Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with

Right Response Ministries. We're glad that you're here. Today's episode, I'm welcoming onto the show

for, I don't know, third or fourth or fifth time, a regular guest, Michael Foster. He's the senior

pastor of East River Church. We're talking about death. We're talking about the Christian response,

the biblical theology and framework for how we should actually view death.

We talk about a proper biblical category of grief, but we also talk about the appropriateness of reacting towards death with anger, that Jesus was actually angry at Lazarus death.

There's a lot of things that we get into. We talk about how to treat the body.

We talk about how it's not particularly Christian to cremate, but the body is significant. And we want to

preserve the body because we believe in a final physical resurrection of these bodies that were not Gnostics.

And so a lot of stuff dealing with death, grieving properly, being angry at death rather than angry at God, how to treat the body. What is a Christian doctrine of a funeral? What does that look like? Important conversation. Death is inevitable. We all deal with it. And we need to know how to deal with it properly from the Word of God. So if that interests you, tune in now. Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. Today, I'm privileged to have joining the show once again, a friend of mine, Michael Foster. He is the senior pastor of East River Church. He's a faithful pastor. He's also bifocational, working outside of the church world. He's been involved with podcasting and writing and all those kinds of things. And right now, he is focusing on many different tasks, but one of them is completing a book

that focuses on the topic of grief, loss of loved ones.

And it's not just a random topic that he decided to write about, but it's deeply personal.

It's something that he's experienced, as we all have in various degrees over the course of his life, but especially just one hit after another in these last

18 months. So Michael, welcome to the show. And can you just share with our listeners these last

18 months, whatever you're comfortable with? And then we'll talk about the theology of grief.

Sure. Well, the genesis of the

book I'm working on was the death of a child. We had a daughter, Nicaea, my first girl, who

died on her due date. So she was fine. There was nothing wrong with her. And then her heart just

stopped. So she was still born.

And that was on the day, like the day before she was supposed to be due or something. So, and that

threw our life into, it's one of those things that changes you forever. It really does. And so I

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