THE JOYS OF DEATH

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 20, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 33.

“THE JOYS OF DEATH.”

The above is the heading of an editorial article in a prominent religious paper of New York. We wondered what a Christian could say of the joys of death—death, the enemy, the fruit of the union of Satan and sin. The writer spoke of the dying, the friends who had gone on before, the joy of meeting them and communing with Christ, etc. All this was interspersed with quotations from poetic effusions of questionable theology.

The word of God reveals no such thing as joy of death. Death has no joys. “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15. “The wages of sin is death.” Rom. 6:23. Death is the culmination of all sin and evil.

We could understand how despair and wretchedness and hopeless misery could find it joy to die, but how the Christian, whose normal condition is life, could find joy in death, we do not understand. He may have joy while dying, but he does not find joy in the death, it is not of the death, it is the joy which comes from Christ, his life, who has plucked death’s sting. But this joy is augmented in life, and finds its fulness in life.

The Bible speaks of death as an enemy: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” 1 Cor. 15:26. It comes through the devil, who “had the power of death.” Heb. 2:14. It is not what one enjoys, but what he must suffer. Death was among the things that Christ suffered. Never once in all God’s word do we read of death as a friend, or of the joys of death.

“Death is [not] a gate to endless joys,” albeit the hymn says so. “In death,” says the psalmist, in addressing God, “there is no remembrance of thee.” “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish.” “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished.” “Death can not praise Thee.” These expressions from Holy Writ show conclusively that there are no joys in death or joys of death.

The joy of the Christian is in life; and so the good of all ages have longed for life. Those instructed in Bible truth, who must needs die, have found joy in waiting, not for death, but for Christ’s coming and the resurrection. In this was the hope of Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, David, Daniel, Hosea, and all the prophets and apostles. It is expressed by David, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.” By Isaiah: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.” So the apostle, declaring the resurrection and Christ’s coming, says, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” The only hope of the dead and the living is the resurrection of the dead and the change of the living at Christ’s second coming. (See 1 Cor. 15:12-21, 51-55; 1 Thess. 4:16-18; 2 Tim. 4:7, 8; Titus 2:13, et al.) There is life in righteousness, life in God’s presence; and there is true joy only in life.