Death Be Not Proud

According to one source approximately 95 million people die each year. That means that every second, 3 people are gone. Every minute 180 individuals pass away. Within the next hour 10,800 men, women and children will have disappeared. Today, as you finish up your daily activities about 165,000 people have died. I’m not sure if these stats take into account daily womb invasions or not as each hour women are deceived into exercising evil in the name of choice. The number of murdered womb babies is estimated to be in the millions.

It is interesting that this massive amount of death goes by virtually unnoticed. We seem to stand up and observe death when it is either revealed to us in one massive event or when it is particularly wrapped around a controversial social topic or celebrity / leader. The Jihad-infected aero bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City as well as the Asian-pacific tsunami disaster are examples of the former while the recent death of Teri Schiavo and Pope John Paul II the latter.

When we are riding in our convertibles soaking in the pleasure rays as our favorite melody and groove propel us down winding roads we don’t think about our grave. Sobering moments only come on the tip of death’s dagger. The book of Ecclesiastes puts it this way, “…the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart… The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure.” (Ecclesiastes 7:1b-2;4) Truly God’s advice is not congruent with our wisdom.

We have watched the educational system instruct us that we come from highly advanced amebas leaping as a Galapagos frog from bug to fish to man and we have sat by our warm television sets seeing if any of those who claim to have some sense of right and wrong will actually understand that a helpless woman needs to eat and drink. Starving a Chihuahua in your garage will get you arrested and branded as inhumane yet denying basic feeding and nutrition to the disabled is now respecting surrogate ‘rights’. At least the wicked are consistent. Well, sometimes.

America has become an oligarchy as Ann Coulter states rather well, “Our infallible, divine ruler is a county judge in Florida named George Greer, who has more authority in America than the U.S. Congress, the president and the governor. No wonder the Southern Baptist Church threw Greer out: Only one god per church!”

In Pope John Paul II’s case the words of John Gunther ring true, “All the doctors!--helpless flies now, climbing across the granite face of death." We all die. We just don’t know when. James White puts this event into a proper perspective by writing, “I wonder...how many evangelical leaders will honor God rather than men and say what needs to be said? "Unless the Pope believed the gospel, he, like any other person on the planet, died under the wrath of God, outside of the only way of salvation God has provided in Jesus Christ!" And how many will cave in to the fear of the face of men and do what society demands by compromising the gospel, showing a greater love of the acclaim of men rather than the approval of God? Remember, friends: Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Eternal perspectives come to us through death events and remind us that vapors only last for a short tick on the grand tock.