by Tom Greenslade

Created on: June 30, 2008

When I was 6 or 7 my teenage friend Jorge died from TB. I can still remember walking by the coffin as it was carried from our house to the cemetery up on the hill outside of town. The men lowered it into the hole, and then we all took up clods of dirt and began to throw them down on the coffin. I lived in the town of Nauta, Peru, in the Amazon Jungle. Throwing the clods of dirt was a jungle superstition. They did this to scare away the spirit of the dead so that it doesn't hang around to haunt them.

This superstition is found in one form or another in all four corners of the world. We know, however, that not one of them is true. The Bible tells us that to be "absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."( 2 Corinthians 5:8 NIV) For some that is a wonderful, desirable, longed for thing. For most it will be terrible! "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!"( Hebrews 10:31 NIV) The spirit of a man continues on to face God as Lord or Judge.
Built into the sides of Jorge's coffin, on either side of his head, were glass windows. As he was carried to the cemetery I could see his face. This was our first exposure to this somewhat bizarre practice. I can still remember my friend's face, a little swollen, not looking very much like him. I was only 5 or 6. I did not really understand too much what this was about. I could see that Jorge was lifeless, dead. He could not relate to me any longer. He did not respond to what was happening here. He was dead.
Paul writes that this is exactly what we were spiritually before Jesus Christ made us alive. "When you were dead in your sins and in ... your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins..."( Colossians 2:13 NIV)
A new convert asked the pastor this question, "When I was saved I felt like a great burden was lifted off of me, but I don't remember realizing that I was carrying a burden before I was saved! Why?" The pastor replied, "Dead men don't feel anything."( Unknown) Jesus Christ makes it different. "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world..."( Ephesians 2:1-3 NKJV)
When you are saved your situation is switched. Once you were dead to God. Now you are dead to sin. In the past the slave culture in the South demonstrated this. Some slaves escaped to live in the North, but for most the only way they escaped the cruelties of slavery was through death. That is why there are so many Negro

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