Tired of seeing professional athletes bowing the knee or pointing to the heavens in a spontaneous display of faith? I hope you’ll reconsider – because the Lord can use even the most fleeting testimonies in a powerful way, as my experience demonstrates.

As I reported in Heaven Without Her, it happened in the wake of my newfound love affair with pro football, and my hometown Green Bay Packers:

“In truth, it was this obsession as much as my mom’s faith that would eventually point me to Christianity. 

“That’s because, in 1993, the Packers lured Reggie White away from the Philadelphia Eagles – the Reverend Reggie White, the Minister of Defense, the all-pro defensive end and the heart and soul of the Packers through the ’98 season. He was an awesome player – the kind of player who could take over a game almost single-handedly, the kind of player whose very presence on our roster attracted other great players, like the Dolphins’ Keith Jackson, the Seahawks’ Eugene Robinson, the Oilers’ Sean Jones and the Bills’ Don Beebe. 

“At first, I just found it curious that Reggie capped every game – win or lose – by leading players from both teams in down-on-your-knees prayer at mid-field. After a season or two, I found this practice very cool; it was so politically incorrect, after all. I watched and admired those who prayed with Reggie. And I found it neat that, instead of making nasty comments about their mothers or sisters or wives, Reggie would growl ‘Jesus is coming’ at opposing offensive linemen.

“But my big Reggie moment -- the moment I’ll never, ever forget -- didn’t happen until Sunday, January 12, 1997. Dave and I were at Lambeau Field for the NFC championship game between the Packers and the Carolina Panthers. It was cold and windy – a typical Wisconsin winter day – but few of us fans cared. With a win, the Packers would go to their first Super Bowl in nearly 30 years. 

“I don’t know when it happened – whether it was during halftime or during a commercial time-out late in the game – but at some point, the Packers’ front office fired up the Jumbotron for something other than a replay. There, materializing in front of my eyes, was a much-larger-than-life Reggie White. I think he was wearing street clothes, and I think he was standing before a stormy background of some kind – others have said that I’m wrong about that, that it was some kind of summer scene. Maybe so, but I remember dark swirling clouds and lightning. 

“Anyway, there was Reggie, singing a haunting tune:

“’Amazing grace! How sweet the sound …’

“I gave him my full attention.

“’That saved a wretch like me!’

“Although those who challenge my visual memory of the occasion also claim that the 60,000+ other people in the stadium sang right along with him, I don’t remember it that way. In fact, all those people just seemed to vanish. It was just Reggie and me, all alone. 

“’I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.’

“Reggie and me and the Holy Spirit, to be more accurate. Although I didn’t know it at the time.

“Surely I had heard that song before, somewhere along the line. It is, after all, one of the most popular hymns in the English language – a hymn written, as it turns out, by slave trader John Newton in 1779 – and surely we’d sung it at my parents’ Congregational church. But it seemed new to me that day. And it took my breath away, for a few moments at least.

“Then it was over. The game resumed, we cheered, and the Packers rolled to an easy 30-13 victory over the Panthers to advance to the Super Bowl. Which we also won, 35-21, thanks in no small part to a heroic performance by Reggie White, who had a record-setting three sacks in the second half.

“After helping to return the Lombardi Trophy to Green Bay and the Title to Titletown, Reggie addressed Packer fans everywhere. ‘I wanted to make sure to honor God,’ he said. ‘A lot of people don’t like that. But I wanted to make sure people knew God had His hand on this team.’

“If that was true, then God enjoyed a lot of victories that season, it would seem; the Packers won all but three games. But as far as I’m concerned, He posted His most impressive win back at Lambeau during the NFC championship game, when He used Reggie White to make this hard-as-a-rock 44-year-old heart sit up and take notice of Him at last.”

(Heaven Without Her, pp 69-71)
​
Originally posted 7/3/14

“The Bible can’t possibly be true,” a skeptical friend insisted back at the turn of the millennium, when I’d just launched my search for ultimate truth. “As if people could ever have lived to be hundreds and hundreds of years old. Ridiculous! Don’t you know that we’re now living far longer than ever before, thanks to evolution and medical science?” 

This woman was right about one thing, it turned out: the Bible does document outrageous lifespans, such as 969 years for Methuselah and 950 for Noah. But everything went rapidly downhill from there, the Bible seems to indicate, presumably because genetic mutations had begun their relentless process of deadly accumulation. 

So who’s right, my friend or the Bible? Is there any evidence that we’re really living longer these days? Or have we actually lost longevity ground over the centuries? Is it possible that evolution isn’t doing anything to extend our lives? That modern medicine is, at best, keeping us in a holding pattern? 

These are significant questions – so significant that I’ve researched the subject now and then over the years. And what do you know: It seems that today’s “ripe old ages” are really nothing new.  

Consider how long these famous people lived:  

• Third Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II, 1303–1213 BC: 90 years
• Spiritual leader Lord Buddha, c. 563–483 BC: 80 years
• Greek philosopher and educator Plato, 424– 348 BC: 76 years
• Early theologian Saint Augustine, 354 –430: 76 years
• King and Emperor Charlemagne, 742-814: 72 years
• France’s first queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 1122-1204: 82 years 
• Italian painter  and sculptor Donatello, 1386-1466: 80 years
• Italian sculptor, painter and architect Michelangelo, 1475 – 1564: 89 years
• Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo, 1564 - 1642: 78 years
• English mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727: 85 years
• French philosopher Voltaire, 1694 – 1778: 84 years
• Samuel Adams, 1722 – 1803: 81 years
• German philosopher Immanuel Kant, 1724 –1804: 80 years
• Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826: 83 years
• Russian author Leo Tolstoy, 1828 – 1910: 82 years 

Interestingly, those who document these vast ages never seem to comment on their subjects’ longevity. How come? If most ancients really dropped like flies in young adulthood, wouldn’t you think someone would exclaim over those who slipped through the early-death cracks?  

Instead, such comments seem to be limited to comparisons of today with the 18th and 19th centuries -- centuries when, we are told, people only lived from 35 to 45 years. The underlying message: Aren’t we children of the 20th and 21st centuries absolutely amazing to have so vastly extended human lifespans? 

But apparently we have not done so. Apparently, like every other historical fact ever uncovered, dates such as those above confirm the biblical record.

Doesn’t this suggest the wisdom of considering what the Bible has to say about what happens after we close the book on our earthly lives?  

Have you ever you ignored a favorite garment’s care instructions?

I’ve done it many times over the decades. Sometimes it works out just fine, saving me a small fortune in dry cleaning fees. But more often than not, the results have been immediate ruin – once-elegant pants reduced to high-waders, sweaters resized for a kindergartener, knits unblocked and misshapen, once-vibrant blouses faded and blotchy.

And then there was my polka-dot Liz Claiborne dress.

I found this dress at a designer discount store back in the day when Liz was high-priced high-fashion. It was a sleek, short-sleeved, cream-colored linen sheath with big black polka dots, and it was my go-to dress whenever I needed to look my tailored best.

Its only flaw was found inside, on the tag proclaiming “DRY CLEAN ONLY!” I couldn’t really afford it, but I loved this dress; and so dry clean it I did, year after expensive year, even as the cost outpaced both inflation and my earnings.  

But one day, riding on my success in hand-washing a couple of dry-clean-only silk blouses, I decided that I’d had enough. Surely my polka-dot dress would thrive in careful hands, oh-so-gentle Woolite, and delicate air-drying on a padded hanger. Surely Liz Claiborne had inserted the alarming “DRY CLEAN ONLY!” warning only as a sop to a faithful fashion-industry colleague. Surely I could get away with breaking this one little rule; it really was too much to ask.

To cut to the chase: I was wrong. My good intentions and careful handling were useless: Every last polka dot bled into the surrounding cream, leaving ugly rivers of black and purple and red. And unlike the original dots, the rivers were apparently permanent; there was no scrubbing them clean.   

The dress was, in short, ruined. And here I am, 20 years later, still mourning its loss.

I did learn one immediate lesson: when something of value is concerned, it’s best to heed its manufacturer’s instructions.

But I only recently realized that this lesson applies equally well to the big picture: If we value our lives, it’s always best to follow our Manufacturer’s care instructions, packaged in one handy volume called the Bible. Some say “Bible” is an acronym for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, with good reason: In its pages, God tells us all we really need to know in fewer words than it took Ayn Rand to define a relatively simple political philosophy.  

Just as with a “dry clean only” tag, we ignore the Bible’s instructions at our own risk. They are the only way to true peace and joy even in the face of the worst calamities imaginable. In fact, this life isn’t meant to work apart from understanding and obeying its instructions.

Even more important, the Bible defines our eternities. It tells us how to be reconciled with our Creator forevermore, and warns us of the dire consequences of dying without having done so.

If you haven’t yet studied God’s care instructions for your life, now would be a very good time to dig in. The consequences of ignoring them are infinitely worse than ruining a favorite dress.

I’m sure a psychiatrist could tell us what it is about fantasy literature that so captivates us as children, and well into adulthood. I’m personally an Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass freak. But there are certainly many other irresistible stories to choose from, from The Wizard of Oz to Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia to The Hobbit.  

There’s no sign of America’s love affair with such stories winding down. Publishers Weekly reports that, in 2014, sales of printed juvenile science fiction/fantasy/magic books grew by an astounding 38% – more than twice what the next most successful genre could muster.  

What gives? Why do we devote so much of our pleasure-reading time to the most unrealistic of genres, especially when we’re young and have an entire world stretched out before us? Is this world not exciting enough for us? 

It’s no surprise that we can find the answers to these questions by consulting the word of God.  

For instance, King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, tells us that our Creator has written eternity in our hearts (see Ecclesiastes 3:11). Deep down inside, we know that this limited life is not all there is; we know that there is more.  

And somehow we know that this more will not be found on the earth we now occupy. As Hebrews 13:14 reminds us, this world is not our permanent home.   

What’s more, the Bible teaches that our lives beyond these earthly senses will, at least for some, represent a vast improvement over the world we see today. For instance, referring to heroes of the faith from Abel, Enoch and Noah to Abraham and Sarah, the writer of Hebrews tells us: 

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.  For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.  And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.  But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:13-16). 

So we know these things instinctively, even if we’ve spent years burying that knowledge beneath layers of earthly pleasures and concerns. We know that we will live forever. And we hunger to know what it will be like. 

Unfortunately, many of us simply ignore what the Bible has to say on this overwhelmingly important topic – even though it’s our only demonstrably authoritative source of truth.  

Perhaps that’s understandable: We want to be able to define eternity, to say who gets in, under what circumstances, for what purposes. And we want our arrivals to be celebrated because of the stellar character and extraordinary benevolence we demonstrated on earth.   

But creating such a world is hard work. It takes a lot of thought and effort and planning and recording of our ideas to invent a world that’s everything we want it to be. So the vast majority of us leave that to professional writers, limiting our involvement to selecting, reading about, and contemplating the fictional fantasies that best suit our tastes.  

How bewildering that so many of us turn to fiction when we could go straight to the Bible for the truth about everlasting life. And how eternally tragic that so many embrace fictional “entrance requirements,” rather than consulting God’s word to find out what it really takes to ensure oneself of a heavenly forever. 

If you are not sure of these things yourself, I hope you’ll decide today to find out what the Bible has to say. How foolish it would be to trust eternity to the imaginings of a writer who has simply created the kind of world he’d like to explore.