| Home
Previous Page |
Webster
defines “untimely” as something that occurs at an
inappropriate or inopportune
time. Demise, I
don’t believe,
needs
defining.
From
man’s perspective, death is never convenient or appropriate,
whether it’s the
demise of a pet or a person you love,
or most importantly, yourself.
As a matter of fact, I’ll go so far as to say
that death is a 24 karat “bummer”, particularly
when it’s your own. It’s
always inconvenient, early, premature
and something we all want to put off for a future date.
Many a cartoon has been drawn and published
showing an ominous hooded figure in a long black cloak,
holding a
sickle and
appearing at someone’s door.
This is
definitely not the UPS or Fuller Brush man and all would
rather
have a
Jehovah’s Witness come knocking then the “grim
reaper”.
So
for us humans, death is not timely, no matter under what
circumstances it comes
to us. But what
about God? How
does
He view death for one of His human
creatures. Is it
ever “untimely” from
His point of view? I
think not. But,
why not?
First
off, He is the One Who decreed the death penalty on Adam, and
therefore all in him. Adam
was told on
no uncertain terms
that his death, due to his disobedience, would not only be
inevitable, but fully appropriate based on His Maker’s
Sovereign
decree. And
because all mankind was in Adam’s loins
at the time, all of us come under the same penalty dictated by
God.
That’s why we all must die.
What God told Adam, He told us, even though
we were not yet actualized as individuals.
One
curse fits all, and a poison well can only bring forth
polluted
water. “The acorn
doesn’t fall far from
the tree” as someone
once wrote. There
are many ways to say the same thing, but the thought is still
the same. God
ordained the demise syndrome
for
disobedience and we all were part of Adam’s rebellion because
we were all part
of Adam when he rebelled. If fallen
Adam
had physically died before he procreated, all of us would have
died, in him, as
well. Just like
arms, legs and a head, we
all inherited original sin and like it or not, that’s our
legacy. So to
God, someone’s death is never untimely,
but rather right on time.
When He says
in His Word that all our days are numbered, the implication is
that it’s God
Who sets that number and it can only be
known by man in hindsight.
What this equates out to is that at any
moment each of us will pay for our rebellion (in and out of
Adam)
with our
life. Yes, we are
all on death row, or
as Scripture puts it, we’re all in the prison house of death,
with no pardon or
stay of
execution possible (“It’s appointed once for man to die, then
the
judgment” – Heb. 9:27).
We
hear a lot today from the pulpit that Christ died in our
stead. Well, if
this is so, then why is everyone’s
death so absolutely inevitable?
Obviously, His death was not meant to prevent us from dying
(going to
the grave). If
that were the case, Heb.
9:27 would have to be
crossed out of His Word.
But praise God for the fact that Jesus’ death assures
us that we will
not stay dead, once we die.
Christ’s
death on behalf of men is in part so we can look forward to a
resurrection. And
because death is
basically sleep (Math. 9:24; Mark 5:9;
Luke 8:52; John 11:11), it’s something
we can all relate to based on everyone’s night time sleep
experiences. We
fall asleep, awaken
8 hours later, and
wonder of wonders we’re not aware of any passage of time. Or someone enters
the sleep of a coma and
years
later he or she miraculously awakens without recollection of
the march of
time (remember Old Rip Van Winkle?). And
it’s the same
with death. One
moment
you’re alive, the next moment you’re dead, and the next moment
you’re alive
again. Just like
sleep. Awake,
asleep, and then awake again.
We all rehearse our “untimely demise” each
night, and a kind of resurrection the next morning. If
someone goes to bed at 10 p.m., and their
spouse has to stay up all night working, that spouse doesn’t
wail andweep over
their
mate being asleep in the next room.
Why? Because
our ongoing day in
and day out experience of sleep is that there will be an
awakening. So we
let our loved ones “rest in
peace”. Sound
familiar? Of
course, because we hear it said at every
funeral. – “May he
rest in peace”. And
death
is definitely a peaceful rest for the demised. It’s a rest because
it’s sleep. And
it’s peaceful because this
fallen satanic
world no longer burdens or holds sway over the soul that is in
the sleep of
death.
Now
all this is well and good for the deceased.
But where the rub comes in is that with the death of a
loved one, those
that survive the
deceased are plunged into all sorts of quandaries about what’s
just occurred, and how they will have to cope with the absence
of their
friend.
This isn’t just 8 hours,then it’s business as usual. It’s permanent, at
least to those who are
still alive. Of
course to God, and the
deceased, it’s only a flicker of time, an instant. But for those who
still have to endure their
stay on death row, the absence of a loved
one can be devastating. It
doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be the
case , but most of the time it is. It’s
usually accompanied by
weeping and mourning and sometimes inconsolable
grief. But to
those of us who are truly
in Christ, and He in us, death does not
hold us in its grip, but rather the
whole idea of exiting this fallen, corrupt, sinful worldis
instead a source of
great joy and relief. Whether
for
ourselves, or another, we who are saved and sanctified fully
understand that
God has left us volumes of insight about life and death.
The problem with most believers is that they
fail to absorb the Mind of God put in print about what life is
and isn’t, and
what death is, and
isn’t. It’s kind
of
ironic, in a way, because life and death is what man’s waking
reality is all
about, and it’s the least understood.
This
is excusable for those who have not been born from above, but
for
those who have, it’s really not an option to stay ignorant
about God's
Word,
about death or any other subject for that matter. After all, it’s this
Word that was
instrumental in our being spiritually conceived,
so it doesn’t make sense that a
believer’s Bible stay closed and its content left unknown and
therefore
unheeded. But
sadly, this is the
norm
for most who profess having been born again.
My
prayer for all true believers is that they will not enter into
their final sleep
of death without first knowing Jesus and God better, via His
Word, particularly
with what it reveals about our timely demise.