Highly educated, well-known in his home country (England), and financially secure, Bryan Magee had been a writer, a member of Parliament, a radio personality, and more. He had enjoyed, he said “good health, energy, an adventurous life, rewarding friendships.”1 Bryan Magee had it made—and knew it too.
But then something shattered it all. It was nothing outwardly traumatic, such as a debilitating disease, financial ruin, public scandal, or mental illness. No, it was much less dramatic, rather pedestrian actually. He said that it hit him, in his mid-thirties, that one day he was going to die.
Well, duh. But as a philosopher, and as a logical thinker, Bryan Magee grasped what this meant. Talking about people who went about their days laughing, working, keeping busy, he wondered, “How can they?” because he knew (and they knew too) that before long “every one of them will be dead, either a heap of grey ash in an urn or a corpse rotting underground.”2 He struggled, greatly, with what death meant for his own life when, because of death (his and everyone else’s), all memories of him, and any deed that he ever accomplished, would “be swallowed up by an everlasting void.”3
Magee then spent years studying philosophy, art, music, and literature—all in a search for life’s meaning in the face of death.
To find meaning amid death is fine, but some want more, much more. Time magazine ran an article “The Man Who Thinks He Can Live Forever,”4 about a rich Californian, Bryan Johnson, who—through a rigid medical regimen (which includes wearing a baseball cap that shoots red light into his head)—believes that he can, well, live forever. Some have sought hope in cryonics, in which, at death, their bodies are immediately placed in vats of frozen nitrogen, anticipating that future technology will revive them—perhaps forever. Others have, at death, only their heads placed in frozen nitrogen, believing that at some point their neural connections could be uploaded to a computer and they could live forever as well (or at least as long as the hardware works).
Does anyone, though, seriously think that Bryan Johnson, with his red-light baseball cap, is going to beat death, or that someone’s brain will, really, be thawed and then uploaded to a computer? These endeavors are not only ludicrous; they are unnecessary because, 2,000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. And the great news of the gospel is that because Jesus rose from the dead, we can too.
Yes, death takes a big toll on all of us now, but through Jesus’ resurrection we are promised eternal life (and we don’t need vats of liquid nitrogen in vain hope of getting it, either). Because of Jesus, eternal life is guaranteed to all who claim it by faith, a gift from a loving God who never intended for us to die in the first place.
the intruder
It is often said that “death is just part of life.” Wrong—dead wrong. Death is the opposite of life, the end of life, the undoing of life. We’re just so used to death that we (in a macabre sort of way) take it for granted.
We shouldn’t. The Bible deems death as an intruder, an enemy to be vanquished, which is why Paul wrote that the “last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26, NKJV). In Eden, humanity could eat from the “tree of life” (Genesis 2:9). But after Adam and Eve sinned, they were denied access to that tree, which would have given them the eternal existence that God had originally planned for humanity to have. “The LORD God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever’ ” (Genesis 3:22, NIV5).
Contrary to the claims of evolutionary theory, in which sickness, disease, suffering, and death, lots of death, were the very means of creating life, especially human life, death was never supposed to have been here from the start. But, as we all know too well, it is here—and as real as life itself.
However, rather than leave us without hope in the face of sin and death, God, in eternity past, instituted the plan of salvation. “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” (Ephesians 1:4, 5, NIV; see also 2 Timothy 1:9 and Titus 1:2). And His “pleasure and will” is to give us the promise of “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23, NIV).
And central to this promise were two things: first, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, where He paid the penalty for sin, our sin, which had brought death to begin with; and, second, His resurrection from that death, because in Jesus’ resurrection we have the promise of our own.
the promise
Talking specifically about His own upcoming resurrection, “Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Matthew 16:21, NIV; see also Mark 9:31).
Paul also wrote: “Because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence” (2 Corinthians 4:14, NIV).
In another place, Jesus is even more explicit about what His death and resurrection would mean: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25, 26).
Of course, as Jesus said, people die—in that they fall asleep in death—for the Bible talks about death as a sleep (Daniel 12:2; 1 Kings 2:10; Mark 5:39). But then, because of Jesus’ resurrection, they will be raised to life. In fact, as far as the dead themselves are concerned, they close their eyes and the next thing they know is eternal life at Jesus’ return. Asleep in the grave, as ashes in an urn, or even spread over the sea, the dead experience death only as a moment of silent darkness. And then: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thessalonian 4:16).
evidence for the Resurrection
With so much riding on the resurrection of Jesus, shouldn’t we have been given good evidence for it? Yes—and we have. Just one example: after talking about Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostle Paul wrote that Jesus “appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born” (1 Corinthians 15:6–8, NIV). Paul is basically saying, Don’t take just my word for it—about 500 others saw Him as well, many of whom are still alive. So go ask them.
Meanwhile, God alone knows how many who professed to see Him alive died for that belief too. But so what? People have died for lies throughout history. Many still do. The madmen on 9/11 died for lies. But this situation is different. It’s one thing to die for a lie that you sincerely believe is true, but to die for a lie that you know is a lie? One could imagine some deceived soul dying over belief that Frankenstein was a true story; but who could imagine the book’s author, Mary Shelley, dying for a story that she made up to begin with?
And not only did those who claimed to have seen Jesus resurrected suffer for that belief; they allowed others, even loved ones, to suffer for it too. That makes no sense. The only thing that makes sense is that, yes, they saw the resurrected Christ, and they dedicated their lives to telling others about Him as well, regardless of the cost.
what the stars say
If one believes in the Creator God, who made the world and the natural laws that govern it, then miracles such as the resurrection of Jesus should not be hard to believe. This Creator simply, at times, operates outside His natural laws—like a musician who, though usually working off a score, occasionally deviates from it. OK, God raising Jesus, one man, from death, was a miracle. Fine. But are we supposed to believe that God is going to raise millions of dead, some eaten by sharks or burned at the stake centuries ago?
Why not? The James Webb Space Telescope reveals a universe with roughly two trillion galaxies, each containing about 100 billion stars each. The God who created such grandeur certainly has the power to raise the dead. That God created and now upholds the cosmos doesn’t prove that He will raise the dead—it shows only that He can. And He will, just as He raised Jesus.
Bryan Magee, who died in 2019, and who (as far we know) never believed in Jesus, also never came to any answer to the meaning of a life that always ended in death. No wonder. Studying art, philosophy, and music doesn’t solve the dilemma of death any better than vats of liquid nitrogen or red-light helmets will.
Only Jesus can—and did. And that is because, in His resurrection, we have the surety and God-given promise of our own.
Clifford Goldstein writes from Tennessee and is a frequent contributor to Signs of the Times®.
1. Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher (Random House, 1997), 228.
