Protected from Second Death

He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

The obvious objection is that this is cold comfort. You went to a funeral and heard the dirt land, and something in you has not settled since, and being told that a second death cannot touch you does nothing about the first one, which is the one with the sound.

But look who is being spoken to. This is the message to Smyrna, and it is one of only two of the seven with no rebuke attached, because there was nothing to rebuke; they were poor and they were about to lose people. The line just before it does not soften anything: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He tells them plainly that some of them will be killed. He does not promise them a long life, or an easy one, or a quiet ending. What he promises is that the thing which ends a body cannot reach the person. Revelation defines the second death later, and it is the only one that is final.

And overcometh is not a word about achievement, whatever it sounds like. Everything in the letter to Smyrna suggests it means staying, which is what people do who have nothing else left to do.

So the promise stands exactly where he put it, and it is worth not widening. There are two deaths in this book. The one with a sound to it, and a date, and a graveside, is not the one he warned them about, and he never told them it would miss. The second one cannot reach a person who stayed. Whatever the first takes from you, and it may take a great deal, it does not get to take you.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 301 is Ready Always (1 Peter 3:15).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna