When we all reach the end of our earthly journey, we will have just begun.

The word decease literally means "exodus" or "going out." The imagery is that of the children of Israel leaving Egypt and their former life of bondage, slavery, and hardship for the Promised Land. So death to the Christian is an exodus from the limitations, the burdens, and the bondage of this life.

Death is not the end of life; it is only the gateway to eternity.

Even when we allow our imaginations to run wild on the joys of heaven, we find that our minds are incapable of conceiving what it will be like.

Death of the righteous . . . is not to be feared or shunned. It is the shadowed threshold to the palace of God.

A Christian funeral should be a coronation ceremony, a statement to the world about eternal life.

Where will we spend eternity—with God in that place of endless joy the Bible calls heaven, or apart from Him in that place of endless despair the Bible calls hell?

Nothing made by the hand of man has ever been so beautiful as starlight on the water or moonlight on the snow. And the same hand that made trees and fields and flowers, the seas and hills, the clouds and sky, has been making a home for us called heaven.

The moment we take our last breath on earth, we take our first in heaven.

Sometimes . . . we grow homesick for heaven. Many times in the midst of the sin, suffering, and sorrow of this life there is a tug at our soul. That is homesickness coupled with anticipation.

The subject of heaven is much easier to accept than the subject of hell. And yet the Bible teaches both.

When that glorious day comes, sin and death will be destroyed and Satan will be banished. All the strife and hatred and suffering and death that twist and scar this world will vanish, and the Lord's Prayer will be fulfilled: God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.