Life more than Death

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 14, 1875

Life more than Death.

[THE following from the Working Church seems so in harmony with truth, and contains such a rebuke upon the prevailing tendency of the age in the direction indicated, that I send it for publication in REVIEW. S. B. W.]

Every careful reader of the Scriptures must have observed how little is said in regard to the deaths of those whose history is there recorded. We have an account of the death of one apostle, and only one—James—who perished by the sword; and his martyrdom occupies only one verse (Acts 12: 2), and seems to have been recorded only because it was followed by an attempt upon the life of Peter that did not succeed. Nothing is said of John, or Paul, or Peter. The volume which records their deeds “does not sing their requiem;” it is the record of the noble efforts which they made to preach the gospel of Christ while they could travel from one country to another, and could endure hardness as good soldiers, and could offer themselves up a living sacrifice; and does not contain, as we might have fancied it would, any account of the manner in which they left this world, or of the hopes or fears or degree of assurance with which they passed from hence. Of the emotions of Paul in anticipation of death, we have some knowledge from his language in the second epistle to Timothy (chap. 4: 6-8). But of his feelings when the hour arrived, and the Roman lictors led him forth to die, no account is given. In all of the cases where the death scene is described, special reasons can be seen for making them exceptions to the general rule. In the case of Stephen, for instance, nothing that he did in the living discharge of his diaconate could have been so specially important as the testimony which he gave in the dying hour, as the first of the army of Christian martyrs, to the truth and power of the gospel.

This prevailing silence of the Scriptures in regard to the death scenes of those whose history is preserved for all time, is a significant and very instructive fact. The Bible nowhere makes dying emotions important. It is the living sacrifice that we are called to render. The call of Christ is to service, to work in his vineyard. More important by far is our work while the sun of life is up than our emotions amid the shadows of the setting sun. It is not the death but the life to which we must look for proof of the divine life in the soul. Many physical causes affect the mind in the dying hour. If we have witnessed a consistent, godly work in a professed Christian, we cannot call in question the genuineness of his piety, even though his death-bed experiences may not be what we desired or expected; and on the other hand, we may well tremble for the issue of a life, in a professed Christian, who has not proved his sincerity, however the death scene may seem gilded with glory.