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The other day, I was called upon to bury the dead. The funeral service for this child of God was attended by the youngest to the oldest; all on a journey to the earth’s ultimate end, before finally heading to their eternal home. Serious God-thinking is engaged in such settings. Ecclesiastes 7:4:
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
Certainly, this is true.
I have never been to a funeral where the unanimous chorus of the attendees was not, “He or she is in a better place.” For the truly born-again, this statement is true—but for the vast, very vast majority, including many confessing Christians, it is not. They were first called Christians at Antioch because they followed Christ. Jesus said in Matthew 7:24-28:
24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:
The doers, not the hearers, are accepted by God. I John 2:4:
He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
Lip-service does not work. The truly born-again seek to do God’s commandments and, when they fall short, they repent and turn from the error to continue following Christ. I John 2:1-2:
1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
There is no place like the funeral home, standing before an open casket, where the end of earth’s journey becomes more apparent and the concept of eternity more real—and surely no other place where the glorious promise of the blessed hope shines brighter. What a magnificent passage in I Corinthians 15:51-57:
51 Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
This marvelous promise belongs to the born-again. Have you been born again? Will today be your day of salvation where all sin and shame is washed away by Christ’s saving blood? Will today be the day Satan’s stranglehold on you is broken? Death and the grave are swallowed up by victory. Click onto “Further with Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.
GOD SAID, Revelation 6:14:
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
GOD SAID, Micah 3:12:
Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.
GOD SAID, Psalm 96:1:
O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth.
MAN SAID: I know who I am, and I know where I’m going—and I don’t need an antiquated Bible to show me the way! Oh, by the way: Maybe you could help me? Am I a boy or a girl? Which bathroom should I use? I need to find myself!
Now THE RECORD: In this feature, you will find God-proofs 186 to 190 and, again, all the loopholes have been closed beyond doubt. Choose life and live.
186. Revelation 6:12-17:
12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
The soon-coming return of Jesus Christ to this earth in the day of judgment will be the end of Satan’s wicked reign here on the earth and he, Satan, ultimately finds his end in the Lake of Fire. The Lake of Fire is where Satan will reside, along with all who have followed his wicked spirit of unbelief, in cognizant, tormented damnation. At the day of Christ’s return in judgment, the Bible says the sky will roll back like a scroll. Isaiah 34:1-4:
1 Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it.
2 For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.
3 Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.
4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.
When written—and even to today’s uninformed—the idea of the sky rolling back like a scroll seems utterly fantastical, but today’s scientists theorize that you can tear space.
187. Revelation 21:2, 10-17:
2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
10 And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,
11 Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;
12 And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
13 On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.
14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
15 And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.
16 And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.
17 And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.
Accounts in the Scriptures sound marvelous and bizarre, but this is what one should expect from the Almighty God. In his book Proofs of God’s Existence, Richard Wurmbrand writes about the practicality of this marvelous city being conveyed through space:
The fact is that as science advances, it discovers what was said thousands of years ago in the Bible. To give just one example: It was predicted by the Evangelist John in Revelation 21 that a city, called the New Jerusalem, about 2,500 km [or 1,500 miles] high and wide and deep, would come to Earth out of heaven. For 2 millennia, science has denied such a possibility. Now we launch sky labs from our tiny planet and seriously talk about space “cities.”
188. Micah 3:12:
Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.
For hundreds of years, the ancient Biblical scholars awaited and dreaded the dire words of the prophet Micah and His Words surely came to pass. In G.R. Jeffrey’s book Unveiling the Mysteries of the Bible, you’ll find the following under the heading “The Roman Army Plowed Jerusalem and the Temple:”
In A.D. 71, exactly one year after the Roman’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, on the ninth of Av, the Roman army plowed with salt the site of the Temple Mount and the whole city as a symbol of Rome’s utter defeat of its enemy. This was a complete fulfillment of the prophecy of Micah: “Therefore shall Zion for your sakes be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.” (Micah 3:12). The Jewish rabbinical source Ta’anit 26b records that the act was completed in preparation of making the city into a Roman colony known as Aelia Capitolina.
189. Psalm 96:1:
O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth.
Isaiah 55:12:
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
How literal is the Word of God? Does all the earth make a joyful noise? Psalm 98:4-8:
4 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.
5 Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm.
6 With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King.
7 Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
8 Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together
If this Holy Bible were the writings of mere men, how could it consistently befuddle today’s most ardent and educated skeptics? How is it that academia’s vaunted science arrives at a deep, exciting, even game-changing revelation, only to discover that the attentive Sunday school student is already there? The obvious reason for this phenomenon is that the Bible is not authored by man, only penned by him. God dictated and holy men recorded His Words.
How bizarre! The Bible records that all of creation has been designed to sing praises to its Creator. Bible-believing Christians are often berated for taking the Word of God literally. Does creation sing? Could this ancient record be once again vindicated?
The headline on ScienceMag.org reads, “Pitch-Perfect Frogs.” A paragraph follows:
A concert of croaking male frogs is a fierce singing contest, and he who has the sexiest voice gets to mate the most. Now two ecologists working in Malaysia report on a tree frog that has taken this musical battle to a strategic extreme: It adjusts its pitch to match the resonance frequency of the hole it lives in, thus tipping the scales in its favor. [End of quote]
“Wired for Harmony” is the November 12, 2012, headline at ScienceMag.org. An excerpt follows:
Stop that noise! Many creatures, such as human babies, chimpanzees, and chicks, react negatively to dissonance—harsh, unstable, grating sounds. Since the days of the ancient Greeks, scientists have wondered why the ear prefers harmony. Now, scientists suggest that the reason may go deeper than an aversion to the way clashing noises abrade auditory nerves; instead, it may lie in the very structure of the ear and brain, which are designed to respond to the elegantly-spaced structure of a harmonious sound. [End of quote]
The following headlines were posted by Mother Nature Network:
♬ Toadfish can be tenors
♬ Mice sing at supersonic levels
♬ Mexican fire-tailed bats sing for love
♬ Antelope squirrels trill their songs
♬ Killer whales sing for their peers
♬ Pacific chorus frogs sing for soundtracks [End of quotes]
The headline at NationalGeographic.com reads, “Plants ‘Listen’ to the Good Vibes of Other Plants.” A few excerpts from the May 9, 2013 feature follow:
Plants might be able to eavesdrop on their neighbors and use the sounds they “hear” to guide their own growth, according to a new study that suggests plants use acoustic signaling to communicate with one another.
“We have shown that plants can recognize when a good neighbor is growing next to them,” said study co-author Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Western Australia.
“We are proposing that this communication may be based upon an acoustic exchange.”
The findings, published this week in the journal BMC Ecology, suggest that plants can not only “smell” the chemicals and “see” the reflected light of their neighbors, they may also “listen” to the plants around them.
“Plants are more complex organisms than we’ve given them credit for,” Gagliano said.
Gagliano thinks that learning the secrets of plant communication could have practical applications that could benefit humans. She imagines farmers using sound to encourage or discourage the growth of certain plants, negating the need for fertilizers or pesticides.
“Whether it would be economically viable,” co-author Michael Renton said, “for a farmer to play music to get that little extra germination speed, I think we’ll have to wait awhile for the answer to that one.” [End of quotes]
All of creation sings—literally. Consider these paragraphs from the September 2016 issue of Acts and Facts:
Hearing is beautifully represented in the animal world. Experts say fin whales can hear the bleeps of other fin whales from more than 500 miles away. Some scientists even claim their hearing range is thousands of miles.
Humpback whales are famous for singing songs that can last up to 30 minutes. They sing in rhyme, and the songs can be heard by other male whales. It’s passed along the water so that an entire ocean may have all the humpback whales singing the exact same song at the exact same time—a kind of great whale choir. [End of quote]
From the GodSaidManSaid feature “Music Power:”
Why is there this phenomenon of song and music? It transcends every nationality line and, for that matter, all of creation. It exists because it is part of the spiritual construct of all life and all of God’s creation is designed to harmonize with it. Within music is found great benefit to all of life and God invests much instruction time in our owner’s manual, the Holy Bible.
A relatively new psychological-medical area of training is making serious strides in the field of medicine, and it’s called music therapy. A marvelous thing to consider is that thousands of years before science knew the reason why, God in His perfect wisdom, the engineer and creator of all life, declared the importance of music in His Word—just another proof of the supernatural credibility of the Bible. [End of quotes]All creation sings, of course, and yes, literally!
190. Psalm 48:14:
For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death.
This feature began at the grave site and it will end there. The born-again seek the face of God in His Word and are lead by Him all the days of their lives. Even our steps are ordered by the Lord. Psalm 37:23:
The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.
A marvelous chapter—arguably one of the most renown in regard to funeral ceremonies—is Psalm 23:
1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name''s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Our God guides us even unto death, and beyond. The full comfort of such an idea is truly and literally unspeakable.
God’s Word is true and righteous altogether—yes, every jot and every tittle.
GOD SAID, Revelation 6:14:
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
GOD SAID, Micah 3:12:
Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.
GOD SAID, Psalm 96:1:
O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth.
MAN SAID: I know who I am, and I know where I’m going—and I don’t need an antiquated Bible to show me the way! Oh, by the way: Maybe you could help me? Am I a boy or a girl? Which bathroom should I use? I need to find myself!
Now you have THE RECORD.
References:
Authorized King James Version
GodSaidManSaid, “Literal Interpretation Stands—All Creation Sings”
Jeffrey, G., Unveiling the Mysteries of the Bible, Waterbrook Press, 2002
Wurmbrand, R., Proofs of God’s Existence, The Voice of the Martyrs, 2007