Morgue Doctrines

And Moses said unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and unto Ithamar, his sons, Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the people: but let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the LORD hath kindled. And ye shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: for the anointing oil of the LORD is upon you. And they did according to the word of Moses. (Leviticus 10: 6, 7)

I posted on Facebook about our country being a humongous morgue due to my observations after the death of a politician.

Incidentally, there was no difference between believers and non believers in their response.

Imagine Christian stations blocking the Gospel to broadcast a burial!

And it is the burial of someone who for the longest time has been openly against believers and their practices, especially prayer.

That is the reason I am convinced we are a dead church.

The only reason a Gospel show can be stopped is because there is a higher Gospel cause being pursued.

That is why I want us to get the message from the Old Testament.

Aaron had lost his two eldest sons, probably because they became overexcited after being commissioned as priests.

We know that it is God who struck them.

Their father and younger brothers saw it when it happened.

Was there trauma? Was there shock?

I am sure there were.

But look at what God says.

You belong to Me. The dead belong to the community.

Let the community mourn and bury them.

You may remember that they were not even allowed to touch their dead bodies.

In our language, they were denied the chance to pay their last respects. And it is God who did the denying.

Where am I taking us? You may be wondering.

Jesus said that it is the responsibility of the dead to bury their own dead.

God’s assignment nullifies everything else, even responsibility to family and friends.

Remember the reason Christ gave for letting the dead to bury their own dead?

Ther was a ministry to be done; that of preaching about the kingdom of God.

And this guy was being denied the responsibility of burying his father, to say the least.

You see, the Gospel takes precedence over any other responsibility as Aaron learnt painfully.

Remember the same happened to Ezekiel when God told him that He was going to take his wife (darling wife is close to what God called her) because there was a message to be shared

We love boasting that we are priests because of what Christ did.

Do we care to know the priestly responsibilities and caveats?

Priests did not deal with death, whether human or animal.

Celebrating death as we like to say nowadays is as unpriestly as a Jew eating pork.

The only time a priest was allowed to participate in death is when it involved his very immediate family. And even then his married sisters were not part of that family involvement. Even a divorced sister was outside that circle unless she did not have any children.

And there were times as we have seen with Aaron that even that was denied.

That is how stringent God was to the priests, among other rules.

Even Jesus, our High Priest, was not involved with death and funerals. The only two times we see Him involved is breaking them up by raising those dead. And I wouldn’t mind if we attended funerals for that purpose.

Christ never talked about any ministry to the dead. And nowhere in the scriptures do we see such ministry.

Our ministry is to the living, preferably after the dead have done their burying.