When I was in college, I was a part of a class where you had to conduct a staged situation that you might encounter in your ministry. The professor of the class said we could do anything we thought would happen in a ministry setting, so I tried to go as strange as I could, because I love to have fun with those types of projects. So for this particular project, I was going to present how the church board needed to give me the necessary funds for the most needed item in the whole church, a toilet plunger.
I had the whole presentation thought through in my mind in a matter of minutes. The following class I turned in my proposal to the professor and his face, changed to one of exasperation. This wasn’t the first time I had done something like this in one of his classes. But because I had defended the idea in the proposal he didn’t deny me. The next class, where others were presenting a different type of project, the professor approached me and said, “You know Jeremiah, I think you should conduct a funeral instead of your plunger, I have a feeling you might encounter more of those.”
Well, a long story short, I did as the professor asked, always wondering what might have been with my plunger presentation. But I received an “A” on the project, and that’s all that I was after. But that request from the professor turned out to be a prophecy of my ministry. In the last three years, I have done more memorials and funerals, then most pastors perform in their whole ministry. Recently I went to Wickenburg to be a part of a funeral there. The pastor asked if I had officiated one before, to which I told him, this year I am averaging one every three weeks. He told me that in his ten years at that church, he had only been a part of two and the second one was the one we were both a apart of that day.
In these last three years one of the hardest parts of being a pastor is the call you get for someone that is dying or has just passed away. I have found that I truly grieve with those who have to watch their loved ones pass, or have a sudden passing. I mourn those losses, and I empathize with those going through the pain of the separation that death causes.
Yet in death, I have found joy as well. Those who are believers in Jesus, those who have put their trust in him, are hard, yet have an assurance about them, that non-believers do not. This past fall, a faithful member of our church named Ed Wiggins passed away. Some of you might remember Ed, him and his wife Linda are a valued part of our church family here, they used to sit together every Sunday on the left side of our church from my perspective. Ed and Linda were faithful in a season when our church was going through some hard times. And after the shake up, Ed began helping with feeding our children on Sundays.
When I received the call that Ed was in the hospital, I went to see him. Now I didn’t have a lot of interaction with Ed, just several conversations over the years, but when I entered into that hospital room, I could sense the Spirit of God. Ed’s confidence in the Lord and graciousness towards me was as thick as a valley fog. We prayed for God’s healing, and God healed him completely when Ed passed into eternity. The final moments of Ed, and believers like him, give me confidence of the life to come.
This leads us into our final argument for this series, the Argument at Death. Now we have been talking about the arguments for the existence of God for the last three weeks, but focusing on arguments that are ones that are out there all over the place. The first one we talked about was the Fine Tuning Argument, where the universe seems perfectly created for life. The second argument was the Moral Argument, in which we asked the question what is the foundation of morality, and when you take away God, what happens? These first two arguments, are merely arguments for the existence of a god in the general sense, but we also showed with these arguments, the God of the Bible claims to be the God that created this habitable universe, and he claims to be the God from which morality comes from. Then last week we talked about not only an argument for the existence of God, but of Jesus being God through his resurrection.
These three arguments, I then challenged you to pursue on your own to understand them more and then to worship God because of what he has done.
This week, I’m going to present to you an argument, that has been presented in the past by people, but isn’t as widely used or as “effective” in the sense of debates. Rather, this is a pleading argument from me personally, because I have seen the last days of many people. This is the Argument at Death.
The Bible is very straightforward when it comes to the end of our lives. In religions such as Hinduism, time is a circle. Life, death, and rebirth are in an endless rotation for all of eternity. But the Bible puts forth that there is a straight line from eternity past, to the created space that happens in Genesis 1 and there will be an end to this created space, with eternity ahead. And death is one way in which eternity comes for the majority of humanity. And with death, a judgment awaits us all.
We encounter this biblical teaching in places like the Gospel of Matthew chapter 25. In this chapter, Jesus is giving a teaching where we talks about the righteous and the unrighteous as sheep and goats, and how they will be sorted. He ends with this in verse 46, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
In the Gospel fo John, the writer records Jesus saying this in the 5th chapter, “24 ‘Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. 25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
28 ‘Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. 30 By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.’”
The writer of the book of Hebrews then gives us this short line of Scripture in the 27th verse of the 9th chapter “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…”
For the believer, this moment of passing from this life into eternity tends to be a serene one. I shared Ed’s story, but my wife Marika’s great grandmother past in the same way. And countless stories can be shared of believers encountering their Savior at that moment where the veil between the finite and eternal drawn back.
But to those who have fought against God, who have sought to become gods unto themselves, the situation is vastly different.
Jesus describes their eternal reality when he says this in Luke 13:28, “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.”
Like I have through this entire sermon series, I want to give you some quotes that are attributed to some well-known atheists on their death beds. These are not conversion stories, but rather their recorded last words as the veil of eternity is lifted in front of them.
Voltaire was a famous atheist philosopher, semi anti-christian, who wrote in the 1700s during the Enlightenment. Though he defended the right of religion, he had a disdained for it. On his death bed he was quoted as saying to his attending physician, “I am abandoned by God and man; I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months’ life.” When the physician said that there was nothing he could do for Voltaire, the philosopher said, “Then I shall die and go to hell!” Voltaire’s attending nurse said of his passing, “For all the money in Europe I wouldn’t want to see another unbeliever die! All night long he cried for forgiveness.”
Sir Francis Newport, living a century before Voltaire, was the head of an English Atheist club. Those gathered at his bedside during his death later told others that he said this, “You need not tell me there is no God for I know there is one, and that I am in His presence! You need not tell me there is no hell. I feel myself already slipping. Wretches, cease your idle talk about there being hope for me! I know I am lost forever! Oh, that fire! Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell! Oh, that I could lie for a thousand years upon the fire that is never quenched, to purchase the favor of God and be united to Him again. But it is a fruitless wish. Millions and millions of years will bring me no nearer the end of my torments than one poor hour. Oh, eternity, eternity forever and forever! Oh, the insufferable pangs of Hell!”
David Hume, the atheist philosopher writing at the same time as Voltaire, is said to have spoke his last words as he screamed from his bed, “I am in flames!” Those that gathered around Hume, were quoted as saying, “Desperation was a horrible scene”.
Thomas Paine, who himself was an atheist, yet inspired the thirteen Colonies to revolt against the British is said to have uttered these words, “Stay with me, for God’s sake; I cannot bear to be left alone , Oh Lord, help me! Oh God, what have I done to suffer so much? What will become of me hereafter? I would give worlds if I had them, that The Age of Reason had never been published. Oh Lord, help me! Christ, help me! …No, don’t leave; stay with me! Send even a child to stay with me; for I am on the edge of Hell here alone. If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one.”
Finally, Sir Thomas Scott, Chancellor of England who lived far earlier than all those that we have discussed so far, is quoted as saying this on his death bed, “Until this moment I thought there was neither a God nor a hell. Now I know and feel that there are both, and I am doomed to perdition by the just judgment of the Almighty.”
And if you think that these types of experiences come only from philosophers of high academia, I want to share with you this: This was relayed to me by one of the members of our church body. Her mother-in-law had a seizer, and this member told her, “I will pray for you.” In response the mother-in-law said, “I hate your God.” A little while later, while the mother-in-law lay in bed close to death, she began clawing at the air and screaming, “I’am scared, I’m scared.” These were the mother-in-law’s last words, before she passed into eternity.
I share these stories and quotes with you not to discourage you, or to scare anyone, but rather to bring us face-to-face with the reality of eternity without Jesus as our Savior. The first three arguments that we discussed in this series were directed at the mind. Evidence was presented, and the question, what’s the best explanation was addressed.
In this argument, we’re moving beyond simply engaging the intellect, and getting to the point of the mystery of what awaits us after death.
Another atheist philosopher named Thomas Hobbs is quoted on his deathbed as saying, “I say again, if I had the whole world at my disposal, I would give it to live one day. I am about to take a leap into the dark.”
For the believer the moment of death is nothing to be afraid of, it is unknown in the sense of a new adventure that awaits. But for the one who does not have their hope in Christ, it truly is a leap into the dark. It is not an adventure to look forward to, but rather a destination to fear.
Several weeks ago, I taught on the Gospel of John chapter 11. In that passage, Jesus’ friend Lazarus has died and Jesus is there with Lazarus’ sisters who are mourning. Jesus says this to them in verse 25 of chapter 11, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
This is the question that he presents to us, do we believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? Do we put our trust in him, that though we may die in this life, we will live in the next? That our sins have been paid by his work on the cross, and that when we enter eternity, a new adventure awaits us? If we say yes, then death has no hold on us. The fear of death has no sway. We can be like Stephen the first martyr, who in Acts 7:59, as he was dying, called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” We can be like Ed Wiggins, giving grace to those around him in his final hours. And we can become a part of a long line of believers that shares the Gospel with those left behind, by simple showing that we trust our spirits to our Jesus who has saved us.
But today, if you don’t have this assurance, I did not share these quotes and stories to scare you to believe in Jesus. No, rather I share these to challenge you in your ways. All the intellectual arguments in the world won’t convince you, until you struggle with who Jesus is. I shared this quote last week, and I would like to share it again.
Scott, a pastor, had a conversation with a man that seemed to be hostile to the Jesus and Christianity. When the pastor confronted him, this is what the man said, “Okay, Scott, I’ll tell you the truth. I’ll tell you the real reason why I dislike Christianity. It’s not because the evidence is unconvincing to me. In fact, the opposite is true. But I still don’t ever want to become a Christian because if I do, Jesus will ask me to forgive my father for the ways that he hurt me (https://scottsauls.com/blog/2019/04/21/intelligentatheistschristians/).”
Evidence alone won’t save us, we must we open to encountering Jesus himself now why we still can. We must struggle, not with a pastor, not with a church, not even with the Bible, but with Jesus himself. We will meet him in the end, whether that be in joyous reunion, or desperate fear. If we seek to encounter Jesus while we still can, then death loses it’s power. If we meet him after the time has elapsed, death will terrify us to no end.
This week, whether you are a believer or not, I want to challenge you to this, seek Jesus to known him. Believer, this seeking is to strengthen your faith in him. Take the verses of John 11:25 and 26 and commit them to memory. Non-believer, I want to challenge you to the arguments that have been presented these last three weeks, and then to seek to know if this Jesus is real, because he tells us that all who seek him with their heart, shall find him.
Let us be the overcomers of death that Jesus has made us to be through his death and resurrection. Amen.
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