I'll Fly Away?

The words penned by Albert E. Brumley while pick cotton on a hot Oklahoma day say,

“Some glad morning when this life is o’er,

I’ll fly away;

To a home on God’s celestial shore,

I’ll fly away.

When the shadows of this life have grown,

I’ll fly away;

Like a bird from prison bars has flown,

I’ll fly away.

Just a few more weary days and then,

I’ll fly away;

To a land where joys shall never end,

I’ll fly away.”

I’ll fly away, O glory, I’ll fly away;

When I die, hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away.”

Death is the separation of the spirit from the body. The spirit is what animates the body, and when the spirit departs, the body ceases to live. Everyone who has ever lived has experienced, or will experience, this separation of the spirit and body. However, not everyone who dies “flies away” in the way described in this beautiful song. The Lord’s teaching about the rich man and Lazarus in bears this out. As Jesus taught this great lesson, He said that the poor man, Lazarus, died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom (). The rich man’s death, on the other hand, was described very differently in the same verse. Christ said, “The rich man also died and was buried . . .”

The poor beggar Lazarus, flew away, as it were, because the angels carried his soul to Paradise. There he was comforted after a lifetime of toil and affliction (). The implication is that Lazarus had lived a godly life, and for this reason his death was a transition to the waiting place of the righteous dead. He flew away from all the bad things of life, to a taste of the eternal reward awaiting all the redeemed.

The rich man, however, found himself in torment (). There he began to experience the reward for his ungodly life. The Lord said that the rich man was “in agony in this flame” (). Not only this, but he was in a place from which he could not pass, and to which no one in Paradise could go (). The rich man’s death was a transition to the place of the unrighteous dead, where there is no hope and no relief.

The lesson for each of us is that having been washed in the blood, we have a particular kind of life to live if we hope to “fly away” when we die. The kind of life we must live is revealed in the lesson of the rich man and Lazarus. As the rich man pleaded with Abraham to send someone back to warn his five brothers, Abraham said, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them” (). For a first century Jew, the phrase “Moses and the Prophets” meant the scriptures, by which they could stand justified before God. For us, Abraham’s words point us to the revealed word of God, the Bible, which is the gospel of our salvation (), which saves our souls ().

If we, being washed in the blood, hear the words of Scripture, and obey those words, we can look forward in joyful anticipation to the end of our earthly sojourn. If we have shown our love for the Lord by obeying His commandments (), our souls will be secure, just as Lazarus’ was. Then we can, in fact and in truth, sing, “When I die, hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away.”