Calvin Synod Herald, 2003 (104. évfolyam, 3-12. szám)

2003-03-01 / 3-4. szám

CALVIN SYNOD HERALD

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shadow, and that old man entered into life.

Well, I am afraid that he is typical of a great many in our time today many who don’t have the faintest idea of what is going to happen to them when they die. They might put on a great deal of bravado while they are young and while health fills their bodies, but that is only because they have never stared into the hollow eyes of death and never really considered their own mortality.

The great Samuel Johnson, who gave us the first magnificent dictionary of the English language, who was the center of social life in London, said that most of us run from one vocation or avocation to another throughout all of our lives all in a cain effort to avoid thinking about our mortality. Yes, there are many who may pretend that they have no fear of death, but unless they have come to know the Conqueror of Death, they are merely pretending and deceiving themselves.

Two thousand years ago, Epicurus, who was not a Christian, said” “What men fear is not that death is annihilation; but what they fear is that it is not.”

T.S. Eliot, more recently, in Murder in the Cathedral, declared: “Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death we fear, we fear.” How true that is, and it has been echoed by numerous people, great and mighty, as well as others.

I mentioned Johnson. He wrote these words to his friend, Dr. Taylor, in the latter part of his own life: “Oh! My friend, the approach of death is very dreadful. I am afraid to think on that which I know I cannot avoid. It is vain to look round and round for that help which cannot be had.” There is a brilliant conversationalist, author, writer, intellectual - who stands terrified before, indeed, the King of Terrors.

Thomas Carlyle, the great author, when describing the phantasmagorical scene that surrounded the funeral of Louis the Magnificent, including the great organ music that seemed to be some plaintiff prayer of hopelessness, said this: “Frightful to all men is death, from of old named the King of Terrors.” But I think Sir Walter Raleigh may have described it best as he apostrophized death saying:

0 eloquent, just, and mighty Death!

Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded:

What none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath

flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised.

Thou hast drawn together all the far stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hicjacet! (Here lies) Yes, who is capable of dealing with such an adversary as this mighty death who says to the ill, “Come.” And to the well, “Tarry not.” He is, indeed an implacable foe, a mighty enemy. He is the last enemy who is to be overcome: Death, and all that lies in the realm of death.

Who is the man who had the highest I.Q. Of all that ever lived on this planet? We could probably take a lot of guesses. But scientists who study such things, and realize the connection that exists between vocabulary and I.Q., have concluded that it was William Shakespeare. And Shakespeare said: ...who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The

undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller retumspuzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

It is interesting to me to hear, as I have over my lifetime, the skeptics wax voluble and eloquent about their unbelief. But it is also more interesting to see them when they come to the end of their lives, when the fogs of death begin to fill their throats.

Think of Thomas Paine, who was a hero once in America until he published his book, Age of Reason. He gave a copy of it to Ben Franklin, who urged him not to publish it. But he went ahead, and in his pride had it published, and it brought, indeed, all manner of ignominy upon him until he was forced to leave the country. When he came to the end of his life, however, he was not so robust, and he was not so skeptical. He said that he would give “worlds if he had them,” if the Age of Reason had not been published.

Or take the most brilliant caustic skeptic that probably ever lived - a man who wrote an entire encyclopedia against Christianity and the Bible. That was, of course, Voltaire, the great leader and skeptical movement in France. But time moves on and so, at length Voltaire came to the edge of the valley of the shadow. As he was on his final bed, he found that his unbelief was failing him, like the young man who had been led into unbelief by an older skeptic. When the young man was taken sick and was going to die, the skeptic was afraid he would recant, so he came to him and said, “Now, young man, hold on, hold on.”

And the boy said, “Sir, you left me nothing to hold onto.”

And so it was with Voltaire. He decided that what he wanted to do was to be reconciled to the Church, and so he called for a clergyman. This was rumored around Paris and caused a great stir among the skeptical community. So the unbelievers rushed to his house and to his bed to prevent this most embarrassing possible recantation. But when they got there they found they had discovered their own ignominy and that of Voltaire as well. He said, “Be gone you wretches.” And like Adam before him, he cast the blame on them. “Look what you have brought me to. Get out of my sight” - and he threw them out of his house.

His physician said Voltaire was the most wretched human being that he had ever seen. He called for a secretary and a statement of his recantation written and signed by two witnesses, and it availed him not at all.

Remember, dear friend, God says, “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6). God cannot always be found. There are times when our heart can become so encrusted with sin, so adamant in rebellion that we cannot bring ourselves to repent or even to believe. Though Voltaire had this signed and witnessed statement of his recantation of his faith it meant nothing at all, for there was no heart in it, and he lived for two more months.

Trochim, his physician, said it was an unbelievably miserable thing. Even his unbelieving friends would no longer come to the house because his cries and anguish were so incredibly horrible. At length he would vacillate between saying, “ 0