Brown's Daily Word 10-1-07

Good morning,
Happy first day of October. It is brilliant and beautiful here. The Autumn colors are bursting with splendor and glory. Thank you Jesus. He makes all seasons beautiful and He makes all things beautiful in Him time. I trust that you had a wonderful weekend of worship, praise and thanksgiving. I attended this weekend a conference at Sky Lake, our church's camping grounds, Friday. It was led by Dr. Walter Bruegggman. One of the sessions dealt with human anxiety and the rest the Lord offers to us. He talked about Pharaoh, who was rich and powerful, yet full of anxiety. In our modern society people live in anxiety and fear. They become consumed with the consumption of the goods and the services. They don't have time for Sabbath rest, which leads to further anxiety and deep depression. The Lord offers a wonderful prescription for our anxiety, it comes through worship and celebration. Praise the Lord for the Lord's day that we can come apart from the world before the One who has made us and redeemed us and offer to Him praise and thanksgiving. In Matthew 11:29, 30, Jesus said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." One of the passages from yesterday was taken from Luke Chapter 16:19ff. It is a story of a rich man and Lazarus. Two years ago, in a conference in Birmingham Alabama I met Erwin Lutzer who was one of the speakers. He was a former pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago. In his book “One Minute After You Die” he says, “One minute after you slip behind the parted curtain you will either be enjoying a personal welcome from Christ or catching your first glimpse of gloom as you have never known it. Either way, your future will be irrevocably fixed and eternally unchangeable…. those who find themselves in heaven will be surrounded with friends whom they have known on earth… Every description of heaven they have heard will pale in the light of reality. All this, forever. Others – indeed many others - will be shrouded in darkness, a region of deprivation, and unending regret. There, with all their memories and feeling fully intact, images of their life on earth will return to haunt them. They will think back to their friends, family and relatives; they will brood over opportunities they squandered and intuitively know that their future is both hopeless and unending. For them death will be far worse then they imagined.
And so while relatives and friends plan your funeral – deciding on a casket, a burial plot, and who the pallbearers will be – you will be more alive than you have ever been. You will either see God on His throne surrounded by His angels and redeemed humanity, or you will be feel an indescribable weight of guilt and abandonment. There is no destination midway between these two extremes; just gladness and gloom.” [ Erwin W. Lutzer. “One Minute After You Die.” (Chicago: Moody, 1997) pp. 9-10]
“What Is The First Thing That Will Happen To Us After We Die?” in Luke 16 beginning in verse nineteen we find the story of Rich man and Lazarus. Jesus tells a story that gives us a glimpse into life on the other side of death. This story is unique to the Book of Luke and is the only one where we find these characters. I have come to believe that what we have before us today is not a parable but rather I believe this story to be a real report of the fate of two very real men. Three things you will discover one minute after you die.

First, One Minute After You Die All Earthly Prosperity or Earthly Suffering is Ended. (vv. 19-21)
There is a huge contrast being drawn here between the life of the Rich Man and Lazarus. These two men have nothing in common during their lives. The Rich Man is extremely wealthy. His wardrobe is consists of only the finest clothes that money could buy. He also had a large home. The fact that he had a gate (v. 20) would likely make his home some type of mansion. The Rich man lived in luxury everyday, which tells us that he was flamboyant and flashy with his wealth. The Rich Man is assumed to be healthy because there is no mention of any kind of physical problems. Like many today he is living his life without ever thinking about what will happen when life comes to an end. It an irony that it is the Rich Man who remains the unknown in this story. His name is not mentioned for a specific reason, he is not in a relationship with God. Lazarus lived an extremely different life. He was poor beyond our ability to truly understand. Lazarus was very sick, being unable to work Lazarus was forced to become a beggar, because he had no means to support himself. He was dependent each day on what the good will of others or he would have had nothing to eat that day. We are told that he was so hungry that he was willing to eat the burnt, broken and discarded pieces of bread from the rich man’s table. Yet Lazarus was blessed in one key way, he apparently knew God. The name Lazarus means “God is my helper.” There is a direct connection between his name and the result of his eternity. The rich man and Lazarus lived totally different lives, but they had one thing in common they both died. Yet, death is not the end of existence, both Lazarus and the rich man died. At the point of physical death, the body ceases to function, but the soul and spirit of man continue to live on. At death the invisible part of who we are moves out of the body and enters into a new existence. In 2 Corinthians 5 the Bible compares this body of ours to a tent. This tent gets old and we groan as we experience pain and suffering. The longer we live the more tattered and feeble this tent becomes.
For Lazarus life had held suffering and pain but his pain and suffering were ended. For the Rich man life had been a time of abundance and ease, this too was ended. All that we are told about the beggar death is that “he died.” Nothing is said about his burial. And the fact that we are not told of his burial leads us to believe that when Lazarus died his body was probably carted away to the city dump and burned along with the trash. The rich man also died. And although we are not told so, we can imagine that he was given a glorious sent off, the finest funeral that money could buy. He would have likely had a large funeral with the best of preparations in regards to the spices, anointments and linens used to prepare his body, a nice tomb to lay his body in. That sounds much like our own day, “How many people have prepared for their funeral without preparing to die?” The rich man had lived without God in this world, so he would live without Him in the next. But not only did the rich man having no share with God, and thus lose God – forever, he lost even those things which had in this life. Not only One Minute After You Die Will All Earthly Prosperity or Earthly Suffering be Ended but….

Second, One Minute After You Die Your Eternity Will Begin! (vv. 22-23)
death is not the end; it is the beginning of a whole new existence in another world. Death is not the termination , it is the transition. When both of these men die, there is no pause in the action. There is no break in the narrative. There is no lapse of time. In fact, it would seem that the moment that these men die they instantaneously experience their eternal positions. In verse twenty-two we read, "The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried.” As both men died and passed through the death’s portal an amazing reversal occurred. The beggar died and angels carried him into God’s presence. Jesus tells us that as soon as Lazarus died the angels came and took him to the place where Abraham’s was. The New King James refers to this as “Abraham’s bosom,” which is simply a way of saying that he went to Heaven. It would seem clear that there is no waiting period for him to enter eternity. Lazarus was a man who had a relationship with God. When he died he was escorted by the angels into the presence of God. It would clearly seem that there was no waiting period for him to enter eternity. Lazarus lived on after he died. Death was not the end for him and there was a life that was waiting for him to enter. Lazarus moved on after he died because the angels came and took him to heaven. Lazarus carried on his new life with the comfort of heaven. The rich man also died but no angels carried him into God’s presence, a split second after he died he woke up in a terrifying place called Hell.
Not only does One Minute After You Die Your Eternity Will Begin but …

Third, One Minute After You Die Your Eternity Will Be Set Forever. (vv. 24-31)
The story tells us that there are two destinations for the soul at death; one a place of comfort and the other a place of torment. But why is the rich man in hell? A surface understanding of this parable might indicate that the rich man missed salvation because he was not generous enough with his money. But that is not the case. The real reason for his being in hell was his disregard of the word of God and his rejection of the Lord. In the story we see Abraham in Heaven. Abraham was one of the very richest men ever lived. Abraham is in Heaven, because he believed in the lord and walked by faith. Some people have an image of Hell that is not based on reality. For instance Mark Twain said, “I'll take heaven for the climate and Hell for the society.” Ted Turner once said “I'm looking forward to dying and going to hell because I know that’s where I'm headed.” People would not be so flippant about Hell if they understood the reality of it. Through the experiences of two men Jesus gives us a glimpse into Hell. It is brief but powerful enough to blow apart many of man’s misconceptions about Hell.

Hell is nothingness we will just cease to exist, hearing, seeing and feeling nothing.
C. S. Lewis was told about a gravestone inscription that read; “Here lies an atheist – all dressed up and no where to go.” Hell is a real place of conscious anguish. This man was dreaming. His hell was not on earth. He was conscious aware of his surroundings – he could feel, he could speak, experience thirst – and was in anguish. In verse twenty-four he pleads, “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.” In fact, this is not the only place that the Bible uses vivid language to describe Hell. In Matthew 25:30, Jesus describes Hell as a place of
“outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Hell is also described in the Bible as a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:48). In the book of Revelation the Final Judgment is described as a “lake of fire.” In other places in Scripture, Jesus said that it would be better to have a millstone hung around your neck and thrown into the sea than to go into the unquenchable fire. (Mark 9:43). Every description of Hell is one of suffering, torment and agony. In this parable we see the word “torment” used four times, and it speaks of definite pain. Liberal Bible scholars have been telling us for decades that what the Bible says about Hell is only symbolic. R. C. Sproul points out in the chapter on Hell in his book “Essentials Truths of the Christian Faith,” “If these things are indeed symbols, then we must conclude that the reality is worse than the symbol suggests. The function of symbols is to point beyond themselves to a higher or more intense state of actuality than the symbol itself can contain. That Jesus used the most awful symbols imaginable to describe hell is no comfort to those who see them simply as symbols.[R. C. Sproul. Essentials Truths of the Christian Faith. p. 286.] Not realizing that the choices we make in this life fix our destiny in the next. (vv. 24-25) “So he called to him, ’Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.” There are no second chances after death.
Surely one of the most fearful horrors of hell is the undying memory of what could have been. Abraham responds to the rich man in verse twenty-five with the words, "But Abraham replied, ’Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. After I spend sometime in Hell I will be able to get out. (v. 26)
“And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.” The gulf that could have been bridged while alive is now un-crossable. The gulf is un-crossable because Scripture makes it clear that our time on this earth is the place for personal decision: one’s eternal destiny is determined by what one does and believes on earth. There is no purgatory, no reincarnation, no chance for relief, no way out, no end, no kidding. In Hell it is too late to pray, it is too late to change your life and it is too late to repent. Hell is a place without hope. Hell won’t be so bad, I’ll be there with my buddies. (vv. 27-31). "He answered, ’Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ "Abraham replied, ’They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ ’No, father Abraham,’ he said, ’but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ "He said to him, ’If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ "We don't see the rich man reveling in fellowship with his friends, he is very much alone. He didn't say, “I'm glad my brothers will be joining me here. We'll have a wonderful time together.” In fact the rich man expresses concern for his five brothers and he asks that someone be sent back to warn them that their choices in this life have consequences in the next. Implied in the rich man’s argument is that he would have repented if a special messenger from the dead had come to him. This seems to run counter to what the exponents of the “signs and wonders movement” say today, that there can be no effective evangelism without signs and wonders. It is a reminder that the primary use of miracles in the Bible was not to convince people of the truth by replacing the Bible, but rather to confirm the truth of the Bible. He is saying that Moses and the Prophets, the word of God, was not enough. The rich man is saying, “I didn't have a fair chance. I was not sufficiently warned, otherwise I would not be here. My destiny is God’s fault not mine!” He is saying that God’s warning through his word (Moses and the prophets) was inadequate and impotent.
While this verse teaches that God will not give people supernatural signs and wonders to get them to repent. This verse also teaches that a person can avoid Hell if they listen to God’s word and repent. They have all the information they need; they just need to heed the information they have. Only one thing will prevent this man’s brothers from joining him in Hell, to hear the word of God and respond to it in faith. God has spoken in His creation. He has spoken in history. He has spoken in His word. Above all He has spoken in His Son, the writer of Hebrews (1:1-2) states, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son….” Therefore no one is without responsibility or has a valid excuse.
In Christ,
Brown

Praise and prayer update:
Patsy Carmon who had a stroke has been moved to General hospital for rehabilitation.

Eleanor Skinner who has been hospitalized General hospital.

Rosemary Bowen who had surgery is home recovering.

Ryan Kerr,who is in hospice care, he is the nephew of Dr. Douglas Kerr.

Trudy Wesner who had complete knee replacement surgery. She is home now.

Justin Brown.

Linda Ayer

Jack Black.

Rich McPherson and the prison ministry team.

Grant DeGaramo.

Don Harbecke, 52 years old is had a quadruple heart bypass in Illinois, he recovering from heart surgery. Praise the Lord.

Leslie Broughton, is going for chemo treatment.

Larry, Jane, and family.

Geraldine Okes (Betty DuBois’s sister) who is hospitalized, she had a heart attack and a stroke in Columbia, SC.

Jovita who is a recent college graduate, looking for a job.

Janice, our oldest daughter, who is going back to work next week, after the birth of Simeon. She works for Healthcare for the Homeless in Boston.

Our youngest daughter Jessica, who will be finishing her assignment with the Americorps in Philadelphia in few weeks.

Sunita is back in Washington.

Pray for Cameron Tyler, (Lee and Eunice Sanford’s grandson) born 8 weeks prematurely, weighing 4 pounds, in neonatal ICU in Boston. He is doing well and becoming stronger everyday.

Pray for Kristin, Becky, Shannan - our young expecting moms.

Jane Loeffler, she is doing well now but she is still at Wilson hospital. Andy Morse, (Mary Lou Horn’s grandson). Andy is waiting for the biopsy results. He is still at Sloane Kettering in New York City.

Kim, a young mom had an emergency appendectomy yesterday. Kim is home now recovering.

Brolin Parker... As he recovers from surgery in Albany last week.

Burt Sweet (Retired Pastor) is still recovering from lung surgery in Watertown, NY. Please pray for Burt and his family as his health continues to be fragile.

Geno DeAngelo, Binghamton Police officer, father of four children, battling lung cancer.

Pray for Jack Hoppes who has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Jack had open heart surgery nine years ago.

Pray for Jim Haas who is working with FEMA in Ohio.

Pray for Eloise Tewksbury for continued healing.

Pray for Sarah Deuel who is going for back surgery next week.

Pray for Carol Crossly who is going for back surgery tomorrow morning, October 2.

Pray for Bethany Monaco, a young college student who is going for surgery today.

Pray for Dave and Linda Barton and the team that are going to Uruguay on a short term mission trip in October.


Pray for Dr. Doug Kerr and Dr. Carpenter who are going to Kenya on a short term medical mission.

Plan to be in the Lord's house this Sunday to worship and celebrate, invite a friend.





The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them.

Psalm 145:18,19