February 12, 2020 – Click here to listen
My column yesterday stimulated some interesting conversation. One guy sent the following hilarious video concerning his options regarding spending the rest of his life with his wife.
Hmmm . . . I suppose that he prefers not to spend eternity with his wife in heaven. Another friend told me that one of his buddies was terrified of dying and being separated and wanted to obtain coffins with windows installed in them and be buried next to his wife who would similarly have a window in hers. He wants to fondly look at his wife after they die. Yikes!
I viewed the King Tut collection one time and in his burial chamber he had provisions for the afterlife of all types including food and other provisions, weapons, a boat, and a throne. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but he didn’t eat the food or paddle down the Nile in his boat. All that remained of King Tut was his eerily grinning mummified body enshrined in a fortune of gold and precious stones and all that stuff sitting around inside his pyramid. His spirit and soul had departed thousands of years earlier . . .
Christians know that the body is nothing more or less than a shell and is no longer housing the spirit and soul of the person who has died. It reminds me of a cocoon that is left behind when a beautiful butterfly is released from its captivity. The Apostle Paul preferred to describe our earthly bodies as being akin to “tents.” It’s an apt description because they are just temporary abodes. Some live in beautiful elaborate well-maintained tents and some tents are worn to a frazzle – ragged and in bad need of repair. Not to worry about it though our glorified bodies will be gorgeous and never in need of repair. 2 Corinthians 5:1 “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands”. When Jesus returns, Christians will be raised to life, and our bodies will be transformed to glorified, eternal bodies. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:42 – “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.”
So, if our bodies are going to be raised from the dead at the resurrection, (rapture), what about cremation? While burial was the common practice for Jews and early Christians, the Bible nowhere commands burial as the only allowed method of disposing of a body. My father-in-law stringently was against cremation, hilariously stating that it was like going to hell twice. I had some long conversations about it with him and lo and behold years later he ended up being cremated with his ashes being distributed in a river he loved in North Carolina.
He and other believers I’ve spoken with object to the practice of cremation on the basis it does not recognize that one day God will resurrect our bodies and re-unite them with our soul/spirit. Somehow, they cannot grasp the idea that omnipotent God can recreate them if they get cremated. Geez what if they were blown up and disintegrated by terrorists like those poor souls in the Twin Towers on 9/11 or devoured by lava streaming from a volcano like those in Pompei.
It seems to be a strange way of looking at the limitless power of God to think that what appears to be a perplexing mystery to us cannot be readily solved by Almighty God Creator of all that is seen and unseen. The fact that a body has been cremated does not make it any more difficult for God to resurrect that body. The bodies of Christians who died a thousand years ago have, by now, completely turned into dust. This will in no way prevent God from being able to resurrect their bodies. He created them in the first place; He will have no difficulty re-creating them. Cremation does nothing but “expedite” the process of turning a body into dust. God is equally able to raise a person’s remains that have been cremated as He is the remains of a person who was not cremated.
1 Thessalonians 4:16 – For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
This verse describes the rapture. Those who have died in Christ will arise to meet Jesus followed by those who still are alive. Our souls spirit and glorified bodies will become one and remain imperishable at long last.
And death?
Well death will be defeated and no longer a factor . . . Thank you Jesus!
1 Corinthians 15:50
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.