The Bible

 

John 5:25-29 : The End is the New Beginning

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25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;

27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.

28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,

29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

Commentary

 

The End is the New Beginning

By Junchol Lee


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We use a calendar that has 12 months and 365 days in it. As it nears December 31st, we feel as though something is getting close to an end, and yet on January 1st it feels like a new beginning. Our life is composed of many endings and beginnings. We may live one life, but within this one life we have many different journeys.

(References: Habakkuk 3:17)

Commentary

 

Death

  
'Soul Carried to Heaven,' by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a 19th-century French traditionalist.

Death in the Bible represents spiritual death, or the destruction of everything that is good and all true beliefs in someone. This happens when people confirm themselves in evil and choose hell. And the more they turn away from the Lord - the source of life - the more dead they are. There is also a sort of spiritual death in the opposite sense: to go to heaven we must let go of our desire to live from and for ourselves, must let that aspect of ourselves die so that we don't start to believe that we can also decide what is good and evil, as Adam & Eve did. This is the death Jesus meant when he said to the disciples, "he who loses his life for My sake, shall find it." The natural physical death of the body, meanwhile, is really just a passage into spiritual life, and is, for people who love the Lord and their fellow people, a rebirth into the true life of heaven. There are also a few cases in the Bible where it is said the "nothing will die" or that things will "never die." This means that love and truth will not die even if people do, because love and truth come from the Lord and are connected to Him.