Nearly everyone has studied about the life of Moses. Few of us have studied much about his death. In fact, there is little in the Bible on the subject. But what is there, is very interesting.

The Bible teaches that Moses was born in Egypt at a time when new born Israelite boys were under a death sentence. He not only survived that threat, but he was raised in the household of Pharaoh. Scripture also teaches that Moses, in defense of one of his countrymen, became a murderer and was forced to flee from Egypt. But while he was a fugitive living in exile, Moses was selected by God to become the deliverer of his countrymen. From their harsh Egyptian bondage, he led them for forty years through a terrible wilderness to the Promised Land. Believers study the miracles that he worked, his leadership, and about his life—and those things are very important. But most of us neglect to study the little that is revealed about his death. And that is also very important.

After forty years of leadership, Moses was not permitted to enter into the Promised Land. And so he entreated God,

Even knowing the goodness of God, do we not feel a twinge of human sadness on behalf of Moses, that, after forty years of leadership, with his goal in sight, he was denied the prize? From a purely human viewpoint, doesn’t that seem cruel? Yet Moses did not complain.

Of the facts concerning Moses’ death and burial, Scripture seems strangely quite brief. We are given many details about his birth, and about the murder that he committed in order to rescue his countryman. We are even made aware of his family life in the land of Midian, but the Bible has almost nothing to say about his death and burial. Since I do not believe that God has included any "fluff" in the Bible, I suggest to you that we should study this subject very carefully.

Notice in the reading above, that it was God who buried Moses. That is a point that we will revisit momentarily. When the passage states, "nor his vigor abated," it was talking about Moses’ ability to naturally beget children. That point is also important, as we shall soon learn.

As far as the Bible records, that is all that we know about the death of Moses. He had no state funeral, although he was mourned for thirty days. He was not embalmed after the Egyptian custom, although he had grown up in the court of Pharaoh and was familiar with that practice. And he had no tomb in the normal sense, for he was buried by God and no man even knew the place of his grave. At first glance, the death of Moses seems almost unimportant to the Bible message. Do you suppose we are missing something? Let’s dig a little deeper.

Moses had a physical, biological body, and we have just learned about the death of that body. But did he have yet another body, that is, a body that was non-biological? When Jesus taught the Pharisees about the rich man and Lazarus, he mentioned Moses. In Jesus’ teaching, a certain rich man and a beggar named Lazarus had died. The rich man in torment first implored Father Abraham to allow Lazarus to dip his finger in water, then come and cool his tongue. When that was not possible, he begged that Lazarus to be sent back from among the dead to warn his five brothers to avoid coming to the place of torment where he was. But father Abraham told him,

Jesus was not teaching that Moses and the Prophets were still alive in the flesh. But he was declaring that they were still teaching. Israel still had The Law that Moses gave to them, and they still had prophecies that God’s servants had delivered to them. Every Sabbath, the priests and scribes read to the people from those recorded words. So in a sense, Moses and the prophets continued their ministry to Israel. How, then, could they be regarded as dead?

Looked at another way, there was a group (body) of people known as Israel who regarded the teachings of Moses as divinely authoritative. The apostle Paul wrote about that body.

The "old testament" fathers of biblical Israel who "were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea," comprised the body of Moses. At least from a human perspective, it was he who had called them out from Egypt, it was he who had led them through the wilderness, it was he who had handed down God’s law to them. Those people who had submitted to Moses were his body.

And that meshes well with "new testament" doctrine, in that those who were in Christ, had been baptized into him.

Through baptism, the early believers had clothed themselves with Christ. That is, they had put him on and they lived within him, collectively they comprised his body. Later on in his first letter to Corinth, after summarizing the workings of that spiritual body, Paul told them,

Moses left behind a body of people that he had organized into a nation known as Israel that continued long after his death, burial and putrefaction. Many years later, after his death, burial, resurrection and ascension, Jesus had a body composed of Christians. It was a "new" body, a spiritual nation or dominion. I believe that the body of Moses and the body of the Christ are type and antitype.

Earlier we read that it was God who buried the body of Moses.

May we not understand that this is another biblical type? It was the biological body of Moses that died in the land of Moab and was buried by the Lord. The body of Moses that consisted of the fathers who had been "baptized into [him] in the cloud and in the sea" survived him by many centuries. Yet it, too, eventually died in A.D. 70, utterly destroyed by the Romans. I do not know where God buried that body, do you? I am convinced, however, that its death and burial are the antitype to the death and burial of Moses’ biological body.

Now recall that Moses was not permitted by God to cross over the Jordan into their Promised Land. He could only view it from afar. Herein is yet another type, for the people who comprised the body of Moses could not, in that body, while still alive and in the flesh, cross over into the new heaven and new earth. They had to first be born again [John 3:3]. In the body of Moses, they could view the glory of the new creation from afar, but in order to enter into it, they had to be in a "new" body, they had to be in a spiritual body. They had to be in the body of Christ. But the faithful of Israel who were not biologically alive at the Lord’s return, took part in the resurrection that accompanied his return [John 5:28, 29].

We also noted earlier that, although Moses died at the age of one hundred and twenty years, "his vigor", his ability to beget children, had not abated. Why is that important? For this reason: Moses could produce biological offspring up to the time of his death. After then he could no longer beget children. That is the type. Likewise Israel, the body of Moses composed of those who had been baptized into him in the cloud and in the sea, and their descendants, produced offspring until it was destroyed and buried by God. After that time it could produce no more children unto God! That is the antitype.

There was a great battle being fought during "new testament" times. The law was given through Moses to the people who became his body—Israel. The law revealed sin to be sinful, but alas, it also condemned the sinners! Through animal sacrifices there was a remembrance of sin from year to year, but not complete forgiveness.

But the Law could not take away their sins.

However, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, and that grace brought eternal life.

The body of Moses offered its members death, while the body of Christ offered its members eternal life.

Yet for a generation (30—70 A.D.) those two bodies contended with each other, each of them claiming that they were sanctioned by God. Their struggle was described by Jude.

The body that Michael and the devil argued over could not have been the moldered remains of the biological body of Moses that had been buried by God more than a thousand years earlier. That body would not have been useful to the devil. But if he could control the other body of Moses, Israel, he could continue to hold people in slavery through the fear of death [Heb. 2:14, 15]. And that would have served his purpose.