Abraham & Virginia Manzo (Friend)
Entered
August 8, 2024
from Brampton
To Dr. Jeffrey, the Pereira Family & loved ones,
Accept our heartfelt condolences and our prayers that God's comfort be upon the whole family upon the 'going home' of your father Dr. Sydney to be with the Lord.
Let us rejoice in the fact that each time a BELIEVER dies, Christ’s prayer in John 17:24 is answered. This is His special petition to God our Heavenly Father in His great High Priestly prayer: “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world…”
Just want to share this comfort message from God's Word in this difficult and sad moment of your lives upon the 'going home' of Dr. Sydney. In 2 Cor. 5:1-8 we read: "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has given us the Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord."
When a Christian leaves his body, it brings about a condition called death; BUT it is death for the body, NEVER FOR THE SOUL.
Death does not destroy the inhabitant of the body, it just takes down the house, the tent, the dwelling place in which the person lived.
God put soul and body together in the first place. Eventually He will do it again, and the Christian will then be the WHOLE individual God desired and designed in the beginning.
When Christians are absent from their bodies, according to the passage above in vs. 8, they are with the Lord. The process called DEATH has SEPARATED SOUL & BODY, and though the body remains with us, the SOUL RETURNS immediately to the Lord. WHAT A HAPPY THOUGHT! Death is a release to the soul: it is removed from a tired, worn, and wrinkled body to be really free of all that which has been of the flesh.
AND DEATH IS IN REALITY A GIFT. Because in DEATH, God is 'stripping me of everything to GIVE me EVERYTHING!' For the Christian, death does not extinguish the light. It puts out the lamp because the dawn has come. The Christian does not consider death to be the end of his life, but the end of his troubles.
Our God is a God of all Comfort. Nothing comforts like the comfort we find in God’s word.
In His love,
Abraham & Virginia Manzo
