Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
For the many who have inquired: A Memorial Service for Grace Wieland will be held February 16, 4:00 p.m., at the Meadow Vista Seventh-day Adventist Church, Meadow Vista, California. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, charitable donations be sent in Grace’s memory to ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency) for the Kenyan Refugees Project. Address: 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, MD 20904, USA (www.adra.org)
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When someone loses a beloved wife of 66 years of happy marriage, the loss is devastating. He longs for comfort, some truth that can assuage the pain of the bereavement.
The comfort that Bible teaching gives is vastly more effective in softening the blow of the loss, than popular ideas about the dead.
Multitudes think is that the human soul is by nature immortal; there is no death—the good people supposedly go to heaven immediately at death and the bad people go immediately to some kind of hell where they suffer endlessly. (Imagine the anguish some feel when they realize that the loved one whose loss they mourn was not a good person!)
According to this popular idea, when the saved person dies and goes to heaven, he/she is fully conscious; imagine the pain that “saved” person must feel watching all the tears and anguish of those sorrowing in bereavement! (Grace would be miserable watching me cry!)
Imagine the confusion a person must feel according to this popular idea when he hears the preacher at the funeral say the dead person is in heaven in bliss when you know deep in your heart that person could not be happy in the righteousness that pervades heaven! Suppose the dead person they mourn was indeed an unbeliever and they know it: that’s when many turn to drugs or alcohol to relieve the mental anguish they feel.
How much more comforting is Bible teaching:
The human soul is not immortal, for in the beginning the LORD God said that the result of sin is that “thou shalt surely die” (see Gen, 2:17).
But such death is not eternal, for Jesus adds when He talked with weeping Martha, “Thy brother shall rise again” (John 11:23). “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth” (John 5:28, 29).
Revelation 20 says there will be two resurrections: those who have believed (“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power,” vs. 6). But the unbelieving hosts will come up in the second resurrection at the end of the 1000 years (vss. 5, 6; 11-15).
My beloved Grace is “asleep in Jesus.” She feels no pain; she does not weep at my pain of bereavement; she is at perfect peace. She is now one of those “blessed” ones who are special, for “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them” (Rev. 14:13). That’s where my beloved Grace is resting, “in the arms of Jesus” as it were, in a group that are specially “blessed,” awaiting that happy first resurrection.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.
