TOPIC:"Let's Talk About Death"
TEXT:I Corinthians 15:54-58
"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (I Corinthians 15:55)
No matter what age you happen to be death is no respecter of persons. It comes to the young as well as the old. To the rich as well as the poor. It's almost paradoxical, but though people are living longer, they still are dying younger. If you don't believe me, check the obituary column of any newspaper in this country. Unless the Lord returns, we are all destined to die. And most of us will not put off death much beyond the age seventy if we reach that age at all.
The question for each one of us is this: Can we face up to death when it comes? Can I? Can you? And do we have the assurance that our destiny is not a hole in the ground, but a home in Heaven? That we are not the victims of death, but the victors over death. That is precisely what St. Paul is declaring in his shout of victory over death in verse 57: "Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Let us now take a closer look at death through the eyes of that first-century Christian, the Apostle Paul. What he has to say should forever change our view regarding death.
But before coming to grips with Paul's view of death, let us think, first of all, of the way man talks DESCRIPTIVELY ABOUT death.
Let me tell you what Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher of the 19th century, thought about death. He declared: "No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave." To Russell death is the absolute end of all things. It is the end of the trail for all of us. Death is final. There is no after life and it is hopeless to think so.
Albert Einstein, the well-known physicist of past . . .