Yet, we also considered how our friend who is soon to pass from this life to the next will then be with their Lord and Savior and how joyful and awesome that will be for them. We’ve tried to explain this to others, but it is hard for people to understand what a Christian has waiting for them when they are “absent from the body” and present with The Lord. I think for many, to die and leave behind who they love and what they know seems like the most horrific prospect ever. They can’t imagine how someone could be facing death and yet have a joyful expectation of what awaits them.
Centuries ago Roman doctors were also bewildered by their encounters with Christians. You see, at that time in history there existed a Roman law stating doctors were now allowed to autopsy or in any way experiment with or examine the bodies of the dead. Therefore, their ability to learn about the inner workings of the body was stifled by this law. I am not pleased to tell you how they solved the problem. As I’m sure everyone reading this knows, Christians at the time were subject to incredible persecution, brutality, torture and horrific deaths. As if that wasn’t enough they also became the “solution” for Roman doctors who could not perform invasive surgeries on the bodies of the dead. I’m sure you get the picture but for some dying Christians their last hours of life only held for them levels of excruciating torture and pain as doctors used them as subjects of experimentation. Yet, out of this gruesome practice comes a testimony that is so powerful that I decided to make it the focus of today’s writing and you might be surprised as to who it is from! The testimony actually comes from Roman doctors who said of the Christians that were chosen for their experiments, “They did not fear death of the life thereafter”.
I obviously can’t tell you what the Roman doctors learned about the human body from their torturous experiments on live Christians, but I can tell you that they learned a lot about the spirit of a Christian and the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. For some Romans, (and for many surrounding cultures of that day), thoughts of the “life thereafter” were filled with uncertainty and dread. For doctors to see Christians consider their own mortality and the life thereafter without fear, or if you will, with an expectation of a glorious existence in the life to come was incomprehensible. So much so that they decided to record this most unusual response.
Beloved, may I encourage you to praise God this morning for His promises for what will become of us when we pass from this world into His heavenly presence?
After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. I Thessalonians 4:17-18
For His glory,