Very recently, I was personally asked by Ron to elaborate on what is the Second Death. The impression I got is that he wanted it phrased differently than the way Theologians normally go about this. And it is to be from MY Perspective, or words to this effect. My response to him and other fellow believers into Jesus as one's LORD and Savior is below:
It can take several lengthy chapters to lay out just a short version of the Theology of what is involved with the Second Death, but I will try to condense even that.
6 Blessed and holy is he
that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no
power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ…
14 And death and hell were
cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
15 And whosoever was not
found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:6,14-15)
8 But the fearful, and
unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and
sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake
which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. (Revelation 21:8)
To begin, we 1st should acknowledge Jesus is the Living GOD (Deuteronomy 5:26) to whom Israel heard the Voice of at Mount Sinai (Deuteronomy 5:24-26, John 5:37, 1:18). It is He who gave Adam breath (Lamentations 4:20, Genesis 2:7), who is the I AM of Sinai (Exodus 3:14, John 8:58), whose goings is of eternity (Malachi 5:2) and born of a Virgin into the world (Isaiah 7:14) came unto His own Temple (Malachi 3:1) the One who implanted His Light in Man at the Beginning (John 1:9, 1 John 1:5, Genesis 2:7) and is Creator of all that is (Colossians 1:15-17).
41 The Son
of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom
all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
42 And shall
cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:41-42)
The Body Of Man At The Beginning
In Genesis 2:7, Man is created physically out of the dust, the
powder of dirt that is blown by the wind, like dusty top-soil that has died to
the Earth and drifts as if ashes. He is spiritually connected by type to the
ashes of the Tabernacle and Temple Sacrifices.
The ashes of the Red Heifer, or of the Sin Offering and so on, were to
be a relationship to the material Adam formed by the LORD GOD in Genesis 2:7.
In Genesis 2:19, Animals are physically created out of the
ground, as part of the Earth’s tilled and turned over soil, out of the
sustenance of the Earth.
If we were to say that the Earth was created HOT, like magma or freshly spewed volcanic lava: then the animal life of this Earth would find their base matter in the hotness of the Earth itself, while man is a by product of the wind at GOD's Command gathering the burnt off floating ashes and powder of the HOT Earth and creating man.
It appears that the angels (cf. Psalm 104:4) were created by GOD's spoken word and a Heavenly wind. So too was man AT THE BEGINNING (Genesis 2:7) brought forth by a Heavenly wind and gathered, but apparently, unlike his angels counterpart, a little lower than the angels, man got a makeup of physicality, of ash and water.
Christ was formed in the VIRGIN womb by the Holy Spirit using the materials of blood, which is the life of the flesh (Leviticus 17:11) and water, which origin is from the LORD GOD's innermost being (cf. 1 John 5:6,8; John 7:37-38).
When the 1st Man unbelieved the person called the Voice of GOD as the familiar name to him for Jehovah GOD, in essence he died after a spiritual sense. Within John 1:1-18, we have the concept that Man had in him a sort of Pilot Light, like that used as a gas flame ignition source we would use to start or flame on a gas heater or furnace. Jesus, the Creator, is that Light that lights every man who will BELIEVE into Him.
In Genesis 2:7, Adam has been given the same singular life, CHaYiM חים, as the animals, a soul attached to the dust or ash of the Earth. But then, GOD BREATHES into the nostrils of man, He imparts a sliver of His own Spirit, a spiritual seed as if a Father to a Son, another Yod, and man goes from having a life or CHaYYiM חיים to having lives or hayyim. Man, by the breath of GOD into his nostrils, goes from a mortal to an immortal being at that point, the Yod being the abbreviate of His Name YHVEH יְהוָ֔ה .
By the act of unbelief, by eating the fruit given him by his wife, which he KNOWS is forbidden, man's second Yod of Life, his eternal flame within him, as it were, is put out, and he becomes mortal. By trusting Faith into Jesus, Man is given the ability to be restored unto Eternal Life as a Son of GOD (John 1:12, 3:15-16, et al).
Two lives must be accounted for, the one within him that is like the animals and returns to the Earth, and the spiritual eternal flame - the spiritual eternal light (which is Christ) which he put out by means of the spiritual, by unbelief.
In the 1st death, a man physically dies. The ash of this Earth returns to the Earth. But then, there's a Resurrection of the Damned. From the ashes and fine powder of the Earth, those who have rejected Christ are reformed into the beings they physically were, their spirit bearing the imprinted DNA coding, but the breath of GOD is NOT in them.
“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25)
If one does NOT believe in Jesus, he has no second life, he is dead once more over his physical death, he is dead a second time, and dies a second death.
At the Resurrection of the Damned, once again Man is created physically out of the dust, the powder of dirt that is blown by the wind, like dusty top-soil that has died to the Earth and drifts as if ashes. This time, he must account for the second life that would have been in him had he simply accepted Jesus, had he simply believed (John 3:18,3:36).
In many ways, it appears that we are not judged as much for the life we lived in the physical body of the 1st life which is destroyed like the animals and returns to Earth, but we are judged for rejecting GOD the Father, who sent us His Son speaking His words, and refusing to have simple trusting faith, not only that the words are true, but to honor Him.