“It’s okay to laugh to toast the departed,” is the article of an award-winning journalist in one of the papers we can buy here in Kaitaia called.

Apparently the author has attended many funerals and his observation is that at the present time the funerals are more cheerful than they were in the past. Once the people going to funerals were gloomily mourning, but now they are laughing and grinning.

ROMANS 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That’s what I read in the paper today and only yesterday a Chartered Accountant writes in the same paper that he was asked once what he thought people would say about him at his funeral.

It is all very well to think about what people are going to say at our funeral, but what I am really interested in is what the Bible, says when I die. What does the Bible say? In Hebrews 9:27 the Bible says:

“JUST AS MAN IS DESTINED TO DIE ONCE, AND AFTER THAT TO FACE JUDGMENT, …”

Here we are told about death and judgment.

DEATH: Nothing can keep us from death. Death awaits us.

JUDGMENT: Judgment awaits us. Nothing  can deliver us from being condemned at the day of judgment, except the atoning sacrifice of Christ. We will not be saved from eternal punishment, if we despise or neglect this great salvation.

I ask once more: What about the fear of death? “Don’t believe people if they tell you that they do not fear death. The fear of death grips modern civilization in a vice-like grip, and it is none the less real for being driven underground.” – Michael Green (“THE DAY DEATH DIED”)