Sangeetha, Reuben and I were fortunate to see the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead”, which was on exhibition at the British Museum. The book of the dead wass displayed in seven sections to depict the journey that the person takes when they die. These include:
1. Preparation for the afterlife
2. The day of burial
3. The mummy in the tomb
4. Empowering the dead
5. Avoiding the disaster
6. Judgment and
7. The perfect afterlife
According to the ancient Egyptians, when a person died, they went on a journey through the world of the dead or ‘the netherworld’. So they put in the tomb a papyrus roll with written spells and pictures which was known as the Book of the Dead. They believed that the specialist knowledge and magical power contained in these texts would assure them of a safe journey to the perfect afterlife through the landscape (rivers, mountains and caves) and many guarded gates.
Unlike the Book of the Dead belief, the Bible teaches us that the safe journey to the perfect afterlife, which is to be in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, does not begin as a journey after the death of a person, but while he or she is alive. And instead of navigating through a netherworld using spells and texts, all one needs to do is to pass through THE DOOR (gate), Jesus Christ by faith and believing in Him to attain a safe journey to THE PERFECT AFTERLIFE.
Have you believed in Jesus Christ; THE DOOR? The journey is not later, but now. Where are/am you/I on that journey?
Hebrews 11:9-10 (KJV)
9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
John 10:9 (KJV)
9 I [Jesus] am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
