Death

Death

Death Frees the Soul
[A letter written to one's physical body.] 1 Corinthians 15:44.
"You and I have been together for a long time in a most intimate and valuable relationship. Now you have grown old. Your hearing and strength are failing. Your resistance to cold is diminishing. You cannot climb and run as you once did. In a word, you are running down. In a short time you will cease to breathe and your heart will stop beating. When you can go no further, you will be returned to the substance of which you were made, and I shall continue on in that life where you are not needed. A Power greater than you and I started us on this journey together. Now I recognize that you are aware of the fact that your journey is nearing its end, while my journey has scarcely begun. I know this to be true, for while you are feeble, I have never been more alive. Our separation, therefore, cannot be one of sadness, but will be one of joy. You are weary and want to stop. I am longing to alight from this slowing vehicle and go on without you. Death will mean that your desire to stop is granted, and my longing is satisfied."

Death for a Believer Is Sleep in Jesus' Arms
A farmer took his little son on a visit to a distant village. Along the way they came to a swift stream spanned by a rickety old bridge which frightened the little lad even though it was daylight. Returning at dusk, the boy recalled the stream and old bridge and became panicky. How would they cross that turbulent stream in the dark? Noting his anxiety, the father lifted the boy and carried him in his arms. Before they reached the bridge, he was fast asleep against his father's shoulder. As the next morning's sun streamed in his bedroom window, the boy awoke to discover he was safe at home. At death the believer falls asleep in the Savior's arms to awaken in His bright land of no night and no fear. When Science Is Silent
Said Dr. Joseph A. Parker: "Some have found fault with me. They say I am old-fashioned and out of date; I am always quoting the Bible; why not turn to science this morning?
"There is a poor widow here who has lost her only son. She wants to know if she will see him again. Science shall give the answer, and I will put the Book away." So he took the Book and put it on the seat behind. "Will this woman see her son again? Where is he? Does death end all? What has science to say?" Here a long pause. "We are waiting for an answer, the woman is anxious." Another long pause. "The woman's heart is breaking. Science must speak. Nothing to say? Then we must take the Book," and here he reverently replaced it, and with great deliberation opened it and read: "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me ...The dead shall arise ...for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. O death, where is thy sting? ...I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God."
Then, closing the Book, and patting it affectionately, he said, "We will stick to the Book!"

Death Is Not Necessarily Loss
A little girl whose baby brother had just died asked her mother where Baby had gone. "To be with Jesus," replied the mother. A few days later, talking to a friend, the mother said, "I am so grieved to have lost my baby." The little girl heard her, and remembering what her mother had told her, looked up into her face and asked, "Mother, is a thing lost when you know where it is?"
"No, of course not." "Well, then how can Baby be lost when he has gone to be with Jesus?" Her mother never forgot this. It was the truth.

If You Knew That Your Days Were Numbered
A man in Iowa discovered that he had terminal cancer. For weeks he moped around the house avoiding loved ones, inwardly cursing God and wondering why this tragedy had happened to him.
Then one day he made a decision: "I am not dead yet, and I am going to live each day to its fullest the rest of my life."
Sometime later, when he was interviewed, he said he had experienced a more abundant life in the weeks after that decision than during his prior 42 years-colors seemed more vivid, the laughter of his children more bright and precious.
One suggestion he gave to help others with terminal illness was, "Consider each day as a gift from God; enjoy it fully."

Called! Held! Kept!
Frances Havergal, the songwriter, lived and moved in the Word of God. His Word was her constant companion. On the last day of her life, she asked a friend to read to her the second chapter of Isaiah. When the friend read the sixth verse, "I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee," Miss Havergal stopped her. She whispered, "Called-held-kept. I can go home on that!" And she did go home on that. She found His promises unfailing.

Sooner or Later Everyone Runs Out of Time
Much sooner than you can anticipate, you will be the silent guest at your own funeral. No doubt there will be relatives and friends present to mourn for you whom you haven't seen in years. After the preacher delivers a message in your memory, you will be taken to the graveyard, given a final farewell and buried.
The retirement that you spent your life working for will be gone forever. Remember the new car that you worried about scratching? Its new owner just wrecked it! The newlyweds bought your house and have redecorated the room that you had at last decorated to your liking. Your personal belongings have been sorted and some discarded. The dog is making a bed out of your favorite old coat. Other clothes of yours that no one could wear or did not want have been boxed and given to Goodwill. Your personal treasures that were valuable only to you-the carefully preserved flower, the lock of hair, the torn picture, the stained postcard-have been burned as trash.
You attended a number of funerals in your lifetime, but for some reason you just never expected to be lying in the casket yourself. Sure, someday, but not that particular day. "Maybe tomorrow," you always thought, "but not today." You remember telling the Lord each time you thought your time was close, "Not this time, Lord. Not today. Maybe tomorrow."
Sooner or later, everyone runs out of time. Paul states that everyone has an appointment with death and then the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). The only time that you can decide whether or not your death will be a blessing is today while you are alive. Today is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). Today is the day to do the Lord's work. "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all of your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working, nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom" (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
Sooner or later, everyone runs out of time but no one runs out of eternity. Doesn't it make more sense to spend your time preparing for that which will not end, rather than squandering your time trying to hold on to that which will not last?
"Careless soul, O heed the warning,
For your life will soon be gone;
O how sad to face the judgment
Unprepared to meet thy God."
Will you be prepared on the day that you run out of time?

Known But to God
Shirley Pope Waite tells this moving story:
"'You must visit the American cemetery,'our bed and breakfast hosts told us. We hadn't known about this cemetery three miles from Cambridge, site of one of England's most famous universities.
"Upon our arrival, we were surprised to see the American and British flags at half mast. Special Memorial Day services were scheduled to honor the war's dead buried there.
"Established in 1943 on land donated by the University of Cambridge, it is the only permanent World War II military cemetery in the British Isles. The rolling grounds are framed by trees on two sides, and contain 3,811 headstones in seven curved grave plots.
"A large proportion of the servicemen and women buried there were crew members of British-based American aircraft. Others died in the invasion of North Africa and France, at sea, or in training areas within the United Kingdom.
"An impressive Wall of the Missing lies alongside a mall with a pool bordered by roses. The wall records names of 5,125 missing in action, lost, or buried at sea. Four huge statues represent a soldier, sailor, airman, and coast guardsman in uniform. A mosaic in the chapel of the memorial building stretches across the ceiling above the altar. It depicts the archangel trumpeting the resurrection and the last judgment.
"As we walked reverently around the beautiful grounds, we paused at the foot of a grave. It was one of 24 decorated with red and white carnations tied with a blue ribbon, and flanked by a tiny American and British flag. The words etched in the headstone read: "here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God."
"Tears came to my eyes as we stood in an attitude of worship. Unknown but to God, these service people were once known intimately by parents, siblings, friends, perhaps a spouse and children. Young men and women who fought for freedom and the dignity of humankind! Yet in death-known only to God!
"Relatives and friends may forsake us. We may feel alone in a world that offers many only poverty, cruelty, and apathy; but God knows each of us intimately. He is a husband to the widow: "for your Maker is your husband; the Lord of hosts is His name" (Isaiah 54:5). He is a father to the orphan: "Father of the fatherless ...is God in His holy habitation" (Psalms 68:5). He is Father to us all!
"Unknown except to God! Isn't that the most important relationship of any? Thank God, we are known to Him not just in life, not just in death, but for eternity!" The Shadow of Death
The first wife of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, a well known minister in Philadelphia, died from cancer while still in her thirties. All three of his children were under 12. Dr. Barnhouse had such victory that he decided to preach the funeral sermon himself. En route to the funeral they were overtaken by a large truck which, as it passed them, cast a large shadow over their car. He asked one of his children, "Would you rather be run over by that truck or its shadow?" "By the shadow, of course!" replied the 12-year-old daughter. "A shadow can't hurt you." With that answer Dr. Barnhouse said to his three motherless children, "Your mother has been overrun not by death, but by the shadow of death." At the funeral he spoke on Psalm 23, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me."

Beyond Death
A sick man turned to his doctor, who was leaving the room after paying a visit, and said: "Doctor, I am afraid to die. Tell me what lies on the other side." Very quietly the doctor said, "I don't know." "You don't know? You, a Christian man, do not know what is on the other side?!"
The doctor was holding the handle of the door, on the other side of which came sounds of scratching and whining, and as he opened the door a dog sprang into the room and leaped on him with eager show of gladness. Turning to his patient, the doctor said, "Did you ever notice that dog? He has never been in this room before. He did not know what was inside. He knew nothing except that his master was here, and when the door opened he sprang in without fear. I know little of what is on the other side of death, but I do know one thing: I know my Master is there, and that is enough. And when the door opens, I shall pass through with no fear, but with gladness."

Praise Out of Tragedy
God can bring fresh praise out of both tragedy and glory, as illustrated by this story about a favorite hymn. Luther Bridgers began preaching at age 17 while he was a student at Asbury College in Kentucky. He was a young Methodist minister of unusual zeal and evangelism. In 1910 the future looked bright for the 26-year-old preacher, who by then had a young wife and three children. The Bridgers family was visiting Mrs. Bridger's parents at Harrodsburg, Kentucky. After the family retired for the night, a neighbor noticed flames coming from the house. He roused Mrs. Bridgers' parents and Luther, but the rest of the family members were beyond reach. The young pastor lost his wife and children.
In the awful days of sorrow that followed, Luther remembered that God offered songs of comfort in the night (Psalms 42:8), and would never forsake him. It was during this period that Luther wrote the words and music that we sing so many times: "There's within my heart a melody/Jesus whispers sweet and low/fear not, I am with thee, peace be still; in all of life's ebb and flow." In the fourth stanza he referred to his own experience: "Tho sometimes He leads through waters deep/trials fall across the way."
In the darkest night, in the depths of despair, God gave an inward song to Luther Bridgers that has blessed millions. Out of a pit of grief came a song of blessing.

Only the Cocoon
Arthur Brisbane once pictured a crowd of grieving caterpillars carrying the corpse of a cocoon to its final resting place. The poor, distressed caterpillars, clad in black raiment, were weeping, and all the while the beautiful butterfly fluttered happily above the muck and mire of earth, forever freed from its earthly shell. Needless to say, Brisbane had the average orthodox funeral in mind and sought to convey the idea that when our loved ones pass, it is foolish to remember only the cocoon and concentrate our attention on the remains, while forgetting the bright butterfly.

Crossing the River of Death
Christ crossed the river of death and the grave so that you and I as believers, whose sins have been forgiven, may not have to cross that river alone. The story is told of a shepherd who tried to induce his sheep to cross a swiftly flowing stream. Sheep are naturally afraid of rapidly running water, and he could not get them to cross. Then picking up a lamb and stepping with it into the river, he bore it carefully and tenderly to the opposite shore. When the mother saw her lamb had gone, she forgot her fear and stepped into the rushing current and was soon safely on the other side. All the rest of the flock followed her leadership. Thus we follow our leader, Christ, and those of our loved ones whom He has already carried safely over to the other shore. The Clock
The clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop at late or early hour. To lose one's wealth is sad indeed. To lose one's health is more. To lose one's soul is such a loss that no man can restore.
Thirty-nine people died while you read these words. Every hour 5,417 go to meet their Maker. You could have been among them. Sooner or later you will be. Are you ready?

Image of Glory
"It is a peculiar thing," said an embalmer as he stood by a woman's casket, "but it isn't necessary to tell me she was a Christian. I always know as soon as I see a body; the glory leaves its stamp on the face." The Glory of Death
George Truett once assured the wife of a Texas judge that when death came she should not be afraid. When the day finally arrived the nurse and doctor were there. She said, "Tell me frankly, doctor, is this death?" He said, "Yes, it is death." She turned to her husband and said: "Oh, dear husband, you know this is the hour for 30 years I have dreaded. This is the hour of all hours I have shrunk from." Yet later she said, "Husband, don't you see that face? Don't you hear that music? Christ is here. I have never known such rapture of light and peace and joy." In that glory she went to be with the Lord. She found that God's grace was sufficient. God's love was not limited.

Sin
There is said to be a church which is very attractive to tourists. The graveyard of the church is always kept locked, but on a gate is the following notice, "The key to the graveyard is to be found in the tavern."
A great army of men and women daily find in the taverns or lounges the key that opens the way for them into the graveyard.

How Do You Face Death?
An aged lady left Buffalo by boat for Cleveland to visit a daughter living there. Soon a dreadful storm arose and many of the passengers, fearing death, gathered for prayer. Only the aged lady seemed unconcerned about the tempest as she sat with her hands folded and prayed. After the storm had subsided, some of the passengers were eager to know the secret of her calmness. They gathered around her and asked her the reason. "Well, my dear friends," she replied, "it is like this. I have two daughters. One died and went home to heaven. The other lives in Cleveland. When the storm arose, I wondered which of them I might visit first, the one in Cleveland or the one in heaven, and I just left it to the Lord; for I would be glad to see either."

Unafraid of Death and Judgment?
A certain person was driving 70 miles an hour down one of those long, straight stretches of West Texas highway one hot afternoon. No other cars were in sight, but up ahead he saw the form of a large bird bending over and tearing flesh from a run over rabbit. As he got closer, a huge hawk straightened up defiantly and looked directly into the headlights.
Instead of taking flight as these birds normally do, the giant hawk spread his wings, almost blocking the road, and challenged the speeding car. Its body made a "whump" sound as the car hit it, and the proud bird was instantly dead. Neither the run over rabbit nor its pride were any good to it then.
On another occasion in East Texas, the same man was again driving 70 down a highway when he saw the small rounded form of a turtle making a slow journey across his path. He remembered the giant hawk, and thought of what a 4,000 pound car would do to an eight-ounce turtle.
The turtle looked up and saw the car coming. He didn't run; he didn't dodge out of the way, nor did he challenge the car. He stopped and pulled all four legs and his head into his shell. The car missed the motionless turtle that rested confidently in his shell.
The proud hawk and the deluded turtle are like two kinds of people ignoring the speeding advance of death and judgment: one is proud and defies the claims of Christ on his or her life; the other pulls into his or her own self-righteous shell.

"Shadow" Illustrated
Little boys sometimes do the strangest things for excitement. To break the monotony of their young lives, two small lads lay down by the railroad tracks to feel the track vibrations of the oncoming train, as well as to hear its thunderous sound. After it had passed and only the shadow of the train had passed over them, they were secure and no harm had been done to them, even in this seemingly precarious position.
Just so, when we pass through the "valley of the shadow," we only experience the "shadow."

Face to Face
Men inspired by the Bible have called death by many names-the destroyer, the last enemy, the angel who summons our souls, a deep dark river. But here is Paul's picture of death from the believer's perspective-a man gazing at first into a metal mirror, seeing only baffling reflections and the fantastic shapes of half-facts, who suddenly wheels around and then sees things as they really are. He sees his fellows as they are; he sees the Savior as He is, in all His beauty-that is death for the Christian. No more peering through the mists of human ignorance to try to discern the face of the Savior; but clear, immediate, direct vision-face to face. We shall see Him as He is, and be forever like Him.

Just an Empty Shell
Two little birds had a nest in the bushes in the back part of a garden. Five-year-old Amy found the nest. It had four speckled eggs in it. One day, after she had been away for some time, she ran into the garden to take a look at the pretty eggs. To her dismay she found only broken shells. "Oh," she cried, "the beautiful eggs are all spoiled and broken!" "No, Amy," said her brother, "they are not spoiled. The best part of them has taken wings and flown away." So it is with death. The body left behind is only an empty shell, while the soul, the better part, has taken wings and flown away.

Prepare for Your Finals
Every time a certain little boy went to a playmate's house he found the child's grandmother reading her Bible. Finally his curiosity got the better of him. "Why do you suppose your grandmother reads the Bible so much?" he asked. "I'm not sure," said his friend, "but I think it's because she's cramming for her finals." Your finals may be closer than you think. There's only one book that can prepare you for them-that's the Bible, the written Word of God.

Suffering for a Good Cause
When the Marquis of Montrose was sentenced to death, the judge ordered that his head and limbs should be severed from his body and hanged in the Tolbooth in Endinburgh and in other public towns in the kingdom. The Marquis heard this sentence with a grim smile of pride and in defiance he cried, "I wish I had flesh enough to be sent to every city in Christendom, as a testimony to the cause for which I suffer!"

New Estimate of Death
Christ has brought a new attitude toward death. He has invested it with a beauty, a peacefulness and a glory unknown before. This is what caused a Greek by the name of Aristeides to marvel, when trying to explain to one of his friends the reasons for the extraordinary success of Christianity. In a letter written about a.d. 125, he said: "If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby." Those believers who are gone before are not lost, not separated from us permanently; they are only waiting in another place nearby for us to join them again.

Burial Causes No Grief
Did you ever see a farmer weep as he placed seed in the ground and covered it with the freshly turned earth? Of course not, for that sort of burial causes no grief. The farmer knows that the buried seed will spring up into luxuriant vegetation in due course. Human burial is quite a different matter. It arouses far deeper emotions because of our attachment to the precious form laid in the grave. But for Christians this grief is tempered by the knowledge that those who die in the Lord are safe with Him, and that one day we will be reunited with them, not only in our spirits but in new and glorious bodies that will spring from the grave at our Lord's coming.
"So also is the resurrection of the dead," says Paul, referring again to his analogy of the seed. "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption" (1 Corinthians 15:42) The Seed-Then the Plant
You sow a seed by putting it into the ground. It must first die, and then it rewards you with a living plant. How does this take place? Can you or anyone else fully explain this philosophically, rationally? Do you refuse to eat the fruit of this seed until you know in minutest detail how it grows into a plant? Hardly. You accept the generating power of nature. When you sow wheat, you expect the same kind of plant to come up. But that plant does not contain every particle of matter that was in the seed. It contains the identity of the seed, but not the entire actual seed as it was put into the ground. Yet the plant resulting from that seed will produce seeds corresponding to that original seed, made of different and yet identical material particles. The plant in reality is that same seed which was placed in the ground, in different form. So will it be with your resurrection body. It will be the same body in the sense that it is your own body-yet no longer in the seed, so to speak, but the plant. When your soul leaves your body at death, that spiritless body is good for nothing but burial in the ground. There it can die and return to dust; and through death it will live again by God's power.

Glory Revealed
A minister was once called into the room of a dear saint of God who was suffering much pain. He had often visited her, and in spite of pain, found her greatly rejoicing. This time, however, he was told that she was in trouble and wished to see the minister urgently. Wondering what the trouble could be and how the devil might be tempting her, the minister rushed to her bedside. She said, "I cannot pray any more. As soon as I begin, my prayers are all turned into hallelujahs. I would have esteemed it a privilege if God had permitted me to spend my remaining days in supplications for my friends; but as soon as I open my mouth, it is all glory, glory, glory!" The minister could not but congratulate her on being drafted into the employment of the celestial choir before her time. She lived for two weeks in a gust of praise, and so she died. On the Way Home
At the funeral of a minister, a little child was seen skipping light-heartedly through the cemetery at dusk. Someone asked, "Aren't you afraid of this place?" "Oh no," she replied, "I only cross through here to get home." Death for the Christian is only a "crossing-through to get home." It is not ultimate and final death. A Joyful Meeting
A young woman who lay dying sought to console her father who was overcome with grief. "Dad," she said, "don't be so broken up. If I had received an offer of marriage from someone who was all you could desire for me, and whose station in life was far superior to mine, but who wanted to take me to live in a remote part of the world, don't you think you could have borne the separation, knowing all the advantages it would bring to me? But I am now being promoted to a situation incomparably beyond anything that could have happened to me in this world. Then why this reluctance to let me go? Our next meeting will be in far more wonderful circumstances, joyful, and everlasting." A Re-created Body
While it is literally true that our bodies shall live again, Scripture does not require us to believe that God has to take exactly the same particles of all the physical substances of which our bodies are made and put them together again like a jigsaw puzzle. Let's not be like that woman who blithely stated that she did not believe in the resurrection of the body, because as the result of an accident she had left one leg in England, and she fully expected to die in the United States. If you expect the same atoms to be brought together again, how would you expect this to happen in the case of a man eaten by cannibals? His flesh would have been digested and become part of the bodies of those very ones who dined upon him. In the resurrection, would their bodies be robbed of the necessary particles to reconstitute the man they had devoured? Do you see to what ridiculous extremes we would be led by an insistence that God work in accordance with what we believe must happen? Of course, nothing is impossible with God. I would not find it difficult to believe that God is able to gather every fragment of bone, flesh, muscle, and sinew that made up our earthly bodies, to make up our glorified resurrection bodies. Men might conceive this impossible, but God can do it. The only reason I declare that it is not going to be so is that God's Word reveals that it will be otherwise (1 Corinthians 15:37). He, an omnipotent God who created our bodies in the first place, can recreate them at the resurrection. Is Our Resurrection Impossible?
Will our bodies one day be raised from the dead or not? How can we know? Impossible, says one group. Before you make such a flat declaration, look at that unattractive insect upon the blade of grass. In just a few short days you will find that insect floating in the air, a beautiful gossamer creature with wings that rival the rainbow. Look at the dry root in the dark, cold winter. When spring comes, out of that root will blossom forth a profusion of beautiful blossoms. Look at the egg, an inert and earthbound shape. Yet in it lies the eagle that can wing and soar above all other birds, or the tiny hummingbird that remains poised in mid-air before some flower, defying the pull of gravity. The doctrine of the resurrection is not inconsistent with the analogies of nature or the experience of our common history.

Plant Corresponds to Seed
In 1 Corinthians 15:36-38, we see that a seed must die in the ground before God causes it to spring up into a plant; that this plant will be consistent with the nature of the seed planted, yet different in form and function. To emphasize this difference between the seed and the plant is similar to the difference between the body that is laid in the grave and the body that will one day be resurrected, Paul says in verse thirty-seven, "And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain." The analogy is that of your dead body to a seed and of your resurrection body to the plant. There is nothing in Scripture that requires you to believe that the body you put into the ground is the selfsame body that will rise in the resurrection. Paul says that, with bodies as with plants, you don't bury that which is to be in the same form that it will eventually assume. A bare grain of wheat will produce a plant bearing many grains, but you don't sow the whole plant. You sow a seed and you get a corresponding plant.

It Is True
Death, like its master, Satan, stealthily watches to take its victims as a thief in the night. Quite often he gives no warning. Be prepared, therefore, to meet this enemy at any time. Professor J. H. Huxley was a well-known agnostic. His nurse revealed that in the last moments of his life, as he lay dying, the great skeptic suddenly looked up as at some sight invisible to mortal eyes, and, staring a while, whispered, "So it is true."

Alive Forever
The famed evangelist, Dwight L. Moody, once remarked in a sermon: "Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody of East Northfield is dead. Don't you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all-out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal; a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the spirit will live forever." A Lesson from a Silver Cup
A servant who had received a silver cup from his master accidentally dropped it into a vat of acid. The servant was dumbfounded when he saw the whole cup disappear. He immediately went to a fellow servant and told him that the silver cup was lost forever. "It can't be recovered. You can't even see it." The master, an educated man, came on the scene. He infused salt water into the acid, which precipitated the silver from the solution. Then by melting it and hammering the metal he restored the cup to its original shape. A skeptic who saw this was so struck by its analogy to the resurrection, which he had rejected as impossible, that he now believed it most credible. A Body Fit for Heaven
What do we know about the germination of seeds? Keep a grain of wheat in your pocket all your life and it will never change. But place it in a congenial environment, a furrow of earth, and it will sprout into a living sheaf of grain. Every kind of life requires its particular corresponding environment in order to achieve its full and predestined potential. You would really be just as foolish to expect your body, as now constituted, to be able to live in the world to come, as a farmer would be if he expected to produce a harvest of wheat by keeping bare grains stored in his pocket. A Divine Display of Power
"Thou foolish one, that which thou sowest..." (1 Corinthians 15:36). The Greek verb is speireis, "you sow all the time." This is a common everyday experience. You accept it because you see it happening all the time. How true it is that there are many wonders in the world that you would not have believed by report, if you had not come across them by experience and observation. Had you lived fifty years ago, would you have believed that a picture could be taken by Telstar, a photographic communication satellite in the sky, which would then send back a clear picture on your television screen? In fact, would you have believed television? In the air there are only video waves, but on the television screen you see a person, an actual scene. Everything is wonderful until you are used to it; the resurrection of the body owes the incredible portion of its marvel to the fact of your never having observed it. After the resurrection we shall regard it as a divine display of power as familiar to us as creation and providence are now. Are You Ready to Die?
One day when Luther was a young man, he was walking with a friend named Alexis. Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck his friend and killed him instantly. From that moment on a radical change took place in Luther's life. Your life will also change if you think seriously that one day it will end, perhaps suddenly and soon. After that you will have to give an account of it to God. Are you ready for it?

Nature Hints at the Resurrection
An illustration of what one may learn from nature, if he only has eyes to see, is the example of a man who looked into his tropical aquarium one day and saw on the surface a tiny creature, seemingly half fish and half snake, not an inch long, writhing in what seemed its death agony. With convulsive efforts it bent head to tail, now on this side, now on that, springing in circles with a force truly remarkable in a creature so small. "I was stretching out my hands to remove it," said the aquarium owner, "so that it would not sink and die and pollute the tank, when in the twinkling of an eye its skin split from end to end, and there sprang out a delicate fly with slender black legs and pale lavender wings. Balancing itself for one instant on its discarded skin, it preened its gossamer wings and then flew out of an open window. The impression made upon me was deep and overpowering. I learned that nature was everywhere hinting at the truth of the resurrection." The Foolish Question
A little boy drove his mother to distraction with questions one day. Finally she sent him packing off upstairs to bed. Later feeling troubled, she tiptoed into his room, knelt beside his bed, and told him she was sorry she had been cross with him, adding, "Now, dear, if you want to ask one more question before you go to sleep, I'll try to answer it." Quick as a wink the youngster blurted out, "Mommy, how high is up?" Some theological questioning is just about as foolish. That's exactly what Paul calls the man who asks these questions about the resurrection body, "Thou fool." The Greek word here is aphron, which comes from the negative prefix a, "without," and the noun phren, "mind." You are a man without sense, without reason, Paul says, if you think there can be an explanation in detail of all observable facts and the conclusions to be drawn from them.