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Blessed are the Dead

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 7, 1871

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 37, No. 12.

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Blessed are the Dead.

By James White

THE Vineyard Gazette gives the following interesting facts relative to the life, religious faith, and death, of one of the very first Seventh-day Adventists in our country. We visited her home on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., twenty-five years since, and felt that we were in the presence of one who truly walked with God. It is said that the following statement is by a candid young man, who is not a professor of religion.
J. W.
Died, in Holmes' Hole, Mass., Aug. 26, 1870, widow Sarah Dexter, aged 85 years, 7 months, 15 days.
She was truly a Christian woman and a zealous advocate of the truths of that Book by which we are all to be judged. A warm friend was she to the cause of Christ, having for more than fifty years been a teacher and expounder of the sacred truths contained in that blessed volume,—the Holy Scriptures and word of God.
She was a true believer and supporter of the “Advent cause,” believing that we are living in the last generation this world will ever know, and firmly believing in the second coming of Christ in the clouds of heaven, in all his glory.
Her last testimony to a very dear friend was that her peace was made with God, and she was going to sleep in Christ.
Her faith was that, the living know that they must die, and that the dead know not anything; she also believed in that scripture which says, “The day they die their thoughts perish.”
The above Scriptural quotations allude directly to the intermediate state, or the time between death and the resurrection.
She believed (as many of us do) that from the moment of our death to the moment of the general resurrection of the dead, of the land as well as of the sea, is an undefinable space of time,—the length or brevity of which is to us alike,—one year being as a thousand, or a thousand years as one,—we being asleep in Jesus and entirely insensible to the flight of time—insensible to all things—so to remain until the morning of the resurrection, when the sleeping dead of earth and sea shall come forth by a command issued by our God, and be summoned to appear before him to receive a reward or punishment “according to the deeds done in the body.”
This, then, was the faith of our departed sister,—now asleep in Jesus, awaiting the call of the Master; and at his coming we feel assured that she will receive a crown of life.
For more than twenty-four years she was a zealous observer of the seventh-day Sabbath, commonly known to other denominations as Saturday.
On that day, the house of our sister was always open to friends entertaining a like precious faith, and to all who desired to love and serve God.
She always manifested a desire, an earnest wish for the conversion of souls, and nothing could cheer her more than to hear that another soul had been saved, another friend brought to Christ.
To those young in that faith which looks to Jesus for life and immortality—those who had just started in the way that leads to Heaven, she was indeed a dear friend, a wise, loving, Christian counselor. Jesus was her guide and counselor, and by his word and his doctrine she guided and counseled others. By humble prayer and kindly words, fitly spoken, she did what she could to assist all on their way to the celestial city,—the home of all who truly love and serve the Master. The promise is to those only who continue faithful to the end. Our aged and much beloved sister continued faithful to her last moment. She bore the cross, and when Jesus comes she will receive the crown.
J. H. L.
Holmes' Hole, Sept. 20, 1870.