At the beginning of this New Year, we reflect on what it will be like as Christians to live in eternity after death and prepare ourselves for that time.
Let me share a story about preparing ourselves for eternity: Several years ago, my wife Sandy and I took her parents on vacation to Scotland while we were living in England. One evening, as darkness began to fall, we looked for a hotel along the road. We passed by some black-painted wrought-iron gates with a sign that read, "Black Barony Hotel." Since we couldn't see the buildings from the entrance, we decided to check out the hotel. Given the time of day and the wrought-iron gates, we began joking amongst ourselves, saying we were heading to the Tower of Terror and that it was likely to be a haunted castle. The road wound through the trees, giving us even more time to imagine what this place would be like. We speculated if they might have a butler resembling "Igor" from the movie Young Frankenstein. I pictured Marty Feldman's face greeting us at the door.
Sure enough, as we walked through the trees, there stood an enormous castle with not a single car in the parking lot. As we exited the vehicle, a man with a severe hunchback approached us from the door. He also had a wandering eye, though he looked nothing like Marty Feldman. To top it off, above the door were these words in large letters: Prepare to Meet Your God, Amos 4:12, a phrase from Scripture. It gets better! The man who greeted us at the door told us we were the only guests staying at the hotel that night; 75 other rooms remained empty. A tour party had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the entire place eerily vacant, so Sandy and I ended up sleeping in a four-poster bed where King James once slept. (Yes, THAT King James, as in the King James Bible.) The hotel's claim that the king had slept there was a point of pride. The bed was awful, with a significant dip in the middle. I’m sure it couldn't have been the same mattress, but it felt as if it had been around since the 1600s! We later discovered that the Bible verse above the door was intended for soldiers who used the hotel while training for war to prepare them to face eternity if they fell in battle.
That sign remains engraved in my mind: “Prepare to Meet Thy God.” It is wise for us to prepare ourselves to meet God on that day. During our daily meditations over the next three or four days, we will delve into what we need to do to get ready for death and judgment and how this will affect each of us. Although we may prefer to avoid contemplating that moment, Scripture reminds us that we will all have to give an account of what we have done as well as our motivations at the end of our lives when God decides our time has come. Thank God that our Savior will appear with us.
Man is destined to die once, and after that, to face judgment (Hebrews 9:27).
So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God (Romans 14:12).
Death is a topic that most individuals tend to sidestep. J. Kirby Anderson aptly stated, “Death is the most universal and most democratic of all human functions. It affects individuals at any moment, showing little regard for age, class, creed, or color.” Death boasts a 100% success rate; nonetheless, many people still shy away from discussing or contemplating it. Woody Allen's oft-quoted observation is, “I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.”
As much as we try to avoid it, death does not go away. Each of us must confront it without exception. It doesn't matter how much money we have or what insurance we carry; it is simply a matter of time. None of us knows how much time we have left. The remarkable aspect is that, even though we know we cannot escape it, most of us avoid thinking about it and do little to prepare for it. Some time ago, an article in the Boston Globe listed the well-known individuals who had passed away that year, stating that they had joined "the great majority." Death, we might say, is a great certainty, and those who have died are the great majority.
An epitaph on a tombstone reads, "Stop, as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I; as I am now, you will surely be. So prepare yourself to follow me!" A person scrawled underneath, "To follow you, I'm not content until I know the way you went!" The passerby was right. It's crucial to understand where one is headed at death, but when we are pointed in the right direction, we should prepare ourselves for what awaits beyond the grave. We'll carry on this thought tomorrow.
Keith Thomas
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Taken from the series Insights into Eternity. Click on the study Preparing for Eternity.