Death is the Gate of Life.  There was deep insight in those old words.  For man’s natural thought of death is that of a dreary ending in decay and dissolution.  And from his standpoint he is right: death as the punishment of sin is an ending.  But far other is God’s thought in the redemption of the world.  He takes the very thing that came in with the curse, and makes it the path of glory.  Death becomes a beginning instead of an ending, for it becomes the means of liberating a fresh life.  And so the hope that lies in these parable lessons of death and life is meant for those only who are turning to Him for redemption.  To those who have not turned, death stands in all its old awful doom, inevitable, irrevocable.  There is no gleam of light through it for them.  (excerpt from Parables of the Cross)