Abolishing evil: part 2

Have you read about the eccentric millionaire who posthumously (after passing away) was put in a container? The container, with the body in it, was then pharaoh-style deposited in a deep freeze. No, this wasn't the action of a freak, it was apparently a conscious decision on part of the millionaire: realizing that he was dying, he saw to it that his body would be preserved in anticipation of a groundbreaking scientific discovery that sometime in the future would make it possible for the millionaire to be brought back to life.

Silly? Consider the pharaohs, then. Some of them spent vast amounts on erecting funerary complexes where their bodies would be put to rest. On acceding to the throne they would immediately start preparing for the unavoidable: the day they would draw their last breath. Today we visit the sites where they once were buried and marvel at the sheer scale and ingenuity behind some of the greatest of these funerary complexes, the pyramids, but very few of us will afterward privately ridicule the ancient kings for having gone to such lengths to secure safe-passage to the afterlife.

And yet the millionaire and the pharaoh had this in common: a desire to face this enemy, death, this evil, and somehow conquer it. And both paid astronomical sums of money trying to achieve immortality.

People like me rely on another remedy. We put our stakes on the one Son who has confronted the powers of death and evil, and returned triumphantly from that all-time showdown. Here's what the New Testament says about Jesus Christ of Nazareth:

"..who abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (Holman CSB, 2 Timothy 1,10)

I'm not ridiculing the millionaire or the pharaoh, just resting in the knowledge that while powerless to stave off my own day of death, I still can look forward to sharing that incredible quality of life someday. Immortality has been only a prayer away since 33 AD.