The Dying Words of Unbelievers

My professor lent me Billy Graham’s Till Armageddon: A Perspective on Suffering so that I could be more well versed on how to articulate the subject when I talk to unbelievers.  It’s a decent book but he didn’t deal much on the Book of Job as I really wanted. If you have the book The Reason For God by Timothy Keller, you don’t need to especially buy this book. Anyway, there is one part that I really liked.  He listed the dying words of atheists, infidels and agnostics and I quote directly from the book:

    “I am abandoned by God and man! I shall go to hell! O Christ, O Jesus Christ!” Voltaire, the infidel.

    “When I lived, I provided for everything but death; now I must die, and I am unprepared to die,” Cesare Borgia.

    “What blood, what murders, what evil councils have I followed.  I am lost! I see it well!” Charles IX, King of France.

    Thomas Paine is reported to have cried: ” I would give worlds, if I had them, if The Age of Reason had never been published.  O Lord, help me!  Christ, help me! Stay with me! It is hell to be left alone!”

I have to say that if you need to disagree with Jesus Christ, read the New Testament thoroughly, study it inside out and get a pastor to explain all the parts that appear unattainable, unreasonable, untenable before you make your decision.   Jesus’ teachings may be in the form of parables but they are not easy to understand.  He told them so that those who are not hungry for his word will shrug them off but true believers like his apostles will run after him and ask him to explain what he meant.  Those are the people he wants.  And unless you study it with an open mind, it will go over your head just like it did for writers like Bertrand Russell and Thomas Paine.

The closer I walk with Jesus, the more I understand His words.  And these days, I am blessed that when I ask Him to reveal the meaning, He does it without fail, either speaking to me in my sleep, via a mentor, via a situation or from the bible itself, on the same day.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Not sure why but I am always attracted to books about dying. This one is called Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson.  The title doesn’t tell much but it is a student now grown up reconnecting with his professor who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig’s disease, which incapcitate his neurological system. Bit by bit, from the legs up, he would lose function and control of it, until his entire body is laid to waste even though his faculty is still there.

The Long Road…Stage 4

This is a repost of all that I have written about myself since my cancer diagnosis in November 2012  from a previous blog.  I’ll put it here as evidence of how God lifted me up and I thank once again all of you who have prayed for me, encouraged me along the way and continue to keep me in their prayers to this day.  THANK YOU!!! and HUGE BEAR HUGS!!!!

Posted August 15, 2013:

Well, it’s the monthly report and yes, praise the Lord, the cancer marker went down again.  From 6.1, it went down to 5.9.  I’m very happy, and so are the nurse and the doctor.  I even put on one pound and am now 110.  I managed to talk to a fellow patient at the waiting area.  He wasn’t doing very well and we found out that he was working in the Pacific fleet in the 60’s and would call on Taiwan and Hong Kong.  And during the time he was there, every time the US fleet visited Hong Kong, they had to give 2/3 of the water from their storage to them.  I at once exclaimed, “Thank you, thank you.  I didn’t know you were there to save us.”  I was too young but I remembered those years we started off with water rationing from 4 hours everyday to one hour every four days.  We didn’t have a dam back then.  Now I know how we managed to pull through.  And he said that there’s a desalination plant right on board and they take the water from the ocean and could make 14,000 gallons an hour.

[Book Review] The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal is head of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna and is well known for his activities in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.  This book retold an unforgettable encounter with a twenty plus year old dying Nazi soldier at the concentration camp that Wiesenthal was confined in.  The soldier called Karl recounted how he couldn’t live with his guilt of one day, when his platoon leader and his troop forced 300 plus Jews into a 3 story small house, made them carry petrol cans into the house, locked the door and threw grenades into the house.  As the house exploded, whoever jumped out would be machine gunned before they hit the pavement and this young Nazi saw a father and mother holding their young son jump and he had to fire at them.  He repented and gave his confession to Wiesenthal, a Jew, probably the last Jew he would meet in his life and he wanted forgiveness.  Wiesenthal stayed silent all the way and in the end, he just walked away.  A few years later, he visited the mother of this Nazi under the pretext of handing a note from his son passed to him from someone to see if indeed this soldier was indeed a Catholic before, joined Hitler youth and then went on to be SS soldier.  He left the mother without telling the mother what his son did – all the murders he committed, and he did not tell the mother that the son confessed to him his guilt.  This issue bothered him all his life and he sent this story to a couple dozen of philosophers, theologians, judges, writers for their opinion as to whether he was wrong or not to have walked away.

This is really an extremely thought provoking book.  If you want to read how my family reacted and what are the most thoughtful answers from the book, then scroll down and highlight with your cursor.  However, if you plan to read the book and work out your own answer, stop right here and don’t read anymore.

Coroner’s Journal by Dr. Louis Cataldie

I finished half of this book and couldn’t go on. Compared to Stiff by Mary Roach, this one is about forensics, how coroners examine corpses to find out what was the cause of death in crime.  Stiff was more about the mechanism of the body when it’s dead. I prefer Stiff.  Dr. Louis Cataldie mostly detailed some of the cases of strangulations, decapitation, mutilation along with weird deaths, homicide or suicide. While CSI, the TV series, may be making some of their knowledge known to the public, the minute details that coroners look for are still beyond the common criminal. After a while, I become numb to these details of murder and feel really turned off. Good book still if you want to see if you want to enter the field.

[Book Review] A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis married a lady with cancer and had only 4 years of marriage with her.  This book was a collection of his thoughts after her death and it was incredible to read that even he had doubts of the existence of God at that moment.  The whole book is depressing and the worst part was when he mentioned how he visited the places where he really enjoyed when he was a young man and he felt happy but it was only momentarily because then, he thought of his deceased wife.  What of her and their time together? Was it merely a vacation to remember ?  Depressing book.

[Book Review] Facing Death And The Life After by Billy Graham

Well, the book cover looks really somber, with black all over and gold lettering and frames.  A bit grim not unlike a hearse or a coffin if you ask me, but then, why wouldn’t I want to read it especially when it’s a subject that stares at me in the face daily and by one of the most popular evangelist.  Billy Graham pointed out a few things I have not noticed before:

1. Jesus was in agony and had prayed three times, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.  Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) The cup is the divine wrath that Christ would suffer at the Cross as He bore the sins of mankind upon Himself.   The author wrote, “Jesus did not take delight in His approaching crucifixion; He loved life on this earth.  He enjoyed the pleasures of walking with His disciples, holding children on His knees, attending a wedding, eating with friends, riding in a boat, or working in the temple at Passover time.” Now I don’t feel bad for us mortals for our lingering sentiments for this world.

Living Somewhere Between Estrogen and Death by Barbara Johnson

If you are middle aged and Christian, then this humorous book would be fun for you to read. It takes the scariness of being old out and replaces it with humor. Basically, Barbara Johnson believes that we should just laugh our way till the last day and throughout the book, she cracks jokes about being old, not being able to see below her waist, having dentures, and above all, being forgetful. Some humorous soul put their “Excuse my dust” on her own tombstone. I think only Christians are so positive about dying and returning home to their Father. Here’s an anecdote that is not too Christian nor age related but funny nevertheless. I’ll just retell rather than retype.

Crossing Over

Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

Ezekiel 18:4 (KJV with commentary)

The other day on K-Love 95.9 FM, a nurse said that one day, a dying man called for the chaplain for his last rites and after that, for 24 hours before he died, he glowed from within.  The nurse was crying when she retold this. It was overwhelming.  I happened to visit my palliative doctor that morning and I asked him if he had seen people glowed at deathbed.

Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet by Xinran

Xinran is a journalist who ran a radio show in China in the 80’s in China and in 1994, a listener called her to tell her of a Chinese woman who was wandering in Tibet for 30 years and just returned to China. She flew to meet her to learn of her story and 10 years later, she produced this story Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet.