We’re all leaving this planet through death’s door. We were born, and we will surely die. It’s a rule! There’s a one hundred percent death rate! No exceptions!
Or should I say… almost no exceptions…
Enoch was an exception. “Enoch walked with God; then he was not there because God took him” (Genesis 5:24). How did God take him? No one knows. We only know that Enoch didn’t die but was lifted out of this world to join God in Heaven. “God took him.”
The only other exception is Elijah.
Elijah’s story includes an exciting final chapter. As Elijah and Elisha walked side-by-side down a dusty road on the east side of the Jordan River, something other-worldly happened.
The old prophet and his young companion were suddenly separated. Like a bolt of lightning on a sunny day, “a chariot of fire with horses of fire suddenly appeared” (2 Kings 2:11). The heavenly transport dashed between the two men, snatching Elijah and leaving Elisha alone and astonished … dumbfounded. As “Elisha watched, he kept crying out, ‘My father, my father, the chariots and horsemen of Israel!’ ” (2 Kings 2:12).
Imagine what you might have thought…
There’s going to be another exception! I think it’s quite possible that born-again Christians living today might not die. Like Enoch and Elijah, we might get to Heaven without tasting death.
God’s Holy Word promises: “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are still alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17).
Ready for a chariot ride?
“… think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, KJV).
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