DARKNESS
On January 10, 1979, Glenn Irwin and Dave Coots, Orinoco River Mission missionaries, took me to see the Guacharo Cave near Caripe, in eastern Venezuela. It was pitch dark, with no electric lights. A Spanish guide took us through it, about one-third of a mile. As we walked in, we heard the Guacharo birds beginning to fly and squawk. They are nocturnal, never leaving in the daytime. They fly out after dark—to go several hundred miles to bring back an unusual kind of nut found only in that location, and they return before sunrise. They live in darkness.
—Roy B. Zuck
A father told his young boy to go to bed. He started up the stairs but realized it was dark and he couldn’t reach the light switch. He went back, but his dad told him to go on up because God was there. The boy knew that was the final answer, so he started up. But on the first step he stopped, looked up, and said, “God, if you are there, please don’t move or you’ll scare me to death!”
DEATH
Dorothy Parker, a well-known writer, was told Calvin Coolidge had died. She asked, “How could they tell?”
The world is a very dangerous place—you never get out of it alive.
Death is not a threat to genuine life. It is but a paper tiger that is no longer free to terrorize us once we know the truth about the outcome of the cross. Death is but a temporary inconvenience that separates our smaller living from our greater being.
—Calvin Miller
Sign in undertaker’s office: “Try our layaway plan.”
—Farmer’s Almanac
May you be in heaven a full half hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.
—Irish blessing
When I die, I want to go peacefully like my grandfather who died when the others in the car were screaming.
Old rockhounds never die; they just slowly petrify.
Old skiers never die, they just go downhill.
Old optometrists never die, they just lose their looks.
Old salesmen never die, they just lose their line.
Old tennis players never die, they just lose their bounce.
Old podiatrists never die, they just lose their souls.
Old postmen never die, they just lose their zip.
Old gardeners never die, they just spade away.
Old realtors never die, they just become listless.
Old hunters never die, they just stay loaded.
Old teachers never die, they just lose their class.
Old opticians never die, they just lose their contacts.
Old doctors never die, they just lose their patience.
Old architects never die, they just change their plans.
Old secretaries never die, they just lose their touch.
Old plumbers never die, they just drain away.
Old cooks never die, they just go to pot.
Old farmers never die, they just get plowed under.
Old bankers never die, they just lose their interest.
Old dentists never die, they just get down in the mouth.
Old fishermen never die, they just smell that way.
Old deans never die, they just lose their faculties.
Old policemen never die, they just take arrest.
Old quarterbacks never die, they just pass away.
Old statisticians never die, they just average out.
Old musicians never die, they just decompose.
Old accountants never die, they just lose their balance.
Old anesthesiologists never die, they just run out of gas.
Old procrastinators never die, they just keep putting it off.
Old quilters never die, they just go to pieces.
When D. L. Moody was rushed home to Massachusetts after a sudden illness during a western crusade, he said to his son, “Earth recedes, heaven opens before me. If this is death, it is sweet. There is no valley here. God is calling me and I must go. This is my coronation day. It is glorious.”
—Leslie B. Flynn
Edwin Markham wrote of the death of Abraham Lincoln: His passing from the human scene was like the falling of a great tree, which in its falling left a lonesome place against the sky.
When infidel Tom Payne was dying, he was heard to utter, “O Lord, help! O Our Lord Jesus Christ, help!” His surprised doctor asked, “What’s this I hear? Tom Payne. A man who spent his life ridiculing the Christian faith and scoffing at the Lord Jesus Christ. As your physician, I ask you as a dying man, do you now repent of your infidel views and turn to this Christ for salvation?” Payne replied, “No, I cannot believe on that man.” He died still an unbeliever.
—Leslie B. Flynn
When Robert G. Ingersoll’s brother died, the world awaited what the great agnostic would say at his brother’s grave. He had promised to deliver an oration. As he stood looking down on the casket holding all that remained of a brother he had dearly loved, the prepared speech dropped from his nerveless fingers like snowflakes falling on a barren forest. And then, on the waiting crowd there fell these words: “Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of a wailing cry.”
About the same time, in Northfield, Massachusetts, D. L. Moody stood beside the body of his brother. In the middle of the funeral service, Moody stood up, looked on the dead face of his brother, and raised his hand and said, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Life is a dirty trick, a short journey from nothingness to nothingness. There is no remedy for anything in life. Man’s destiny in the universe is like a colony of ants on a burning log.
—Ernest Hemingway
“You say you want the death certificate changed, doctor?” asked the puzzled clerk. “It’s quite against the rules, you know.”
“I know that, but it’s important,” said the physician. “You see, I was in a hurry and didn’t pay any attention to the space marked ‘Cause of Death,’ and that’s where I signed my name.”
—Seng Fellowship News
Charles IX, king of France, exclaimed on his deathbed, “What blood, what murders, what evil counselors have I followed; I am lost; I see it well.”
People today think they have robbed death of its sting by calling a cemetery a memorial park.
If I knew where I am going to die, I’d never go near the place.
A soldier was in a foxhole in Europe. He was in water up to his knees, and bullets were zipping by. A sergeant came up to him and called his name, “Private Smith.”
“Yes sir.”
“Report back to headquarters.”
“Why?” asked the private.
“You’re going home.”
“What! And leave this foxhole?”
Death and what happens afterward is the only unresolved mystery.
—Robert Stack
Two friends met on the street. One said to the other, “Did you know that Sam died?”
“Is that right. Did he leave anything?”
“Yeah, everything!”
“Mankind is plagued with the two problems of sin and death,” said Albert Camus, existential philosopher and atheist. He added that Christianity addresses these problems.
H. G. Wells, famed historian and philosopher, said at age sixty-one, “I have no peace. All life is at the end of its tether.”
England’s great poet, Lord Byron, who died at age thirty-six after a life of promiscuity and rebellion against his early religious teaching, wrote shortly before he died, “My days are in the sere and yellow leaf, the flowers and fruits of life are gone, the worm, the canker, and the grief are mine alone.”
Henry David Thoreau, writer, poet, philosopher, and naturalist, admitted, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
Ralph Barton, the brilliant cartoonist, wrote before ending his own life, “I have had few difficulties, many friends, great successes; I have gone from wife to wife and from house to house, visited great countries of the world—but I am fed up with inventing devices to fill up twenty-four hours of the day.”
Pascal, the seventeenth-century mathematician, philosopher, and author, declared, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which only God can fill through His Son, Jesus Christ.”
Elizabeth I, queen of England, on her deathbed was in great distress. The doctors could do nothing for her, but she continued to cry piteously, “I will give millions for another inch of time!” With ten thousand dresses in her wardrobe, a kingdom on which the sun never set, and with many servants, she had to leave them all.
Alexander the Great left orders that when he was carried to the grave, his hands should not be wrapped in the specially treated clothes used by the embalmers of that day, but rather be exposed to view so that all might see that they were empty!
Charles Simeon of Cambridge, on his dying bed, looked around with one of his bright smiles and asked, “What do you think especially gives me comfort at this time?” When those around him remained silent, he exclaimed, “The creation. I ask myself, did Jehovah create this world or did I? He did! Now if He made the world and all the rolling spheres of the universe, He certainly can take care of me. Into Jesus’ hand I can safely commit my spirit!”
Hudson Taylor was so feeble in the closing months of his life that he wrote a dear friend, “I am so weak I cannot even pray. I can only lie still in God’s arms like a little child and trust.”
John Bacon, eminent eighteenth-century English sculptor, said on his deathbed, “What I was as an artist seemed to be of some importance while I lived, but what I really am as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is the only thing of importance to me now.”
Is death the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.
—Sir Walter Scott
Death for the Christian is a turning off the light because the dawn has come.
—Leon Jaworski
When you are born, you cry and people rejoice. When you die, people cry, and, if you are saved, you rejoice.
When John Knox was dying, he took his wife’s hand and asked, “Read to me that Scripture on which I first cast my anchor.” In her last illness hymn writer Fanny Crosby remarked, “How can anyone call it a dark valley? It is all light and love.” The dying words of Adoniram Judson, first missionary to Burma, were, “I go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school. I feel so strong in Christ.”
On her deathbed, Susanna Wesley uttered this last request before losing her speech, “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.” When her son, John Wesley, was about to die in his eighty-eighth year in extreme weakness, he astonished his friends by breaking out singing a stanza of a hymn which began, “I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath.”
—Leslie B. Flynn
If we knew as much about heaven as God does, we would clap our hands every time a Christian dies.
—George MacDonald
Pastor Maynard Belt told of an elderly Christian couple who were parted after more than fifty years of marriage when the husband finally succumbed to a fatal disease. When their pastor went to call on the bereaved wife, he found her sorrowing, yet triumphant. “I’m pleased to see you doing so well,” he commented, “but I’m sure you miss your husband.” “Oh, yes,” she replied. “I miss him more than I ever could say. But I think of it this way. For years and years I would wait all day for Bill to come home from his job. I’d work busily about the house, and I’d look forward eagerly to the time he’d come through the front door. I’d have his dinner ready, and we would enjoy being together. All these years, I waited for him to come home, and now he’s waiting for me to come home!”
Man’s greatest enemy is death.
—Arnold Toynbee
John Wesley was asked why the Methodist movement was so successful. He answered, “Our people die well.”
Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.
—Douglas MacArthur
Death is the golden chariot that ushers us into the presence of God.
—Tertullian
People have not learned to live who have not learned to die.
—Jim Elliot
A gravestone had the inscription, “I expected this, but not just yet.”
The tragedy of life is not that we die, but is rather, as Albert Schweitzer said, “what dies inside a man while he lives.”
I once saw a quaint inscription on a gravestone in an old British cemetery not far from Windsor Castle. It read:
Pause, my friend, as you walk by;
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you will be;
Prepare, my friend, to follow me!
I heard about a visitor who read that epitaph and added these lines:
To follow you is not my intent,
Until I know which way you went!
—Warren W. Wiersbe
C. S. Lewis’s wife was witnessing to a woman who believed in the power of science. Mrs. Lewis asked, “Have you ever thought of death?” The woman answered, “No, but by the time I come to death, science will have done something about it.”
In the ancient Ottoman Empire, the eastern emperors were crowned at Constantinople. The royal mason was always summoned in beforehand. He would set marble blocks in front of the coming monarch. Each sovereign would then choose one slab which would later become his tombstone. The point was that at the time of the coronation, he was also to consider his funeral.
John Wesley was asked by a friend, “Suppose you knew that you were to die by midnight tomorrow, John. How would you spend your time until then?” Wesley replied, “I would spend it exactly as I expect to spend it now. I would preach tonight in Glouchester. I would get up early tomorrow and proceed to Tewkesbury, where I would preach in the afternoon. Then I would go to the Martin’s house in the evening, since they are expecting me. I would talk with Mr. Martin and pray with the family. Upon retiring, I would put myself in the Father’s care, go to sleep, and wake up in heaven.”
When John Owen, the great Puritan, lay on his deathbed, his secretary wrote (in his name) to a friend, “I am still in the land of the living.” “Stop,” said Owen. “Change that and say, ‘I am yet in the land of the dying, but I hope soon to be in the land of the living.’ ”
—John M. Drescher
A young businesswoman, flushed with success, was opening a new branch office, and a friend decided to send a floral arrangement for the grand opening.
When he arrived at the opening, he was appalled to find that his wreath bore the inscription: “Rest in peace.”
Angry, he complained to the florist. After apologizing, the florist said, “Look at it this way—somewhere a man was buried under a wreath today that said, ‘Good luck in your new location.’ ”
—Bits & Pieces
In 1846 John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke and, although he returned to Congress the following year, his health was clearly failing. Daniel Webster described his last meeting with Adams. “Someone, a friend of his, came in and made a particular inquiry of his health. Adams answered, ‘I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement; battered by the winds and broken in upon by the storms, and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.’ ”
—The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes
He is foolish who says that death should not be feared, not because it will be painful to look forward to, for it is vain to be grieved in anticipation of that which distresses us not when it is present. Death … is nothing to us for while we are here, death is not; and when death is here, we are not.
—Epicurus
Benjamin Franklin composed this epitaph for himself:
The body of
B. Franklin, printer,
(Like the cover of an old book,
its contents torn out and
stripped of its lettering and guilding)
lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall not be lost;
for it will (as he believed)
appear once more,
in a new and more elegant edition
revised and corrected
by the Author.
A fellow who didn’t want to die, said, “Yes, I’m a Christian and I have eternal life, but I’m not homesick yet.”
We are apprentices and have not served our time out. We are students and have not got our diplomas. Death is not a graduation; it is a Commencement Day!”
—T. De Witt Talmage
Death is the king of terrors and the terror of kings.
Fifty persons were killed in the crash of a United Airlines passenger plane in the hills above Oakland, California, on Friday, August 24, 1951. A book was found in the wreckage entitled, “From Here to Eternity.” That title told the significant part of the tragic story.
When the son of the Duke of Hamlin lay dying, triumphant in Christ, he called his younger brother to his side and said, “Douglas, I am dying now; I am leaving you. In a little while you will inherit Father’s property and the homestead. And that isn’t all. Douglas, you will also inherit Father’s title; and by and by they will call you the Duke of Hamlin. But, Douglas, when you are the Duke, I shall be a king.” That is truly the destiny of every child of God, whether he lives in a palace or a poorhouse.
An aged Scotsman, while dying, was asked what he thought of death and he replied, “It matters little to me whether I live or die. If I die I will be with Jesus, and if I live Jesus will be with me.”
Epitaph in a graveyard in England:
I have sinned;
I have repented;
I have trusted;
I have loved;
I rest;
I shall rise;
I shall reign.
—D. L. Moody
The pastor of a church visited a family whose son had been killed in an automobile accident. He heard the mother rail out at him, “Where was your God when my boy was killed?” He quietly said, “The same place He was when His Son was killed.”
—Roger Lovette
Winston Churchill had planned his funeral which took place in Saint Paul’s Cathedral. He included many great hymns of the church and used the eloquent Anglican liturgy. At his direction, a bugler, positioned high in the dome of Saint Paul’s, intoned after the benediction the sound of “Taps,” the universal signal that says the day is over.
But then came the most dramatic turn; as Churchill instructed, as soon as “Taps” was finished, another bugler who was 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.”
That was Churchill’s last testimony that at the end of history the last note will not be “Taps”; it will be “Reveille.” The worst things are never the last things.
—John Claypool
When Xerxes, the Persian king, was marching with his immense army to invade Greece, he came to the Hellespont. There, before crossing into Macedonia, within sight of the blue waters of the Strait, he ordered a grand review of his troops. A throne was erected for the monarch on the hillside, and seating himself on the marble chair, he surveyed his million soldiers in the fields below. With a proud smile, he turned to his courtiers and confessed that he was the happiest man on earth. He truly had some cause for pride.
But before long, the king’s countenance changed, and those who had stood by him saw the tears beginning to trickle down his cheeks. One of them asked why his joy had turned so soon to sorrow. “Alas!” said Xerxes, “I am thinking that of all this vast host, not one will be alive in a hundred years.”
When a former President of the United States was eighty years of age, an old friend shook his trembling hand and said, “Good morning, and how is John Quincy Adams today?” The retired chief executive looked at him for a moment and then replied, “He himself is quite well, sir, quite well. But the house in which he lives at the present is becoming dilapidated. It is tottering upon its foundation. Time and the seasons have almost destroyed it. Its roof is pretty well worn, its walls are much shattered, and it crumbles a little bit with every wind. The old tenement is becoming almost uninhabitable, and I think John Quincy Adams will have to move out of it soon; but he himself is well, sir, quite well!” It was not long afterward that he had his second and fatal stroke.
Death is a universal conspiracy, not to be mentioned.
—H. L. Mencken
Donald Grey Barnhouse was driving his children to the funeral of their mother. A semi-tractor trailer crossed in front of them at an intersection, momentarily casting a shadow on the car, and Barnhouse asked his children, “Would you rather be struck by the semi or by the shadow?”
“The shadow, of course,” they replied.
“That’s what has happened to us,” Barnhouse said. “Mother’s dying is only the shadow of death. The lost sinner is struck by the semi of death.”
The statistics on death are quite impressive. One out of one people die.
—George Bernard Shaw
Walter C. Wilson was talking to an atheist who said, “I do not believe, Dr. Wilson, what you are preaching.” Wilson said, “You have told me what you do not believe; perhaps you will tell me what you do believe.”
The man replied, “I do believe that death ends all.” “So do I,” Wilson said. “What! You believe death ends all?” “I certainly do,” he answered. “Death ends all your chance of doing evil; death ends all your joy; death ends all your projects, all your ambitions, all your friendships; death ends all the Gospel you will ever hear; death ends it all for you, and you go out into outer darkness.
“As for myself, death ends all my wanderings, all my tears, all my perplexities, all my disappointments, all my aches and pains; death ends it all, and I go to be with my Lord in glory.”
“I never thought of it that way,” he said. Wilson led the man to Christ by just agreeing with him that death ends all.
When I’m gone, speak less of William Carey and more of William Carey’s Savior.
—William Carey
Just before he died F. B. Meyer wrote to his wife, “Dear, I have just learned to my surprise that I have only a few days to live. It may be that before this reaches you, I will have entered the Palace. We shall meet in the morning.”
London had seldom witnessed such a funeral service. The vast audience rose with bowed heads. To their surprise, the organ swung into the triumphant notes of the Hallelujah Chorus. A faithful soldier of the cross had entered into the King’s presence.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s last years were not full of life; he merely and barely existed. “In the 1970s Sartre was an increasingly pathetic figure, prematurely aged, virtually blind, often drunk, worried about money, uncertain about his views … incontinent … the struggle for power over what was left of his mind. It must have been a relief to them (his few friends) when he died on April 15, 1980.”
—Wilson Quarterly
One day A. C. Gaebelein saw a combined tailor’s shop and dyeing establishment. In the window was this sign:
I Live to Dye; I Dye to Live
The More I Dye the Better I Live
The More I Live the Better I Dye
There is great spiritual truth in the sound of these words, and in their writing too, if the spelling d-y-e is changed to d-i-e.
Recently I received a letter from a Radio Bible Class listener and it warmed my heart. A woman wanted to tell us about the homegoing of a loved one, and she wrote, “Last month my mother went to heaven. She was ninety-five and a blessing to everyone who met her. Your broadcasts and literature blessed her life for so many years.” The writer went on to share what her seven-year-old son had said about the passing of that dear saint of God. Expressing his great love and admiration for her, he remarked with childish glee, “I’ll bet Jesus was glad to see Grandma!”
—R. W. De Haan
The story is told of an ancient king who summoned a group of scholars to his palace to write a history of mankind. They compiled many volumes, but the king was too busy to read them. But with the onset of old age he again summoned the historians to the palace and told them to give him just a summary of their findings. A spokesman for the group said, “Man was born, he suffered, he died. That is the history of mankind.”
In A.D. 125, Publius Aristides sent a letter to an acquaintance to give this explanation for the rapid spread of Christianity. “If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.”
I am prepared to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
—Winston Churchill
In just a few words the novelist Charles Williams summed up one of his characters. “He passed a not unsuccessful life in his profession; the only intruder he found himself unable to deal with was death.”
I know that everyone must die but I always thought an exception could be made in my case. Now what do I do?
—William Saroyan
When I was a sixth grader, an elderly lady visited our one-room country schoolhouse on a community event. Though energetic and full of zest for life, she was somewhat stooped, her hair was white, and her face lined with wrinkles. After she left, one of the boys loudly said, “I never want to get old.” The teacher, a bitter unbeliever, countered with the words, “Do you want to die young?” “No,” the boy replied. “Well,” came the sharp retort, “You will either die young or grow old and die. There are no alternatives.” These words made a deep impression on me. I was but a boy, but even young children think about death. The tone of utter despair in my teacher’s voice sent chills down my spine. Without Christ the future is dismal indeed.
—Harold Van Lugt
What would you do if you knew you only had one day left to live? That’s what Gunther Klempnaier asked 625 young German students in twelve vocational schools. His findings revealed that 20 percent of the young men questioned would spend their last day on earth drinking, taking drugs, and pursuing young women.
A different response came from an eighteen-year-old woman who wrote, “I would like to spend my last evening in church (to be alone with God) to thank Him for a full and happy life.”
The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.… Of all things that move men, one of the principal ones is the terror of death.
—Ernest Becker
When Harry and Nancy Goehring went to Bangladesh as missionaries, their desire was to see Bengali people become Christians. They did not know that God would use Harry’s death at age thirty-two to bring at least one of those people to Christ.
As the friends of the Goehrings met with Nancy and the children to comfort them, Debindra Das, a Bengali laundryman who had become a Christian, spoke with his wife Promilla about Harry’s death. He said, “I was ironing the clothes in the hallway. I could see Goehring Sahib through the open door. I watched his face. I watched him die! Not like when Hindus die. You know how our people die—fearing death.”
Promilla was impressed. Because of that simple testimony of a Christian’s peaceful homegoing, she asked the Lord to save her that very night. That Hindu woman was the firstfruit of a death that had seemed so untimely.
—Our Daily Bread
Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau declared, “No man can come to the throne of God and say ‘I’m a better man than Rousseau.’ ” When he knew that death was close at hand, he boasted, “Ah, how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach.” Then he prayed, “Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give Thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from Thee; render it a partaker of Thy Felicity!” This is an amazing statement when we realize that Rousseau didn’t confess to be born again. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide, and for more than twenty years he lived in licentiousness. Most of his children were born out of wedlock and sent to a foundling home.
In my native village in New England it used to be customary as a funeral procession left the church for the bell to toll the number of years that had been enjoyed by the deceased. How anxiously I would count those strokes to see how long I might reckon living! Sometimes there would be seventy or eighty tolls, and I would give a sigh of relief to think that perhaps I had so many years ahead of me. But at other times the bell would ring only a few times and then a horror would seize me as I thought that I too might soon be claimed as a victim.
—D. L. Moody
A grandmother lost her granddaughter by drowning. Grieving deeply, she said, “Life will never be the same without her, but heaven has never seemed more real.”
English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday (1791–1867) was asked, “Have you ever pondered yourself what will be your occupation in the next world?” Faraday hesitated awhile and then responded, “I shall be with Christ, and that is enough.”
—Our Daily Bread
King Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, had a palace servant whose duty it was to approach him every morning with the greeting, “Philip, remember that you must die.”
Making sense of life means, ultimately and always, making sense of death.
—J. S. Whale
In his book After Death, What? William B. Ward says that a nationally known radio minister asked his listeners to suggest topics for radio sermons. Of those who responded, 70 percent asked for messages dealing with life after death.
Mary Roscoe of Greenwich, New York, was at Voltaire’s bedside during the days and hours before his death. She said he repudiated his book, Age of Reason, and asked if she had ever read it. She replied that she read it when she was very young, but that it so depressed her that she threw it in the fire. Voltaire allegedly said, “I wish I had done as you, for if ever the Devil has had any agency in any work, he has had it in my writing that book.” Mary Roscoe reported that in his final hours Voltaire said repeatedly, “O Lord! Lord God! Lord have mercy on me!”
During the Civil War a soldier lay dying of a bad wound. A minister came to speak to him and he said, “Are you afraid to die?” Rising from his bed on his elbow he exclaimed emphatically in vehemence, “Are you here to insult me? Of course I’m not afraid to die. I’ve faced death many times before.”
“Yes, but are you afraid of what comes after death?”
Quietly and solemnly he replied, “Yes, that’s it.”
Wilson Mizner was a celebrated wit and card shark. His biography makes interesting reading, but no one with a sense of moral values would admire or envy him.
He authored many proverbs, a few of which are still found in common usage. A sampling: “The first hundred years are the hardest.” “Be nice to people on the way up because you’ll meet them on the way down.” “A good listener is not only popular, but after awhile, he knows something.”
In 1933, at the age of fifty-eight, he suffered a serious heart attack. When he regained consciousness in the hospital, he asked for a priest, a rabbi, and a Protestant minister. His explanation: “I want to hedge my bets!”
A few days later, when an oxygen tent was brought into his room, he cracked, “This looks like the main event.” Motioning away the priest who tried to talk to him, he said, “Why should I talk to you? I’ve just been talking to your boss.”
When the priest reproached him for his levity at such a critical time, it occasioned Mizner’s final quip: “What? No two-week notice?”
Within moments he was in eternity.
—John A. Jess
The natives in Kenya have a dialogue called “Alafu?” meaning “And then?” It is generally put on by two teenage boys and goes like this:
“What are you going to do when you grow up?”
“I will learn a trade.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll get a job.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll earn a lot of shillings.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll get married.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll have some children.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll raise them.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll become a grandfather.”
“And then?”
“And then perhaps I’ll be made chief.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll rule the people.”
“And then?”
“And then—and then—and then I’ll be an old man.”
“And then?”
“And then—and then—and then … Oh, don’t ask anymore.”
At this point the one who has been asking questions points his finger at the sky and says with great emphasis, “You should be thinking of life and death and your soul while you’re still young.”
An Arab awakened in the middle of the night and was very hungry. He lit a candle and began to eat the dates beside his bed. He took one, held it up to the light, and saw that a worm was in it. So he threw it out of the tent. He took a second, held it up to the light, saw another worm, and threw it away. The same thing happened a third time. Finally, he blew out the candle, grabbed the dates and stuffed them into his mouth, not wanting to face reality.
I am not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
—Woody Allen
Writers H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were brilliant men, yet they rejected the message of Scripture. They placed their trust in their own systems of belief, which were based on human reason. Yet they could not find lasting inner peace and they slowly lost confidence in what they believed. Wells’ final literary work, for example, has been aptly called a “scream of despair.” And shortly before Shaw died in 1950 he wrote, “The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt.… Its counsels, which should have established the millennium, have led directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once … In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions.… And now they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.”
Death is the debt we must all pay.
—Euripedes
During World War II a London church group gave a farewell party for some soldiers who were returning to the combat zone on the continent. At the conclusion a young officer known for his wise choice of words became a spokesman for the group to thank people for the send-off. After expressing the men’s appreciation, he hesitated, and, as if seeking something to say in closing, he added, “We’re leaving for France, the trenches, and maybe to die.” He hadn’t intended to say that, and he was somewhat embarrassed, but then he blurted out, “Can anyone here tell us how to die?”
There was an awkward silence, then someone walked to the piano and began to sing the aria from Elijah. “O rest in the Lord!” That was the answer. It still is!
You are well? That’s fine.
You hope to remain that way? That’s natural.
You may be disappointed! That’s possible.
You will die! That’s sure.
You’d better get ready! That’s wisdom.
You want to be right? That’s promising.
You don’t know the way? Then listen—Accept, believe, receive.
A visitor asked an old-timer, “What’s the death rate here?” The old-timer replied, “Same as back east: one to a person.”
Odds that you will eventually die in a car crash: 1 in 125.
Odds that you will develop a brain tumor: 1 in 25,000.
Odds that you will die in a fire this year: 1 in 400,000.
Odds that you will win a state lottery jackpot: 1 in 4,000,000.
—Today in the Word
A doctor had a sign on her office door that read, “When you’re at death’s door, I’ll pull you through.”
An inscription at the exit of the cemetery beneath the Santa Maria della Concezione church on Via Veneto in Rome reads, “What you are, we used to be; what we are, you will be.”
One time when Joseph Bayly was flying from Chicago to Los Angeles, he conversed with a woman sitting next to him on the plane. She was about forty years of age, and well-dressed. He asked her, “Where are you from?” She said, “Palm Springs.” Knowing that Palm Springs was a city of the rich and famous, he asked, “What is Palm Springs like?” She answered, “It is a beautiful, beautiful place filled with unhappy people.” He then asked, “Are you unhappy?” She responded, “Yes, I certainly am.” “Why?” “Mortality.”
An inscription on a tombstone read, “I told you I was sick.”
Many people think that we are now in the land of the living and are going to the land of the dying. But Christians are in the land of the dying and are going to the land of the living.
At dusk, a little girl entered a cemetery. An old man who sat at the gate said to her, “Aren’t you afraid to go through the cemetery in the dark?” “Oh no,” she replied, “my home is just on the other side.”
—Henry Dwibanville