| Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. Rev. 21:3 |
Fellow Believers,When a young person dies, people often say, "Oh, what a shame. He would still have such a long life ahead of him." But when an elderly person dies, the typical remark is, "Well, at least he lived a full life." The implication is that the longer a person lives on this earth, the more enjoyment and satisfaction he has in this life.
That's not what the Bible says. We read in Psalm 90:10, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." And in Job 5:7, "Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." In short, life is full of sorrow and trouble.
All this hardship has its genesis, of course, in the fall of man. God said to Adam, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life" (Gen. 3:17). True, most of us living in the modern world don't really toil painfully to eat of the cursed ground. We have supermarkets. But the majority of the world civilization is even today living below what we consider to be the poverty level. It's just that we don't see the acute suffering they have to endure from famine, diseases and wars.
Actually, a hard and sorrowful life on this earth is just a small part of the penalty for our sins. Much worse is the fact that after this life, every natural man will have to spend eternity in hell.
Thankfully, those of us who have become saved have also been graced with the lively hope of going to heaven instead. Just what heaven is like is something our finite mind cannot even imagine. One thing we do know from Revelation 21:4, "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." That alone renders eternal life in heaven infinitely better than our present life.
But that's not all. In heaven we'll be dwelling with Jesus in person. "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men." This is the Jesus who loved us so much as to humble Himself to become flesh and die for our sins 2000 years ago. And this is the same Jesus who will forever treat us as His beautifully adorned bride. How can heaven be anything but supremely sublime?!
With that glorious hope, and with so many end-time signs appearing, we who trust in the Lord Jesus must surely endure to the end. Yes, in this life we have sorrows and hardship resulting from the original curse, and the added tribulation stemming from the hatred the world .
Tom Holt, Editor
First Quarter, 2001