and all the fear I have concerning it is what arises from my traditions. ”

“ Life and Death
Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein
Two shades are imaged, passing like a breath:
And one is Life, whose other name is Sin;
And one is Love, whose other name is Death.
VIII
Sorrow
Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste
Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice
Of lost Love’s tears, and, famishing, can but taste
The dead-sea fruit of Life’s remembered joys. ”

“ Canst thou behold the realms of those who die?
Where dwells the spirit e'er its mortal birth,
E'er yet it suffereth
The pain and sorrow incident to earth?
Where after death?
The Sun gave answer, with refulgent glow:
Child of a fleeting hour, thou too must die to know.
Canst tell, thou jeweled canopy of space,
Bewildering, and boundless to the eyes,
Knowest thou the unborn spirits' dwelling place?
Knowest thou the distant regions of the skies
Where rest the spirits freed from mundane strife,
From mortal grief and care?
Knowest thou the secret of the future life? ”

“ Oh! for a thousand tongues to declare the truths which are now fast dawning upon my bewildered mind! Death, the great leveller, need have no more terrors for us, for it has been conquered by the Great Spirit, in giving us a never-ending life in the glorious spheres of immortal bliss. ”

“ Suppose you were now in ignorance respecting the doctrine of life and immortality through a resurrection. You know you must die, and sincerely think that death will terminate your existence forever. You see your children one after another laid upon their dying bed, and with distraction shake the farewell hand of eternal separation, and with the most solemn melancholy and wo, look forward to the period when you must follow them down to the chambers of eternal silence, and cease to be. ”

“ While contemplating on the possible way of calling unto itself the beloved soul that had gone astray in its blindness, Death stood before it and called it to make ready for a long journey beyond the boundaries which it now knew. ”

“ You may talk and talk to the grief-stricken one who bends over the corpse in the coffin about death being a transition from a world of woe to a world of weal, and the distressed one may try to cherish the thought and proclaim belief, but the tears cease not to flow, the pain and anguish written upon every feature of the mourner refuse to give place to joy and gladness. ”

“ But I would say this to you, that some will have ten desires for death, when they have not one desire for heaven. And what moveth Christians to be so desirous to die? It is not so much because of their hope, as because of their anxiety; it is not so much because of their confidence, as because of their impatience. But I say unto you, when your desires of death are not accompanied with desires of heaven, suspect them. ”

“ Nothing is living but Death!
"Oh for the old glad days,
Incense thick in the air,
Passion of thanks and of praise,
Passion of trust and of prayer!
Ah! the old days were fair,
Love on the earth was then,
Strong were men's souls, and brave:
Those men lie in the grave,
They will live not again! ”

“ For indeed, when this purgative contemplation is most severe, the soul feels very keenly the shadow of death and the lamentations of death and the pains of hell, which consist in its feeling itself to be without God, and chastised and cast out, and unworthy of Him ”

“ If this be dying, let no true Christian ever be afraid of dying. Oh death is sweet to me. This bed is soft. Christ’s arms and kisses, his smiles and visits, would turn hell into heaven. Oh that you did but see and feel what I do! Come and behold a dying man, more chearful than ever you saw an healthful man in the midst of his sweetest enjoyments. Oh Sirs, worldly pleasures are poor, sorry things, compared with one glimpse of this glory, which shines in so strongly into my soul! ”