Scriptural Examples of the Death Route

SCRIPTURAL EXAMPLE OF THE DEATH-ROUTE

Dead men are worth their weight in gold! The Scriptures abound with examples of great souls of the past who took the "death-route" to their complete subjugation, and the total enthronement of God in their lives.

Job, of old, had a death-to-self experience with God. He declared: "Though he [God] slay me, yet will I trust him" (Job 13:15). Job had just lost his health and all of his enormous wealth. He also lost his ten children. He had just dug ten new graves and held a multiple funeral. If he had not been dead to his family, his possessions, his health and even to life itself, as well as the hard-to-understand providence of God, he would never have so triumphantly manifested such a courageous spirit in the midst of such soul-rending grief. Weaker souls by the multitudes followed their wives' or their husbands' advice and cursed God and died (Job 2:9).

When God told Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering, he was talking to a dead man. If the old carnal Abram of the past had been yet alive, he would have balked. He might have asked Sarah about it, and she might have talked him out of it. Abraham was three days and three nights on that journey to Mt. Moriah to offer Isaac. He had ample time to think it over and back out, but he was resolute. Abraham had not always been so completely dead to self. He had fumbled and "blew it" enough times, but by this time he had gotten settled and God could trust him.

Hardly will one find more profound words outside of the Scriptures than these from the pen of an anonymous poet:

"Thus in Thine Arms of Love, O God, I lie,
Lost, and for ever lost to all but Thee.
My happy soul, since it hath learned to die,
Hath found new life in Thine Infinity."

St. Paul was a dead man -- dead, dead, dead! He was dead when his dearest friends wept and clung to him, begging him not to go up to Jerusalem. They knew that he would be imprisoned and possibly murdered, and they would never see his face again in this world. He responded with words that have echoed and re-echoed across the intervening centuries: "What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 21:13).

Stephen was a dead man when he preached that memorable sermon recorded in Acts, chapter seven, and paid for it with his life. He was dead long before they killed him. He had experienced his own personal crucifixion, and he was filled with the Holy Ghost and faith (Acts 6:5).

Back in the Old Testament era again: Daniel was a dead man. So were the three Hebrew children who would not worship the king's image (Daniel 3:16-18).

Jonah was not a dead man. He did finally obey God, but it took three days in the stomach of the fish, with the certainty that he had better come to terms with God or he would never get out of that prison. Even after he so reluctantly obeyed, things didn't turn out as he desired, so he had a carnal spell, and pouted, and said he didn't want to live any longer (4:1-3). The carnal nature is so hateful! No wonder Martin Luther said, "I fear the pope of self more than the Pope of Rome."

Neither was Balaam a dead man; nor was Demas, nor King Saul, nor millions of others like them. "Remember," said G. D. Watson, "Conversion is a birth and sanctification is a death." [10] The old carnal self must die! Death to self is the only way one can come fully alive unto God. Preach it, brethren, preach it, preach it, preach it! None of us is worth a wooden nickel for God until we are dead -- dead -- dead! Dead men and dead women are the only people God can count on.

"Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all!"