NET – 116:15 The LORD values
the lives of his faithful followers.
AV, RV, RSV, NIV (1984), ESV – ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.’
Similar NIV (2011), NASB, NRSV and many other translations.
NLT – ‘The LORD cares deeply
when his loved ones die.’
GNB – ‘How painful it is to the LORD
when one of his people dies!’
The Message – ‘When they arrive at the gates of death,
GOD welcomes those who love him.’…
Perhaps it’s my dear wife’s recent brushes with death, or simply that fact that I have surpassed the proverbial ‘threescore and ten’ years, but my thoughts have been turning to the question of mortality.
‘Death’, writes Stephen Travis (I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus) ‘has become a subject of embarrassment, a matter of whispered uncertainties.’ Death has been removed from our everyday experience, transferred from the home to the hospital, from the neighbourhood to the newspaper. …
In I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus (2nd ed., 1988), Stephen Travis outlines the following case for conditional immortality (‘annihilationism’):-
First, immortality of the soul is a non-biblical doctrine derived from Greek philosophy. In biblical teaching man is ‘conditionally immortal-that is, he has the possibility of becoming immortal if he receives resurrection or immortality as a gift from God. This would imply that God grants resurrection to those who love him. but those who resist him go out of existence.…
[Note: this article is a work in progress!]
The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on his way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
(William Walsham How, ‘For All The Saints’)
Alone (so far as I am aware) among our better-known hymns, this one distinquishes between the restfulness of the Christian’s state immediately following death, and the ‘yet more glorious day’ of our Lord’s return and the ensuing resurrection of our bodies, the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth, and the completed triumph and eternal reign of God.…
Piecing together the (admitedly limited) biblical data on the intermediate state, Michael Bird proposes the following:
…1. Prior to Christ’s ascension, all who died went to Sheol/Hades, which was divided into two parts, one compartment for the wicked and another compartment for the righteous.
2. After Christ’s descent to Sheol/Hades and with his ascension, Christ took with him into heaven all of the saints in the paradisal part of Sheol/Hades, while the wicked remain in Sheol/Hades waiting for judgment.
The doctrine of ‘soul-sleep’ interprets the period between a believer’s death and final resurrection as one of uninterrupted unconsciousness.
Habermas and Moreland identify a number of problems with this view:
…First, numerous biblical texts (e.g., Luke 23:43; Phil 1:23; 2 Cor 5:1-10) clearly teach that death is a transition into conscious enjoyment of the presence of Christ. How could Christ’s presence be enjoyed if one were asleep?
Second, some of these same Bible passages describe death as a gain because the deceased is with Christ.
J.I. Packer has a helpful summary of biblical teaching.
In Surprised by Hope, Tom Wright notes that there is no biblical warrant for supposing that the faithful departed are actively engaged in praying for us. In particular,
…We should be very suspicious of the medieval idea that the ‘saints’ can function as ‘friends at court’, so that, while we might be shy of approaching the King ourselves, we know someone who is, as it were, ‘one of us’, to whom we can talk freely and who will maybe put in a good word for us.
Summarising ch. 17 of God’s Words, by J.I. Packer
Death as an uninvited intruder, evoking panic. “He passed, however, a not unsuccessful life in his profession, and the only Intruder he found himself unable to deal with was death.” (Charles Williams)
Fear of death universal. Heb 2:15 ‘through fear of death were subject to life-long bondage.’ Job 18:14 ‘the king of terrors’. “Nineteen times the Bible calls the prospect of death its ‘shadow’.”
Some ‘shrug it off’ – ‘morbid’. …
‘Ancestor worship’ is, perhaps, something of a misnomer, since most of the examples given below do not involve ‘worship’ of ancestors as if they were deities. Rather, they include a belief that ancestors may mediate access to deity, or have some kind of influence on the lives of the living.
The following examples are based on this article, by Sarah Kessler.
1. Sraddha from India. Male members of the Hindu faith are required to take part in the Sraddha ritual. …
