If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.(1 Corinthians 15:19-20)

The other day, someone came to me and said, "Are we going to have another one of those morbid All Saints, listing of all those who died this year, services again? Those are a downer. If you have one, I don't want to come!"

The answer to him and all others who ask the question is an emphatic, "YES."

Let me tell you why we are celebrating this All Saints Day.

First, it has been a tradition of the church for most of the last two thousand years.

I spent quite a bit of time this week researching the origins of this observance. It goes back as early as the year A.D. 270. Although no specific month or date is given, it emerged as a commemoration of "All Martyrs." At some times and some places, there were specific dates for specific persons who had given their lives as martyrs for their faith. Gradually, the observance was broadened to honor all martyrs and then all saints, all believers in Jesus Christ who died. For awhile, there were different dates on the calendar and different traditions in the Eastern and in the Western church, and those different traditions go on to this day. However, November 1 is the generally accepted date of All Saints Day, and it is most often observed on the first Sunday following that date.

Second, we are celebrating because we live in a culture that tends to deny death.

In last Monday's October 29, 2007, issue of the Los Angeles Times, there's an article by Sandra M. Gilbert titled "Mortality tales." She describes how we live in a country that is clearly ambivalent about death and mourning. She writes,

As the Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote, in the nuts-and-bolts world of facts that he identified with the United States, "death is merely one more fact"--one that our American "philosophy of progress" tries to make "disappear, like a magician palming a coin."

The traditional funeral, which emphasizes the ineradicable sorrow of loss, increasingly is being replaced by the so-called celebration of the life, which emphasizes the joy of what was and evades the painful shock of absence. In 2006, New York Times reporter John Leland noted that some services for the dead are now being orchestrated by party planners. . . .

Thomas Lynch, in his book The Undertaking, writes, "Where death means nothing, life is meaningless," as he distinguishes between "death that happens and death that matters."

Most of us are familiar with the work of the late Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who, in her classic book On Death and Dying, described the five stages we go through as we confront the reality of the death of a loved one or our own mortality: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance. Most of us can live most of the time in the stage of denial. We don't want to talk about death. We don't want to think about death. That's why my friend was so opposed to us even having any observance of All Saints Day. But, sooner or later, we confront the reality of the death of a loved one or our own impending death, and we are forced to come out of denial and work our way through the subsequent anger, bargaining, depression and, hopefully, come to some degree of acceptance.

To deny the reality of death is to deny reality. For example, World War I was to be "the war that would end all wars." How misguided was that notion. The horrendous loss of life of that war was followed some two decades later by World War II. I rented the recent Ken Burn's PBS special on that war last Monday. I was shocked to discover in the opening part of that excellent documentary that it is estimated that there were approximately sixty million combatant and non-combatant deaths resulting from that conflagration. That goes beyond denial, doesn't it? And add to that the deaths of the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the scores of other smaller wars in the twentieth century and now the daily obituaries coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and one would be foolish to deny the reality of death.

Third, we celebrate this day because we do love those who are gone, and we know there's something healthy about stopping to remember them, to honor them. What pain there is in remembering is greatly offset by that sense of symmetry built into each of us that knows it's unhealthy to eliminate the loss of loved ones simply because they're no longer with us.

The reality is that time does have a way of healing some of the desperate grief of a loved one's death. How sad it is when we allow what is at one level the positive healing of time to at another level be the numbing of feelings for that loved one. During the first several years after our daughter Suzanne's death in 1991, I would have a frequent dream that she would come back and spend a joyful morning with our family. Then about noon, she would disappear, and I would awaken. It has been six or seven years since I have had that dream. I miss it. Now I must stop and consciously remind myself of those memories of her now that she has been gone over sixteen years. A service of memory such as this is a healthy reminder!

Fourth, we celebrate this day because we do need to confront our own mortality. Sooner or later, the doctor will give us a diagnosis that lets us know our time on earth is limited or, for some of us, we'll get no advanced notice. It's important that we stop to contemplate the fact that one of these days we're going to die.

Fifth, we celebrate this day because we are privileged to claim God's promises, so that we sorrow not as those who have no hope.

You and I have hope based on God's promises in Jesus Christ.

The longer I live, the more I look at life and the more I study the Scriptures, I'm convinced that you and I are not really equipped to live until we are equipped to die. How easy it is to flounder through life, managing our existence, with a vague sense of our mortality but never coming to grips with the hope that is ours as followers of Jesus Christ.

This is why it is so essential to read the Bible and to meditate on the promises of God's Word.

One of the great chapters of the Bible is 1 Corinthians 15. I commend it to you for frequent reading. In it, the Apostle Paul wrestles with those significant facts in the life of Jesus Christ that he refers to as of "first importance," zeroing in on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then, he broadens his discussion to talk in general about life and death matters for each of us, challenging those who say there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead. He says, if there is no resurrection, then Jesus Christ has not been raised. And ". . . if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised" (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).

Then he goes on to make a most disturbing, or reassuring statement, depending on what your personal relationship is with Jesus Christ. He writes, "For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:16-22).

Do you catch the importance of what he's saying? He's declaring here, emphatically, if we're not equipped to die, we're not equipped to live. There is no authentic Christian life without the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And there's no authentic Christian life without our holding on tightly to the promise that there is life beyond this life. If Christ is not risen, we are lost in our sins. Those of our loved ones who have died have perished. And when we die, it's all over. We, too, shall perish. However, the fact is that Christ is raised from the dead. Christ is victor. Through His life, death and resurrection, He enables us to be set free from the specter of death, equipping us to die in a way that equips us both to live on this side of death and on the other side of death.

He comes at it again in another passage. On this occasion, he's writing to the believers in Thessalonica, making a statement that I have read at every one of the several hundred memorial services I've conducted. He writes, "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died" (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14).

Early in my ministry, I would quote that passage, emphasizing the phrase, "so that you may not grieve," or as it is translated in the King James, "that you sorrow not." My pragmatic observation was that, in most cases, the people sitting before me in a memorial service grieved, sorrowed whether they were believers or nonbelievers. The more I studied this passage, I came to realize that Paul was writing not to tell us that we need not grieve but that we need not grieve or sorrow as those who "have no hope." Do you catch the difference? It's a quantum difference. A person who does not grieve is not a healthy person.

We may not all grieve in exactly the same ways. When our daughter Suzanne died, Anne and I grieved quite differently. For some, grieving is accompanied by uncontrollable weeping. For others, by nature, we have a more stoic face and yet, deep inside, we experience the horrendous nature of our loss. Paul wasn't saying don't grieve. He was saying, as you grieve, understand that the texture of the grief of one who has hope is different than the texture of the grief of one who does not have hope. Let's never forget that. It's important for us to realize.

Let's look briefly at some specific promises.

I find it quite significant that Jesus, the very night of His betrayal, shared some specific hopeful promises with His disciples. There, in the upper room, He stated bluntly, "'Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.' Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen'" (John 14:1-7).

Think through the implications of what Jesus is telling us. He's declaring that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father. He's telling us that He is the way, the truth, and the life. He's declaring that no one comes to the Father except through Him.

And He's also promising us some things about the life to come.

Specific promise one: We are promised a specific place with Him in the life to come. The Bible refers to this as heaven. Depending on the translation you use, it refers to the fact that, in heaven, there are many dwelling places or mansions that He has already prepared for us, and how He will take us to that place.

Specific promise two: He is saying that we will be reunited with our loved ones in a recognizable way. The Bible tells us there will be no marriage as we know it here in heaven, but there will be the reality of new bodies that we will receive that are recognizable, and we will have fellowship with the Father and with each other.

Specific promise three: He promises us that this will be a life beyond anything we can fully imagine in this life. Take the apocalyptic writings of Scripture describing mansions and streets paved with gold. If you take them literally, they go beyond anything that even the wealthiest person on earth has experienced. Show me any wealthy person who has seen streets paved with gold. If you take this theologically in a way that describes the non-describable, the way most of us would, the Bible is using human, tangible terms to describe an existence much more magnificent than anything our human imaginations can conceive.

Specific promise four: Jesus is telling us that we are set free from the specter of hell. That's right, I used the word. Today, we refuse to talk about hell, don't we? We preachers are intimidated by those who want only positive thoughts. But, my friends, we can't have just positive thoughts. There are negative realities that are painful. There are consequences of refusing God's love in Jesus Christ that most of us do not want to contemplate. The Bible declares that there is a place called heaven where those who have repented of sin and put their trust in Jesus Christ alone will spend eternity. And the same Bible that talks about heaven talks about hell. Rather graphic terms that are used in the Bible and, even more specifically in medieval literature to describe hell, only point to the reality that hell in its essence is eternity separated from the Creator-Sustainer God, whose name is Jesus Christ and who is present even now in the person of His Holy Spirit. Can there be anything more empty, anything sadder, anything more painful than to face the specter of hell? The positive aspect of this promise is that you do not need to face that specter, if you repent and trust Jesus Christ alone for your salvation.

I'm certain there are other specific promises. I've just tried to hit the essential elements.

Nonetheless, death is an awesome specter.

You may be surprised to hear me make that statement. I would be dishonest if I didn't.

My experience in two of them was quite different from my experience in the other two. One situation was in 1960, when I was flying from Tacloban in the Philippines to Manila when the DC3 I was in got caught in the tail end of a monsoon. That plane was like a piece of paper in a windstorm. Fortunately, we were seat-belted, but everything in the overhead racks came flying out, and one Filipino stewardess, who was not seat-belted, was thrown right to left, forward and backwards, so violent was the storm. Inside, I had a calm, inner peace that God had made provision for me in the life to come. I had a similar experience in Hoag Hospital in 1981 when, in the middle of the night, I awakened with severe pain from a pulmonary embolism, and I thought I was dying. There, in that room, I quoted the same passages I do for the memorial services for others and prayed the same prayers, and a deep sense of peace came over me.

But, on two other occasions, I did not have that same peace. One was when, as an eighteen-year-old, I was hitchhiking from Heidelberg to Frankfurt on the Autobahn. A motorcyclist stopped and offered me a ride. I spontaneously jumped on behind him, only to realize I had never ridden on the back of a motorcycle before and certainly not on one with a speedster weaving in and out faster than the high-speed flow of traffic. And, on another occasion, I was doing some scuba diving, when my mask started leaking when I was down twenty or thirty feet. I could not purge the water from my nasal passages or my lungs as I thrashed my way back to the surface. I've never put on scuba gear since.

I say this to acknowledge that all death or near-death experiences are not necessarily the same. One can experience deep peace in one situation and terror in another, and I'm not certain exactly how those all calibrate with the hope that is ours through Jesus Christ.

One of my dearest friends went through a harrowing life and death situation recently, when his disease-ridden body had sustained fevers up to one hundred-seven degrees, and he went into what was an apparent coma. For several days, he hovered between life and death. All his bodily functions were being handled for him. And he could actually hear the doctors as they were trying to talk his wife and children into pulling the plug. He, a pastor who had preached the hope Christ's resurrection promises so faithfully through the decades of his ministry, acknowledged that, in that moment, he had his questions, that his fate very well was being determined by those he could hear talking but to whom he could not communicate. Part of him wanted to die and another part wanted to live. And he acknowledged that he even had momentary doubts as to whether what he had preached through the years was true or not. But then he laid hold, once again, on the promises of Jesus Christ for whatever the outcome would be. The next couple of days, he rallied, was taken off life support, and was able to share that near-death experience with some of us, his covenant brothers. Death is an awesome specter. Some, with Christ's help, are able to segue into it with an enormous sense of peace. Others, given some of the physiological and psychological aspects of their individual circumstances, may be forced to wrestle once again with the ultimate questions of faith, needing to once again, in an act of the will, trust themselves to the mercy of Almighty God, claiming those specific promises in faith.

What, then, can we do to be adequately equipped to die and to live?

I've already shared classical, biblical formulation for it. Our salvation is based on faith not works.

Let me come at it in a very different way by reading to you an email I received this week from my dear friend Dr. Leighton Ford, the brother-in-law of Billy Graham and, for decades, his associate evangelist. It's titled ROBERT GOULET AND THE ONLY ONE HE WANTED TO SEE.

Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 7:34 a.m.

Subject: Robert Goulet

Robert Goulet died this week at the age of 73 while waiting for a lung transplant. I liked him very much, this handsome singer with the strong resonant baritone voice and the Canadian background.

I met him one time. It was a Sunday afternoon, June 1978, at a Billy Graham rally in Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens. At the time of the invitation, when people were streaming forward, Billy looked back to where I was sitting on the platform and motioned for me.

"Robert Goulet just came forward. I know him," he whispered. "I'd like you to counsel him."

I slipped off the platform and quickly recognized and found him at the front of the gathered group.

When the counseling began I introduced myself to him and told him I was Billy's brother-in-law.

"May I ask why you came forward?" I asked.

"Oh," he said, "I like Billy and I wanted to encourage him."

I sensed there was more and asked him to tell me a bit more about his spiritual background and interest.

"I go to a church in California," he said, "and my pastor is Donn Moomaw. He's a wonderful man. In heaven I know he and Billy will be right up front and center. Me, I know I will be at the far edge some place and I hope I'm just close enough where I can wave and they can see me."

"I know Donn, and so does Billy," I said. "Robert, what do you think it will take to get to heaven?"

He thought a minute. "I think it's as if God has a big pair of scales," he said. "He puts our good deeds in one side and our bad in another. If the good outweighs the bad we get in."

"Robert," I said, "if that's it, then Billy is not going to make it. Neither is Donn. Neither am I.."

"Then who the (expletive deleted) can make it?" he blurted out, looking startled.

"No one," I said, "but for the grace of God."

"You've been to London I imagine?" I asked, remembering an illustration from John Stott.

"Many times."

"Well, if you are looking across the Thames River, what do you see? Old Bailey, the halls of justice, and St. Paul's Cathedral, right?"

Robert nodded.

"On the top of Old Bailey you recall is the figure of Justice, blindfolded, and with a scales in hand. And what's on the golden dome of St. Paul's? A cross!"

He nodded again, listening closely.

"You see, Robert, Christianity is not a religion of the scales, but of the cross. None of us is good enough by the scales of justice to come to a perfect God. But anyone - you, Billy, Donn Moomaw, me - can come to God because of the cross,. That's where Jesus died in our place, and brought not justice but mercy to those who accept him."

We prayed together. He thanked me. We said goodbye.

About a week later I got an unexpected phone call from Robert Goulet, from his home in California.

"Leighton," he said, "I've been thinking about what we talked about. I"ve written a poem I want to read to you." Here in part is what he read.

There's only one man I want to meet,

And that man is Jesus.

Not Donn or Billy. Jesus.

Robert Goulet got it.

I think some place I have a copy of that little poem.

And I wonder whether Robert thought back often to that Sunday afternoon in Toronto. And whether while he waited for a transplant he thought of the faith, not of the scales, but of the cross.

I can believe, if he did, that his desire came true. That he now is seeing Jesus.

This is what it's all about, isn't it? This crucified and risen Christ equips us to die and to live. So, claiming His provision as our own hope, we now honor those who have already gone ahead in that same hope!