As we approach Halloween, we are reminded of frightening stories told around campfires that kept us awake for many nights to come, but few mastered horror and plot twists as well as Alfred Hitchcock. He is considered by many to be the father of the horror movie genre.
In his television feature Final Escape, Hitchcock developed the theme of a conniving woman who is sent to prison for murdering her rich husband. To escape her captivity and the cruel inmate who beats her, she strikes a deal with the mortician who makes the coffins for dead prisoners.
When the bell tolls for the next death, the plan is for her to sneak into the morgue and get into the casket with the dead body. The mortician would then wheel it out and bury it returning later to dig her out so she could pay for his needed eye surgery.
Not long after the plan is concocted, she hears the bell. She stealthily makes her way to the workshop, climbs into the coffin and is carted out the next morning and buried. The plan is working!
After too much time has passed sharing the cramped casket with a corpse, she pulls out some matches and strikes one. Much to her dismay, she finds she has been buried with the deceased undertaker with no one left to free her from her nightmare of being buried alive.
Her fate was forever sealed with a man who was totally powerless to deliver her from her tomb. Her final escape did not turn out the way she planned.
Sadly, this fictional story depicts so very accurately the fate of all who die without trusting in Jesus. Many people put their hopes in all types of schemes to cheat death and cope with their own desperate conditions. Some look to their own good works while others trust religious leaders long dead. A few pay incredible sums to be frozen believing they will be resuscitated when cures for their diseases are discovered.
All types of elaborate plans are concocted, sold, and bought in an effort to escape the inevitable truths of death and judgment. But these two realities await every living soul and each of us must face the consequences they bring with them.
When we place our trust in someone to get us out of our grave, we’d better make sure they can deliver. Being buried with anyone other than Jesus will result in being trapped forever, our fates sealed with someone incapable of conquering death.
The reality of an eternity of suffering should be even scarier to us than any campfire story or horror movie. Unlike the fiction baked into all of these, hell is real and awaits all who refuse to receive the free gift Jesus died to provide.
Each Sunday we celebrate the resurrection of the only One who conquered death and came out of His grave never to return! He was seen alive by many reliable witnesses including over 500 people at one time. There is more solid evidence for Jesus’ resurrection than most events in all our history books and each person owes it to him or herself to seriously examine the facts and draw their own conclusions.
The last thing anyone would want would be to be buried with a dead man that could provide no aid. Thankfully, there is a Risen Savior who is mighty to save even from the deepest grave and He has offered joyful resurrection and life eternal to all who will repent and confess their sins and receive the everlasting gift His shed blood provides.
As we experience another Halloween with all its morbid decorations, may it remind us of our own mortality and the importance of trusting in One who can get us out of our graves and into eternal joy.
Blessings, George