What Is Death…Really

I’m a Christian. I go to church and pray. I read my Bible and talk about God. Just like many other Christians, I go through the motions. I call myself “saved”. Many of you may also be saved, and some may not even know what that means. Before we talk about this scary thing called death, this evening I would like to spend a few minutes on what makes a person truly “saved ”.

The Bible explains clearly what it means to be “saved”  Below are a few key references.

Romans 10:9
”That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. “

Romans 10:13
”For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Ephesians 2:8-9
”For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Let’s take a deeper look at these 3 references. Romans 10:9 gives us the 2 requirements for being saved. The first is to confess with your mouth. You see, we cannot be saved until we realize we can not make it to heaven on our own. The Bible tells us in Romans 3:10 that “there is none righteous”. Righteous is just a simple word for perfect. There is no person alive on this earth who is perfect. Sure, some people may be very, very good. I guarantee there are some people on earth that we may truly struggle to find something wrong they have done. The honest truth is that according to Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. A sin is simply anything we do which violates God’s perfect law. The biggies like murder, rape, infidelity are obvious; but the Bible tells us it is also a sin to have something as seemingly innocent as an inappropriate thought about someone. There is simply no denying the fact that we are all sinners. The object lesson God gives us is that our very, very best deeds. The things we go through life being proud of achieving, are no better than “filthy rags” when viewed through the prism of God’s holiness.(Isaiah 64:6) If we stop right here, we’re out of luck. No one is good enough to go to heaven, and we all might as well eat drink and be merry….right?

Jesus paid the price for our sins. We have a sin debt that we could never pay back. Because God is perfect, He would never allow us into heaven on our own. Fortunately He sent His son Jesus to pay the price. In John 3:16, the Bible explains it clearly- “For God so loved the world (YOU), that He gave His only begotten Son (Jesus), that whosoever (anyone) believeth in Him should not perish (go to hell), but have everlasting life (in Heaven). The death Jesus experienced was horrible. The agony He experienced as He was whipped raw, beaten, and then nailed to a wooden cross where He hung suffering for hours,  is almost unimaginable to us these days. The amazing thing is that He went through all that pain for YOU, and for ME!!! In addition to the horrible suffering of the cross, Jesus also took on all of the sin from every man and woman who died previously and who would ever live in the future. That blood that He willingly shed was enough to completely cover up our sins. Imagine how hard it must have been for that perfect, sinless sacrifice of Jesus to have His father God turn His back on Him because of our sins. We have much to be grateful for. When Jesus finally reached the end and shouted, “It is finished”, He completed that inconceivably large payment for our sins.

Did Jesus just pay the price and die? No, just like part two of what is takes to be saved, we must believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead 3 days after He died. This was witnessed by many and is a vital part of God’s plan of salvation for our lives. God demonstrated His love and power and mercy by raising up His Son Christ Jesus. He promises to do the same for us some day. He has promised to come again some day and the dead who know the Lord will be raised up and taken to meet the Lord in the air.(I Thes 4:17)  

Recap:
So there are two things we do to be saved, we confess our sins to the Lord trusting that His sacrifice was the only thing that could ever pay the price for our sin, and then we believe in our heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. There is no voodoo or special chant. There are no good deeds or other things you can do. It’s just the act of accepting that free gift. If you’ve never put your trust in Jesus as your savior, why not pray this simple prayer:

Dear Jesus, I know I am a sinner. I know that apart from you, I deserve to go to hell, but you died and rose again to pay that price. I accept your free gift of salvation and trust you to take me to heaven when I die. Thank you for paying the price for me. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

If you prayed that prayer, then please let me know so that I can rejoice with you and help you find a good church where you can learn more about the Lord. Reach me at kc9edn(at)gmail.com

If you’re still reading, then you might be asking yourself the question, “why didn’t he answer his original question?”. What is death…really? Well, first I wanted to explain how to have eternal life, and then we can talk about what eternal death really it. This isn’t a fairytale. If you aren’t convinced you need Jesus, or perhaps you have become complacent in your salvation, then you will most definitely want to read part II of this post.

Part II – What Is Death… Really?

The Eternal Nature of God

Ok, so I was listening to an apologetics lesson on the eternal nature of God tonight on my loooong drive home from Michigan. The speaker was explaining that God operates outside of time and space and is therefore not affected by either. God created time and space, what we call the "time space continuum".

Now as I understand it, Einstein taught us that light and time are related, or simply stated, the presence of light indicates the passage of time. This makes sense to me for several reasons. We measure the passing of a day by the rising and setting of our great light, the sun. We measure objects in space by the light, and color of light, that they emit. It has been hypothesized that if an object could be accelerated faster than the speed of light, it would travel backwards in time.

Now, imagine a universe with no light. I mean nothing but pure, utter, unadulterated darkness. How would we measure time? There would be no day and night, no heaven and earth, no anything without the presence of light in our lives. The Bible tells us in John 1:7 that John gave a witness of "...the Light, that all men through Him might believe." It is interesting that God is often referred to as the "Light" in the Bible. The greek work used was "Phos", which literally means "to shine by rays". Given this information one can only conclude that God is the one and only, true and unquestionable, source of all light.

I believe God created the heaven and the earth. This means the sun, stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae, etc, etc, were all initiated by God. Continuing this though process one could deduce that if God = Light and Light = Time, then logically one would make the jump that    God = Time and therefore God is eternal because He exists outside the linear boundaries of Time.

Something great about true science is that even secular scientists frequently prove there is a God while shooting for something completely different. For Einstein, rather than calling the beginning of the universe "creation", he assigned it to the "universal constant". Scientists are still looking for the "God Particle", also called Higgs Boson, that creates matter from nothing. This is the only "particle" that has never been observed.

In conclusion I encourage you today to stop and consider that everything about the world we live in points to a creator who has told us that even though He made our whole universe, He still has time to listen to and answer our simple prayers.