Skyscraper

You might well ask why each of us needs a savior and I am not sure that I can give you a complete answer. But, perhaps, a metaphor may help. This one may seem a little contrived, but it is the best I have been able to come up with, for now.

We might compare life in this current world to going over the edge of a cliff (birth) and, ultimately, under the force of gravity, reaching the bottom. It would make some difference, as to your final condition, whether you made a soft or hard landing. If the cliff is high enough, having a maneuverable parachute, hang glider or ultralight craft could certainly make a difference in the outcome.

Now imagine an elevator shaft in a skyscraper under construction before the elevator has been put in. A worker on one of the upper floors takes a glass bottle, soda or beer, and drops it down the shaft. We have little problem guessing the result when the bottle reaches the bottom of the shaft. Unless that bottle is snagged by something like a net before it reaches the bottom, it will be irreparably shattered. We are much like that bottle.

If we were to think f each floor as a year of our lives and the bottle as our soul, we would each know what the end result would be. It doesn't matter much which floor we are dropped from, the result is pretty much assured. So we are heading for a hard landing. The only thing we don't know is what floor we have been dropped from. If we are not to be shattered, we must be caught by someone before we reach the bottom. Natural death is that bottom.

I am not sure that the Bible tells us, in so many words, why it is so. Just that it is, and to have no bottom is worse. There is no one who may die in the place of the Satan and the fallen angels we call demons because they cannot physically die. Their doom is assured because of the eternal existence they have. Jesus said, "To whom much is given, much is required."

So, natural death is not necessarily a curse to a fallen race. For with it, there is the possibility of redemption. In light of this, we can see why God places an angel at the entrance of the garden to prevent the two from returning and eating of the Tree of Life. Eternal life after the fall leaves no remedy for it. The two would have become indistinguishable from the fallen angels with regard to salvation.

The end of this is that each of us must be caught before we reach that hard floor or our fate becomes that which has been set for the devil and his angels, and since none of us know what floor we are fallen from, we, none of us know when we shall reach that bottom. Jesus said that hell was created, not for humanity but for the devil and his angels.

But, we are also told that we were created in the image of God, so it follows that we must have an eternity of one sort or another - as He most certainly has one - or the image is fatally flawed.