A friend of mine had his wife cremated and her ashes placed in a container. One hundred years from now that sealed container will weigh the same as it does today.
We know scientifically that the material world has within it no ability and no potential to increase in size. Those ashes have an amazing past. Housed in them for a time was a living being.
The elements first housed a fertilized egg – a zygote. This grew into being a fetus, and then a child still growing, then aging, then dying. Her remains, almost universally believed, do not represent who and what she was or what she yet is. Yet she was housed in those elements. We know this factually. Now she is gone, lost from our capacities to know her presently.
Plato asked a question of Crito, his fictional friend, “Do you believe in death?” His friend answers, “Yes, is that not when the soul leaves the body?” The classical Greek thinkers were reason-reliant (having reliance on something or someone).
They believed that the existence of all things had meaning: they sought answers by contemplating reasonableness and discounting what proved through reasoning to be ridiculous. Dialogue and discussion was fulfilling to them. Even then, their religious beliefs were ridiculous. They invented gods whose weaknesses resembled the weaknesses in men. We could say that they invented gods in the likenesses of men.
The Greeks were not the only ones to believe in a continued existence beyond the grave.
A practice in ancient Egyptian religion was to mummify their leaders, to adorn them with gold; this, in preparation for their re-appearance beyond the grave.
Ancient China embraced the idea of ancestry worship because of a belief in existence beyond the ashes, beyond the grave.
Where did the person who was greater or different than the elements in a jar come from? Are they spirit? Are they new at birth; or pre-existing?
We are persuaded, since we’ve known persons who reside in bodies, that souls (those persons) will continuously and forever exist in an invisible, inaudible, poorly discernable state. We think that we are reasonable as Crito when he answered Plato saying, “Death is when the soul leaves the body.”
With every birth we see somewhat of a miracle, we see a soul or spirit intermingling with some elements; we see those element take on life, live awhile, then return to a mere ash pile of elements.; the same elements which compose every single thing the eye can see.
What is a person? Why do they appear – not the body, we know how D.N.A. and R.N.A. function in the formation of bodies. We know nothing new – no new elements come into being – just new, temporary bodies: from dust – to dust. Protein, cell production, growth, aging, and death; but, the person is more than the elements of his makeup.
Are we in the ashes? Do we exist only temporarily? Was Job, the oldest character in the Bible – a real person or a parable-like one – asked, “If I die shall I live again?” (Job 14:14)
Two thousand years later, after many predictions of His coming, Jesus of Nazareth stated, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he be dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25)
We are taught in theory that a big bang occurred – perhaps more than once – and this accounts for the motions in the universe. Isaac Newton did not reason this as conceivable. He saw an inter-dependence of motion and matter too specific and intricate to have happened by chance. Isaac Newton displayed a great scientific mind. He affirmed through personal experience and scientific necessity that behind all existence and phenomena a Personal, Almighty, and Loving God exists. Newton loved the Bible.
Einstein marveled that the universe cannot be added to in substance. The expanding universe is miraculous, we cannot explain how it can expand; but the Christian can by using his Bible.
“By faith we understand that things which are were not made by things that exist.” (Hebrews 11:3). Here, the Bible is saying what the physicist has discovered. Matter cannot create matter. The person is a material body, like the expanding universe, is a product of God’s creating presence.
“In the beginning;” but, with God there is and can be no beginning – and no end. There is, however, divine purpose. “God is love,” Jesus taught.
Not only is this a marvelous claim, it accords with how we determine who are heroes in the world and who are worse than no help at all.
Forgiveness, of course confession too, and mercy are not foreign ideas to the human race. A civil family knows well that such kindness is much-needed. That God is kind and extremely merciful is the Jew/Christian message how-be-it not always demonstrated by the organized church in world history.
The Gospel is true, however, whether or not that which purports to be the church is true to it. And this Gospel of personal salvation stands as unique, if contrasted to any and all other religious thought.
The Gospel of God is not religious thought and is rather revealed truth.
The Savior of the world is revealed truth too. God loves in such a manner that those affected carrying the testimony span all of world history.
The first “beginning” account in the Bible states that the heavens and earth appeared not with a material cause and effect condition but rather as the worlds appearing from a Source not seen.” Science, seeing the expanding universe must make the same conclusion: something creative is happening and we have no known answer – scientifically – explaining it: creation is ongoing.
We see a similar unexplainable event with the birth – and death – of persons. “They’re not gone, we think – multitudes of us – and we cannot explain the existence of persons from any studies on matter or substance. Spirits or souls exit: persons are seen, known by us, leave sight: we cannot through our own understanding explain how this is.
“By faith,” the Bible reads, “we understand.” The Bible teaches of body, soul, and spirit: man is three parts: tri-partite.
Faith is actually, if in the true God and not the invented gods of religions, is the commonest of common sense. Isaac Newton and multitudes of brilliant men, lived in faith and, at the same time made brilliant gains for human reasoners.
The Bible’s God superintended that His word would be preserved throughout history; pre-determined that He would teach the earnest seeker through that word. History records that multitudes have found counsel from God through His word; but also through His Tutor. This is a fact of history and demands just treatment because it is a major factor in ushering into the world, Western Civilization. The Gospel of God invites me to the mercy of God; to the Son of His mercy.
The unseen God sent His Son into the world: God became man and dwelt among us and we beheld Him as the only Begotten of the Father. The first born of the Father became the federal head of the human beings that come to know Him. “Where I am, you may be also: I go to prepare a place for you,” (John 14:3). My friend’s wife’s ashes were only her mortal house. She is with Jesus.
Critics of God’s Gospel work to make something of nothing. Their doubts they flaunt as if they have something of substance, something helpful. They have ignorance and false pride; arrogance and no light from heaven.
“Jesus is that light which lights every man who enters the world,” (John 1:9).
This is miraculous in that we cannot tap the Source, view the cause and effect. But we can know in experience, in the same way we know true love.
Those who play the fool, act as though truth must play by their rules, and deny the inner witness of God, and lie to the Holy Spirit until they have hardened their God-given capacity to know Him, have nothing to offer bereaved souls
The Gospel of God answers to every need the human faces. God – visibly for the eye to see, gave His Son so that the wages of my sin could be fully paid. He – Jesus – ransomed me! Historians cannot erase it. Critics cannot better it. Wise men still seek Jesus. “Seek me and I will be found of you,” thus states the word which proceeds from the mouth of God. (Jeremiah 29:13)
Life beyond the grave makes sense. Mercy and loving-kindness- forgiveness, ransom, in my stead He died specifically so we, friend, may live
Buddy