Do I Have to grow old?

To make me look younger I can buy numerous anti-ageing products – face creams, hair dyes and toning creams – to name but a few.

If I want a really youthful look, and am prepared to pay, I can have a ‘chin tuck’, a ‘nose job’ or even improve my failing eyesight with laser treatment. But all this doesn’t stop me growing older. So, I ask, why do we all have to grow old?

No Escape

Old age happens to us until finally we die. No one escapes death, not one; you never meet somebody who fought against Napoleon, or heard a speech by George Washington do you?

That’s because everybody dies - but do I have to physically grow old? Can’t I get to 21 and stay like that until I fade away at 75, 85 or whatever? Why does my body have to degenerate?

Well, one thing that ageing makes us do – if we stop to think about it – is to face up to the issue of death. If you always looked 21 you might be tempted to think you were going to live on for ever. But every wrinkle and every grey hair is God’s wake-up call to us. It reminds us that we won’t last forever in our present state.

What God Intended

Death is not the end; it can be just the beginning. When God created the earth and placed man on it, he didn’t design it so that we would die after a mere 70 or so years in which we could enjoy his wonderful creation. No. Death came into the world as a punishment, not as the gateway to heaven, as some people wrongly think. God said to Adam:

“Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

Death was a punishment for disobedience and death is there defined as a return to dust. That’s what happens when we die – we cease to exist – unless we do something about it.

“Man who is in honour, yet does not understand, is like the beasts that perish” (Psalm 49:20);

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Tomb With A View

 Stand on the Mount of Olives and you can gaze down across the Old City of Jerusalem and see the place where once the Temple existed.

That site is now occupied instead by the Muslim Dome of the Rock and its golden dome is likely to capture your attention. But lower your gaze and you will see tomb after Jewish tomb, for the chances are that you are standing in, or next to, a huge Jewish cemetery. For Bible-believing Jews this is a highly sought after burial place, not just for the view, but for what the Bible says is destined to happen at this very site.

A King in Jerusalem

Jews first occupied Jerusalem at the time of King David – about 1000 years before Christ. It was the very place that God had chosen to have a temple erected which would symbolises His permanent dwelling in the midst of His people. And it was here, where David placed his throne, where God promised that his greatest descendant would rule when He established His kingdom on earth. This is what God promised King David:

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               The Doomsday Clock is now just 2 minutes to ‘midnight’

Washington Post, January 25, 2018

‘The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the symbolic Doomsday Clock a notch closer to the end of humanity Thursday, moving it ahead by 30 seconds after what the organization called a “grim assessment” of the state of geopolitical affairs. “As of today,” Bulletin president Rachel Bronson told reporters, “it is two minutes to midnight” — as close as the world has ever been to the hour of apocalypse. In moving the clock forward, the group cited “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.” The organization — which has 15 Nobel laureates on its board — now believes “the world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since World War II,” ‘

The End of the World- as we know it- is nigh!

The fears of the Scientists are focussed on the tangible such as Global warming and the intangible - Presidential sabre rattling;  but students of Bible prophecy see another ‘end’ to the world’s problems, when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to set up his Kingdom on Earth

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