Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/72

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - Life, Death and Resurrection

Topic -

INTRODUCTION

The Gospel of God's grace in Christ is universal but not popular. In simpler terms: it is meant for all, but on the whole people are not interested; they find other things far more important. Paul, the apostle, expressed himself this way: "The Gospel you heard me preach is no human invention." Indeed not! That high Mohammedan official was right when he said to a Christian missionary: "Our Islam is in accordance with human nature, your Christian message goes straight against human nature." The highlights of human life clearly illustrate this. When a child has been born and the worldlings see only sweetness and light, the old Dutch form of baptism says (in its prayer): "That they, for Thy sake may leave this life, which is nothing else but a continual death, being comforted and on the last day may appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ without fear." When a marriage ceremony is performed and the children of the world have only eyes for the loveliness of the bride, then again the old Dutch form of marriage points out: "Those who are married have to wrestle with many adversities and sorrows on account of sin." But then, when life is over and the non Christians are convinced (anyway try to convince themselves) that all has come to its final close the Christians express their firm conviction, based upon God's promise, that for everyone who has died in Christ, the glorious life has started, never to end in all eternity!

THE CAMOUFLAGE OF FEAR

There is a Dutch saying that in the house of the man who was hanged, the word gallows must never be mentioned. This does not mean that the thought of being hanged is absent from the mind, just the contrary! The people concerned are all the time so aware of the gallows that for that reason they simply cannot stand to hear the word. The same with death. Pagan religions are chiefly concerned with the endeavour to protect life, to ward off death. It seems a hopeless struggle and indeed it is!

Notwithstanding all protective measures death has the last word in everyone's life. However, people refuse to admit defeat; they cannot do anything else but try and try again, because perhaps, perhaps this time it will work! But it never does.

So it is with the "primitive" Papuans, among whom we worked, so it was and is with the highly cultured peoples. No matter whether you study Greek mythology or Babylonian, you discover that it is always the same. Many stories are told to show how the quest for eternal life failed. The ancient Greeks were supposed to be a live-loving, fun-loving people but those who saw deeper discovered that all the joy and fun of the Greeks was only "a light mirage of clouds and sky reflecting back a sea of sorrow(*). About the fact that death is all powerful people have tried to console themselves in different ways. There is first the teaching about the "immortality of the soul", taken for Christian doctrine which definitely it is not! Pagans said and say: "Look here, we have to die some day, we cannot carry on our life on earth forever, but there something in man that will not ale: his soul is immortal!" A tragic and desperate endeavour to ward off the unbearable thought of total disappearance. Or people try to console themselves by saying: "We will live on in our work." Shakespeare will be read and admired as long as the English language is spoken, so the English bard is declared to be "immortal" ' on account of his work. But do you think Shakespeare himself will derive much consolation and comfort from that kind of brain reasoning? Was that the life he longed to live? This pale and bleak idea that his plays will be read and performed for centuries to come? Semitic people consoled themselves with the thought that they would live on in their children and in their more remote offspring. But all these considerations are cold comfort for the harsh reality that one day we have to die and none of these considerations takes away the fear of death at all! Our generation is possessed by the fear of death; the price to be paid for defying God! The word death must therefore never, never be mentioned!

We human beings form a link between the world of the animals and the world of the spirits, we belong to both be it that to the animal world we belong for,. a limited time only. When we die, our spirit departs to its final destiny; the dead body remains, "Earth to earth and dust to dust", period. But the radio and newspapers assure us about a dead body, in which the process of deterioration has already started, that "the late Mr. Hedonist is now resting comfortably in the slumber-rooms of Messrs. Pseudomenos, Thanatos & Atropus, funeral directors(**). We have to realize clearly that a dead body does not rest anymore at all; it is dead matter, nothing else. But that is part of the universal camouflage, the great untruth, the common conspiracy to deny the harsh reality of death. If people had only the courage to face the facts, if they were only willing to admit their misery and despair they would turn to Christ, to be assured of eternal life with Him. Then all fear of death would be taken away from them.

THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH

(Kierkegaard)

Sin, unforgiven sin is the root of this fear of death. People know that this matter must be settled, that it can be settled definitely and completely by surrendering wholeheartedly to Christ, but even many Christians postpone this again and again. From the days of girlhood and boyhood first to the days of young womanhood and manhood, then again to middle age when they are far too busy building up a business, a career or a reputation to be bothered by the thought of death. However, the effect is as one of our hymns put it:

"Unhelped by Thee in error's maze we grope,

While passion stains and folly dims our youth,

And age comes on uncheered by faith or hope."

That indeed is the situation of the many in our days. The postponement of a radical choice, the refusal to surrender to Christ and His grace turns our Christian life, as individuals, congregations and Churches often into the sorry and below-standard spectacle it is.

THE WAY OF JOYOUS CERTAINTY AND HOPE

But it was not so in the days of the New Testament! It was not so in the days of the Reformation! It never was so in the lives of the children of God. During the last war, a Lutheran minister and a few R.C. priests in Germany had been condemned to death because they had resisted Hitler. They were to be beheaded. In the morning of the day of execution when the guards came to take the man to the scaffold, the Lutheran minister, who was to go first, turned to his R.C. brethren and said simply: ,Auf Wiedersehn in Himmel" (see you in heaven). This was not a pious wish! This was the ultimate reality and certainty, a fact for which he had lived, for which he had risked and lost. his life. This example could be multiplied by the thousands! Do you perhaps think that these men were deluded? Far from it! There is nothing that makes a person more realistic than the prospect of facing death. Only the house built on the Rock Jesus Christ will stand then!

PERSONAL EXAMPLE

May I add a personal example? Regarding these matters I know what I am talking about, because apart from the danger of bombardments, hunger, etc. during the wartime, no less than three times I have had a close brush with death; the last time a very close one indeed! The first time I was on the verge of death when I suffered from appendicitis and that was only diagnosed after peritonitis had already set in. Afterwards the surgeon told me: "You have escaped through the eye of a needle". The second time it happened in the concentration camp when I was so ill with dysentery that the doctor had already ordered my grave to be dug. And during the last month of our stay there I suffered from heart beri beri (vitamine B deficiency). One morning I tried to get up, fell down and could not breathe anymore. Later on I told Dr. Berg, the missionary doctor, that I had experienced the feeling that if this had lasted for a few more seconds, I would have died. He answered that this indeed was what would have happened, because the heart had stopped beating (heart-arrest as the doctors call it). I am not afraid to die; if I were, my faith in Christ and my almost 40 years in Christ's service would have been a sham and they are not.

Therefore, if you still belong to those who expect so much fro this life and for whom the world m of God is vague and unreal, start doing it the other way around! Then I can assure you, how incredulously it now may sound to you in your present state of mind, that you too will be enabled by Christ to say when death comes near: "Death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory?" Radical acceptance of God's grace in Christ, wholehearted confession of sins, unconditional obedience to Him is the condition for that. God is willing to grant you this, but are you willing and ready to accept it? It is a matter of life eternal or everlasting misery; there is no third possibility.

"And as it is the lot of men to die once, and after death comes judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the burden of men's sins, and will appear a second time - sin done away - to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him" (Hebr. 9 : 28 NEB). Christ called those who belong to Him "children of the resurrection". Let us daily rejoice in the fact that we are.

NOTES:

(*) Friedrich Nietzsche discussing the plays of Aeschylus.

(**) The names these gentlemen use for themselves grow fancier every year. First it was "undertakers"; then: "funeral directors"; now the genteel word to use is "morticians". Who knows what beauty in names we still may expect in the near future? With an eye upon the great advances in creative embalming, may I suggest: Preservationists?

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