Thoughts On Death

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Blueridge Believer

Puritan Board Professor
To debar death from our thoughts, and the future eternal world from our meditations—will neither render us immortal, nor afford us a triumphant dismissal from this into the eternal world—but must make our exit dreadful, and our latter end a scene of ineffable anguish. While, on the other hand, we never enjoy the pleasures of life, the sweets of society, and the endearments of our friends and families, with a better relish—than when serious thoughts of death and eternity predominate in our mind. We should study—

1. To have a practical belief in the future eternal states of both heaven and hell.

2. Not to be much elated with prosperity.

3. Not to be much dejected by adversity.

4. To more and more be weaned from the world, and to have our conversation more and more in heaven.

5. To have frequent meditations on death and eternity; and then, when death comes, we may be made, not only submissive to our dissolution—but long to depart, and be ravished in the prospect of our being forever with the Lord.

JAMES MEIKLE 1730-1799
 
I find the thought that we are dust very liberating.


God has designed our lives short and most of our lives to be not very substnatial outside our small circle of influence.

Knowing that this is His providence and that only He CAN get the glory keeps us serving HIm obediently and not trying to make a lasting name for ourselves....because we will soon die, return to dust and be forgotten.

To wuote the song (probably wrong), This life will soon pass..only what is done for Christ will last.


:amen:
 
George Swinnock:

If thou wouldst exercise thyself to godliness, think often of thy dying day, and of what price and value godliness will be to thee at such a time. There are few thoughts more terrible or more profitable than of death. Hence it is that God commands man so often to remember his latter end, because the meditation of it is so gainful to him. The first day man was made, he was called to think of his last day. God minded him of death in the tree of knowledge, and the threatening annexed to the prohibition, that he might thereby keep him from sin. Satan could not prevail with Eve to taste of that killing fruit, till he had prevailed with her to distrust that threatening of death, "Ye shall not surely die," Gen 3:4. After the fall, God reneweth this meditation, by turning the conditional into an absolute commination, "Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return." And though the Holy Ghost omitteth many particulars about God's carriage with the long-lived patriarchs, and their holy conversation before him, yet he is exact in registering their deaths—and he died, and he died, of every one, Gen 5—to quicken us to fear God, because we are but dying, frail men. There is hardly anything about which we deal, but God gives us by it a memento of death. Our clothes are all fetched out of death's wardrobe, our food out of death's shambles. The sun is an emblem of life's posting, the night of the chambers of darkness. The year hath its autumn, the day its night. Our candles should mind us of the wasting of our days, the evening of the shadow of death; our undressing, of our putting off our earthly tabernacles; and our lying down in our beds, of our lying down in our graves.

If thou wouldst make religion thy business and main work, think often and seriously of thy death and departure of this world. He that guides and steers the ship aright, sits in the stern or hindermost part of it. He that would order his works, his way, according to God, must be frequent in the meditation of his end. The end of his days must be at the end of all his thoughts. Zeno Cittiaeus consulted with the oracle how he might live well, and received this answer, {GK}, If he would be of the same colour with the dead.

Matthew Poole:

Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity.

Matthew Henry:

The conclusion of every day should put us in mind of the conclusion of all our days.
 
The thought that death will come more swiftly than not keeps me going more than it slows me.
 
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