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| Picture taken from: http://mentalfloss.com |
What prompted this blog was the fact that I have attended two funerals
in two days and I have another to attend in a fortnight’s time. But coupled
with that personal situation was the story on the BBC News website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31518899.
The story stated: ‘The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says that in the
first six weeks of 2015, just over 82,000 deaths were registered, which is 23%
higher than the average from the previous five years’. The story becomes a
little more startling when we realize that this is more than one death per
minute for every day of those six weeks!
There is a double sadness in these statistics. For some the death of a
loved one will have cast a significant shadow across their lives. They will be
in mourning, trying to come to terms with the fact that someone close is no
longer there. There is the enormous cost of funerals to be borne – someone has
to pay! However, for me the sadness is not knowing whether that loved one is in
heaven or hell. The Bible reminds us that ‘it is appointed unto men once to
die, but after this the judgement’.[1]
Death is not the end. It is a door of entrance into one of two destinations
given us in the Bible.
There are many people that think that everyone goes to heaven when they
die. Others think that ‘good’ people go to heaven, although what the definition
of ‘good’ may be is difficult to determine. But can we be sure? Is it just a
matter of what I think? Does God really put our life into some enormous scale
or balance to assess whether the ‘good’ outweighs the ‘bad’? Where can we find
an answer to the question of where we will spend eternity – the life beyond
this one?
We come back to the only authoritative source of truth – the Bible,
which is the word of God. One of the best loved verses in the Bible tells us
that ‘whosoever believeth in him [Jesus Christ, God’s Son] should not perish,
but have everlasting life [a home in heaven]’.[2]
As children we used to sing a simple song which had the line: ‘whosoever that
means me!’ The best example of that truth is the thief that died on the cross
at the side of the Lord Jesus. Not a ‘good’ man! Yet, to him the Lord said, ‘Today
shalt thou be with me in paradise’.[3]
What made that assurance possible? The thief admitted his guilt – his sin – and
believed that Jesus Christ was able to save him. Do you? If death was to put
its hand upon you, what then?
