Death

For the twentieth anniversary of Larry King Live, Barbara Walters interviewed the man who became famous interviewing others. She asked him direct and revealing questions. Two of the most telling responses came when she probed about fear and faith. Walters asked King, “What is your greatest fear?”

He immediately replied, “Death.” This interview occurred in 2005 when he was at the very top of his career and had much to lose, but none of that mattered compared to the fear of death.

Her follow-up question was, “Do you believe in God?”

“I can beat it!”

“I wonder if it’s loaded. I’ll look down the barrel and see.”

“Look at this wire hanging down into the street! I’ll throw it to one side.”

“I wonder how much electricity these wires carry. I’ll touch this one and see.”

“I wonder whether this rope will hold my weight!”

“Listen! That’s the train whistle. Step on the gas, and we’ll beat it across.”

“That firecracker must have gone out. I’ll light it again.”

“Watch me skate past the ‘danger’ sign. I’ll bet I can touch it.”

When a man asked George Mueller the secret of his service, Mueller responded: “There was a day when I died, utterly died; died to George Mueller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends; and since then I have studied to show myself approved only to God.”

Source: The London Quarterly Review, Volume 92

Daniel Sulmasy (then head of the Bioethics Institute of New York Medical College) made an interesting discovery while observing dying patients in a hospital. He aimed cameras at the doorways of terminally ill patients and tracked the number of minutes they spent alone. He said, “More than eighteen hours a day, there was no one in the room.”

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, “There she goes!”

Gone where?

Gone from my sight ... that is all.

One of the most notoriously bad characters that ever lived in New York was Orville Gardner. He was the trainer of prize-fighters and companion of all sorts of hard characters. His reputation was so thoroughly bad that he was called “Awful Gardner.”

Thousands came to faith in Christ through Moody’s meetings. As he approached the end of his life, he viewed Heaven as something to anticipate. Moody wrote:

A bright young girl of fifteen was suddenly cast upon a bed of suffering, completely paralyzed on one side and nearly blind. She heard the family doctor say to her parents as they stood by the bedside: “She has seen her best days, poor child!”

“No, doctor,” she exclaimed, “my best days are yet to come, when I shall see the King in His beauty.”

A little boy and his father were driving down a country road on a beautiful spring afternoon. Suddenly out of nowhere a bumblebee flew in the car window. Since the little boy was deathly allergic to bee stings he became petrified. His father quickly reached out, grabbed the bee, squeezed it in his hand, and then released it. But as soon as he let it go, the young son became frantic once again as it buzzed by the little boy.

When John Quincy Adams was eighty years old, a friend said, “How is John Quincy Adams?”

He replied, “John Quincy Adams himself is very well, thank you; but the house he lives in is sadly dilapidated. It is tottering on its foundations. The walls are badly shattered, and the roof is worn. The building trembles with every wind. And I think that John Quincy Adams will have to move out of it before long. But he himself is very well.”

Source: Sword Scrapbook II, Viola Walden

The famous and very successful football coach Bear Bryant often told reporters, "I’d croak in a month if I quit coaching." After twenty-five years as the head coach at his alma mater, Bryant announced he would be stepping down at the end of the season. On December 29, 1982, he coached his Alabama football team for the last time in the Liberty Bowl against Illinois. On January 26, 1983, he died of a massive heart attack.

Too busy to read the Bible, too busy to wait and pray;
Too busy to speak out kindly, to someone who passes by the way!

Too busy working and worrying, to think of the life to come;
Too busy building earthly mansions, to plan for the Heaven above.

Too busy to help a brother, who faces trials and suffering woes;
Too busy to share his burden, “No time, I’m busy you know.”

Too busy for all that is holy, on earth beneath the sky;
Too busy to serve the Master, but not too busy to die.—Author Unknown

Scientists studied a native tribe in South America whose people have been dying prematurely for generations. After thorough investigation, the cause of premature death was determined. The disease was transmitted by an insect that lived in the walls of their adobe homes.

There is a marker on a rock near the top of Mount Washington, marking the spot where a woman climber lay down and died. She was so close to the top that she could almost hit it with a stone. A hundred steps more and she would have reached the shelter she sought, but she did not know this. Disheartened by the storm, beaten in body and distressed in spirit, she was at the end of her courage. She could not see a step ahead, so she lay down and died one hundred steps from her goal.

Alexander M. Sanders, Jr. (who was at one time the Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals) spoke to the graduating class of the University of South Carolina in 1992. His daughter, Zoe, was a member of that class. He told a story about when Zoe was 3 years old. Sanders came home to find a crisis. Zoe’s pet turtle had died and she was crying her heart out. His wife turned the problem over to him to solve.

A mother was explaining, to her little girl, the death of her father. The mother said: “God has sent for your father and will send for us, but I do not know just when.” Finally, the little girl said: “If we do not know just when God is going to send for us, do you not think we had better pack up and get ready to go? God might send when we are not ready.”

Source: The Expositor and Current Anecdotes, Volume 8, F. M. Barton Publisher

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

Anthony Fernando, a twenty-one-year-old man living in Colombo, Sri Lanka, went fishing one day off the coast of the island. He had no idea he would never make it back alive. A forktail gar fish jumped out of the water and cut him on the neck with its tail. He bled to death before a fellow fisherman could get him to a hospital.

Two men, driving in Southern California, got into a battle of road rage after one cut the other off in a parking lot. The hot-headed men sped out of the parking lot in a fit of anger, chasing, driving recklessly, dodging and weaving in and out of traffic. They endangered a lot of lives before  one finally forced the other to careen out of control. The driver frantically tried to regain control, but in the process an innocent little girl on a nearby sidewalk was killed. A young life was taken simply because two men became needlessly angry at each other.

A great without has been written on heathenism. Men and women are toiling without a Bible, without a Sunday, without prayer, without songs of praise. They have rulers without justice and without righteousness; homes without peace; marriage without sanctity, young men and girls without ideals and enthusiasm; little children without purity, without innocence; mothers without wisdom or self-control; poverty without relief or sympathy; sickness without skilful help or tender care; sorrow and crime without a remedy; and worst of all, death without hope.

John Hunter was a man arrogant in demeanor and possessed a violent and ungovernable temper. He was accustomed to say, “My life is at the mercy of any scoundrel who chooses to put me in a passion.”

These words proved prophetic, for at a meeting of the board of St. George’s Hospital in London, Hunter got into a heated argument with other board members, walked out, and dropped dead in the next room.

Source: American Medical Journal, Volume 16, E. Younkin, M. D.

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College