Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna | Saturday, February 24, 2018 | Reading: Exodus 33:1-11, Exodus 4, Gen 3:1-21
Topic: The Tabernacle of God 366
Scripture: But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say not of this building. (Heb 9:11)
Note: 2Cor 5:1, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” The passing of Dr. Billy Graham this week, is one of the glorious examples of the dissolution of this earthly house of tabernacle which is our body. He was arguably the foremost Evangelist of the Christian faith in the 20th century. He was blessed with length of days, living a full life of almost a century, from 1918 to 2018. His passing was announced to the world through the various media as having died at age 99 years; he was born in November.
While he was still alive on earth, Dr. Billy Graham understood clearly that his eventual passing will be announced to the whole world as his death. He wasn’t perturbed, worried or shaken by the fear, horror or uncertainty that’s often associated with the terminal word, death. To those who are still not sure of their next destination after leaving this life, the very thought of death can lead to depression or oppression or obsession with trying to find a temporal solution to delay this so-called fearful phenomenon called death. Death in this flesh is inevitable but death through separation from Jesus is avoidable.
This was Dr. Billy Graham’s response to the question of death during the terminal stages of his life, when he was suffering from debilitating Parkinson’s disease that greatly affected his mobility and made it uncomfortable for him to be able to honour invitations to speak. Dr. Billy Graham had this to say: “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will be in the presence of God.”
Dr. Billy Graham understood the message of the cross of Jesus in relation to the redemption of man. For all the decades that he preached the message of the cross to hundreds of millions of people, he knew that what he was preaching was not mere rhetoric but the word of life. He knew what he had believed. He understood that anyone who’s in Christ Jesus had passed from death to life, because Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. Can we all say assuredly with conviction before we eventually pass from this life, that “we shall be in the presence of God”?
Food for thought: When Christian believers pass from this life, they enter into the rest of God. That’s our assured destination.
Declaration: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Philippians 1:21
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
