Do we have a specific time to die?

Well, there are two ways to look at it. If we can lengthen our days there must be a point from which we can lengthen them, or shorten them, or they can be shortened by someone else, who might kill us. So even if there is a time, it seems according to scripture that it is not in stone and can be changed by certain actions. That is the best I know how to explain it.

 

This discussion is one with all the other determinism threads we have gone through. I must say it makes no sense to me to assume that God has determined a time for each person's death, and I dare say that those who assert that do not likely live it out. If you are sick, do you not go to a physician and take the medicine or elect the surgery, hoping to stave off death? If someone you love is seriously injured in an accident, do you not pray for his/her recovery and for the physicians attending? And then there are the issues raised by others about murder and violence ... if God has pre-determined these things, then to a degree the perpetrators are absolved.

If I believed in this sort of determinism, as a pastor I would have had to say to grieving people in my church, "It was just his/her time." And sometimes, at the end of a long and fruitful life, with weeks and months of painful illness at the end, that might have felt all right. But I could never have said that to the couple whose son was killed in an auto accident, nor the mother whose teenage son was shot on the street corner. Nor could I have said it to the man who acknowledged that he had betrayed his marriage and contracted AIDS.

The concept of the permissive will of God, which someone else has mentioned, works a whole lot better than thinking that God has decided these things in advance.

 

Certainly---as a pastor I hear this all the time-----"Well, it was just his time to go!!" or "It was God's will and He knows best!!"

I even heard a preacher say at a funeral of a teenager who died in an automobile accident----"Well, God needed another Rose in Heaven---so He took (So & So)!!"------if taken to thought--this statement would have to mean that God is guilty of murder---would it not???

What about the tragic moment of "9-11"??? 3000 souls in a moment are lost to death!!! Their "time to go"?????? NO!! Some idiot decided he'd rather fly an airplane through a building than live---took the lives of others . . . I say---it was not their "time to go" but that they were all victoms of a world "going the way of Cain"

 

Amen. Agreed.

 

Believe me, I have heared this many many times in my years as a Pastor.

As the following scriptures tell us, if we can lengthen our days then there must of been a length to start with, such as three score and 10 years. People don't live that long or they live longer. There are many causes of death and "fear not man, who can only kill the body is one of them. I give you your breath and you live, I will take it and you will die is another. I don't say there is a set time to die, but I do say that according to scripture there is a life span, which can be lengthen or shortened according to scripture, for different reasons.

Those killed on 9/11 would come under "fear not man, who can destroy the body", as best I can understand the scripture, they certainly did not live out their "life span".

Psa 90:10 The days of our years [are] threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength [they be] fourscore years, yet [is] their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

1Ki 3:14 And if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen thy days.

Mat 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Exd 20:12 ¶ Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Deu 25:15 [But] thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

2Ki 20:6 And I will add unto thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake

Pro 9:11 For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased.