End?

June 17th, 2017| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

A strange entertainment, indeed. “The Cremator” is a bizarre “death simulator” in “Window of the World,” a Chinese amusement park in Shenzen.

You want a chance to experience cremation? Here’s the opportunity for the morbidly curious.

But, no, you won’t be rendered into ashes here.

First you journey through a morgue. Then they settle you into a temporary coffin that is placed on a conveyor belt. This device will carry the en-coffined you through a chamber filled with hot air (being pumped out at 104° F) and trimmed with audiovisual effects to simulate the heat and flames of a crematorium. (Be prepared for the shrieks and screams accompanying the “cremation.”)

It might be fear, or it might be the heat, but all who experience the ride come out drenched in sweat.

Said one customer:

I’m never coming back.”

Exclaimed another woman:

It was horrifying.”

But one enterprising park visitor loved it.

The experience was quite good—quite good fun.”

This sounds like what the ancients called memento mori, Latin for “remember you have to die.” They used different means to remind themselves of their mortality, so that they may, instead, focus on the immortality of the spirit and the afterlife.

It’s not entirely a bad thing to be reminded of one’s death periodically. However, it is not THE END.

The apostle Paul taunts death …

O Death, where is your victory?
O Death, where is your sting?
1 Corinthians 15:55

Taunt death? How could he, knowing he himself would succumb to it one day?

The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law.
1 Corinthians 15:56

Death, the Bible says, is the result of sin, a violation of the divine standard (“law”). That is what resulted in death, both physical, as well as eternal death, away forever from the presence of God.

But this was not to be the end.

… but thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:57

Jesus Christ, God incarnate, paid the price of the sins of mankind, in your place and mine.

He made Him who knew no sin
to be sin on our behalf,
so that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him.
2 Corinthians 5:21

A magnificent exchange was effected: our sins accounted to Christ and his righteousness accounted to us.

And for all who believe this grand transaction, accomplished by work of Jesus Christ, eternal life guaranteed, and death now becomes only a dawn, a doorway, a portal to a better world.

For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him
shall not perish, but have eternal life.
John 3:16

And one day, there will be a resurrection–ashes and all!

Behold, I tell you a mystery:
… the trumpet will sound,
and the dead will be raised imperishable,
and we will be changed.
1 Corinthians 15:51–52

John Donne (1572–1631) wrote about it in a sonnet:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Yup, memento mori. But that ain’t the last scene of life. There’s more.

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Indeed! For the believer in Christ Jesus, there is life eternal with God, in the presence of God.