A Great message of the Bible is the truth that man is God's likeness and that this likeness is spiritual and deathless. One should never lose sight of this fact, even though in human life, so called, one must deal with the mortal sense of existence. One should see death as merely an illusory incident in human experience and as having no power to destroy, since God is Life and the eternal Principle of being. Scriptural characters reckoned death as sleep, and Christ Jesus taught this concept of death, describing it in this way on more than one occasion. His conclusion was confirmed by his ability to waken people from this deep mesmeric state as from a night dream.
One such occasion was when he heard that his friend Lazarus was sick. After two days he announced to his disciples (John 11:11), "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." When the disciples demurred, the Master said plainly, "Lazarus is dead."
A fundamental teaching of all Christian denominations is that what the world calls death is not the end of life. Many other religions declare that existence persists in some mysterious form after people have left the earth. Christian Science reasons logically on the subject and arrives at the conclusion that those who go through the phase of human experience called death continue with the same form they possessed before death and that this fact should not seem mysterious.
