Death

            The human skull has been a symbol of death or bad things to the world for centuries to say the least. As a child, before I was old enough to read, my father told me how bad things are marked with it. He proceeded to show me many different bottles and containers with the skull and cross bones on them, and then told me what was inside could kill me. He then showed me things like rat poison, termite and ant poison and many other things like cleaning solutions with this symbol on it. At another time he showed me some dead mice that he killed with the poison and told me if I drank anything with that symbol on it, I would end up the same way, dead. His warnings were stern enough that I never forgot what he told me and avoided things, with that symbol on it, and was even afraid to touch them. To bad Adam and Eve, didn’t listen to their Father, about what would happen to them if they swallowed the (forbidden fruit) poison fruit.

Whenever I see a container marked poison, and it has the skull and cross bones on it, I think of my dad warning me. We have taken the symbol off of most poisonous goods today, and we shouldn’t of. Considering the number of people in this country now who can’t read English, we should start labeling all harmful products with this symbol again, instead of the simple word poison! Many might die because they don’t know and haven’t been warned. Think about that for a moment, then consider how Jesus spoke to people about eternity, he spoke twice as much about hell than He did about Heaven. Have you ever discussed Christ with anyone, and told them about Heaven and warned them about going to hell? Most if not all of you have done this, but, I don’t think we do it enough, and someday we will find out that someone went to hell, because we never took the time to warn them! I know this article is for someone, because this is not what I planned on writing about, and thanks to a pastor’s comments to me, this is what is going to be in print.

This is how it came about, I recently completed a new web site that has the Audio Bible and just love how it came out and looks. Then I got this e-mail from a pastor that I know, and it said the following. Did you see the background on the audio Bible download page??  Creepy.  What's up with that? What can be done to change it?  (It is at - http://soamc.dynu.com/audiobible/) I wrote back to him and this is the short form of it, what can be done, NOTHING. It’s perfect, you see, to me the Bible is pretty simple. It is a book of Life, or a book of Death, the choice is yours. On the page, I have the Word of God in front (Life) and in the background is (skulls) death, which one do you choose to follow? And when you get to the bottom of the page you read the following - 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.  So here again, death (the skulls) are in the background (our past) and we are now children of the Light. In my opinion it is always good to remember our past, and that we have been delivered from death.

Bottom line

The whole purpose of this article is to focus on just two things, Life and Death, things we will all experience. We all are going to die someday, and the question is this, do you have Eternal Life? You can’t get it by being good, because all of us are sinners and God says so in His Word. (Romans 3:23 KJV) For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; But there is good news for us sinners. (Rom 6:23 KJV)  For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. You have heard the expression that Jesus is the way? He is! (John 14:6 KJV) Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Now let us look at some real life stories about our eventual end.
Life Here and Now

Listening to a student read the Scripture in seminary chapel, Joseph Sittler, now blind, heard something he'd never heard before. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me."

"The text does not speak," said Sittler, "of the valley of death but the valley of the shadow of death. There is a difference. ... The wonderful truth ... is that God is with us now. It is not simply that God will be with us in the experience of death itself; it is that God will walk with us through all of life, a life over which death sometimes casts its shadow." --Quoted by Martin Marty in "Context," August 1 and 15, 1984. Christianity Today, Vol. 30, no. 2.

Good Night and Good Morning

Winston Churchill chose to believe. Churchill arranged his own funeral. There were stately hymns in St. Paul's Cathedral and an impressive liturgy. But at the end of the service, Churchill had an unusual event planned. When they said the benediction, a bugler high in the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral on one side played Taps, the universal signal that the day is over. There was a long pause. Then a bugler on the other side played Reveille, the military wake-up call.

It was Churchill's way of communicating that, while we say "Good night" here, it's "Good morning" up there. Now why could he do that? Because he believed in Jesus Christ, who said "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me though he were dead, yet shall he live." When a man steps out of his own grave, he is anything that he says that he is, and he can do anything that he says he can do.

--Robert Russell, "Resurrection Promises," Preaching Today, Tape 151.

To Die Is Gain

If we look at our life as some precious treasure we must hoard, the demands made by others of our life are like losses. And death is a final loss, a final failure to hold on to our life. But if we look at our life as a treasure we must share, every service we give to others is a fulfillment of our life's purpose. And death is the final giving, the total giving.

-- Edicio de la Torre, Leadership, Vol. 7, no. 4.

Frozen in Greed
Clovis Chappell wrote in his book of sermons Feminine Faces: 

"When Pompeii was being excavated, there was found a body that had been embalmed by the ashes of Vesuvius.  It was that of a woman.  Her feet were turned toward the city gate, but her face was turned backward toward something that lay just beyond her outstretched hands.  The prize for which those frozen fingers were reaching was a bag of pearls.  Maybe she herself had dropped them as she was fleeing for her life.  Maybe she had found them where they had been dropped by another.  But, be that as it may, though death was hard at her heels, and life was beckoning to her beyond the city gates, she could not shake off their spell.  She had turned to pick them up, with death as her reward.  But it was not the eruption of Vesuvius that made her love pearls more than life.  It only froze her in this attitude of greed."  -- N. Bruce Creswell, Jr.  Leadership, Vol. 10, no. 4. – Choose Life (Jesus) today over Death! God Bless You, Dick Mason