Source/Author: By Bishop Dr. Ong Hwai Teik

"So he is the God of the living, not the dead, for they are all alive to him.” ^NLT Luke 20:38

Around this time last year, Malaysians woke up with the shocking news that a towering Malaysian, Karpal Singh, had met with an untimely death. He had perished in an accident on the North-South Highway near Kampar on Maundy Thursday.

After fighting for his life in the Singapore General Hospital since 2 February 2015 aided by mechanical ventilation, the iconic political leader and founding Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, died in the early hours of 23 March 2015. The impact and reality of death once again rippled across the world at the loss of this giant of a man who is universally acknowledged as the father of the modern and very wealthy Singapore.

Across the sea in the Middle East, the Church is suffering a new wave of persecution, including martyrdom, as terrorism of ISIS rears its cruel and ugly head. The world was sickened by this mid-February news that 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt who were working in Libya had been beheaded by a group calling itself “The Tripoli Province of Islamic State”. It was reported that the execution video was released as a warning to Christians and Christian nations at war with ISIS. These 21 brethren, some of whom are reported to have cried out “Oh God” and “Oh Jesus” as their captors pushed them to the ground, have been declared martyrs by the Coptic Church.

Coping with death is an issue that is ever current and real for all of us. In Luke 20:27-40 believers get a clear glimpse of certainty as to what happens to us after death. The resurrection life of Jesus belongs to those who are His by placing their trust in His saving death as “children of the resurrection”. The Scriptures declare in Luke 20:36 – 38: “Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ³⁸ Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

In this passage, the Sadducees (who deny the truth of resurrection and the immortality of the soul) used marriage as the setting in their attempt to trap Jesus. The answer that the Lord Jesus gave was that the highest and most intimate of relationships is fulfilled experientially in God’s direct presence in heaven. It will even overtake the most intimate of earthly relationships, marriage – so that we shall be enjoying perfect fullness of relationship as the family of God in the presence of the Father, the Head of the household. We shall then know Him fully as “the Father, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name” (Eph 4:14)

The Lord Jesus further pointed out the underlying fundamental reasons causing the defective convictions of the Sadducees in the parallel passage found in Mark 12:24:  “Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures, or the power of God?” They had chosen to bind the revealed truths of the Scriptures by their imposed views, and had also restricted the omnipotence of God by “enclosing” the Almighty One within the earthly and finite.

It was reported that last month the Vatican Radio, cited Fr. Rafic Grieche, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Egypt, in stating that among those 21 Christian Coptics recently martyred in Libya, was a man from Chad. He had converted to Christianity because of the faith he witnessed in the Coptic Christians who had been taken captive. “He found his faith when he saw the face of the other Egyptian Christians, he didn’t want to leave,” he said. “He wanted to be a martyr like them.”

Jesus was present with Stephen who was in the path of Christ - taking up his cross in his martyrdom in Acts 6, so that “the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” (Acts 6:15). Paul who participated in the martyrdom of Stephen was to be converted later. At his death, Stephen, “full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). The power and presence of God in such “supernatural witnessing” to Christ found in martyrdom is documented countless times throughout the centuries. There are countless cases in which unbelieving onlookers, jailers, executioners, fellow soldiers, or relatives were converted on the spot, confessing Christ - even at the cost of their lives. As J M Kushiner puts it, “We are touching the fringe of spiritual mysteries here. God is here among us, on this earth, and the worker from Chad is today with him in Paradise”.

The late theologian and biblical scholar GB Caird, Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford, said, “all life, here and the hereafter, consists in friendship with God…Death may put an end to physical existence but not to a relationship that is by nature eternal. Men may lose their friends by death, but not God.”

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elijah (the latter two appearing in the transfiguration narrative with Christ in Mark 9:28-36) …and all who are God’s friends through faith in Christ, are very much alive for “HE IS THE GOD OF THE LIVING, NOT THE DEAD”.

In spite of the spectre of death never being more real and threatening against God’s Church today in our generation, we must never forget that we are "children of the resurrection". This fact will empower us, as God’s people called Methodists, to confront the one who comes to kill, steal and destroy [John 10:10] and all the evil that he seeks to do in our land and in this world through systems and people who are under his power and patronage.

Far from allowing this great message of hope as an Easter people of such a heavenly heritage lull us into an escapist stance from this world, we need to remain as courageous “apostles of hope” – earthed to our land and this generation. We need to be mindful of those who are still mourning post the first anniversary of the disappearance of MH 370 and the need to be engagingly watchful as this current Parliament sitting takes place and in which significant bills and laws will be passed. We need to steadfastly seek the Lord 24/7 in prayer so that the hope of His Kingdom will make a demonstrable difference through His people in this land - that His “will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Whether in heaven or on earth, these repeated last words on the 2 March 1791 by John Wesley on the last day of his life on earth continue to strengthen and “encourage” us – "The best of all is, God is with us!"