Losing the Christian Death, Part 2

This podcast will help you get ready to face the inevitable unpleasant things that will happen in your life -- things like trouble, suffering, sickness, and death -- the death of people you love and your own death.

The Bible says in Job 14:14: "If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come."

The featured quote for this episode is from James Patterson. He said, "The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective."

Our topic for today is titled "Losing the Christian Death (Part 2)" from the book, "The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come" by Rob Moll.

--- Lacking Spiritual Comforts

Christians once saw a window to the next world as a fellow believer entered eternity. Visions of heaven, Jesus and family were once common on the deathbed. This provided faith-sustaining, hope-inducing and grief-allaying comfort to those who survived the death of a loved one.

Wells quotes a newspaper account of the 1817 death of Anna Vedder in Schenectady, New York. "The newspaper remarked that the manner of her death was 'not only calculated to sooth the grief of those by whom she was held dear in this life, but also to inculcate most strongly, upon the minds of all, the blessedness of those that die in the Lord.' The paper assumed that 'it cannot be uninteresting to hear that she died in the full assurance of faith. The candle of the Lord shone upon her head. Death had lost its sting. She walked over the waters of Jordan . . . shouting the praises of redeeming love. She declared, moreover, that she beheld a place, more splendidly decorated than the tongue of mortal could describe, wherein was a seat prepared for her.'"

Such an expression that heaven was in view was once common and expected among Christians. Dallas Willard writes in The Divine Conspiracy, "Before the widespread use of heavy sedation, it was quite common for those keeping watch to observe something like this. The one making the transition [dying] often begins to speak to those who have gone before. They come to meet us while we are still in touch with those left behind. The curtains part for us briefly before we go through."

After asking Willard about this passage, he told me of his own experience. He said, “My brother, who died of Parkinson’s, had been in a state of noncommunication for a long time. Just before he died, he turned and said to his wife, ‘Now, dear, you must let me go.’ And he went.”

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