Since the beginning of time (well, since after the Fall) man has looked for ways to either not die, or to remain remembered after death. Immortality is tantamount to people with the ego and the means to attempt it, and boy, have they always attempted it.
People have sought to get themselves photographed, painted into portraits and hung over the mantel at the manse, to become famous celebrities, win medals, do heroics in war, and in modern times, to engage in cryogenetics, to send our likeness and information into space, to preserve DNA, and now we have another scheme in the endless search for immortality:
You can have your ashes pressed into a vinyl record. Yes, you heard right. It is called Pressed for Time by the folks from Andvinyly in the UK. Live ‘life beyond the groove’, they say. The company offers a package for ‘people, parts of people, and pets.’
Parts of people, people!
There are ever more clever ways to desecrate a dead body. It’s not enough to tattoo, disfigure, mutilate, or cosmetically change our bodies while we are alive. We are now trivializing the temple of the Lord, the creation He formed with His hands post-death, to make a song record with our own ashes inside it.
Here is the ultimate irony. We are ALREADY immortal. All of our bodies will die (except the unique generation that is raptured alive to immortality in the blink of an eye). But it is the destination that differs. We all either go to heaven, or we go to hell.
As for the desecration of our bodies after death, the cavalier attitude about who we are (children of the Most High God) we are told that we would be Godless:
“Godlessness in the Last Days”
“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
The body that we are given is “sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable.” (1 Cor 15:42. Paul describes the resurrection body. This applies to both the saved and the unsaved, though each will be given their imperishable bodies at separate times. We cannot conceive of what our immortal bodies will be like, because it is like the seed that is sown, looking nothing like the resulting tree.
“When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.” (1 Cor 15:37-41)
The fruitless search for life inside of a vinyl record, or in a cryogenic lab, or anywhere else besides Jesus, is fruitless because at that day we shall all be raised. The unsaved will be like the Burning Bush, on fire but not consumed. Their atoms will be reassembled from the LP record and the grave and the rest of the places they had scattered, into an immortal body. But the music playing will not be pleasant and beautiful. It will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 8:11-12)
But you don’t have to weep, you can be filled with joy and join Him when He calls us, raised imperishable, at the last trump. Repent now, and your notions of being pressed into an LP will fade as quickly as the the joy in Him will rise!
