{"id":44277,"date":"2022-02-07T00:01:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T06:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=44277"},"modified":"2022-02-07T00:21:59","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T06:21:59","slug":"do-you-knock-at-the-gates-of-the-grave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=44277","title":{"rendered":"Do You Knock at the Gates of the Grave?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There is a sense in which we are less familiar with death than our forebears, more insulated from its horrors. Of course the death rate in the twenty-first century is identical to every century before and every century to come\u2014\u201cit is appointed for [each and every] man to die once, and after that comes judgment.\u201d So perhaps it is better to say we are less familiar with what we consider <em>premature<\/em> death\u2014the death of infants, children, and young adults.<\/p>\n<p>Because we are less familiar with death, we tend to prepare less for its inevitable encroachment. With the average lifespan now extending well past the promised threescore and ten, it is easy enough to set death alongside retirement, pensions, and inheritances as matters that should concern us sometime in the future, but certainly not right now.<\/p>\n<p>But it was not always so and there are lessons we can and should learn from previous generations of Christians, for they had a heightened understanding of the importance of being ready. They had to. Like first responders, they had to be in a state of constant preparation, ready to be deployed at a moment\u2019s notice. Like servants, they had to be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a sense in which we are less familiar with death than our forebears, more insulated from its horrors. Of course the death rate in the twenty-first century is identical to every century before and every century to come\u2014\u201cit is appointed for [each and every] man to die once, and after that comes judgment.\u201d So perhaps it is better to say we are less familiar with what we consider premature death\u2014the death of infants, children, and young adults. Because \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":44280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[303,685,96],"class_list":["post-44277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-articles","tag-death","tag-sanctification","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/shutterstock_1733822777-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44277"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44282,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44277\/revisions\/44282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}