Background on Cemeteries

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The Tombs of Notable People

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 53:10-11, Jonah 1:17, Matthew 28:5-6, John 20:1-7, Psalm 16:10

The pyramids of Egypt are renowned because they contained the mummified bodies of ancient Egyptian Pharaohs. Westminster Abbey in London is famous because it holds the remains of many English notables...

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What You’re Missing

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

James “Jim” Moore owned a famous midtown (New York City) eatery that was known as “Dinty Moore’s.” The restaurant attracted a lot of actors from the theater industry due to the quality of its food and...

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Benjamin Franklin’s Epitaph

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Job 19:25-27, Isaiah 40:31, Ezekiel 37:4-5, 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, Psalm 16:10-11, Romans 14:8, Ecclesiastes 12:7, Matthew 10:28, John 11:25-26

Benjamin Franklin, an avid lover of books, penned an epitaph for himself that he hoped would one day mark his grave: The body of Benjamin Franklin, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn...

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The Christian Symbols of the Early Church

Author

Philip Schaff

Keywords

Scripture

Revelation 7:17, Luke 15:1-7, John 10:1-18, Psalm 23:1-3, Matthew 4:19, John 15:5, John 10:11

At the same time Church historian Philip Schaff was writing his 8-volume history of the Church, the Roman catacombs were being discovered. Schaff had this to say about symbols Christians used to adorn...

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The Dash

Author

Jon Tyson

Keywords

Legacy

On a warm summer night, I drove my son to a local cemetery. It was a Moravian cemetery that sits nestled on a hill overlooking a flowing creek. My son, a typical teenager in many ways—Xbox, iPhone, ho...

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Death in the Cul-de-Sac

Author

Gary A. Haugen

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 11:1-9, Isaiah 30:1-5 , Proverbs 14:12, Matthew 7:24-27, James 4:13-17, Psalm 127:1-2

Take the cul-de-sac, for example, which is my metaphor for the world of suburban monotony and triviality that so many Western Christians find themselves trapped in. The literal cul-de-sac (i.e., a dea...

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An Unforgettable Funeral

Author

Tony Campolo

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 16:26, Luke 12:16-21, Ecclesiastes 5:10-15, Matthew 6:19-21, Luke 12:15, 1 Timothy 6:7, Mark 10:24-25

I heard of a funeral in California where a man requested to be buried seated behind the wheel of a brand new Cadillac, dressed in a tuxedo, with a two-dollar cigar in his mouth. He left the money to i...

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Moving the Fence

Author

Mike Yaconelli

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 19:1-10, Galatians 3:28, Romans 3:22-24, Ephesians 2:14, Acts 10:9-48, Luke 10:25-37, John 4:4-26

In the Second World War, a group of soldiers were fighting in the rural countryside of France. During an intense battle, one of the American soldiers was killed. His comrades did not want to leave his...

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The Place of the Dead

Author

Matthew Y. Emerson

Keywords

When the New Testament speaks about “the dead,” it has a specific background, one that affirms “the [place of the] dead” as a location containing the disembodied souls of both the righteous and unrigh...

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Hallowed Ground

Author

Kevin DeYoung

Keywords

Holiness

When someone or something is holy it is set apart. In the Gettysburg Address (1863), Abraham Lincoln declared the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania to be “hallowed ground.” Because of the momentou...

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Just a stain in the soil

Author

William Rowley

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 3:20, Genesis 18:27, James 4:14, Psalm 90:12, Psalm 39:4, 1 Peter 2:24-25, Psalm 90:10, Psalm 78:39, 1 Chronicles 29:15, Psalm 39:5, Psalm 144:4, Job 14:1, Psalm 103:15-16, Job 7:6-7, Genesis 2:7

I love a British TV show called Time Team. Hosted by Tony Robinson, a team of archeologists descend on a site in Britain and excavate for three days. Inevitably, the archeologists unearth the dead...

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Buried in the Holy Land?

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

A man went on vacation to the Holy Land with his wife and her mother. While in Israel, the mother-in-law died from a heart attack. The couple went to a local undertaker, who explained that they could ...

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The End of Human History

Author

G. K. Chesterton

Keywords

Jesus

Scripture

Matthew 27:57-60, John 19:41-42, Luke 23:50-56, Romans 6:4, Colossians 2:14-15, Isaiah 53:9-11, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden the Romans setting a military guard lest there...

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Surprise Me!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

* This story is likely untrue, but a funny anecdote nonetheless It’s difficult sometimes to think we won’t live forever. A wealthy man who had made his fortune and spent many years in New York p...

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The Church's Funeral

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 12:12-27, Ephesians 4:15-16, Revelation 3:1-3, James 2:17, Matthew 16:18, Hebrews 10:24-25, 1 Peter 2:4-5, Romans 12:4-5, Acts 2:42-47, 1 Corinthians 3:9

The story goes about a young man (or woman!) with dreams of growing a small church nestled in rural Oklahoma. Despite his relentless efforts, the church continued to teeter on the edge of extinction a...

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A Phone Line to the Grave

Author

Lee Strobel

Keywords

I hate to admit it, but there is actually a minister in a city in America who has a phone line connected from his wife’s grave to his office because before she died, they had agreed that if she was pr...

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Rather Be in the Casket

Author

Jerry Seinfeld

Keywords

I saw a study that said, the number one fear of the average person is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two! How in the world is that? That means to most people, if you have to go ...

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End of Construction, Thank you for your Patience

Author

Billy Graham

Keywords

My wife, Ruth…was one of those who could lighten heavy hearts, especially mine. I will never forget when she announced what she wanted engraved on her gravestone, and for those who have so respectfull...

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All the Succession of Time

Author

Jeremy Taylor

Keywords

All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every one, preaches our funer...

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Holding on to Earth

Author

John Shea

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 19:29, Revelation 21:1-2, 1 Corinthians 2:9, Hebrews 11:16, Philippians 3:20, John 14:2-3, Matthew 6:19-21

There once lived a peasant in Crete who deeply loved his life. He enjoyed tilling the soil, feeling the warm sun on his naked back as he worked the fields, and feeling the soil under his feet. He love...

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Hell in the Bible

Author

Matthew Y. Emerson

Keywords

Hell

First, Sheol in the Old Testament and Hades in the LXX and in Greco-Roman thought can be used to refer to both a general place for all the dead as well as a place of torment or consignment for the unr...

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The Great, Perfect Box

Author

Jerry Seinfeld

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 3:1-2, James 4:13-14, Job 14:1-2, 2 Corinthians 5:1, Philippians 3:13-14, Psalm 90:12

To me, if life boils down to one significant thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving. Unfortunately, this means that for the rest of our lives we’re going to be looking for boxes. When you’re ...

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Communism Had Nothing to Say about Death

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 2:14-16, Isaiah 25:6-9, Ezekiel 37:1-10 , Psalm 49:12-15, John 11:25-26, 1 Corinthians 15:54-57

During the second world war, [the British statesman] Sir John Laurence attended what he describes as “a sort of Communist memorial service” to " Stanislavsky (the seminal Soviet Theatre pr...

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Throwing Away Valuable Resources

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 42:, Philippians 3:13-14, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 11:24-30

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

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The Legacies of William Borden and King Tut

Author

Randy Alcorn

Keywords

Legacy

The streets of Cairo were hot and dusty. Our missionary friends Pat and Rakel Thurman took us down an alley. We drove past Arabic signs to an overgrown graveyard for American missionaries. As Nanci an...

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You’ve Brought Pavement?

Author

Ben Witherington III

Keywords

Perhaps you’ve heard the humorous story about a man who was about to die so he liquidated all his assets, turning them into gold bricks. He required his family to pack the bricks in two suitcases and ...

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Hell and Gehenna

Author

Matt Chandler

Keywords

Hell

The word Gehenna is used by Jesus twelve times in the four Gospels. God’s first response to the belittlement of his name is this Greek word Gehenna, which we would translate “hell.” The interesting th...

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Stay Out of Those!

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

A very old man lay dying in his bed. In death’s doorway, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookie wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himsel...

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Scripture Grounds our Story in Place

Author

Eric O. Jacobsen

Keywords

Our Scriptures that bring us the story of our salvation ground us in place. Everywhere they insist on this grounding. Everything that is critically important to us takes place on the ground. Mountains...

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Home: A Desire for Permanence

Author

Jen Pollock Michel

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 10:23, James 1:9-12, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Jeremiah 17:7-8, Colossians 2:6-7

Before Seattle resident Edith Macefield died at age eighty-six in 2008, she refused to sell her house to developers for the $1 million they had purportedly offered. Macefield wanted to die at home. Se...

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