Death -- It's Certainty (Part 2)

(#6, Yermo ?, Imperial 1957)

Read John 14:1-3; John 11:25.

Here again we need a revelation from God.  Ingersoll spoke as well as any man could have spoken at an open grave, without revelation, when he said, 'Life is but a barren veil between the cold and ice clad peaks of two eternities.  We strive in vain to look beyond the heights.  We lift our voices in the silence of the night only to hear the echo of our cry.'  But the Christian has something better than that.  'We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building from God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'  Socrates and Plato speculated as to what came after death -- the Christian knows.

Does death end all?   There is a life after death because...

ƒ    It is possible.

w   If God can put life into the body can He not preserve it?

w   If God can cause one to be born into this world can He not give a new birth after death?

ƒ    It is reasonable.

w   There must be a purpose in everything.

w   Life cannot be destroyed.

w   The only way that we can reconcile the inequalities and abnormalities of this life is to look for another life.

ƒ    It is probable.

w   Most men feel that there is a God and a hereafter.

ƒ    The Scripture says so.

w   Gen. 25:8: Abraham was gathered to his people and yet we are told that he was buried in a cave.

w   Death is not annihilation but an entrance to another life.

Three things are certain.

ƒ    Death is certain. 40 million die every year. 109,589 die every day. 4566 die every hour. 76 die every minute. (Ed.: These figures from the late 1940's are only increased today.)

ƒ    Life after death is certain.  But what kind of life?  (Dan. 12:2-3; John 5:28-29; Acts 24:15)

ƒ    We need Christ!  That too is certain.

w   He conquered death. Rev. 1:18.

w   He delivers from the fear of death. Heb. 2:15.

Will you be a "gainer" when you die?