Daily Manna · Day 301 · October 28
Protected from Second Death
“He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”
Today's promise is short: "He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." The honest objection is that it can sound like cold comfort. You went to a funeral and heard the dirt land on the coffin, and something in you has not settled since. Being told that a second death cannot touch you does nothing about the first one, and the first one is the one you heard.
So look at who first received these words. This is Jesus' message to the church in Smyrna. Of the seven messages in Revelation 2 and 3, it is one of only two with no rebuke in it, because there was nothing to rebuke. Jesus says to them, "I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich)."
Then He tells them what is coming: "the devil shall cast some of you into prison." The verse just before today's verse softens nothing: "be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." He does not promise them a long life, an easy one, or a quiet ending, and He tells them that faithfulness may cost them their lives. What He promises is that the thing which ends a body cannot reach the person. Later, Revelation explains what the second death is: "death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." It is the one death that is final.
The word "overcometh" can sound like a word for some great achievement. In the message to Smyrna, everything points to a simpler meaning: staying faithful. That is what people do when they have nothing else left to give.
So the promise stands exactly where Jesus put it, and it is better not to stretch it. There are two deaths in this book. One has a sound, a date and a graveside, and He never told Smyrna that one would pass them by. The second death cannot reach a person who stays with Him. Whatever the first death takes from you, and it may take a great deal, it cannot take you. Jesus calls Himself the One "which was dead, and is alive," and He has made sure of that.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 301 is Ready Always (1 Peter 3:15).