THE TROUBLE WITH DEATH

God never intended that humans should die. He created Adam and Eve perfect and placed them in a climate controlled garden with everything they needed to survive. God even came and walked and talked with them in the garden celebrating the very first Sabbath with them the day after He created them.

God wanted humans to share their lives with Him and to be well and happy. Then we messed up and enters death. They felt shame and hid from God and as was God's custom He entered the garden searching for man asking where are you? Have you eaten from the tree I told you not to eat from?

Death entered our world and I HATE it!!!! Death leaves a wake of sorrow for the loved ones that are left behind and I can even envision God our Father shedding a tear or two each time one of us dies.

Those who are left behind suffer the loss of those they have loved and for husbands and wives that are left behind it is heartbreaking to loose the love of your life and then try to carry on in life because life goes on....a really tough thing to do when the love of your life has passed away.

Then that first Valentine's day after they are gone....How much do you suffer then when the love of your life is gone? This is the trouble with death it leaves the living behind to pick up the pieces.

NOT AS THOSE WHO HAVE NO HOPE
When we close our physical eyes on this side of life, the eye of the soul just open on the other side of life. Life continues. In Hades, we reunite with friends, loved ones, those who died at death, those we don't know, they all there in Hades.
But there's more to it, Abraham, Joseph, the mighty Samson, king David, Paul, DL. Moody, Martin Luther all of them are there. So truely as Paul has said, "For me to die is gain".

But the wicked who close their eyes on this side, they open it on the other side of Hades where Judas Iscariot, Ceasar, Jack the Ripper, Hitler, all of them evil souls are.
Iit is not a place to look forward to, it is the beginning of torment.

Life don't end for us at the grave.
Every God given day that we enjoy living, we proclaim our death to come soon.
The bed we sleep in symbolizes our grave bed.
The blankets we cover ourselves with at night symbolizes our sand blanket we will be covered when the darkness of night has fallen upon us.
When we wake up in the morning by the alarm clock, we think of that morning when we will wake up with the shout, when the morning breaks eternal bright and fair.
Death is just but likened unto a Sabbath rest for the body from its work.
Its human to weep, its human to grieve, but we do not weep as the world who have no hope.

I think about this: If they are in the presence of Jesus, and I choose to be in His presence too, aren't we in a very spiritual way all together in that moment. I can just imagine us 3 standing together. Enjoying our Lord.

Death really stinks and interrupts, but Jesus has overcome the grave. And we do have a hope... So like gerjorzen said above, we have a hope that is ot like others. And like the other above comment yes we can think of them and find joy but we are warned in the Word about communicating directly with the dead. I always recommend just remembering our time hear is short as a link of an eye, although it may not seem so at times (like raising a child, before you know it the baby days are over and you miss them although when those long sleepless nights felt hard) and that our loved ones already in the presence of the Lord would want us to live life eternally; although we do mourn and miss them greatly we can continue to run the race and fight the good fight. (((Hugs)))

The following copy and past came from Truth According To Scripture site. I am a Seventh-Day-Adventist and believe death is a sleep until the resurrection at second coming of Jesus. This site looks to be written by Presbyterian. Worth the read if you take the time.

~The Origin of Hell-Fire in Christian Teaching



The concept of a soul within us that cannot die first became a ‘Christian’ doctrine at the end of the second century AD. Hell had been taught in Greek philosophy long before the time of Jesus, with Plato (427-347 BC) as the important leader in this thinking.
The teaching of an everlasting place of punishment for the wicked is the natural consequence of a belief in an immortal soul. By the year AD 187, it was understood that life, once we have it, is compulsory; there is no end to it, either now or in a world to come. We have no choice as to its continuance, even if we were to commit suicide to end it.
At the end of the 2nd century Christianity had begun to blend Greek philosophy —human speculative reasoning, with the teachings of God’s Word. Such words and phrases as ‘continuance of being’, ‘perpetual existence’, ‘incapable of dissolution’ and ‘incorruptible’ began to appear in so-called Christian writings. These had come straight from Plato, the Greek philosopher, all those years before Jesus. Other phrases used were ‘the soul to remain by itself immortal’, and ‘an immortal nature’. It was taught that this is how God made us. But this idea derives from philosophy, not divine inspiration. There are no such words in the Bible. It was Athenagorus, a Christian, but whose teachings, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, were strongly tinged with Platonism, who had introduced the teaching of an immortal soul into Christianity. In this way, he paved the way for the logical introduction of eternal torment for immortal, but sinful, souls. This was a hundred years and more after the time of the apostles, and came straight from popular philosophy. The apostles had consistently taught that death is a sleep, to be followed by resurrection. The early church leaders – Clement, Ignatius, Hermas, Polycarp, and others who also believed that death is a sleep, taught that the wicked are destroyed forever by fire – their punishment was to be annihilation. These leaders did not teach of an immortal soul to be tortured by fire in hell for eternity.
About AD 240 Tertullian of Carthage took up the teaching of an immortal soul. It was he who added the further, but logical dimension. He taught the endless torment of the immortal soul of the wicked was parallel to the eternal blessedness of the saved, with no sleep of death after this life.
This came at a time when many Christians were being burned for their faith and it was natural for them to accept that their persecutors would at death be consigned to an ever-burning hell for the persecution they had inflicted on others while they went straight to eternal bliss.



From the third century the darkness of the infiltration of man-made beliefs into Christianity deepened until the Dark Ages had smothered almost all the light of God’s Word. At the beginning of this time, the first attempts were made to create a systematic set of beliefs. It is not surprising that an ever-burning hell and the immortality of the soul were prominently included.
It is at this time that such beliefs, held by most Christians today, had their origin. An ever-burning hell has remained a commonly taught doctrine of the Christian religion to this day. It was not based on the Bible but on philosophy. Bible verses were later sought to uphold the ancient philosophies of the Greeks, and added to the teaching.
Eventually under the influence of Augustine, AD 430, the concept of endless conscious torment was brought into general acceptance by the Catholic Church in the Western world. He taught that all souls were deathless and consequently the lost would experience endless fires of punishment, immediately upon the end of this life.

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