DEATH, BELIEVER’S RESPONSE TO

The inevitable tomb is not a period at the end of the sentence of life, but a conjunction connecting us with the life to come.284

A father gave this counsel to his married daughter on the first anniversary of her mother’s death:

“I had forty wonderful years with your Mom,” he said, “the best years of my life. But that part of my life is over. Finished!”

“But Dad …” “No buts, listen to me.” His clear blue eyes stared intensely into mine. I couldn’t turn away from him as much as I wanted to. “They were the best years of my life,” he repeated. “Your mother is no longer with me; this truth has to be faced. But I am alive and must live the time allotted me until she and I are together again.” His voice trembled, but it was not uncertain. “She is gone, but no one can take away the wonderful memories. They are part of me, the happy memories and the sad ones. But only a part. I can’t let them possess me or I couldn’t get through my days. Every day is a gift from God. It must be lived with joy. It is just a taste of the joy to come when we will all be together again.” I kissed him then, not realizing that our conversation would one day be one of my fondest memories. Recalling that day has always been a great strength to me, particularly today—the first anniversary of my dear father’s death. [Cited in Home Living, May 1980.]285

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse told of the occasion when his first wife had died. He, with his children, had been to the funeral service for her. As he was driving his motherless children home, they were naturally overcome with grief at the parting. Dr. Barnhouse said that he was trying to think of some word of comfort that he could give them. Just then, a huge moving van passed them. As it passed, the shadow of the truck swept over the car. And as the truck pulled on in front of them, an inspiration came to Dr. Barnhouse. He said, “Children, would you rather be run over by a truck or by its shadow?” The children said, “Well, of course, Dad, we’d much rather be run over by the shadow! That can’t hurt us at all.” Dr. Barnhouse said, “Did you know that two thousand years ago the truck of death ran over the Lord Jesus … in order that only its shadow might run over us?”286

I am standing on a seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean blue. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to meet each other. Then someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.” Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living weights to its place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone says, “There she is gone,” on that distant shore there are other eyes watching for her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes,” and such is dying (From Loraine Boettner, Immortality [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Pres. & Reformed, 1956], pp. 29–30.)287

A little girl whose father had just died asked her mother where her father had gone. “To be with Jesus,” replied the mother.

A few days later, talking to a friend, the mother said, “I am so grieved to have lost my husband.”

The little girl heard her and, remembering what she had told her, asked, “Mother, is a thing lost when you know where it is?”

“No, of course not,” said her mom.

“Well, then, how can Daddy be lost when he has gone to be with Jesus?”288

Years ago, Dr. Arthur John Gossip preached a sermon titled “When Life Tumbles In, What Then?” on the day after his beloved wife had died suddenly. He closed with these words:

“I don’t think you need to be afraid of life. Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely, but we have a wonderful God. And as Paul puts it, ‘What can separate us from His love? Not death,’ he writes immediately. No, not death, for standing in the roaring of the Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I, too, like Hopeful in Pilgrim’s Progress, can call back to you who one day in your turn will have to cross it, ‘Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom and it is sound.’ ”289

As the great Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson lay sick and about to die, he said, “I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world; yet when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from his school. Perhaps I feel something like the young bride when she contemplates resigning the pleasant association of her childhood for a yet dearer home—though only a little like her, for there is no doubt resting on my future.” (Cited in Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 1883, p. 540.)290

When Martin Luther’s daughter, Magdelena, was fourteen years old, she was taken sick and lay dying. Luther prayed, “O God, I love her so, but nevertheless, Thy will be done.”

Then he turned to his daughter and said, “Magdelena, would you rather be with me, or would you rather go and be with your Father in heaven?” And the girl said, “Father, as God wills.” Luther held her in his arms as she passed away, and as they laid her to rest, he said, “Oh my dear Magdelenachen, you will rise and shine like the stars in the sun. How strange to be so sorrowful and yet to know that all is at peace, that all is well.”

It is this hope in the hour of death that the resurrection gives to us.291

There are many instances of those whose faith has triumphed in the hour of death. D. L. Moody, the great evangelist of the past century, said on his deathbed, “Earth is receding; heaven is approaching. This is my crowning day!”292

This incident illustrates how the child of God can face the last enemy with confidence and courage:

Many years ago, the ship known as the Empress of Ireland went down with 130 Salvation Army officers on board, along with many other passengers. Only 21 of those Christian workers’ lives were spared—an unusually small number. Of the 109 workers who drowned, not one body had on a life preserver! Many of the survivors told how those brave people, seeing that there were not enough lifebelts, took off their own and strapped them onto others, saying, “I know Jesus, so I can die better than you can.” Their supreme sacrifice and faithful words set a beautiful example, which for many years has inspired the Salvation Army to carry on courageously for God. Millions have come to recognize that born-again individuals can face death fearlessly.

Death for someone who has not come to know God is a frightening prospect. And indeed it should be, for when one passes from this life, there is no longer the possibility of coming right with God. In contrast, the dark door of death for a Christian is only the other side of the shining gate of life.293

The dedicated missionary Jim Elliot once said: “I must not think it strange if God takes in youth those whom I would have kept on earth until they were older. God is peopling eternity, and I must not restrict Him to old men and women.”294

Samuel Rutherford, a seventeenth-century Scottish pastor and theologian, wrote the following to a woman when her young daughter died: “Remember what age your daughter was, and that just so long was your lease of her … your lease [has] run out, and you can no more justly quarrel against your great Superior for taking His own, at His just termday, than a poor farmer can complain that his master taketh a portion of his own land to himself when his lease is expired.” (From Letters of Samuel Rutherford, London: Banner of Truth, 1973, p. 13.)295