WHY DIE BEFORE YOUR TIME?

Recently I went to my high school class reunion.  I admit, I thought long about not going, but in the end there I was.  It turned out to be much more enjoyable than I had anticipated – seeing old acquaintances even if I didn’t recognize them at first, looking over old pictures, and also knowing that it would end, that I would be leaving in a few hours.

But there was one troubling thing.  I had known a few of the classmates had died over the years.  Every five years or so the group that puts on the reunion has an update of those who have passed on.  As I thought about going to the reunion my mind drifted to really close friends who have departed this life.  Of my really close friends, four in high school and one in both high school and college, three were now deceased.  That’s 60 %! 

And as I prepared to go, I also thought about the boy my age who lived on one side of my home and the girl who had lived on the other, also my age.  For some reason the girl had been coming to my mind for weeks.  When we got to the reunion the man who had been the boy next door was sitting at the next table, and it was good to see him.  But then I had a shock.  In looking through the paper materials, I saw that the girl who had grown up beside me on the other side of our house had died two months before!  Now I know why she kept coming to my attention!

So in my life, sixty per cent of my close high school friends and half of my neighbor friends are now dead.  And I’m not really that old!!!

In our class perhaps fifty out of a class of over 400 are now deceased!  What is going on?  Yes, years have passed.  But these people all died many years before the modern average life expectancy of an American.  A couple may have been killed in a war, or a car accident, but not most.

Why did they die before their time?  Why?  Was it before their time?  Well, I can’t answer that for all, but I am reasonably certain the answer is yes for most.

The best answer I can come up with is that most of these people just do not know what God has provided for them to be well and healthy.  They do not know how to protect themselves against the attacks of the evil one, and they do not know how to receive God’s great gift of healing.  When something terrible attacks them such as hearing a dire prognosis from the medical world, they readily accept that is what they have and in general thus they are acquiescing to their fate.  Oh, some do fight vigorously against disease using the medical world tools, and no doubt some are successful that way.  But that is not what most do.  And so many talented lovely people are no longer with us.  I can’t talk to my childhood friend, the girl next door, Emmy and ask about her life, her family, what happened.  I can’t talk to my good friend Joe and ask why he died so young.  I can’t speak with Stanley and try to learn what happened.  Oh, I do know about John.  He got hit by a car in Atlanta while crossing a street. 

Well, I have spent years of my life teaching and preaching about the fullness of Jesus and all he has done for us and all we are in him.  There have been wonderful healings – a two year old with a dreadful brain tumor that major hospitals had given up on, a woman on her way into heart surgery, another baby born with a lung too short that just grew to full size, a woman whose arteries suddenly were unclogged, and so on.  Many who have come to our meetings or services have been healed.  And others watching on television or over the web have learned and grown in Christ.  But still the great majority of the population does not know the power of the gospel.  They treat it all as a historical story, something to be read and considered like reading about Caesar or Washington.  Yes, they say they believe in Jesus, and I think in some way many do.  But they do not “know” him nor know the truth of the Bible.  And the church services in so many places on Sunday morning are over precisely at noon, fitting the long-scheduled format.  No time for the Holy Spirit to minister, to heal, to comfort, to guide. 

At many such places the sick list is recited and prayers are requested.  Some in front may even pray for healing by saying “if it is God’s will.”  Of course it is God’s will to be well!  Unless it is your time to go be with him, it is his will for you to be well!  I’ve taught about that so many times, with scriptures that make the truth inescapable.  You can watch our programs on the web site or listen to our CDs or read the newsletters.  Healings and miracles happen today just as in the days of Jesus and the disciples. 

But our population continues to age, and in general to fall away from God – noticeably for those truly in revolt against the Lord, and quietly and perhaps even more horribly, discreetly for those who still don’t really know who he is or what he did for them even though they say they are Christians.  They just don’t know all Jesus has done for them and that is available to them.  They don’t know and they don’t know how to receive or how to fight against evil, and they suffer and go quietly into the night.

The title above is from Ecclesiastes 7:17. 

It is still true.  Why die before your time?