TWO VISIONS OF DEATH

TWO VISIONS OF DEATH

“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” 2 Cor. 5:1

The vision of those who go and those who are left.

What is death? Simply the moment when a person passes on to another plane, on to another level. Some might remember the exquisite, marvelous line in the course of the slave's dream in which the author describes the passing out of the slave into liberty through death, and speaks of the body of the slave as a worn-out fetter which the soul had broken and cast away. That is the Christian conception of death. I want to take again a side issue for a minute. I do not want anyone to imagine I am callous in the presence of death. I am not. I know its bitterness to those who are left. I hate the idea that no tears are to be shed in the presence of it, that we are to steel our hearts against emotion. I am looking at death from the standpoint, NOT OF THOSE WHO ARE LEFT, BUT OF THOSE WHO GO. This is the two views of death. The earthly tabernacle, the tent, dissolved; then a building, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (2 Cor. 5:1). The earthly tabernacle dissolved. I remember Moody saying to a group of friends, "Someday you will see in the newspaper that Moody is dead. Don't you believe it. The day you read that in the newspaper, Moody will be more alive than ever he has been." That is the Christian outlook, triumph over death.