This closing chapter of the book of Genesis tells about the death of Jacob or Israel, and later of the death of his son Joseph.

Do you know what death is?

The body is only the covering or clothing of the soul or spirit, which is the real person. The body clothes the soul or spirit just as a glove clothes the hand. Look at a gloved hand. You see only the glove: you cannot see the hand. It looks as if the glove moved, but it moves because the hand within it moves it. So the whole body looks as if it lives and moves, but it lives and moves only because the soul or spirit moves it. Without the hand within it the glove is dead. Without the soul within it the body is dead. Look at the gloved hand again. Notice the shape, the folds and the wrinkles in it: they are all made by the shape, the folds, and the wrinkles of the hand that is inside of it, but they are not so fine and perfect. So the shape and everything in the body are made by the soul or spirit that is inside of it, though they are not so fine and perfect. A hand can feel through the glove, but not so acutely as without it. A hand can work through the glove, but not so skillfully as without it. And so the soul or spirit feels through the body, but not so acutely as without it; and it speaks and acts through the body but not so perfectly as without it. Take your hand carefully out of the glove, and you will find that the glove retains its shape for a while. When the soul or spirit is carefully taken out of the body by the angels whom the Lord sends for the purpose, the body still retains its shape for a while, but it no longer feels and moves.

This taking of the soul or spirit out of the body is called "resurrection," or "rising again." And then the soul or spirit can see, and feel, and hear, and smell much more keenly than before. The person can speak and act much more perfectly than before, and enjoy pleasures and delights much more intensely than before. All this is possible because that person no longer has a body covering his or her spirit. So you see that after resurrection people can be much happier and better than before.

The body's ceasing to live because the soul is being drawn out of it is called dying. The body is made of dust from the ground in a very wonderful way, and it is made by the Lord to be a perfect instrument through which we may do things in the natural world. When the Lord takes us to live in the spiritual world, it is because we are through with what He has wanted us to do here, and He wishes us to do things for Him in heaven. So our material body is not needed any more, and it gradually turns into dust again. This is the reason why it is put back into the ground from which it was taken.

Now, in the time when Joseph lived, hundreds, yes, thousands, of years ago - and long before that - the people of the Church liked to show that they believed in the resurrection. They believed that the soul or spirit could not die; that it could not rot away and turn into dust; and to show that they believed this, the people in Egypt took the dead body and filled it with myrrh and aloes and cassia, and treated it with salt, and in this and other ways they changed the matter of which the body is made up, so that it would not be hurt by decay; that it would not rot and turn into dust. Many of the bodies so treated are still preserved, thousands of years after the souls have left them. They are called "mummies." By so keeping or preserving the body, they wanted to show, or represent, that the soul which used to live in the body was kept, or preserved, by the Lord from all evil. The tomb or grave where the body was laid represented heaven where the soul had gone, and therefore a bad person was not allowed to be buried, because a bad person does not go to heaven. Kings, because they represented the Lord, were buried in the big pyramids. These were made like mountains because mountains, as you know, also represent heaven.

When people go away from us to be gone for a long time, we feel badly, because we love to have them with us, and we miss them when they are gone. So when our friends or anyone of the family go to heaven we feel sorry for a while because we miss them. In the Old Testament we read of rules and customs for mourning thirty days, or a month. Now-a-days some people wear black for a whole year to show how sorry they are. But if they would think more of the happiness of those who had gone to heaven, they would not feel so very sorry so long, and they would not wear black so long, and perhaps not at all. The Lord takes people to heaven in order to give them greater joy and pleasure, for in heaven everything is much more beautiful than here. The sun, in which the Lord lives, is brighter and warmer than the sun of our natural world. The air sparkles, and in some heavens seems to be full of little tiny rainbows, or of flowers, and even of little tiny babies. The trees are wonderfully perfect and sometimes look as if they were alive. The flowers are of the most delicate colors, their perfume exquisite; the brooks and lakes are of the clearest water; some of the houses are built of gold and precious stones; the schools have the most beautiful living pictures on the walls; the men, women and children there have the softest, brightest garments, the colors of which change from time to time. Everything is so lovely that we cannot but be glad when anyone goes to heaven. And when our turn comes to die, or rather to rise again, then we shall meet again all those whom we loved who have risen before us.

Table of Contents