Echoes in Eternity

"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadow-lands - dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

- C.S. Lewis

On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call "ambivalent." It is Satan's great weapon and also God's great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our holy hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered. - C.S. Lewis

[UPDATE: This video has been questioned regarding its veracity, particularly about whether the people are being beaten because they are Christians. Because of that, the videos aren't currently available.]

Be warned, this video contains graphic violence against Christians. But it is critical to the health of the Western church to see and remember the saints who are perishing for their faith. Guess that rush hour traffic jam today wasn't so bad after all...



Francis Chan's response

(HT: JT)

After one commenter on my Ave Atque Vale post mentioned that remembering that the ultimate end of all people, celebrities included, is death can be the best available lead-in to the Gospel, I thought a follow-up post with a few pictures of their graves might further drive home that very point.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1,370,000 aborted babies, which in pennies stacks 1 1/4 miles high.

I saw this sad story from Britain today. According to a poll, the most popular song to have played in that post-Christian country is Frank Sinatra's "My Way." That is one of the most depressingly self-centered songs in history, and it speaks to the self-centeredness of a culture that uses that as their final goodbye to life. Without Christ, people live a funeral dirge in life and are narcissistically self-sufficient even in death.

I've lived a life that's full -
I've travelled each and every highway.
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets? I've had a few,
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course -
Each careful step along the byway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.
...
To think I did all that,
And may I say, not in a shy way -
Oh no. Oh no, not me.
I did it my way.

For what is a man? What has he got?
If not himself - Then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.

Yes, it was my way.