The Mystery Of Immortality

In Paul’s resurrection chapter he brings us face to face with the shocking common denominator of all men, death. He speaks to those who have seen all earthly hope collapse and lie in shattered fragments at their feet. He encourages those who in one moment of time have had their world turned upside down to come crashing down around them.

He speaks to those who have realised that eyes that once smiled have closed, lips that once spoke have fallen into cold silence and the warm loving grasp of a vibrant hand has forever relaxed. He addresses all men who, no matter how lightly they may treat the matter or how desperately they may try to circumvent or delay the issue, must someday stand on common ground as their hearts ponder the same age-old question of the mystery of immortality.

The stark reality of man’s mortality is made evident in the life of even the most sceptical. He cannot avert his eyes from the spectre of death that overshadows his every step. He cannot silence the voice that shatters his self-imposed naivete.

The timeless question of Job of old breaks loudly into the false sanctity of his consciousness with all the force of a wailing siren:

"If a man dies,

shall he live again?"

Job 14:14

Paul and Job urge man to break out of the shell of self-deception and face the issue squarely. He implores man to come to grips with the implications of man’s mortal existence, no matter how painful the encounter with reality might be. He insists man admit the hopelessness of his dilemma, unless an answer comes from a higher source and authority.

Theirs is not a question flung as a scornful cry into the face of an unyielding fate. But rather, it is framed as an intelligent appeal, from the heart of a man of spiritual wisdom. A man who recognizes that the answer to life’s central question can only come from the one from whom life issued.

Are we, as Paul, justified in holding that in spite of death, we have a valid hope of immortality? Some scoff at such a proposition as a ridiculous paradox. Some shudder at it as a dreadful possibility. Some, not as wise as Paul, turn to history outside God’s Word and are led only to the grave and left there. Because secular history is merely mute about the matter. It neither confirms nor denies the prospect of an afterlife.

Some turn to science, but find no laboratory, apparatus or technique for analysing life or death or discovering the fate of a soul. Some rely upon philosophy and find themselves free to speculate, postulate, formulate and posit theories, but in the end find their hypotheses unreliable, for philosophy has no reliable means of testing its conclusions.

Some of us turn to the only true and reliable source, the Word of God, to find there the only authoritative and satisfying answer to man’s perpetual quest for immortality. We cherish this hope as the established answer. Our hearts vibrate within us as we contemplate Paul’s climatic cry, "O death where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be unto God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" 

- John White

Our Blessed Hope

There rests within the breast,

Of those who wait for Him,

A fervent, burning hope for rest,

From sin in every limb.


Longing ever to be free,

From the prison of the flesh,

Through faith’s eye the empty tomb we see,

And our hearts are filled with bliss.

And echoing as we pause and listen,

The angel’s cry - "He is risen!" - John White

Over-comers In Christ

God has never guaranteed Christians immunity from trouble. Although Jesus said we could come to Him to have life more abundantly, He wasn’t inferring that life would be a rose garden or that we would be borne to heaven on flowery beds of ease. The person was right who said life wasn’t meant to be easy.

But just why is this so? Jesus says that in this world we shall have trouble didn’t He? We are, as the writers of the New Testament said, in the world, but are not of the world. This world is not our home. We are just sojourners, pilgrims, seeking a city whose build and maker is God. Paul envisioned us a colonisers in the Phillipian letter. And as ambassadors and living love letters from heaven in his Corinthian letters.

As the old saying goes, we are cannot hold on to God with one hand and the world with the other. We cannot be neutral. Jesus said. “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matt. 6:24)

God is asking us to take a stand for Him in this world. You see Jesus called it like it was. The tug of the world and the pull of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God in\ opposite directions guarantees inevitable trouble for a Christian.

Experimentally we can all confirm the veracity of Job’s statement that man is born for trouble. He’s often caught up in the geography of circumstance and finds himself surrounded by the meteorology of trouble. He frequently feels the heat in the crucible of crisis.

He’s dropped into the test tube of trial. He’s called upon to navigate the shoals of loss and sorrow. Often he finds there is no easy way to build a detour around\sorrow or tragedy. He must go through it in order to come out safely on the other side. The three Hebrew children were not saved out of the fiery furnace, but in and through it. The lives of Daniel, David and all the patriarchs of the Old and New Testaments confirm the universality of this dilemma and the purifying experiences that often result form it.

In his Roman letter Paul gives a liturgy of the sort of tragic occurrences the Christian may expect in life. (See Ro. 8:35-39) In this list, He gives no indication any will escape trouble. Rather, he says we will suffer through them. He warned that Christian martyrdom was already becoming an everyday occurrence. He even mentioned two kinds of demonic angels. He indicated there are special kinds of demons whose primary mission is to bring us trouble. But he reassures us that by suffering we become more than conquerors in Christ Jesus.

Oh, To Be Like Him!

I John 3:2 “Beloved, now are we the sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be LIKE HIM, for we shall see Him as He is”

In our century it has become increasingly clear that man’s desire to be free of the surly bonds of earth and soar into the heavens has brought him to the very brink of a new era. He has reached for the stars and seems to have taken a first feeble step into near space. Armstrong’s historical statement, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” seems to summarise man’s eternal quest for the heavens.

In spite of all the fantasising of science fiction, man is quickly becoming acutely aware of the many practical scientific problems posed in his penetration of outer space. It would seem that man is just too inhibited by the continuum of time, matter, energy and space to ever conceivably achieve his dream.

The time required for man to travel safely at the speed required, using any propulsion and environmental survival systems that can be envisioned today, far exceeds man’s survival capacity. The fragility of man’s frame and the sensitivity of his biological systems mitigate against successful extended space travel.

Man’s only real hope of breaking away from the forces of gravity and truly leaving the restrictive confines of this earth, lie in another direction entirely. Man has the answer he seeks and the freedom he desires, but he does not seem to be willing to understand it or accept it. Man is truly designed for the stars, but he does not seem willing to fully come to grips with or grasp his eternal destiny. A simple statement in the Word of God clearly settles the issue. John, in speaking of eternal sons of God said,“We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is..” If we are to know the fantastic future our Creator God has in store for those eternal sons He has chosen as the eternal objects of His love in Christ Jesus, we only need to know what He is like. What He is like, physically, intellectually and spiritually is the key to our eternal existence.

To really explore our future we must examine what He is like in His resurrected body. Because, as even Job understood two thousand years before the event, eternal sons and daughters of God will be given a completely new resurrected body - like Him.

Paul made sure we understood that this new body entailed an entirely different and glorious sphere of existence. Physically, that automatically entails repealing or setting asides the laws of nature that normally place restrictions or limitations upon our human body. The record of all the observed activities of our resurrected Saviour during the days He spent among upwards of five hundred of His followers before His ascension gives us some indication of that fantastic future. Evidently he travelled from earth to paradise, to heaven and back to earth in an instantaneous manner. We can only speculate about the vast stellar distances involved. He also demonstrated the ability to appear and disappear. The account of His walk with the two disciples to Emmaus clearly illustrates that as well as His appearance in the midst of His disciples, evidently without walking through a door!

In doing so laws relating to matter and energy would of necessity be negated. Because our finite minds cannot comprehend such fantastic phenomenon we are hesitant to fully accept it or speculate upon its full implications. Perhaps it is enough to rejoice in being the eternal sons of God who will see some day Him as He is and be like Him in eternity!