ALSO in your dying, and in the sickness that precedes it, you may not cast away your human dignity.
Man the Lord created you; and man must suffer differently from a beast, and die differently than a beast dies. The preacher truly testifies, that dying itself is common to you and your dog, but Scripture shows you already in Jacob, the patriarch, what even in that dying extremity the faith of God’s child can do.
Jacob was old and sick, and felt that his end was near. He lay at the gate of death. And seeing that gate already opening, he called his sons to his bedside.
And when they came, he did not helpless and breathless remain lying on his bed. No, it says: “Then Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed” (Gen. 48, 2). This means to say, that he put his legs out of bed and on the edge of the bed sat upright.
And yet Jacob did not die young.
He was an old man of one hundred forty-seven years.
Evidently he was rather inclined to remain lying down. He was exhausted and at the limit of his strength. Sitting upright cost him violent exertion. For it reads, that he had to strengthen himself for it, i.e., take hold of himself and do his uttermost best.
But he did it.
He was not going to be dragged off as a prey by death, but would die as a hero of faith.
And when the fairly long address to his sons was ended, he himself gathered, so we read, his feet into the bed again, drew them together, and thus yielded up the ghost (Gen. 49, 33).
SUCH exhibition of heroism in human dying occurs also outside of faith and in opposition to faith.
A heathen emperor of Rome, at the approach of his end when death was already upon him, stood up against a wall, and refused to go to bed, for, said he, an emperor must die standing.
This was outside of faith. From pride.
But sometimes also in opposition to faith there is such heroic dying.
At least the writer of this has witnessed, how up to a few minutes before his death a ruffian stood up in his bed, raving and cursing against the Most High God and exhausting his last vital strength in rage against the Almighty.
And this should not astound you.
Satan works with no other powers than God works with, but he turns them into their opposite. Hate in its kinds is as strong as love.
The only difference is, that he who before dying strengthens himself in his faith, himself is weak, and in his weakness lets the strength of Christ perfect itself.
Therefore as an hero of faith he does not struggle against death. He does not resist. When death comes, it is to him an ambassador on the part of Christ. And when his hour is come, he walks through the valley of the shadow of death, and the rod and the staff of the Lord comfort him.
That Roman emperor allowed himself standing up to be vanquished. That ruffian fought death, till he was felled by it. But a child of God follows willingly, knowing that death also is a creature, that without God’s will can neither stir nor move.
YET one should not be heartless here in his judgment.
Sometimes there are sick, who are going to die, and cannot thus strengthen themselves. Such is the case with sicknesses that stupefy, or which by high fever send the blood to the head and render one delirious. Such is the case in terribly exhausting sicknesses, whereby one loses all control of the body, and finally half-unconsciously drops off, and is gone, before one of the bystanders can know it. Also sudden death by shock or paralysis of the heart excludes every possibility of clear, elastic, heroic and animated dying.
Had Jacob passed away of such a disease, he too would not have died so bravely.
Thus let us distinguish well. There is dying and dying. And no standard common to all can be set up.
But this lessens in nothing the claim, that he who can die bravely and in the power of faith, must also do it.
Must do this for himself, for his loved ones and for his God.
Also in dying you shall not be merely passive, but in holier sense be active.
In dying, too, you have a task, a calling, a sacred duty to fulfill. Your last piece of work on earth. But a task, at your account; for which all your life long you have to prepare yourself; and of which you shall give account to the Judge of your heart and your thoughts.
This task touches also your loved ones.
Your death must leave behind a fruit for them. Presently your love can no more benefit them, but can still do so in your dying. For the impression of an heroic and believing deathbed always leaves behind a glorious preachment. An impression not easily wiped out.
And thus likewise you have to die honorably for God’s sake.
For God’s honor, over against Satan and his satellites, hangs by it; hangs by it, that also in the dying of His child the power of faith be manifest.
AND whether you can do anything for this?
Yea, surely you can.
Learn it of Jacob. First he strengthened himself, let down his feet from the bed, sat upright, leaning on his staff, and with animation addressed his children. And when that task was ended, he did not call for help, and they did not put him to bed, but he himself drew his feet into the bed and placed them together upon the couch, from which he would be carried out to Canaan.
And how Jacob could do this? He, the dying man!
Evidently because he did not put up his faith as in a sheath on the wall, but used it to the end as a weapon, to exhibit hero courage.
Yet Jacob could not do this at once.
If long years before his death Jacob had accustomed himself, to act in times of accident or sickness cowardly and soulless, this wrong would have avenged itself in his dying.
Power of faith is no imagination, but a motion of soul, which expresses itself in will-power and elasticity. And only as fruit of steady exercise of faith, an exercise that steeled the will, such a royal dyingbed was granted the old patriarch.
DYING hangs together with your living.
When in life you have accustomed yourself, to go out of the way for the body; to have the body dominate you; and cowardly to yield to every emotion in the body; how in the world, when finally the whole body must go under, will you in dying heroically maintain your stand?
Therefore the dyingbed stands immediately related to the sickbed.
One is under his sickness, and the other above it. This is because, with spirit- and faith-power one resists the stupefaction and exhaustion of the disease, while the other holds himself limp and cowardly, and at once lets himself be overwhelmed by the effect of his sickness.
This difference you see already in your children, when they suffer pain. Then one succumbs and shrinks back from it and sets up a great crying, while the other child holds himself in leash and exhibits courage.
With the child, even as with the man, this can be over-boldness and insensibility springing from the same. Nerves also with one are far stronger than with the other. And then, indeed, this must be led into better paths. For that same Jacob who so died, was the counterpart of insensibility, and cried like a child when he heard of Joseph’s death, and wept when he saw Joseph again.
But the reverse in your child demands equal leading. Oversensitiveness is sin, and must be fought against. It is unworthy of a man. And as often as pain or distress or suffering of sickness overtakes us, the man in man must be evident; he may not throw himself away; and if he is a child of God, even though Satan beats him with fists, he must be able to do all things through Christ Who giveth him strength.
SO every fault in your training avenges itself still upon your dyingbed. For on the development of courage in suffering, hangs the honor of your faith.
But also the example of your environment operates so mightily upon you.
Just because so few patriarchical dyingbeds are witnessed, every idea is lost of the calling, which awaits us still in our dying.
You see people around you ever so greatly engrossed with the service of the body, to feed it, to clothe it, to ornament it, to bandage it when it incurred maiming. And of the care for feeding, clothing and ornamenting the spirit, the soul within, you observe so little.
This weakens. It extinguishes the high-spiritedness of faith, it quells faith in the power of faith. And so the impression of the material becomes so gigantically great, and the impression of the spiritual so dwarfishly small.
Then one no longer dares with his faith to resist that gigantic power.
And so there are more and more who succumb, till it pleases God to raise up again certain heroes also in this matter of dying.
And where these went before, others follow.
And so the Christian dyingbed comes back again.
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