(courtesy public domain)
By Spencer D Gear
Would you believe that an app has been created to try to predict the date and time of your death? What next? Take a read of this brief article in Time magazine, ‘This App Predicts When You’re Going to Die‘.
The Time magazine article explained: ‘Feed the app basic information about your medical history and lifestyle, and it spits out the date that might just appear on your tombstone, along with a countdown clock that lets you watch as the seconds evaporate into regret’. The article explained that Deadline’s ‘prediction is nothing more than a statistical estimation, and regular doctor visits are still a good idea’.
Deadline’s accuracy
(courtesy clker.com)
The app is called, ‘Deadline’, but when you go to that link it does at least admit the limitations of this app: ‘Deadline uses statistical information to attempt to determine your date of expiration, but no app can really accurately determine when you will die, so consider this a way to motivate yourself to be healthier, and consult a physician as necessary’.
A God’s-eye view
How do the Christian Scriptures regard the date and time of your expiration – your death? Let’s check out some verses:
1 Samuel 2:6, ‘The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up’ (NIV).[1]
Job 14:5, ‘A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed’.
Psalm 39:4, ‘”Show me, LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is’.
Psalm 104:29-30, ‘When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. 30 When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
Psalm 139:16, ‘Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be’.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 11, ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot…. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end’.
James 4:13-15, ‘Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that”’.
Whom will you believe?
Which one are you going to believe? Will it be the word of the computer (a Deadline view)? Or will you choose the word of the Lord (the guaranteed originator of life and the one who determines the when and how of your death)?
I know the One to whom I am committed. He also is that one who said, ‘Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him’ (Hebrews 9:27-28).
Notes
[1] All Bible quotations are from the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible.
Copyright © 2014 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 20 November 2015.
