Time’s Up!!

If you have ever had to take a timed exam in school or college or some other forum, you always dreaded the one monitoring the exam proclaiming, “Time’s up”, meaning you would no longer have the opportunity to finish questions you had not yet answered, or change answers you had already given but wanted to go back and change.  Your success or failure is now fixed, and you have to live with the results.

Such exams provide a metaphor for our life in this world, as there is coming a day for each of us when God will say, “times up” (Job 14:1-5).  If we die before Jesus’s second coming, most in our culture will have a tombstone with the date of their birth and the date of their death noted and few will exceed eighty to ninety years of time in this world (Psalm 90:10-12).

James 4:14, as well as numerous Psalms remind us that our time in this world is, relative to eternity, no more than a vapor or fog that appears for a short time and then quickly vanishes, leaving behind only a memory of our existence, a memory that for most will fade with time. Our money and possessions will be enjoyed by someone else. Our jobs, if we were still working, will quickly be filled by another. Our families and friends may remember us with fondness; however, they will move on quite well with lives that don’t include us, and within a few generations we are totally forgotten (unless they contract with Ancestry.com).  Any of our prideful achievements, which may be memorialized in history, can be cancelled by future historians and most certainly will be washed away forever at history’s end.

Death – physical death – is rarely a welcome event for anyone, except possibly someone living in excruciating or chronic physical or emotional pain.  They may see death as their only hope of relief, blindly assuming that upon their death they will either pass out of existence or be transported to a realm of eternal peace, joy and safety and their intolerable pain will be over.

But for the vast majority of people born into this world, physical death, the end of our time in this world, is dreaded and feared – and for good reason.  The Bible refers to death as the “king of terrors” (Job 18:14), an enemy that needs to be conquered, which despite our best efforts we have no ability to do.

Even in the midst of chronic pain or the severe trials of old age, our natural tendency is to find a way to extend our time in this world.  Most would pay any price to extend that time; just one more year – one more month – one more day – a few more precious moments.  It is our fear of death that makes doctors and pharmaceutical companies rich.

Many will try to take the sting out of death by expressing the belief that upon our final breath we cease to exist; our body is cremated or goes into the grave where it decomposes and becomes worm food, and that is that – thanks for the memories.  Others will do so by espousing the belief that upon death we all go to a better place, a realm of everlasting peace and uninterrupted happiness.  This is typically the message of comfort given to people at most funerals, either by presiding clergy or well-intentioned friends, who will say, well we know they are in a better place.  Well, if we know that with such certainty, why are we mourning and not celebrating their passing and even more importantly why are we not looking forward to our death with great anticipation, excitement and joy, rather than fear and dread?

The fact is, apart from the Bible – God’s authoritative word regarding life and death – we know nothing about what happens to us after physical death or why we even die in the first place.

In answer to the above why, the Bible tells us that death –  physical death – the separation of our soul/spirit from our bodies, wherein we cease to exist in this world, is the just wage or recompense of sin (Romans 6:23); of our rebellion and defiance toward God – the infinitely glorious God who created us to share in His glorious existence, enjoy his abundant goodness and live forever in his glorious presence where we were to know only fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11) as objects of His infinite love, under His sovereign rule.

The Bible tells us however, that it is through one man’s (Adam) disobedience that sin came into God’s good and perfect world (Romans 5:12), spreading to all mankind, bringing with it corruption, disorder, misery, sorrow and ultimately physical death.  The Bible further teaches that not only is death the loss of all of the things we came to love and cherish in this world of time, but that at the time of our death, the thing we have most to fear is that we will face God’s judgement (Hebrews 9:27) (2 Corinthians 5:10), the ultimate determination by God of what happens to us subsequent to our physical death, as we now enter the eternal realm (Matthew 25:46). His judgement will be just (Psalm 9:8) based upon how we have lived our lives in this world of time in relationship to God and our fellow man (Luke 10:25-28).

I will look more at this “what” in my next post.

Grace and Peace ×