Dying well: How to face death with faith and not fear!

From the heart of Dr. Robert L. Taylor, Th.D. If Jesus didn’t rise from the grave there’s no hope of salvation, no hope for sanctification, no hope for glorification. If Jesus didn’t rise from the grave Christianity is pointless. But praise be to God - the tomb of Jesus is still empty! I’ve always liked what the two angels told the women that first discovered the empty tomb. The angels said in Luke 24:5, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead?” Because Jesus is no longer among those who are the dead ones, “the resurrection of Jesus gives the Christian tremendous hope in every facet of life, but particularly in the face of death.”  Because in order to rise from the dead, you must first die. The resurrection assumes death. We all know that death is terrible. It’s so bad that we live our lives as if it’s never going to happen to us. I remember coming across a quote from Dr. Paul Helm. He wrote, “The modern Western attitude to dying and death is all too obvious. It is to avoid it, to avoid mentioning it, and where mention of it is unavoidable, to use euphemisms and circumlocutions.” We often say that someone, “passed away,” or “passed into glory” which are all just polite ways of talking about death. And of course, it’s my aim to be polite and I certainly never want to come across as insensitive, but to Dr. Helm’s point, we do avoid talking about death at all costs. But we shouldn’t always avoid talking about it because what you and I believe about death, particularly, what happens after we die shapes the way we presently live our lives. Death, which is the thing that causes us the most pain and sadness in this life, the Christian can face with confident hope and not fear. And of course that hope isn’t found in anything that you have done or in anything that you can do - rather the source of the Christian’s resurrection hope is only found in Jesus! As Christians, we do not place our hope merely in life after death but rather in the resurrection. Since the first century, Christian hope has been rooted in the resurrection, and resurrection isn’t what happens when we die. It’s what happens when our bodies are raised from the grave at the powerful rapture event (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 1 Corinthians 15:51–54). Be encouraged!