What is it with the fascination with zombies and the undead, i.e. ‘dead people walking’ or people who “see” dead people and talk to them? Movies, TV shows, books, even commercials depict zombies in “everyday” scenarios!
What’s up with that?
One particularly gruesome 30 seconds is for some table-top-talking-box that turns on the TV for a zombie whose arm breaks off reaching for the remote. (By the way, in the real world, extra hardware required to turn things on and off; that little box doesn’t just automatically do it.) Then, perhaps at a really poor attempt at humor (?) the guy’s ear falls off! Gross!!
It’s a perfect ad to show small children (not!), who are drawn to commercials anyway, who are not even in the demographic target but tend to be the most influenced by it. Is it any wonder why children think there are monsters under their bed?
The expression “living dead” is an oxymoron in human terms. It’s like “good grief.” Grief is rarely good, and dead is never living.
Actually, there IS such a thing as “living dead” but it’s not at all like the movies show us. It’s a very real situation that occurs with complete separation from God, and those who find themselves in it are not walking this earth (or anywhere for that matter) as zombies, but exist in a spiritual plane of misery and suffering, and it’s a very real place.
It’s called Hell. The Bible also refers to it as the “realm of the dead” or Sheol – the dwelling place of the wicked sent there for punishment, a place of no return.
Moses and Aaron had led the nation of Israel out of Egypt. Yet time and again the people grumbled against Moses and Aaron and God. The people were told because of their sin and rebellion they would not enter the Promised Land, but their descendants would. (Numbers 14) But Korah, grandson of Levi, and some others gathered an assembly (250 well-known men and members of the council) and decided Moses and Aaron were “setting themselves above the Lord’s assembly.” They decided that everyone was holy, and the Lord was with them, and they didn’t need Moses and Aaron (and therefore God) to show them the way. (Numbers 16)
These men challenged God because they believed they had no sin in themselves. Moses asked Dathan and Abiram to advise him, but they would not. They, too, accused Moses of leading them to their death in the wilderness.
The Lord was angry. He told Moses those people were going to be destroyed.
Yet Moses and Aaron pleaded with God to spare them!
But Moses and Aaron fell facedown and cried out, “O God, the God who gives breath to all living things, will you be angry with the entire assembly when only one man sins?” (v.22)
God warned the people through Moses: Move away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Moses told the people that IF these men lead a “normal” life and suffer death like all of mankind (from old age), then God ‘has not sent me.’ But if the Lord does something new and these men are swallowed up by the earth, then you will know these men have treated the Lord with contempt. (v.30)
The ground opened up and swallowed those men, their families, and all their possessions. It says they went down alive into the realm of the dead, and the earth closed over them.
Not only that, but fire from the Lord consumed the 250 men who had stood with Korah against Moses and Aaron.
Incredibly, the next day the people STILL grumbled against God!! And God sent a plague, and only Aaron’s atonement made with incense and coals from the alter of God did the plague stop, after 14,700 more people died.
A lot of people believe that God will not send people to Hell. It’s a misunderstanding of the Unchanging Sovereignty of God. Now that we live in the ‘Age of Grace’, with Jesus Christ being the sacrifice for our sin and the Reconciliation between Man and God, providing that we accept Jesus and believe in Him, we avoid Hell. We avoid eternal separation from God. We avoid going ‘alive into the realm of the dead.’
You see, God does not send us to Hell – we send ourselves:
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:17-18)
THE RIGHT RENDITION 