However good the worldly man imagines his life to be, it is a life which can only get worse and worse. Good health cannot last forever. The appetites will decline with age. The inevitable process of physical deterioration must rob the man of the world of at least half the quality of his life, as he once knew it in his youth. If his life is long it is also clouded with cares for his own health and that of others in his circle who are ageing with him. However much he consoles himself with memories of the past, he cannot now entirely shake off the regret which hangs over them that they are past joys which will not return.

Try as he may to find some hope with the help of friends, and even the clergyman of his parish, he knows that death is coming towards him as the grim reaper whose advance no power can halt. He may convince himself at times that 'death is not a thing to be feared'. But in his more realistic moments he knows that death will carry him away from all that he has ever known or experienced so far. He cannot pretend the change is either welcome or friendly.

Without a Bible to guide him he gropes his way as best he can, moving in the dark and edging every day closer to the darkness which is total and eternal. His friends, and even his minister, either do not or cannot tell him, that the Christless man is lost already in this life and is hastening with every passing hour, alas!, to a state of inconceivable misery and curse. This is the end of the ungodly man's life and, however much men scoff at hell, they cannot present one shred of proof to show that it is a false representation, or that the worldly man will not go there after death.

The death of a graceless man is an event of such tragic proportions that no words of man or angel could exaggerate its misery. Who, after all, can tell us here on earth what it means to lose one's soul (Mark 8:36)? Who can tell us what it means for a lost sinner to enter into the place where now he must pay for all his sins and yet have nothing with which to pay but an endless agony of tears? Let a man meet an angry lion rather than an angry God. But, if words mean what they say, the Bible makes it clear that the unconverted sinner, at his death, must enter into this worst of all possible states – that of 'eternal punishment' (Matt. 25:46).

Scarcely any mockery on earth is so great as that to be witnessed at some funerals of worldly persons. The greatest guilt for these is that of the officiating minister. The prayer is a eulogy of the deceased man or woman. The sermon is a rehearsal of the Judgment Day, in which the clergyman takes upon him the role of one who has power to declare that 'this our beloved brother/sister is now at peace'. Let the departed man be never so much a man of the world, the minister will 'put him into heaven'. Let a man be a heavy drinker, an atheist, a gambler, a lover of coarse pleasures, an unrepentant idolater – he is certain to be translated to glory at his funeral service by the pious prayers and laudations of some preachers. Well has it been said, if you want to hear a minister telling lies, go to a funeral service.

Where a man has lived a godly life, let this be stated at his funeral and let all who love his memory be assured that he is now indeed 'at rest'. But if there was no godly life, no faith in Christ, no final repentance, let nothing be said. A wise silence concerning the dead may convey a powerful message to the living who are still foolish. The funeral service is an occasion when the preacher should remind worldly people of their own need to prepare to meet God. At funerals we never affirm that a soul has gone to hell; but we must not state that a soul has gone to heaven if there was no evidence of grace, not even a little, in their life-time.

The only rest into which a Christless man enters at death is the fictitious rest invented by ignorant or cowardly clergymen who cannot, or dare not, confine their references about the recently deceased to what scripture light sanctions and allows. Those who live for this world and then at their last end employ at their funerals ministers who put them easily to heaven no doubt have their reward. They are at least in the minds of mourning relatives and friends, now decently buried and clerically qualified for the happy life of heaven. The funeral service over, the mourners retire from the grave-side to the warmth of an hotel and so back to the same worldly life as before. They are unwarned, uninstructed, unprepared for their own last end. All the tearful relatives part with a handshake and a kiss till the next family funeral. The overwhelmingly great and universal impression from the day's proceedings is that all go to heaven when they die and all are at rest.

There is more bad theology conveyed by such atrocious funeral services than many suppose. The implied false doctrines deserve to be listed for posterity: 'God pardons all men's sins regardless of the state of their souls'. 'Christ's death avails for those who never in this life believe in him'. 'All men are happy after death'. 'God does not care how we live on earth'. 'Courtesy to the bereaved means that we must not tell the truth about life after death'. 'It is better to let the ignorant go on in their ignorance than to upset them with any fear as to the future life'. 'A minister and a church-funeral put everything right in the end'. Far different is the death of the man who truly believes in Christ. Of him it is written that he shall 'rest from his labours' (Rev. 14:13). This man's rest is not imagined but real. His body, still united to Christ, rests in the grave or in a bed. His soul enters into the sublime rest of victory over all life's trials and troubles. 'He shall enter into peace' (Isa. 57:2). 'The end of that man is peace' (Ps. 37:37).

None but those who have experienced it can tell how sweet the feeling must be of having just entered into the saint's everlasting rest. Shall we speak of the bliss of looking up into the radiant face of a Saviour whom we have sought to serve a little here on earth and of receiving from his lips an affectionate 'Well done!'? Shall we refer to the immediate presence of the Triune God, that ultimate, transcendental Mystery whom all heaven shall eternally adore? Shall we mention the innumerable spirits of just men now 'made perfect' (Heb. 12:23) who are to be our companions and our fellow-servants forever?

O the rest which God's people shall have when they are, one by one, called to 'come up higher' (Luke 14:10), to leave this lower theatre of war and to take their places with God's blessed dead on high! Here, all is watching, waiting, praying, fasting, hoping. But there, in Christ's near presence, all is to be resting, enjoying, adoring, feeling, partaking, drinking from the Fountain of life, which is Christ himself.

A great part of a Christian's life here below is to be on the outside of this world's 'good things'. The believer is excluded from so much that the world provides of pleasure and happiness. The polluted joys of sinners are no fit entertainment for Christ's people. We dare not sit down to their tempting morsels, nor sing their bawdy songs, nor dance to their tunes, nor clap at their jokes. The worldly man's laughter is like the 'crackling of thorns under a pot' (Eccles. 7:6). Half the places on earth are no-go areas for God's people. We go through those doors at our peril. The price of entry is death to the soul. Those professing Christians who are so unwise as to venture in will not come out again without sorrow and loss. Remember Samson and be warned!

But when the saint reaches his rest he will be welcome to enter where he may. No room in the saint's house-of-rest above has any lewdness or poison of sin in it. It is all holy, all innocent, all edifying, all sanctified, all glorious. The whole is luminous with the presence of God and of the Lamb. It is, in every part of it, his 'Father's house' (John 14:2) because it is Christ's 'Father's house'.

The Christian life can only get better and better. On earth it is good; after death to be with Christ is 'far better' (Phil. 1:23); after the resurrection of the last day it will be best of all. The saint's rest in death is not the end of his reward but only the first part of it. It is to be augmented still further when Christ bids the archangel to blow the last blast on his trumpet (1 Thess. 4:16; 1 Cor. 15:52).

The rest of God's people in death is the prelude to their full, total and consummated joy when they receive their bodies back from the cold grave and wear them in their newly beautified condition, freshly brought up by Christ from the dust of death, all lustrous with sinlessness and bright glory. As surely as Christ rose from the grave, so certainly will he raise his own believing people up and marry them to himself forever: 'Thy Maker is thy husband' (Isa. 54:5).

Already two thousand years of time have passed. Time is hurrying on till 'time shall be no longer' (Rev. 10:6). The saint's rest is nearer today than ever it was – not the sleep of death only but the eternal state. Who knows but that even now the archangel is preparing to sound his trumpet? Happy and blessed are those who are then found doing 'their Master's will faithfully'. He himself 'will come forth and serve them' (Luke 12:47).