Life After Death (Part 1) – Death: David Pawson (Transcript)

Full text of Bible teacher David Pawson’s teaching on death titled ‘Life After Death: Death (Part 1)’

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TRANSCRIPT:

David Pawson – Bible Teacher

I’m going to read from the Old Testament.

Ecclesiastes 11:7-10 (TLB): ‘It is a wonderful thing to be alive! If a person lives to be very old, let him rejoice in every day of his life, but let him also remember that eternity is far longer and that everything down here is futile by comparison.

Young man, it’s wonderful to be young! Enjoy every minute of it! Do all you want to; take in everything, but realize that you must account to God for everything you do. So banish grief and pain, but remember that youth, with a whole life before it, can make serious mistakes.’

Ecclesiastes 12: 1-7 (TLB): ‘Don’t let the excitement of being young cause you to forget about your Creator. Honor Him in your youth before the evil years come — when you’ll no longer enjoy living. It will be too late then to try to remember Him when the sun and light and moon and stars are dim to your old eyes, and there is no silver lining left among your clouds. For there will come a time when your limbs will tremble with age, and your strong legs will become weak, and your teeth will be too few to do their work, and there will be blindness too.

Then let your lips be tightly closed while eating when your teeth are gone! And you will waken at dawn with the first note of the birds; but you yourself will be deaf and tuneless, with quavering voice. You will be afraid of heights and of falling — a white-haired withered old man, dragging himself along: without sexual desire, standing at death’s door, and nearing his everlasting home as the mourners go along the streets.

Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young — before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken and the pitcher is broken at the fountain and the wheel is broken at the cistern; and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.’

That’s a very practical passage from the Old Testament which deals with real life and is not afraid to face the facts.

Now on these next six Sunday mornings, I’m going to be speaking about Life After Death, and Christians are the only people who can really face up to this subject. Others must face it with questions, doubts, fears. Christians can face it in the light of Easter and we’re going to look at various subjects and aspects of life after death.

But before we can do so we must look very squarely and very directly at the fact of death itself. It is the biggest fact of life. It’s the one certain thing that we can predict about the future. And so it’s right that we should face death and look it in the face and then see it as a conquered enemy, and this is what we hope to do this morning.

Now to introduce the subject to you, I’ve asked a member of our congregation who is in the medical profession to come and talk with me for ten minutes or so about this subject. I suppose that the medical profession sees more of death than most others perhaps with ministers coming second, or maybe I should put undertakers first and medical profession second and maybe ministers third.

But nevertheless we share this that both of us have had quite a lot to do with death in one way or another and I’m going to ask some questions about this to try and help us to face up to the fact to see it in a Christian light and to understand something of its meaning before I speak to you.