The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1917, Page 82

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82 The Lutheran Pioneer.

end. As the consideration of the punishment in
the eternal fire is fraught with terror, so the out-
look to the bliss in heaven fills the Christian heart
with rare delight even here below. “We shall ever
be with the Lord’ He that overcomes will be
“a pillar in the temple of God, and he shall go
no more out.” We shall obtain an incorruptible
crown; for Christ has abolished death, and has
brought life and immortality to light through the
Gospel. What glory and bliss will be ours when
we shall sit at the celestial Fountain of Life, be-
holding God from face to face! Perfectly con-

_ formed to His image, we shall then praise Him

forever with the angelic hosts.— If God: would
promise us a life in paradise lasting a hundred
thousand years, that would indeed be an enormous
gift. But it would, nevertheless, leave room for
the question of disquietude, “What will become of
me after this long period of time will have elapsed ?”
There is not the slightest reason for our being dis-
turbed by such a thought, for the life which God
has given us is not numbered by years, it lasts
forever.

Indeed, according to our text God has given us
life eternal even now, here on earth. It begins while
we are living here. Christians do not have to wait
for it drearily until death; as our text shows, God
will not give us eternal life in the near or distant
future, but we receive it as soon as we believe in
Christ. “God has given it to us” believers. Of
course, it is, at the same time, a fact that we do

not yet walk by sight, but we walk by faith; and

in this sense God will give us cternal life when we
shall enter into heaven. But by faith we have it
at the present. When we were regenerated by Holy
Baptism, when we first believed the Gospel, we be-
came new creatures in Christ, we passed from dark-
ness to light. Thus we were transformed into chil-
dren of God and heirs of salvation, and entered into
spiritual life, which our text characterizes as being
eternal.

But some one might ask: “Do Christians real
live forever? Must they not die as well as the un-
believers? Are not the singer’s words true:

Hark! a voice saith, All are mortal.
Yea, all flesh must fade as grass,
Only through death’s gloomy portal
To a better land we pass;

This frail body ‘here must perish,
Ere the heavenly joys it cherish,
Ere it gain the free reward

For the ransomed of the Lord?”

|

True, the inscriptions on the gravestones in the
cemeteries proclaim silently, yet none the less for-

cibly, that all must go the way of all flesh. The
Christians, too, are sinners, and therefore must die.
We must enter into the kingdem of God through
much tribulation, and finally through death (unless
we live to see the last day). But what is that grim
king, temporal death, to Christians? He is stripped
of all his terrors. He is to the merely “a power-
less form, howe’er he rage and storm.” — As far as
our souls are concerned, stern death is to us a portal
that leads into paradise. The Savior said to the
malefactor, “To-day shalt thou he with Me in par-
adise,” and in Revelation we read, “Blessed are the
dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth.” Tow
delightful it is to sit in front of our door, enjoying
the warm summer evening after the toil of the day.
In. like manner death is a door which leads to
heavenly enjoyment. Our souls will not be dead,
not even for a moment. ‘They cannot die. . Those
who depart in Christ are at once carried by the
angels into Abraham’s bosom®--- As far as our
bodies are concerned, it cannot he denied that they
fall victims to the grave. But by resting in Joseph’s
sepulcher Jesus has sanctified our graves, making
them bedechambers, wherein we lie unto the day of
resurrection. Thus death is to believers a sweet,
restful slumber. Jesus expressly called the death
of Lazarus and of the daughter of Jairus a sleep.
When we go to bed, we do not end our lives. On
the contrary, without sleep it would be impossible
for us to remain alive; we wovld eventually die

from exhaustion. Calm sleep refreshes, strengthens «

us, and lengthens our lives. So death must serve
us Christians to prolong our days eternally. When
we shall arise from the graves, our bodies will be
reunited with our souls, and then we shall delight
ourselves forever in the living God. Terrible
though death may be, Christians do not, according
to their inward man, fear nor dread it, but trium-
phantly exclaim with St. Paul, “O death, where is
thy sting? O grave, where is tliy victory?”

Death cannot interrupt our soiritual lives, but
ushers us into the land of perfection. The life that
we, even now, possess by faith is actually eternal. —
In the second part of this article we shall, draw
several other priceless truths from the glorious text
which forms the heading of these lines.

FL, OsTERHUS.
———_-____--—

Every man and woman should be a partner
with the Lord Jesus for the salvetion of the world.

Onuy as the Church fulfils he: missionary duty
does she justify her existence.

’