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Religous: From beyond the grave
Joseph Lee L'Heureux
for South Peace News
Have you ever wondered what life is all about? Or, is this all there is?
I know the latter question hit me about twenty-six years ago. What happened to make me reflect on this question?
Well a friend of mine, an old school chum, had just committed suicide, and this became the question, which started me upon this path of reflection, and made me consider the previous question, what is life all about?
I had just been blessed with a beautiful seven-pound boy and was at the apex of my life up to that point.
My friend had obviously experienced the lowest point of his life, and so I asked the question: What drove him to such a desperate act? It had to be no hope, I decided, the experience of too much pain, emotional or physical and no possible solution in sight.
Then I decided to visit another friend who was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease and was now in the final stages and just speaking in a whisper. His muscles had reached the point where he had to be fed, so I asked him. “Have you ever considered ending it all?” His whispered answer was very quick, which I had to lean forward to hear. He said. “God gives it and only God can take it away.”
There it was, the answer. One had come to believe in the “power greater than himself”. A God who had the final say, one who had given us the commandment, “thou shall not kill” (Deut. 5:17) which obviously to my suffering friend was the ultimate author and authority of our lives, the other had obviously lost faith in that authority and forgotten this teaching which we had learned as children.
One had left alcohol behind in his twenties the other had indulged until his last days. No hope, alcohol can have that effect.
In our times we are witnessing a battle in the courts of what some are calling “our human right to end it all,” when we get sick. Two or three countries have already ruled in their court “one has the right to choose when his or her life should end.”
Obviously these people have come to believe, that there is nothing to look forward to beyond the grave and that if there is, He has no authority over their lives. How sad.
Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ the Son of God most High, and the author of life, came and took our infirmities and fears and nailed them to a cross. The Bible, which over one billion Christians have come to believe, as documented evidence from those who walked with Jesus.
“That Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter and then to the twelve” (1st Cor.15:3-5) revealing to us that He had power over death and obviously has power to grant us the forgiveness of our sins, giving us power to forgive one’s self as well.
So why, do so many have no hope?
The gift of faith is something given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ through our parents, when they chose to baptize us in His name.
This faith has driven the world forward for two thousand years for us Christians and longer, forty-five hundred years if you acknowledge our Jewish roots.
So why does only one sixth of the world believe this?
One hundred and seventy years ago, a fellow wrote a book on the evolution of man. Charles Darwin spread his lies leading so many astray. Over the next twenty years this book gathered momentum, and over the years the atheist forces among us managed to get this teaching introduced in our schools so thereby undermining what Jesus Christ had accomplished nineteen hundred years before.
It is interesting to note, while this theory on evolution was spreading its errors, 1840 onward, again “A woman appeared in the heavens clothed with the sun” according to the scriptures (Rev. 12:1) in 1858 and identified herself to an illiterate child as “The Immaculate Conception”.
Was this appearance to Bernadette Soubirous a straight answer from heaven refuting Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution?
One hundred and fifty years later we have that same “Immaculate Conception” appearing again and again in the heavens, giving us hope and faith in life after death.
If she rose from the dead, in the same way her son Jesus did, why not us? Of course this promise is for all of us and Mother Mary is that second example.
Yes the Virgin Mary is appearing to us now, daily and this time for twenty-eight years in Medjugorje, in central Europe, where this concept of euthanasia, the “it’s our choice” concept began.
Is this a co-incidence or a God incident?
I believe Jesus is again proving to us through His Mother’s appearances, that we all matter to Him and we do have a life with Him, after death.
God Bless You! May you be inspired to hope and faith.
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