Last week 26 international leaders gathered in Beijing. While they were together, they watched a massive military parade in Tiananmen Square which show-cased China’s growing military power. As Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were walking to the viewing platform their conversation was picked up on a live video feed. All three men have great power in their respective countries. Xi and Putin are both 72. Xi said, “Now people in their 70s are still young. In the past, people rarely lived beyond 70. Putin replied, “In a few years, with the development of biotechnology, human organs can be constantly transplanted so that people can live younger and younger, and even become immortal.” Xi said, “The prediction is that in this century humans may live to 150 years old.”
Moses lived more than 3000 years ago. In Psalm 90 he wrote, “Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away. Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.” Today average life expectancy in the affluent West is approximately 79 years for men and 83 for women. So, in the past 3000 years, although many people live longer, the maximum life expectancy has not changed.
The Bible teaches that death is the consequence of the disobedience of our first parents. God gave Adam and Eve both bodies and eternal souls. Their enjoyment of eternal life depended on them obeying God’s commands, but they disobeyed God. Their disobedience had consequences for the whole human race. The Apostle Paul wrote, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.”
The Greek King Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, charged one of his slaves to wake him each morning with the words, “Philip, remember, you must die.” It is wise for us all whether we are ordinary people or powerful kings and presidents to remember our mortality. Jesus Christ came into the world so that through God’s grace and love we might receive eternal life. Jesus said, “For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will. It is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life and I will raise them up at the last day.”