A SIMPLE VIEW OF LIFE AND DEATH
Religious people down through the ages have led others astray because they did not see life and death the way God sees it. God has a very simplistic understanding of life and death:

This is very different, of course, from man’s understanding of life and death which is about life and death of the natural, human body. Their literal interpretation of the Bible leads them to apply this human idea of life and death to scripture. This is what leads them astray. They do not understand that God’s always speaks in parables.  Nor do they understand that God’s written word and his spoken word are not the same. Religion is what people create when they fail to recognize these truths about God.

People always need to be mindful of the fact that God always introduces spiritual truth through references natural truth. This is the “first the natural and then the spiritual” principle. When they come to understand this principle, they will see that God uses man’s understanding of natural life and natural death to introduce his idea of spiritual life and death. When man understands life and death this way, this is how he will always interpret scripture according to its symbolic, spiritual meaning — not according to man’s human understanding of literal scripture.

STUDY TIPS: See this link for a detailed explanation of spiritual life. See this link for a detailed explanation of spiritual death.

Readers who grasp and accept God’s understanding of spiritual life and death are ready to study the topics of resurrection, new life, forgiveness, and heaven and hell. God is giving them the ability to  hear God’s spoken voice in their hearts.

Readers who do not grasp and accept God’s understanding of spiritual life and death are to be pitied. Their eyes are blind to interpreting the Bible symbolically and their ears are deaf to hearing God’s spoken voice. They cannot see or hear because they have hard hearts. They need God to do a miracle that only he can do: Change their hearts.