GOD’S human sons were not meant to die. (Romans 8:20, 21) In fact, when God first spoke of death to Adam, it was mentioned, not as the outcome that man should normally expect, but as the punishment for disobedience to God. (Genesis 2:17) Adam understood what death meant, since he would have seen animals die.
Adam sinned, and he paid the price for it by dying at the age of 930 years. (Genesis 5:5; Romans 6:23) Having been expelled from God’s family for disobedience, he was no longer considered a son of God. (Deuteronomy 32:5) The Bible says this about the sad consequences for mankind: “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men.”—Romans 5:12.
The Bible also says: “There is an eventuality as respects the sons of mankind and an eventuality as respects the beast, and they have the same eventuality. As the one dies, so the other dies; and they all have but one spirit, so that there is no superiority of the man over the beast, for everything is vanity. All are going to one place. They have all come to be from the dust, and they are all returning to the dust.” (Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20) What does returning to the dust mean?
The expression “returning to the dust” reminds us of God’s statement to the first human: “Dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19) This means that humans, like animals, are physical creatures. We are not spirits that merely inhabit a body of flesh. Our thinking faculties cannot survive the destruction of our body. Of a man who dies, the Bible says: “He breathes his last breath, he returns to the dust; and in that same hour all his thinking ends.”—Psalm 146:4, The New English Bible.
If that is what happens, in what condition does that leave the dead? God’s Word gives a clear answer: “The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:5) Rather than being like a friend welcoming us to a better life, death is called “the last enemy,” according to the Bible, for it halts all of our activity. (1 Corinthians 15:26; Ecclesiastes 9:10)
