Parashat Vayechi 5766/2006
EJD
The weekly reading for the week of 14 Tevet, 5766 - January 14, 2006 Parashah: Vayechi Genesis 47:28 to 50:26; Haftarah: 1 Kings 2:1-12; Mei Kituvim: 1 Chronicles 5:1-26; Brit Chadashah: Luke 24:36-53
Parashah Lite Edition (Focuses on one verse or idea anywhere in the readings)
The Bagel: No coffins in heaven.
"So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt" (Genesis 50:26 ESV).
The best thing about heaven is that it is a place where there are no coffins. Death is foreign to heaven. Life is there. When the future down here seems so uncertain and it gets to the place of death, then coffins happen. But the coffin is just a decay box. It is a dignified way of letting the body turn back into dust. But that is not the person. The soul/spirit is either in heaven or gehenna. One day that body, which has decomposed and maybe even has been dispersed among the elements will be resurrected. The person will be whole again. So many forms of holistic/wholistic teaching leave out the most important wholism of all - the future resurrection. This is the ultimate cure for all the ills and pains of life.
Mind you, the destiny of the soul is determined by faith or the lack of it in G-d's provision of a permanent atonement for sin in the death of Yeshua on the cross. Without receiving Him, there is no other way. He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven to vouchsafe for us that eternal life. He is the reason there are no coffins in heaven.
Cream Cheese: It's not the coffin they carry you off in, but the cross that carries off your sin.
Unless noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
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