These words in the book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007) by J. K. Rowling, are recorded on the white marble tombstone of James and Lily Potter: The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death (p. 328).

So who destroys death?

Tomorrow night in our inductive study, we will be meditating on the powerful praise of an ancient prophet who penned words 2,700 years ago that shook the world.

He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it (Isaiah 25:8).

The apostle Paul picks up on this triumphant prophecy and brilliantly proclaims it in I Corinthian 15. Read the biblical chapter today.

The Scottish preacher, Robert Smith Candlish (1806-1873), wrote with deep conviction:

Death, in this world, is the great devourer. He swallows up all living things. He has an insatiable stomach. No nicety of taste, no fastidious delicacy of palate, is his. Indiscriminately, promiscuously, one equally with another, his voracity swallows up all. He is a ruthless, pitiless monster of prey. Neither man nor woman nor child will his horrid appetite spare. The tender babe; the fair youth; the blooming maid; the strong man in his prime; the veteran, tough and scarred; the feeble cripple, tottering under the weight of years;—all come alike to him. He swallows up them all. Hungry and greedy, he prowls in all streets and lanes; in all highways and by-paths; in every city, village, hamlet; throughout all houses. He has agents and purveyors by the hundred who are keenly on the scent to find him food; insidiously and unscrupulously catering for him; always, and in every place. Diseases, a multitude that no man can number; accidents that no man can prevent; wars, plagues, pestilences; poverty and famine; lusts, passions, sins, crimes;—what troops of ministers has he incessantly doing his pleasure! And with all he gets he is never gorged; he craves for more. Like the devil whom he serves, he goes about seeking whom he may devour. Bribes, entreaties, tears, alike fail to move him from his purpose. Beauty has no charm—love no spell—to mitigate his rage. Oh! how he riots as his cruel fang pierces the loveliest form, and chills the warmest heart. Power has no weapon to resist his onset. Worth has no protection against his rancour; nor wisdom against his wiles. None are humble enough to be overlooked and pitied. None are good enough to be reverenced and spared. None are high enough to bid him stand at bay. The king of terrors, formidable to all, is himself afraid of none. He seizes and swallows up remorselessly the whole family of man.

 

Yes! Even when there stood before him one of that family over whom he had no power; one who could say, “No man taketh my life from me”—“the prince of this world has nothing in me:” even when the Son of the Highest, “the Holy One of God,” “the man Christ Jesus,” “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners,” stood before him;—and when that holy one on the cross, giving himself a ransom for many, bowed his head and yielded up the ghost;—Death! Hadst thou no shame, no scruple, no fear, when thou hadst to deal with him? Was there no misgiving, no relenting, when to the long list of thy victims his name was to be added, and thy mouth was opened to swallow up him?

 

Truly, O Death! That was thy choicest morsel!—the daintiest and rarest delicacy thou hadst every tried to devour! But it was thy band, thy poison, thy ruin. It was the death of thee, O Death! Thou couldst not digest that bloody prey,—that bleeding Lamb of God,—all-ravenous as thou art. Thou couldst not keep him in thy bowels;—any more than that great fish of old could keep Jonah in its belly. The Lord spake to thee, as to that fish, and compelled thee to “vomit out” his Holy One before he could see corruption . . .

So thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ! God has victoriously triumphed over death in open field and in open fight.

It is good to contemplate the manner of death’s ultimate overthrow, and to contrast it with the manner of his present dominion. Here and now death reigns. He reigns universally, all-subduing, all-conquering. You do well to watch this grisly king and conqueror, making his way stealthily among the families of men, and one by one picking out his victims; this cunning reaper, putting in his sickle secretly, silently, slyly, to snatch at unawares the tenderest of the grass, the finest of the wheat. Ah! he goes about this work like a coward and a spoiler; and you need to watch lest he overtake you “as a thief in the night.”

 

But with all this wary caution against his wiles, remember what death really is to you who are in Christ Jesus. Think of him as already conquered, and doomed at last to perish ignominiously, at the first sound of the trumpet heralding the conqueror’s triumph. Pay him not so great a compliment as to be any more in bondage through fear of him. Tell him, believer, when he draws near to alarm you, that you are content to let him have this corruptible and mortal body of yours; content to let him do his worst upon it with his devouring jaws; since you see the day already near, the bright morn already dawning, when he shall himself be swallowed up, and that victoriously, at the glorious appearing of the all-conquering King. . . .

So thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ! Are you safe and secure in the Christ of biblical revelation?