Your Chances Of Dying

Your Chances Of Dying

“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:7-8 KJV

The odds of your dying from any cause is 1 in 1. In other words, by human reckoning you will have a 100% chance of dying in your lifetime. What you die of can be broken down into many categories. The top three in the USA, according to the August ’06 issue of National Geographic, are:

heart disease – 1 in 5, cancer – 1 in 7, stroke – 1 in 24.

Surprisingly, suicide is in fifth place, with a likelihood of 1 in 119. Some low ones listed were from lightning – 1 in 79,746, and fireworks discharge – 1 in 340,733.

What is conspicuous by its absence is any statistic showing the number of people who died saving other people. While we are usually concerned more with our own death than that of others, God shows His love for us in Christ, who died for His enemies to save us from that second death, the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). In fact, His word declares that “our Savior Jesus Christ ... hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10).

God also promises that “the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1Th. 4:16). So it seems our chances of dying aren’t 100% after all!

By Tom Steere