the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
" Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." - Revelation 14:13.
The additional words " from henceforth," give this passage a specific and prophetical meaning. Neglecting these at present, we may consider the great unquestionable truth that there is for the Christian a blessedness in death. Not but that there is something better than death. Death is one of the enemies of Christ that must be put under his feet, and his saints shall one day get the victory over it, and, undergoing a change at his advent, live on eternally. In the meantime however, death is constrained with other agencies to work together for good to the people of God. Their faith deprives him of his terrors.
Three thousand souls an hour, fifty a minute, pass away from earth. How few of these die in the Lord! Think of this you that know the Lord, and whom he has commissioned to make him known. You are to meet -these souls again; and happy will it be for you if you are able to show that you sought earnestly to obtain for your fellow-men this blessedness.
They are blessed, for they have great peace in the hour of their dissolution. Their cheerful exit confirms the faith of those that behold, and brings heaven near. It sometimes carries conviction to the impenitent, and leads them to seek that God who has such power to sustain and bless the souls of his people. They pass away from a world of sin and temptation and disappointment and vanity, to a world of light and purity. They depart to be with Christ, - to dwell in the mansions which he has prepared for them, - to associate with angels and with saints in light, - to drink of the rivers of pleasure that are for ever at the right hand of God, - to obtain a crown of righteousness.
And if the king has summoned one of his own away from your side, can you greatly grieve? Does not the blessedness of that departure greatly overbear your individual brief loss, and flash down a glory upon your own desolation? Do you think much more of your own poor blessedness, thus interrupted, than of the perfect beatitude into which the other has entered? Would you make war upon this text? For the dead that die in the Lord are blessed for this among other reasons, that they leave behind them unspeakable consolations. Yes, it teaches that the survivor, who had a property in the one taken away, has not lost anything, but has seen his property taken upon high, that it may be rendered immeasurably more valuable and kept securely till the day of the restitution of all things. We do not want our wealth with us, but in the country to which we are going. " How great is thy goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee." And the loved ones taken are a part of that treasured goodness. Let Him then prepare a place for thee, in the way that seems best to Him. Too large an earnest of the inheritance that is to come, might check the vigor of our aspirations. The little paradises of earth, very little worthy of the name, yet clothe themselves with the superior power that belongs to present things, and disrobe from our view the only true paradise above.
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