From Here To Eternity
By R. C. Sproul Jr

If we tend more toward a mathematical approach to things than a literary approach, I am middle-aged. "Middle-aged" is polite-speak to describe someone who is too young to be old, but too old to be young. But in terms of the raw numbers, I am roughly equidistant from my birth and my death, should I turn out to fit the average. If there is a hill, I'm standing on the peak. What is strange about the view from this peak is that looking backward, the closer the clearer. Looking forward, however, is the opposite. That which is closer is less clear than what is far. I remember yesterday better than yesteryear, but I know more about eternity than I do about tomorrow. Tomorrow I may go to this town or that, to do this business or that, should the Lord will. But at the bottom of this shallow hill, most assuredly I will die.

One of my favorite things about The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis' collection of letters written from a senior demon to his junior demon-in-training, is the literary delight of looking into an upside down world. In this realm good is bad, and bad is good, and the high demon, Satan, is the low demon, referenced, with all due respect by his "underlings" as "His infernal lowness." I'm afraid on the one hand we miss how much like us the serpent is, and how much different. We, like him, have a twisted view of God. We shut our eyes lest we see Him as He is. But we not only look at Him, but like Him. That is, we still bear His image, even with our eyes scrunched shut. This is why even the heathen worship, though they worship the creature rather than the Creator. This is why they plant vineyards that, in God's economy become ours, because they were made to exercise dominion. The devil, for all his vast intelligence and power, is upside down, inverted, and, most important, sterile. God is the maker, the creator. The devil, whom we must remember, God made, is the breaker, the destroyer. Death is his gig. Which is why we are rightly repulsed by death. It is the vacuum that nature abhors, the chill that makes our bones brittle. It is the very inverse of the power of the Word.

Just two weeks ago I attended the funeral of my friend Jim Lichtenstein. The funeral, strangely, helped to illumine some of the darker corners of that side of the mountain behind me. Jim lived and died in my old hometown, Ligonier, Pennsylvania. His funeral was held in the church in which I grew up. Many of those in attendance were regular players in that production known as my childhood. Tim and Marilyn Couch sat behind me, and I, forgive me, wondered in the quiet of my mind whether Tim remembered the time, as the two of them looked after us while my parents were away, that I flung cottage cheese at his face. Zeb Hood was there, a strapping young man on his way off to college. The last time I saw him he was napping in his father's arm. (That's right. I said, arm. Barry used to carry him around, draped over his forearm, sort of like a football.) Mrs. Fischer, my old Sunday School teacher, didn't make it to the funeral, for though she still lives on her own, it's harder for her to get out, now that she is 102. And there, at the bottom of his hill, was my friend Jim, while his dear wife, his 16 year old son Skipper, and 13 year old daughter K.C. took stock of where they were on their own hills.

Funerals, we are told, are for the living. It is saying goodbye. It is the gathering of loved ones for mutual comfort and support. And it is a time to mourn not just the loss of Jim, but that it was death who found him. The devil came to town, and was given his due. It is right that we should mourn. We should never be comfortable with death, anymore than we should be comfortable because one flesh was torn asunder, because two godly children have been left fatherless. We do not send Jim gently into that good night, but must rage, rage, against the dying of the light. The devil is doing his dirty work. It is wrong that we, who reflect the image of our Maker, should be unmade by the destroyer.

But what does the devil see? He has this in common with us, that he too is a creature, that he has a beginning and an end. No doubt his own shame precludes him looking to his own beginning. He could not drink such a bitter cup, to remember the heights from which he fell. He cannot, on the other hand, look forward to his own end. There the picture too is too bright, this time not with his own reflected glory, but the blinding brilliance is in the dancing flames of the lake at the bottom of his hill. Better still, if he would or could see everything in between, he would see that his every victory is a pyrrhic victory. Every time he wins, he loses, for though he has death on a leash, he is himself on God's leash.

Here then is where our joy returns, where our life trumps his death. We see the monster death. We see the monster demon that holds him. And we see the dreadful glory that holds them both in His almighty hand. It is not enough, however, that God should take death and muzzle it. The glory isn't simply that God has boxed death into a corner. Instead, the glory is all the greater in that death now works for God. For some the coming of the Reaper is grim indeed, as it signals the end of muted wrath, the end of common goodness. These for whom the bell tolls enter into their reward, the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. For those in Christ, however, this note is no minor chord. Rather it is a crescendo of glory, as we rejoice in seeing our King execute His justice. All men, in the end do finally glorify God, though these wretches will not enjoy Him. Here they live in eternal death, a death that was never the devil's beast, but is the devil's end. Here it will not be mere privation. Eternal death is not, as we have been told, separation from God. The dead in hell, in their darkness, live coram Deo, before the face of God. And there His wrath burns. They behold His glory, and die forever.

That same glory, however, awaits us as well. There is yet more glory in death, for it not only brings sinners to their reward, but brings saints to His. Death, this dark enemy, is in God's grand economy, the very path to paradise. For we who are in Christ, the black hooded shroud, and the ancient, sinister scythe are but the shimmering luster of the gates of pearl. Death ushers us into the same vision that is the agony of hell, but for us it is the ecstasy of heaven. Brother death ushers us into that place where we shall see Him as He is. And so we shall be like Him. We behold His glory, and live forever.

Again we see the glory of the irony, or the irony of the glory. He who has constructed the world such that the first would be last, the least the greatest, and the servant the leader has for us made death life, and life abundant. For all of us, to die is gain. And what do we gain but the eternal weight of glory. Death is not only robbed of its stinger, but has become the very balm of Gilead.

This, naturally, ought not to surprise us. Just as the devil, because He is entropy, can only take of life and make it death, so our Lord who is Himself the Logos, and the very power of being, can only take death, and make of it life. God and the devil must both be true to their respective natures. Not even these leopards can change their spots. Can these bones walk? The Lord knows not only can they, but they must because He is the one who speaks reality into existence, because in the end, He overcomes all.

Christ our king has commanded that we be of good cheer, for He has already overcome the world. And with that world the second Adam has likewise, in bursting forth into that second garden, overcome death. But here too we live in the tension of the already and the not yet. All things are indeed under His feet. And all things are being brought under His feet. The last to surrender will be death. Then all the dead will die forever, and all the living live forever. And death is swallowed up in victory.

Thus, for once, our calling is not simple, but complex. We have not one calling but two. We are, with a pious and holy hatred, to hate this enemy death. It is the destroyer. It leaves widows and orphans in its wake. It breaks up families and breaks hearts. Even here, however, the smell of death has a sweetness, for it bids us to long for eternity. This is our second calling, that with a pious and holy love, we are to love this friend death. It is the deliverer. It leaves in its wake the souls of unjust men in the throes of perfect justice, and makes of us just men. These two callings, however, do become one, simple yet again. For still our calling is to rejoice that though things are not as they were meant to be, though death stalks our planet, things being not what they were meant to be is precisely how things were meant to be, and death yet is leashed time and again. We are simple here, in life and in death, body and soul because we belong to our faithful savior, Jesus Christ.

In eternity we will no longer need to be called to be separate, to be set apart. For such is the distinguishing mark of eternity. It is the great divorce. As far as the east is from the west, so far will we be removed from not only our sins, but sinners themselves. Sheep frolic amid the green grass, and rest beside the still water, and nuzzle the very mane of the Lion of Judah. Goats, at the same time, wander a desert of fire. All that is old in us is made new, as our old man enters into the fullness of death, never to trouble us again. Since, however, this is our end, it is likewise our beginning. That is, if we would live in light of eternity, we must reflect these eternal truths now. We are called to be separate now, because we were called to be separate then, before the beginning of time, and after the ending of time.

Those who hate Him, the Bible tells us, love death. May we be deliberate enough to hate death, but only because we love life. May we likewise be deliberate enough to love death, because we love life. May we not only think deliberately, but feel deliberately. May we be deliberate enough to long for eternity, and yet in our longing may we never grow bitter. May our longing be marked not by our want, but by our joy. We were made for this, and we've got to get back to the garden.

Jesus said before His ascension that all authority had been given to Him, in heaven and on earth. His kingdom is not only for all time, but in all places. Remembering that there is but one Lord of heaven and earth, we remember that the line between them both is but a scarlet thread. As those who were honored to die the martyr's death cried out to the bloodthirsty Romans, "Christos ho Kurios," Christ is Lord, as they testified to the kingdom before the watching world, their very words brought them into that eternal kingdom. That is, their last and dying breath was at the same time their first eternal breath. As their bodies bowed in death, they joined yonder sacred throng, crying out, "Christos ho Kurios."

My friend Jim is there. Jesus bought Him there. For that, let death be proud.