WHAT IS DEATH?
To prevent the minor and major diseases resulting from the inundating grief over a loved one’s death, the Bible provides the greatest possible barricade. The eleventh chapter of John not only gives clear teaching on this matter but also presents public and highly dramatic proof of the veracity of the assertions made. In the village of Bethany , lived Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. When Lazarus became sick, word was sent to Jesus for help. But Jesus purposely delayed His going because He wanted to teach the world the transitory character of the state we call death. While Jesus started His trip to Bethany , He told His disciples that He was going to raise Lazarus out of his sleep.
The disciples thought it was rather ridiculous to make a hazardous journey to wake a sick man out of sleep. Then Jesus talked to them in the only language that they in their immaturity could understand: “Lazarus is dead.”
Arriving in Bethany , Jesus revealed to a sister mourning for her dead brother another important aspect of the state that we erroneously call death:” . . . the believer in Me will live even when he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never, never die. Do you believe this?”
How could anybody believe that Christians never really die --- that they are only asleep? Jesus knew that even His disciples and the others at Bethany would not believe such assertions without proof. A million empty human words never would have convinced anybody, but three words from the Master did: “Lazarus, come forth.” Out came Lazarus, a living proof that for the Christians there is no horrible existence that we associate with the word death. It is only a sleep that requires His call to awaken us. Quite understandably, Christians changed the names of their graveyards to sleeping chambers (our English word “cemetery” comes from the Greek Koimeterion, which means “a sleeping chamber.”)
When Jesus told those who were mourning over the dead body of Jairus’s daughter, “. . . . she is not dead, but sleepeth,” they ridiculed Him with scornful epithets. Again He wanted to prove false the utterly hopeless view we have about the state we call death. So He merely took the cold and motionless girl by the hand and awakened her from the state the He calls sleep.
