Death

On June 28, 2008, Asia LeeShawn Ferguson went over two fences and entered a restricted area in Six Flags Over Georgia. The seventeen-year-old was hit and killed by the Batman roller coaster. It is not known why Ferguson climbed the fences; and his father said, “Nobody knows but my son and the Lord.”

Many people try to climb the fences their authority has placed around them, and they enter forbidden territory. It should not be a surprise to them when they get hurt.

Source: Chicago Tribune, June 30, 2008

Archaeologists have dug up first century cemeteries in Greece and Rome and have found many tomb stones that bear the Greek or Latin inscription for “No hope.” Imagine living your entire life with no hope! Imagine going to your death, to that eternal night, with no hope!

Source: Unknown

Submitted by Ray Cazis

President Wilson once received a call in the middle of the night from a civil servant who informed him that one of his appointees had just died.

The caller said, “While I’m sure we are all saddened by this news, I would like to know if I can take his place.” There was a pause at the other end of the line before the president replied, “It’s all right with me, if it’s all right with the undertaker.”

Source: Business Wit & Wisdom, Richard S. Zera

I went to the UCLA Medical Center with my high school anatomy class and saw a cadaver on a cold, stainless steel counter. A dead person is totally powerless. It’s impossible to reach him. I could have handed that cadaver a Gospel tract or witnessed to him, but he couldn’t do anything to respond to an appeal or to change his condition in and of himself.

Submitted by Ray Cazis

At the end of World War II a young Bible college student in Illinois met Ira Hayes on the streets of Chicago. In an effort to offer him hope, Bill shared John 3:16. Ira stopped him, “Do you remember Iwo Jima? I’m the man who put the flag on Mt. Suribachi. They’re building a monument to us. I don’t need God.” Three months later, national papers carried a story of a 32 year old man who died of alcoholism and tuberculosis. His name was Ira Hayes.

Source: Unknown

Some say that the music they listen to does not affect them. It would be hard to convince the Kuntz family of this. Fifteen year old Richard Kuntz was listening to a Manson album when he committed suicide by shooting himself. His father says Richard was a major Manson fan and his favorite song contained calls to commit suicide.

Source: World Magazine, November 22, 1997

A lady arranged the cremation of a body she believed was her son. He turned up alive the next day.

Greater Manchester Police said the confusion began when the body of a man in his 30s was discovered in Manchester, northwest England, on Oct. 12. He was identified as Thomas Dennison, 39, by a care worker who knew him. Officials contacted Dennison’s mother, Gina Partington, 58, who identified the dead man as her son.

Winston Churchill planned his funeral before he died. His wishes called for a bugler, positioned high in the dome of Saint Paul’s to play the taps after the benediction. The taps were meant to represent that his physical life was over. But then came the most dramatic turn: as soon as the taps was finished, another bugler, placed on the other side of the great dome, played the notes of reveille—It’s time to get up. It’s time to get up. It’s time to get up in the morning. At the end of history, the last note will not be taps; it will be reveille.

There is an old story of a king and his clown or “jester” who sometimes said very foolish things. One day the jester had said something so foolish that the king handing him a staff, said to him: “Take this, and keep it till you find a bigger fool than yourself.”

“Some years later, the king lay on his deathbed. His courtiers were called: his family and his servants also stood round his bedside. The king, addressing them, said, “I am about to leave you. I am going on a very long journey and I shall not return again to this place: so I have called you all to say goodbye.”

A little girl whose baby brother had just died asked her mother where Baby 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 baby.” The little girl heard her, and remembering what her mother had told her, looked up into her face and asked, “Mother, is a thing lost when you know where it is?”

“No, of course not.”

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

Doctor to patient: “I have bad news and worse news.”

Patient: “So let’s have it.”

Doctor: “The bad news is that you only have 24 hours to live.”

Patient: “I can’t imagine what could be worse than that!”

Doctor: “I forgot to tell you yesterday.”

Source: Unknown

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

When I was a student in college I heard Dr. John R. Rice tell the story of being invited to preach a revival meeting for a godly pastor. For several months the pastor and Dr. Rice corresponded about a date that would work out for these meetings in both of their schedules. Finally a week was agreed upon and the next Sunday at the close of the service, the Pastor announced the date of the meetings to his people.