It Is Appointed Once to Die

It is appointed to a man once to die. Some people believe that is an absolute; in other words, Lazarus died once, but Jesus resurrected him, so He either has been translated, or he is still alive on this earth, somewhere. Certainly it is a fact that Jesus only died once, and later He ascended into Heaven. I think that it’s safe to say that has more to do with who He was than that He was appointed once to die.

Well, to be honest, I’m not sure that the rule is absolute. For one thing, Enoch and Elijah never died, so there are at least two exceptions. It seems to me that, if some men are allowed not to die at all, then it is not a stretch of the imagination that some men might die twice. Even if I did believe that the rule was absolute, I would have to presume that Lazarus was translated, rather than still breathing. I think a two-thousand year old man would attract some attention. If he is still alive, then I hope that he will read this and contact me, because I’d love to sit down with him and spend a few days (or weeks) getting him to tell me what he has seen.

Let us consider, though, Enoch. We are told in Genesis that Enoch walked with God, and then he was not, for God took him. In Hebrews, we are told that he was translated that he should not see death, because his faith pleased God. The Bible doesn’t tell us what Enoch did that he so pleased God, other than the simple statement that he walked with God. Considering how many other people in the Bible have walked with God, though, without being translated, Enoch’s walk with God must have been pretty extraordinary.

On the last day of Elijah’s life on earth, Elisha refused to be separated from him, even for a moment. Twice the sons of the prophets asked Elisha if he knew that his master was to be taken away from him that day, and Elisha responded, “Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.” The Bible gives us a number of examples of the kind of things that Elijah did in his lifetime, but the fact that everyone in Israel with the gift of prophecy knew that it was his last day on earth tells us something about the kind of man he was.

Of course, Lazarus was not the only one in Scripture that was brought back from the dead. In 2 Kings 4, Elisha revived a boy that had died suddenly. In 2 Kings 13:21, a young man was revived by touching Elisha’s bones. In Luke 8, Jesus revived Jairus’ daughter after she died. There was a young man that Jesus brought back from the dead during his funeral procession…Interestingly enough, out of all of these, Lazarus is the only one mentioned by name (of course, the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man is the only parable that has a character with a name—I don’t think that is a coincidence, particularly since the tag line for the parable talks about one being raised from the dead).

The bottom line is, that in general, any given person will die only once. I guess it would be safe to say that it is only possible for a man to die once. God, however, does the impossible on a fairly regular basis, and to resurrect a person from the dead would then make it possible for them to die again. I personally think that I would rather not be resurrected than to have to die twice; I just don’t think I would want to go through that again.

The Rapture

The word rapture simply means, “ecstatic joy or delight.” Interestingly enough, the English word rapture comes from the Latin word Raptus, which meant to carry off. One might wonder how an English word meaning ecstatic joy could come from a Latin word meaning to carry off; it would seem that our predecessors could imagine no greater joy than for Jesus to carry them off to Heaven.
I have been criticized for using that word as a Christian term, on the grounds that it isn’t Biblical. I have to admit that the word itself does not appear in Scripture, but the idea is pretty evident. In 1 Corinthians 15:50, Paul tells us that flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. Clearly, we need to change before we can enter in. In verse 51, it goes on to say that we shall all be changed, even though some will not sleep. Sleep, in this instance is that same sort of sleep that Jesus was talking about when he said that Lazarus was asleep. In other words, some people will die, and then be resurrected, but some people will still be alive when the time of judgment comes, and will not have to suffer death. In verse 52, we are told that this change will happen in the twinkling of an eye, in other words, essentially instantaneously. Verse 53 goes on to say that this is because corruption must put on incorruption, and mortality must put on immortality.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, it talks again about the last trump, that Jesus will come for us, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, and those that are alive and remain shall arise to meet them in the air. After that, all of us will be with Christ for all eternity. 1 Thessalonians 5:2 reminds us that the Lord shall come as a thief in the night, referencing Matthew 24:43-44 where Jesus compares His return to a thief coming to rob; if people knew when the thief was going to come, then they would no doubt be ready. Since we don’t know when Jesus is going to return, we must always be ready.
In Matthew 24:40 Jesus prophesied that there would be two in the field, and one taken, and the other left. It’s possible that He was referring to farm workers in a natural field, but in John 4:35, He tells His disciples to start harvesting the fields, even though it was four months until the time to harvest a natural field. The passage in John is very clearly talking about working with people, winning souls. If the passage in Matthew is talking about the same thing, then Jesus is referring to two people that are out winning souls, but one is ready, and the other one is not. Of course, if that’s the case, then the two women grinding at the mill in verse 41 would have to have some spiritual significance, also, but I’m not sure what that would be (my best guess would be studying Scripture, but that’s just a guess).
By the way, a number of people have written books about what signs will precede the second coming of Christ. I am not going to mention any one in particular, but let me say this: These writings are speculative at best. I am not even going to attempt to debunk them; they may even be right. I make it a point to not concern myself with such things, because one misinterpretation could have long-lasting consequences. What if I spend my life looking for one sign before I get myself ready, and then get hit by a car before that sign occurs? Or, what if I’m mistaken about that particular sign, and it isn’t supposed to happen until after the rapture? When I get to Judgment, can I say to God, “But God, Doctor Theolophisus’ book says the rapture wasn’t supposed to happen until after the polar bears became extinct!”? Will God give me a pass because I wanted to do the right thing; I just read the wrong book? Jesus warned in Matthew 24:4, “Take heed that no man deceive you.” Don’t misunderstand me, I am not accusing anyone of intentionally trying to deceive us, but the onus is on us to ensure that we don’t allow ourselves to be led astray.

My Sis

When I was growing up, in a lot of ways my older sister was my mentor. Don't misunderstand me, she picked on me sometimes, and did other things that I didn't agree with, but she helped me to understand some things that would not otherwise have been evident to my young mind.
Some of it I don't really think was intentional. When I was a preschooler, she challenged me with mathematics. Of course, this was done more in the attitude of, "I learned this in school, and since you haven't started school yet, you don't know how to do it. Nyaah, nyaah,” but the end result was that I learned basic mathematics before I started school.
Some things she clearly did out of a sense of watching out for me. I remember walking through a cemetery one time and making a stupid comment. I don't remember exactly what I said, but something along the lines of, "I'm just a kid. I don’t have to worry about dying. I won't die until I'm old." She challenged me to look around at the tombstones and see if I could find any markers of people younger than me. I found several, and it didn't take long, either. Granted, a lot of those were infants that had probably been born with health problems and hadn't lived to their first birthday, but some were kids that had just died for one reason or another. That was a real eye-opener; I started taking my own mortality much more seriously after that.
Another time she became concerned that, when asked to bless the food at dinner, I recited a rote prayer as quickly as I could. She asked me if I could explain the prayer to her. I had never really thought about the meaning of the words before. In retrospect, I'm a little surprised that she was able to keep from laughing at my attempts to explain this little prayer that I had memorized (apparently phonetically). When I tried to break it down, the words that I was trying to explain were, "Goddess great, goddess good, lettuce sankim for our food. Amen." For some reason, it had never registered with me, until she asked me, that I was praying to a goddess instead of to God. I knew I wasn't supposed to be praying to any goddess...
Another time she noticed that, when we went to church, during the time that some of the congregants came into the sanctuary early to pray for the service, I mostly just goofed around. That may have been distracting to some of the people that were doing what they were supposed to be doing; that may even be the real reason why she did what she did. She tried to impress upon me the importance of prayer, but I didn't see the need. Praying for service didn't make sense to me, because service was going to happen whether I prayed for it or not. The idea that I might get more out of it if I prayed for it didn't make sense to me, partially because I wasn't aware that I was getting anything out of service (although perhaps if I had prayed about it, I would have received something from service). I didn't feel like I needed anything from God (boy, I wish I could get that feeling back in my life, but I guess that's really just the bliss that comes from ignorance—I’m still ignorant, just not as ignorant as I was). This was during the cold war, so finally she tried to at least get me to pray for that. Even then, I did not, at first, see the need. The USA and the USSR had been at a standoff for years, with neither one seeming particularly inclined to attack the other, even though people on both sides kept worrying that the other side would. Finally she told me something outrageous: She told me that the Soviets had come over the North Pole, and had captured Detroit. That got my attention. I'll tell you something else, too, that got me praying, and I prayed hard. I was afraid to even look at the news for the next several days, because I knew that most of the coverage would be about the Soviets occupying Detroit. Eventually, though, I looked, if only to find out if my prayers were being answered. Much to my surprise, I found out that the Soviets were no longer in Detroit, and, what's more, nobody else seemed to remember Detroit even being invaded. That taught me an important lesson about the power of prayer.
In retrospect, it also teaches an important lesson about “childlike faith.”

Computers, Death, and God

There's a bumper sticker out that says, "We are Microsoft. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." When things like this and this show up in the news on the same day, I really think that bumper sticker is not so funny. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want ads in my applications, even it does allow me to get free Wi-Fi access.
We now have a computer that can play checkers (draughts in the UK) and never lose, and a car with AI.
I'm curious as to how a goddess can sin. Shouldn't their goddess being telling her priests what is, or is not, a sin?
Meanwhile, a couple of thought-provoking things in Newsweek: I See Dead People, and Rabbi Marc Gellman's take on near death experiences. Rabbi Gellman postulates that research into NDE's is dangerous from both a religious and a scientific standpoint. I have read his arguments, and I have to disagree. I don't see any danger to either. Quite frankly, I do think that it is a waste of time and money, but I fail to see the danger. I don't expect that the research will ever find definitive proof one way or the other about the afterlife. That is a matter of faith. There is the idea of placing objects in the ER out of sight of the clinicly dead individual, to see if said individual remembers seeing them in their recollections of their out-of-body experience. Interesting thought, but a good number of NDE'rs don't report seeing the ER from the ceiling, and most of the ones that do are focused on their own bodies, with some attention given to the medical team attempting to revive them. If someone does get revived, and then recalls seeing the number for Dial-A-Prayer written on the top of the ER room light fixture, is that sufficient proof that they had an out-of-body experience? It would be quite a stretch to consider that proof of life after death. I must admit, I have a certain amount of curiosity as to whether the experiences reported by NDE'rs are real, or simply elaborate hallucinations, but, IMHO, it really only matters to the people who went through it.
I do appreciate the fact that Rabbi Gellman states that Genesis tells us why we are here, while Darwin tells us how we are here, and goes on to say that they do not conflict. I'm not entirely sure that they don't conflict, but they can co-exist. The bottom line is that religion tells us that God made the universe, and then made man; science attempts to explain the process by which God did that. I do think that people on both sides tend to get a little too serious. There has been some discussion as to whether the 6 days mentioned in Genesis are literally six twenty-four hour periods of time. It seems to me, that since God didn't create the sun and moon until the fourth day, that isn't talking about a day in the sense of sun-up to sun-rise. Also note that in 2nd Peter 3:8, the scriptures tell us that, "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." So, am I saying that creation actually took 6,000 years, instead of six days? No, I'm saying that time, with God, is pretty insignificant, even though, with us, it seems vastly important. 6 days, 6,000 years, 6,000 millennia; it's all the same to God. At the same time, the evolutionists insist that mutations happen randomly, but when a random mutation happens to benefit the species, then the mutant strain becomes dominant. If the mutation is not beneficial, then it quietly fades away. They readily admit that most mutation are harmful. That makes evolution a painfully long process, doesn't it? Quite frankly, the odds against humanity evolving by the process of natural selection would seem to be astronomical, and yet, the evolutionists tell us that this must be the case. Look, it's a theory. Granted, right now, that's the most plausible scientific explanation for how we came to be here that anybody has been able to come up with so far, but it is a long way from being considered scientific fact. Don't get all in an uproar if some people challenge its veracity. I can understand that some people are still upset that Galileo Galilei was placed under house arrest by the church for suggesting that the earth orbited the sun (even though I still haven't found any scripture that contradicts him), but that was a long time ago, by people that didn't like having their beliefs challenged. You should be able to empathize with that.