REST IN PEACE!?!?

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Colossians 2:8).

How often have you been to a wake or funeral and some person whom is supposed to be a 'godly person' says that the person who died isn't really dead?

"They have made the transition; this body is just a shell, they are really in heaven smiling down on us all right now!"LOL

Aside from the fact that this sort of belief/doctrine has No scriptural basis; as a man, who has lived on this earth the better part of 30 years, I have problem with this statement.

1st of all the idea of heaven (regardless of your religion) is a place of tranquility.  In Revelation 21, When we are with the Father in the Kingdom of God, it is written:
"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4).

Everyone seems to know this scripture, however no one takes into consideration that if dead people are already in heaven then the Bible in general (and Revelation 21:4 in particular) is Falsehood!

 WHY?

Consider this...
A year or so, ago my mother's brother (my uncle) died from Cancer. At his funeral the minister said that he was in heaven smiling down. Now weather or not my uncle died in the Lord is irrelevant as far as this conversation is concerned. For the sake of argument we will assume that he did. So during the funeral my uncle is smiling down from heaven.

Why would he be smiling?


Yes he is in the presence of God, but if he is looking down on us in the funeral home, he will see nothing that would make him smile.

His 70+ year old mother sits front row, her whole body in pain from old age and disease. She cannot walk more than a few feet without stopping to rest (that is during the months that she can make it that far). She contains herself but is not only sad but, is battling the spirit of bitterness because she bared 9 children (4 sons) and every single son has been taken away from her. She thought they would sing at her funeral instead 1 after another she has to watch their lifeless bodies lowered into the earth. This particular uncle is the only one that lived past 40. The youngest died at age 9. She is understandably heart-broke.




 My uncle would then look over to the next pew and see his oldest son, frustrated at losing his father when he was 8 yrs old, for his father to come back into his life at 18 only to lose him for good at 27. The pressure of funeral arrangements has him completely stressed out.






My uncle made a lot of mistakes in his life and therefore his first 3 children are angry and sad at the vision of their dead father. My uncle's latter 4 children and wife all have rivers streaming from their faces. His second oldest daughter is pregnant and the babies father is no where to be found. Now she must truly give birth and raise a child without a man.

In the years since the funeral he would have witnessed some of his nieces and nephew's incarceration. Them being charged with crimes where if convicted they would receive 10-20 years in the penitentiary. Not to mention his second oldest son that, incarcerated and therefore must mourn by himself on funeral day.
 


After his mother died, he witnessed the remainder of his huge extended family fall apart as his mother was the glue that held us together.

He would have bear witness to the rape of a female family member.

He got to see the assault of male family member beat up by local gang members. 

He also got to look down on the teen-age niece that became the mistress of a man twice her age. She became addicted to drugs and eventually got pregnant by the child molester.  Meanwhile she would steal to support her habit from the houses of any family member who trusted her, which usually ended up being the house where his mother also lived. His mother's residence was vandalized and terrorized numerous times.
His only brother still left alive is bitter and cold to their mother and to all of their sister's.

Not exactly the kind of picture that i would wanna see when I look down from heaven.

Not exactly the kind of picture that would make me smile, should i decide to look down from heaven.

These scenario's are only what he would see when looking at his own family. What about when looking down on his childhood friends who have chosen to stay on the wrong path?
All the people who loved him dearly but are currently suffering during the recession.

The people he knew in Mississippi whom lost their home and everything they owned in hurricane  Katrina who still struggle to this day.

I say, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, THIS IS NO SMILING MATTER!"

According to the Bible, in the last days, "nation shall rise against nation... and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." And, "All these are the beginning of sorrows" (Matthew 24:7-8).

Weather a man of God, or a man of the world there is nothing to smile at. Unless he only looks down from heaven when good things happen, and he turns away when the trials and tribulations come.


Me personally, when I die I don't want to look down on the earth the way that false prophets claim. I hope and pray that the Bible is true and EVERY MAN A LIAR, I want the same thing that the patriarchs wanted:     TO BE HID IN THE GRAVE UNTIL THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD!

"Seek ye the LORD, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the LORD's anger" (Zephaniah 2:3).

"When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble:..." (Habakkuk 3:16).

"...hide me in the grave... keep me secret, until thy wrath be past... appoint me a set time, and remember me!  If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come" (Job 14:10-15).

When will this change come?

"Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1Corinthians 15:51-52).\

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER: "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." (Proverbs 3:5).

Everyone who has ever died is still dead. "Resting in Peace" in the dust of the ground. Why? because that was the first promise that God made to Adam!

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17).

Even after the serpent (Satan the Devil) told Eve the first lie ever told in the Bible (the same one this minister and 99% of all minister's tell at funerals), 

"And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die" (Genesis 3:4).

God told Adam again:
 
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Genesis 3:19).

May the dead rest in peace in the dust where GOD said they would go!

And May the Lord add a blessing to the reading of His Word, in Jesus name

LOCKSMIF...LLAVES (keys)