Since the Bible so clearly teaches that the hope of life after death is based upon the promises of God to restore the dead to life in the resurrection, the question naturally arises as to why so many of those who profess to believe the teachings of the Bible should be confused on the subject. The basis for this confusion originated in the Garden of Eden.

God said to Adam, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Gen. 2:17) Later Satan, speaking through the serpent, asked Eve about this, saying, “Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Gen. 3:1) Eve confirmed what God had said, including his statement that death would be the penalty for disobedience.—vss. 2,3

Then Satan, replying to Eve, said, “Ye shall not surely die.” (Gen. 3:4) This was a denial of what the Creator had said. In effect, Satan charged God with lying when he said that death would be the penalty for disobedience. Possibly Satan believed that in some way he could thwart the divine purpose of inflicting the death penalty upon man. If so, he soon discovered that efforts to do so were futile, for the human race began to die.

However, Satan did not concede that he was wrong. Instead he began, through human agents, to circulate the propaganda that death is not what it seems to be, that in reality there is no death. To the extent that he could induce people to believe this, he would be proving that he told the truth when he said to Mother Eve, “Ye shall not surely die,” you will only seem to die, and when you seem to die you will, in reality, be more alive than ever.

To those who have confidence in the Word of God, there shall be no difficulty in deciding which of the statements made in the Garden of Eden should be accepted. It was the Creator who declared, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” and we know that God told the truth. It was Satan who said, “Ye shall not surely die,” and we know that he did not tell the truth. Jesus said of Satan, “He is a liar, and the father of it.”—John 8:44

Not only is Satan a liar, but, as Jesus declared, he is the “father of it.” In other words, Satan fathered the first lie, and it was the most devastating and far-reaching lie that ever was told. This falsehood, stemming from the Garden of Eden, has corrupted the truth on the subject of death in the minds of the people of all nations and religions; while the truth, as expressed by God in the statement, “Thou shalt surely die,” has been believed by only a comparatively few.