Bible Study #15 - Jesus' Guarantee of victory over death
Hello everyone!
Sorry about the sabbatical that I have taken, but I am back and ready to update!
A small lad, making his way thourgh the graveyard, stopped to read an insciption on a head stone, he was intruiged by the following epitaph:
"Stop, my friend, as you go by. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, you soon shall be. So prepare yourself to follow me."
The boy stood for awhile then, taking a piece of crayonfrom shi pocket, he wrote this message;
"To follow you, I'm not content, until I know which way you went."
What happens when people die? Where do they go? What is death? For the post-modernist, these quetions are easily answered "we live, we die, that's it" for an agnostic, these questions plague them, should they be making peace with God? Or is it all fake? Do we just die? Will it hurt? Heaven... Hell? For a christian, these questions, are again easily answered!
Death is inevitable, but Jesus once said "I am the living one, I was dead and behld I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the hades" (rev 1:18) Jesus conquered death and he has a message of hope for us!
Death as Sleep
Over 50 times the bible mentions death as a sleep. the term cemetery is translated as "sleeping place" in Greek.
After he had said this, he went on to tell them, "Out friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going to wake him up" (John 11:11)
I am the ressurection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. (John 11:25-26)
Deaht is an intruder and jesus feels our pain when we lose a loved one! At the graveside Jesus wept for Lazarus, he then demostrated his truth by ressurecting Lazarus.
What happens when a person dies?
To understand what death is, we need to go back to the beginning and see how God made huamns in the first place.
The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the rbeath of life, and the man became a living being. (Gen 2:7)
When warning Adam and Eve against eating from the tree of knowledge God said
You will surely die (Gen 2:17)
of death, god said to adam and eve
By the sweat of your bwo you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you shall return (Gen 3:19)
It is clear that death is the reverse of creation. The body returns back into dust, and the principle of life (the breathe, or spirit) returns to the One who originally breathed the life into Adam and Eve. Death is likened to sleep with our identity and personality secure in God's hands until the resurrection.
When we accept Jesus christ as our saviour are safe and secure with God until the ressurection! So fear not, gentle friends, for the time will come when we will sleep and then our lives shall be eternal and full of grace!
Are you ready?
posted by Crystal Princess at 6:51 PM
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