The Cold Hard Facts

Phillip Mullins

Ecclesiastes is an Old Testament book that asks life’s hardest questions.The question of all questions is found in chapter 3 and verses 19-21:

“For what happens to the sons of men also happens to beasts; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so does the other. Surely, they all have one breath, man has no advantage over beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the beast, which goes down to the earth?”

I remember one of the saddest, but most insightful days from my childhood was the day my dad and I buried the family dog. She had been a part of the family for years and was loved as much as any pet could be. One day she was struck by a car in the road in front of our house. Mom called dad and he came home from work. We loaded our little dog in my red wagon and wheeled her to the back of the field behind our house. After we buried her, my dad, sensing the tragedy for a seven year old, said some comforting words about “man’s best friend.” I can still remember how big and steamy the tears were that rolled off my cheeks. That was the end of my dog, and I knew it.

When a human being is lowered into the grave, is that the end for them? This is the question of Ecclesiastes 3:21. After death, is that all? Like an animal that is breathing one minute and struck dead the next, is man’s fate any different? Indeed death is terrible, the most terrible experience of all if that is the case. What really matters if we all end up dead and there is nothing beyond that? Is death all that awaits man?

The Bible says there is more. Hebrews 9:27 says, “…it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.” There is a reckoning beyond death. Ultimate reward awaits those who have been faithful to God while everlasting punishment awaits those who have not believed and obeyed God (1 Thessalonians 4 and 2 Thessalonians 1).

We need to see death. We need to stare it right in the face. Thanks to technology, our society has all but insulated itself from the grim evidence of death. For the most part, hospitals and nursing homes spare us from the scene of death as it creeps over a person. Funeral homes and graveyards are clean, trim, and polished places that mask the ugliest of all human experiences. We ignore death when it is not around, when it approaches we resign it to an out of the way place, and when it occurs we do our best to gloss it over. This is not healthy. We need to see death. I am not advocating a morbid approach to death, just an honest one. We need to see the cold, hard facts of it all.

Why? When we see death, we see the truth about our existence. We see where we are headed and it creates a burning question in our soul – Is there a way to win over it? Death causes us to ache for and search for hope. Death drives us to the only place for deliverance, and that is God.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has the answer. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25). God vividly shows us the way out of death by the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. God raised the Son from the dead to prove His identity and to show us all there is a way through the grave to life, a better life. Christ will come one day to raise those who belong to Him to an everlasting life in heaven (John 5:24-29). Jesus Christ offers the only real hope for life beyond death. Some of the most hopeful words ever penned are found in Hebrews 2:14-15 concerning what Christ offers us:

“Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their life  time subject to bondage.”

Looking anywhere else for deliverance is vain and trying to avoid death is even a greater waste of energy.

We need to see death because it is when we see our mortality that we gain the perspective that we need to live this life properly. Again, Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 says, “…Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil.” We really don’t learn how to live until we realize we are going to die.

There are two ways we can see death and learn the needed lessons from it. One is to listen to the words of God in the Bible and look around and see the work of death all around us. That is the easy way. The hard way is to ignore God’s warnings and ignore the evidence of death around you until some sickness or accident brings you terrifyingly close to it. Yet, there is a risk in the latter alternative. For death does not always knock before it enters, sometimes it barges in with no warning.

Of death, Wardlaw wrote, “Every man must advance; and every man must advance alone, to single combat; and every man in succession must fall.” How true, yet, the Bible tells us that with Christ, the follower of God does not have to walk alone to face the ultimate enemy. Look at life and see death. Look at God’s Word and find the hope for life in death. Prepared or not, it is coming.