Gold Nugget 370 - The Prospect of Death

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      By nature man has an absolute horror of death.  Self-preservation is the first law of his being.  He will suffer anything, he will do anything, to avoid death.  Death is in his eyes a fierce monster, cruel, relentless, detestable.  To live may be hard, grievous, wretched, scarcely tolerable; but to die is wholly intolerable.  It is to exchange the bright pure light of day for absolute darkness, or at best for a dim, dull, murky region in which souls wander without aim or hope  It is to be cut off from all that is known, customary, intelligible, and to be thrown into a world unknown, unfamiliar, full of terrors.  It is to lose all energy, all vigour, all robustness, all sense of power. … Better, in they eyes of the natural man, to live on earth, even as slave or hireling, the hardest of all possible earthly lives, than to hold the kingship of the world below and rule over the entire realm of shadows.     

      In the vigour of his youth and early manhood the natural man forgets death, views it as so distant that the fear of it scarcely affects him sensibly; but let the shadow be suddenly cast across his path, and he starts from it with a cry of terror.  He can, indeed, meet it without blenching in the battle-field, when his blood is hot, and to the last he does not know whether he will slay his foe, or his foe him; but if he has to die, he accepts his death as a miserable necessity.  It is hateful to him to die; it is still more hateful to be cut off in his prime, while he is still strong, vigorous, lusty.

      It is not till old age comes on, and his arm grows weak, and his eye dim, that he can look on death without loathing.  Then, perhaps, he may accept the necessity without protest, feeling that actual death can be little worse than the death-in-life whereto he has come. …

      The whole relation of death to life and of life to death became changed by the revelation made to man in Christ.  Then for the first time were “life and immortality” fully “brought to light.”  Then first it appeared that earth was a mere sojourning-place for those who were here as “strangers and pilgrims” upon it, having “no continuing city.”  Then first were the joys of heaven painted in glowing hues, and men told that “eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither had it entered into the heart of man [to conceive], the things which God had prepared for those that love him”. 

      No sensuous Paradise of earthly joys was depicted, no “Castle of Indolence,” no mere haven of rest, but man’s true home, the place and state for which he was created, when is his citizenship, where he will be reunited to those whom in life he loved, where his nature will be perfected, and where, above all, he will “be with Christ”, will “see God”, and “know even as he is known”.

      The prospect of death thus, to the true Christian, lost all its terrors. … Natural shrinking there may be, for “the flesh is weak;” but thousands have triumphed over it, have sought martyrdom, have gone gladly to their deaths, and preferred to die.  Even when there is no such exaltation of feeling, death is contemplated with calmness, as a passage to a better world – a world where there is no sorrow nor sighing, where there is no sin, “where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest”. 

      Ultimately death from natural disease or accident is to the Christian no sign of God’s displeasure, but rather an indication of the contrary.  God takes to himself those whom he recognizes as fit to die … He takes them in love, not in wrath, to join the company of “the spirits of just mend made perfect, to be among his “jewels”.

 

The Pulpit Commentary, II Kings p. 410-412, II Kings 20: 1-3, (G. Rawlinson)

 

Gold Nugget 370

The Prospect of Death

 

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