At a recent Celebrations Service for a Sister-in-Christ, the preacher noted, “We are not bodies with a soul, but we are souls in bodies for a season!” That is why Tryon Edwards stated: “This world is the land of the dying; the next is the land of the living.”¹ Herman Hooker adds, “Death is as the foreshadowing of life. We die that we may die no more!” (12,000 Inspirational Quotations, p. 101). That’s what Peter referred to when he wrote about a “living hope...reserved in heaven for you” (I Peter 1:3-5). That’s why Sir Walter Scott stated: “Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last and final awakening” (12,000 Inspirational Quotations, p. 105).

All the foregoing, being true, it is a sobering thought that Jesus Christ in His New Covenant, is the only one who has, with authority (Matt. 28:18), told us what that life will be. It is a life of eternal punishment, or eternal blessings, where death never darkens the doorstep, tears and pain will no more, in God’s dwelling place of many mansions (Matt. 25:46; Rev. 21:3-5; John 14:1-3). Or, it will be a place of “outer darkness; there will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 25:30).

Meditate on the reality and truthfulness of these facts about eternal life—You and me, and God’s Tomorrow! That make so sobering these words by Edmund Vance Cooke (in How Did You Die?):

“Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,

  And whether he’s slow or spry,

  It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,

  But only, how did you die?”

(12,000 Inspirational Quotations, p.100)

Note Hebrews 9:27; “...it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (NKJ). Are you ready for the life after death—that sobering, eternal land of the living?? Out there somewhere—in one of two places—You and I will be living out an eternity!

¹Frank S. Mead, 12,000 Inspirational Quotations, A Division of Merriam-Webster Incorporated, Springfield, Mass., 2000, p. 100.