If I Die…

Someone I’ve known for many years died the other day. It’s an interesting phenomenon that when people die, we eulogies them. We stop and pause and think about the messages they proclaimed throughout their life. It seems we find more meaning in things they may have said, done, or written only after they die.

I think we honor people more after they die because they are no longer a threat. They no longer are competition. They cannot rise and speak for themselves or defend themselves. Because of this, it is easier to say good things about them. We contemplate the mystery of their lives, passions, struggles, joys, and concerns.

I am positioning myself so that when I die (not “if” I die), people who knew me or heard about me will become nostalgic or curious and check out things that I have written. And I hope and pray that what I have written is a clear and consistent witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When I die, I want people to read this article. I want the curious to know that there is only one way of salvation, and that is through a repentant heart having faith in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity who died a substitutionary death on their behalf.

I want atheists to hear that atheism is entirely untenable. To deny the existence of the self-existing Triune God who has revealed Himself in His self-authenticating Bible means that you cannot prove anything. Without Him, reason, science, and morality are impossible. As Dr. Cornelius Van Til so aptly proclaimed, “Antitheism presupposes Theism.” By “theism,” he does not mean just any god, such as the false god of Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or any other religion. Only the Christian God of the Bible mediated through the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, is worthy of love, honor, praise, and thanksgiving.

When I die, I believe God will sovereignly direct the reader to read my words and be confronted with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I pray the Holy Spirit will breathe spiritual life into the core of your being so that you will become a child of God.

I pray those who read these words who are caught in the deception of our age where people, even pastors, are lying to you telling you that what God clearly calls sin is now, somehow miraculously made holy. I pray the Spirit would so convict those stopping by curious about my life, and my message will be so changed that no matter how difficult, how painful, how radical a change you have to make to get right with God, you will do it. Hell is real, and I want to see you again in heaven. I want you to tell me how God used what I wrote to change you for all eternity.

It doesn’t matter if you read these words before or after I die. What matters is that you respond to them by placing your faith in Christ.