Why We Do Not Cremate

(Message delivered by Pastor at the True Life Church 10.30 am Service, Jan 8, 06)

Text: John 11:17-27

Why We Do Not Cremate. This is the title of my message for this week. It has come as the result of a request from Betty Tay for her aged father, 101 years old, who went home to the Lord on Jan 3. As it is a big family and most of them request cremation and we do not cremate, I officiated only the Vigil Service on Friday, Jan 6. Hence this timely message.

Cremation is a practice of heathen religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. They have no hope of everlasting life beyond the grave so they disposed of their dead by burning. Today many Christians are also asking for cremation. Why? It is becoming a custom. It is for convenience. But it is going astray of our Christian practice.

What we must follow is the Bible. There is no practice of cremation in the Bible. Only burial is mentioned such as the case of Lazarus, as recorded in the Text of our message. When we bury a Christian brother the pastor will say we commit your body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.

As a pastor it is my duty to bury and not to burn the dead and I have only one sermon to preach. It is in the words of Jesus to Martha, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. From what we read we are assured Martha believed with all her heart.

These words of Jesus I repeat loudly to those who follow the coffin to the graveside is make sure they would believe. They are directed also to the undertakers and grave diggers, usually they are Malays, and I have observed their submission to God’s Word. They would not cremate. Because they believe in the resurrection. Even Malays.

Paul has written a whole chapter of I Cor 15:1-58 on the Resurrection. “If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor 15:32). Paul follows reasoning of non-Christians.

Once I engaged a Jewish teacher of modern Hebrew to teach a large class of students at Far Eastern Bible College. Because I paid her very well, when she was returning to Israel with her husband who also came to work in Singapore, to say goodbye, I presented them a JESUS SAVES clock and preached the gospel to them. But they rather talked of enjoying life and when they died that was the end. This is the same answer you get from other friends, non-Christians. The question whether they would be buried or cremated (ie. burned) did not bother them. Why, they had hope only in this
life.

Coming back to I Cor 15:1-58, Paul’s chapter on the Resurrection, we enter the realm of mystery. We shall not all die and we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (I Cor 15:51-52)

But the most important factor concerning the raising of the dead is the raising of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says in Rom 10:9, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus (ie. confess that He died to pay the penalty of your sins), and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” According to Rom 10:9, we are saved by believing in our Lord’s Resurrection.

Whenever we visit the Holy Land one site we must never miss is the Garden Tomb, the Empty Tomb. We believe with all our heart our Lord had risen. Why we do not cremate is that we believe He is risen and we will be risen too. Cremation leads us to a hopeless end, Burial leads us to an endless hope. Amen.

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GENESIS

Notes From A Weekly Study Conducted by Pastor Quek
(Taken from Newsletter of Cherith Fellowship, Vol. 2 Issue 1, Jan 2006, edited by J.T. Joseph)

CHAPTER 6

A mere two days before His crucifixion, Christ highlighted the confluence of signs which would herald judgement to the generation that witnessed them – see Mt. 24:3-39. Thus did Jesus affirm the historicity of Genesis 6.

It is therefore of the utmost importance, both in understanding the past and in seeking guidance for the future, to appreciate the content of Chapter 6.

Verses 1, 2

Although Scripture is clear that believers should not wed unbelievers, there is no concomitant indication that, should such a union occur, it would be unrecoverable. Thus, the ‘union’ described laconically in vv. 1 & 2 must surely refer to something quite out of the ordinary.

The interpretation hinges on ‘sons of God’ – bene Elohim.

All of the occurrences in the O.T. of this peculiar (and specific) phrase, ‘sons of God’, refer to angelic beings – cf. Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7.

A similar usage may also be found in: Dan. 3:25; Psa. 29:1; Psa. 89:6.

We may therefore take these, in the present context, to be fallen angels who possessed ordinary men, who then married the ‘daughters of men’. Note that demons cannot possess inanimate objects.

Jude 6 reinforces the interpretation here adopted. This verse cannot mean all of the angels that fell with Lucifer, for then there would be no demons free to roam the earth through the ages. By a process of elimination, we conclude that the reference pertains to those of the fallen host that ‘kept not their first estate’ in that they commingled with wicked mortals. The progeny then manifested wickedness and violence of a depth and on a scale not seen hitherto.

Laxity in personal lifestyle was already widespread. The demonic possession of some of the men of the time then made them irresistible to the carnal (but attractive) women of the period. These men and women became obsessed with sex [do we not observe this to be the case in our time?], thus ensuring a rapid multiplication of progeny who, like their parents, were demon possessed also.

Demonic possession of human beings did occur now and again during OT- and NTtimes, but never on the scale that happened prior to the Flood.

Verse 3

God may have spoken these words in the days of Enoch, whilst Adam was still alive. The ‘striving’ is best understood as between the Holy Spirit and mankind – no other interpretation would suit the context [see John 16:8]. Note that the Hebrew word deen [strive] / carries the idea of judging.

The allusion to ‘a hundred and twenty years’ may refer to limitation of the future lifespan of man – or, to the period remaining before judgement (in the form of the Flood) was to fall.

If we take the latter view as being in keeping with the context, then it entails God continuing to ‘strive’ with an increasingly wicked and rebellious mankind for a final season of grace.

This season of grace was characterised, the filthiness of mankind notwithstanding, by the unremitting preaching of God’s word, initially by Methuselah [the oldest living patriarch at the time] and thereafter by Noah.

Recall that the year of birth/year of death of Methuselah and of Noah were 687/1656 and 1056/2006, respectively, counting forward from Adam.

Gen. 7:6 indicates that Noah was 600 years old when Methuselah died, which is when the Flood came upon the earth.

Verse 4

The coming together of demon-possessed men and women yielded, as offspring, the / nephilim / fallen ones – also called ‘giants’, as in Numbers 13:33.

We now realise that all human characteristics are mediated by genes, which may be dominant or recessive in a given population. Variations are brought about by recombinations or mutations. The latter are typically induced by external factors, and are known to produce ‘gigantism’. Thus, those sceptical of the biblical record should reconsider their position, for the men and women of the period were truly abnormal.

Verses 5 – 7

These nephilim constituted a driving force behind the perversion and lawlessness of the period, conditions which ‘broke’ the longsuffering patience of the Creator. The Flood that ensued destroyed all mankind (the ‘eight’ excepted) along with all fauna and flora, and it is possible that Rev. 20:13 has these lawless dead in purview when reference is made to the sea giving up its dead.

What befell the unholy spirits that kept not their first estate? These, as II Peter 2:4 testifies, were imprisoned in tartarovw (Tartaroo), the deepest level of hell, there to await final judgement.

Verses 8 – 13

Here we find the first occurrence of ‘grace’ / / khane.

Did Noah find grace in God’s sight because he was ‘a just man and perfect in his generations’? The whole tenor of Scripture argues otherwise: he was elected by grace, being at heart a sinner, then justified before God the Almighty Judge [ / tsad-deek’ / righteous – as justified and vindicated by God], and in that sense was deemed ‘perfect in his generations’ [/ taw-meem’ / without flaw, innocent].

On this basis alone could he walk with God – a principle that has applied through the ages, and which prevails even in these charismatic times.

Let us not here mistakenly or facetiously assume that Noah was, after all, in a ‘cocoon of grace’.

He lived amongst, and dealt daily with, what was perhaps the most wicked generation ever to have appeared on the face of the earth.

The pressure on him to conform must have been well nigh overwhelming, given the ‘pull’ of a licentious society on his inner sin-nature on the one hand, and on the other, the continual rejection and ridicule of his godly preaching. As to the latter, it is sobering to note that none were converted by his decades long testimony, save his immediate family.

Truly, then, Noah deserves the epithet, ‘man of faith’ [Heb. 11:7].

All of the later inspired writers of Scripture (Chronicles, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Luke, Paul [in Hebrews], Peter) took the account of Noah and of the Flood as literal truth, as did Christ Himself – see Mt. 24:37-39 and Luke 17:26, 27.

Verses 12, 13

The depth and reach of human perversity is reiterated as the immediate cause of the global destruction to come. Note that [v. 12] corrupt / / shaw-khath’ has the connotation of destroy.

Mankind had essentially destroyed themselves!

Animals, though not implicated in man’s moral corruption, were also to suffer the consequences.

It should clearly be noted that man was to be destroyed with the earth – not from the earth, as purveyors of the Local Flood Theory would have us believe. The Hebrew preposition reads, / ayth / together with.

The entire context of the Genesis-account militates against the flood [/ mab-bool’ / deluge] being a localised phenomenon. Peter, in his second epistle, testifies [3:6] to its global scope.