Renewer

King Tut still looks pretty good, at least on the outside of the sarcophagus. On the inside? Not so good.

Entropy, a natural law, order turns into disorder, everything breaks down, dies, decays, no exceptions. It’s the great paradox, the wonder and complexity of a creation that is mysteriously disassembled; the miracle of life turns to death. The universe is running down. Every living thing will die and decay. The Egyptians embalmed corpses better than anyone, but they only slowed an inevitable process. Against our will, we are part of the death cycle, and we haven’t yet figured out a way to break it. That would mean finding a way to renew our molecular structure for…well…forever.

Hell is a powerless place of eternal decay, where the soul and eventually the body are in perpetual breakdown, disease, with no hope of renewal. Dante’s warning on the Gates of Hell: “Abandon all hope, all ye who enter herein.” Without divine regeneration, says C. I. Scofield (Sofield Reference Bible, p. 1117), we are “impotent to enter the kingdom.” Where might we get such power that allows us to live forever? Within ourselves? From technology? From modern medicine?

Jose Casado del Alisal, Spain, 1855, “The Resurrection of Lazarus.”

God is the “Living One” (Gen. 16:3), the “author of life” (Acts 3:14),  the “giver of life” (Psalm 36:9), and grants access to the “Tree of Life” (Rev. 2:7). Jesus entered into the cycle of death and beat it. He came back from the dead with the “power of an indestructible life” (Hebrews 7:16) with the authority to grant eternal life to all who trust in Him.

God Glimpse: Meditate on the great “I am,” the self-sufficient, self-existent, uncreated One, the Giver of the eternal power of Life.