‘I’M NOT AFRAID OF DYING’

This was the response of a well-known New Zealand actor (Breaker Moran, Jurassic Park) Sam Neill when interviewed in Australia about his diagnosis with an aggressive type of blood cancer. He declared he was more ‘annoyed’ by it, because he still had so much to do. He added he ‘wasn’t particularly interested’ in his cancer. Since then he has documented his life, hoping to capture his memories for his children and grandchildren. With his cancer in temporary remission, he is back to acting and making wine on his beloved Kiwi wine farm.

Would you not say that most people fear death, because despite much research and so many so-called ‘near-death’ stories, it belongs to the realm of ‘the unknown?’ Neill makes no reference to any form of life beyond death or personal faith, but I submit even many ‘believers’ are somewhat fearful of death. I know I’m happy to live for a few more years yet! (wink)

A recent exegesis of Revelation 21, aided by some helpful comments by South African Dr. Riekert Botha, sheds greater light on some of my own musings and emotions about death. Some overall comments:-

• Ch. 21 depicts ‘The New Heaven and the New Earth.’ It’s another angle on Christ’s ultimate victory. ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more’ (v.1/NRSV). Throughout the Revelation, ‘the sea’ has symbolically and consistently symbolized ‘the nations of the earth,’ particularly as opposed to GOD.
• V. 2ff, “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals… He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.'” What a triumphant statement of Christ’s and his followers’ victory over ‘the last enemy!’ (1 Cor. 15:24-26). ‘Death,’ that all-dominating power over humankind, is vanquished at last! Therefore ‘death’ for God’s people is no longer central to their thinking but Christ and the very life of God in him. Decades before the writer of Hebrews dealt so clearly with this issue: “And again,’Here am I and the children whom God has given me.’ Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.” (Heb. 2:13b-15) ‘But you have come (past tense) to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant… See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking… for indeed our God is a consuming fire’ (Heb. 12:22-24, 29).
• V. 5ff, “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true. Then he said to me ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.’ V. 8ff warn the cowardly, faithless, polluted, murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters and liars that they will experience ‘the lake that burns with fire and sulfur,’ which is the ‘second death’ (recently scientific investigation at the original site of Sodom and Gomorrah in Israel has indicated high deposits of sulfur and other key minerals, indicating a possible massive meteor strike). It boils down to this: being ‘in Christ’ by faith or not being ‘in Christ’ due to unbelief. Accordingly our position is either hope-filled regarding life and death or hope-less in this present world and beyond the grave. Decades before, the Apostle John had written in the Fourth Gospel, ‘He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in (Gr. ‘into’) his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God.’ (Jn. 1:11-13).

• V. 9-27. Next John sketches his ‘Vision of the New Jerusalem:’ “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel… And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb... I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and of the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring glory into it… there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and honour of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it… only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.’ Obviously we have to do here, not with some picture of ‘heaven’ but of the Church of Jesus Christ, headed up by the Lamb. How many times did the Apostle Paul not refer to Christ and his indwelt people as his ‘holy temple’ on earth: 1 Cor. 3:16ff; 1 Cor. 6:19ff (The word for temple here is not hieron = outer temple but naos = innermost sanctuary).

Dallas Willard in his classic, The Divine Conspiracy, has a section on dying, aptly titled ‘Death Dismissed.’ “Once we have grasped our situation in God’s full world, the startling disregard Jesus and the NT writers had for ‘physical death’ suddenly makes sense… Jesus abolished death – simply did away with it. Nothing like what is usually understood as death will happen to those who have entered his life… Jesus made a special point of saying that those who rely on him and have received the kind of life that flows in him and in God will never experience death!” Note how the apostle three times declared this truth in his Gospel: “I assure you that whoever keeps my word will never die… ” (repeated) (Jn. 8:51-52/CEB). “‘I (Jesus) am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live… Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.'” (Jn. 11:25-26/CEB). On this basis Willard writes, we may compare death to someone who walks to a doorway between rooms. While still interacting with those in the room he/she is leaving, he/she begins to see and converse with people in the room beyond. This rings true of so many believers who in dying have a two-fold conversation, one with those left on earth and the other with the heavenly welcoming committee! Hallelujah, what a fear-destroying hope we have in Jesus!

END NOTE: cf. Part 4 of “I’m On My Way: The Resurrection of the Dead,” posted July 7 2020.