The Autumn of Life V: More Bitter than Death

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Welcome to the Whole Council podcast. I'm John Snyder and we're looking at the fourth letter in a series of five by Archibald Alexander and these are taken from an appendix of a book that he wrote called

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Thoughts on Religious Experience. I believe it's out of print right now. You can still get it as a

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Kindle book and there are some pamphlets available that have been put together just of the letters that we're talking about.

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Alexander was the president of Princeton Theological Seminary and he was also the head systematic theology teacher or the chair of theology and he pastored during the latter half of the

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Second Great Awakening and so in a sense Alexander holds a unique place in American theology.

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He's very reformed and he's very precise with this theology but he's also very experiential and so he writes a book on Christian or religious experience and we've been looking at the letters written to those who are in the autumn of the

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Christian life, the elderly believer, and you may not be an elderly believer and you may not consider yourself an elderly believer but it's good advice for all of us in light of the fact that whatever is uncertain about the future,

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Alexander says, death is not one of those uncertain things unless Christ comes before we die.

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So in this fourth letter, Alexander is going to deal with the issue of death and how it is viewed outside of Christ, quite terrifying, and how it's viewed by the believer in Christ and very different and he's going to spend most of his time on the outside of Christ view.

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He gives a list of reasons that death is bad and the first he says is that while death is bad in itself, it is even more frightening when we think of what often precedes it physically.

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So if we live long enough, our body begins to deteriorate, our minds perhaps begin to fail us, and for many people death is preceded by a long season of illness and that may be very painful or very sad season and so death is not just itself a frightening thing for humans, what leads up to the death can be frightening.

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And Alexander says it's as if the soul doesn't want to be separated from the body, from this tent, and it takes a violence to separate the two of them.

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Second, he says, while death is bad in itself and it's bad in the sense of what might precede it, it is even worse because it separates us from those that we love and from the scenes and things that God has given us throughout our lives, things that are precious to us, and we have to say goodbye to them as we say goodbye to this world.

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So he mentions relationships, relationships that God has given us that have filled our lives with many happy memories and as we face death we realize that we will have to say goodbye to these people, a husband saying goodbye to a wife, a parent to a child, a grandparent to grandchildren.

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But it's not just the relationships, it's the things and the places and the memories.

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So we are leaving this scene, this earthly scene, and there are many places perhaps that the memories of those places fill us with joy.

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So he talks about, you know, your childhood home or your home as a parent or as a grandparent and all the memories you have.

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Or he mentions church buildings where you remember gathering with other believers over the years and how often

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God met with you and how he was gracious to you. And saying goodbye to these things can be a sad thing for the believer and of course sad things for the unbelievers.

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He goes on to say that death is bad in itself but it's worse still because of the pain that we will feel for those that we're leaving behind.

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So it's not just that as we face death we're leaving things behind that are precious, but we look at the face of those that love us and perhaps they've come to say goodbye to us, they're visiting us in a hospital.

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Everyone knows that things are reaching an end. Perhaps they've, you know, come from a distance at holidays and we feel there won't be another holiday with these people.

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And we can see it in their face even though they try to put a brave front on, you know, a pleasant mask.

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We see it in their face that they hurt at the thought of saying goodbye. And so we know that we will be leaving a spouse and we've seen what that does, the cost that a spouse has to pay when they're left behind.

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We're leaving children, we're leaving grandchildren and friends, and in doing that we know that there will be some cost that they will pay when we're gone.

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And it's just natural. It happens in the unbelievers life, it happens in the Christians life, and that makes death a pretty hard thing to face for us.

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But then he ends these statements of why death is bad with the pinnacle, and he says death is bad in itself, but it is most bitter when we are facing death and we look at loved ones who do not know the

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Lord. Or when a loved one is facing death and we're looking at them and we're about to say goodbye to them and we realize that they have never shown any evidence that they love

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Christ, that they follow Christ, that they are Christ's. And not being in Christ, what death will usher them into is, you know, unthinkably sad.

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And so he points out that for the believer, this is particularly a sad and costly element in death.

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We are saying goodbye, if we're dying, to people that we've witnessed to or prayed for and they have not embraced

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Christ, or we're saying goodbye to someone that we have witnessed to and prayed for and they have not embraced

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Christ. Of course, Alexander stops and deals with the fact that this can be a very personally bitter cost if, as a

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Christian, our conscience accuses us of not doing what we could have.

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We know that we can't save people and we don't damn people. We're not big enough to rescue someone by our good example, and we're not big enough to damn them by a poor example.

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But still, living in such a way so as to point people to Christ, speaking in such a way so as to explain the gospel, praying and bringing the names of loved ones to the throne of heaven frequently, we can do those things as believers.

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And if our conscience points out that we have not done that, or not done that as we should, then this partying with people who are not believers is particularly bitter.

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He says this, When remorse for unfaithfulness mingles its bitter streams with the sorrow occasioned by bereavement, the cup must be bitter beyond conception.

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So, when we're having to say goodbye to a loved one, or whether we're the one that's leaving this world, or they are when we're saying goodbye to these pleasant memories, when we know that other people were hurt because of our leaving, when you throw on top of all of that the bitter sorrow of not knowing whether that loved one that you're leaving, or they're leaving you, knows the

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Lord, that is, he says, mixed in with the other sorrows that is unspeakably bitter.

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And I think we should stop and say that this sorrow is something that can go so deeply, that can wound the heart of a believer in particular so deeply, that, humanly speaking, it's an incurable wound, but it's not incurable with God.

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Alexander warns against a couple of wrong responses to this.

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One wrong response, and this is one I think that we probably have to be most on guard against, and it is by far the more difficult to deal with, and that is the response of looking at a lost one that's dying or leaving behind lost ones, and you despair, and guilt and an angry conscience overwhelm you, and you want to know how do you comfort yourself.

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And one way, he says, you can comfort yourself inappropriately, is to adjust the Bible to make room for unbelievers, and to say, well, a

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God of infinite mercy and infinite grace would surely not damn my loved one for rejecting

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Christ. And he mentions a pastor in his own day, he doesn't give his name, a man who preached faithfully the biblical doctrines all of his life, and then when his own son passes away, a son that showed no interest really in Christ, the pastor suddenly begins to change his descriptions of judgment, and of who goes into eternity facing judgment, and who is forgiven, and he, you know, he becomes kind of a

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Unitarian, where he says, well, actually, I believe a God of mercy would just bring everyone under the umbrella of the cross, and so my unbelieving son surely is not facing the consequences of rejecting the gospel.

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And Alexander warns that we must not do this. So how do we handle it?

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Well, the author doesn't give us a lot of advice in this letter, so let me stop and say just a few things.

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I think we could say it this way. When there are spiritual wounds in the soul, it's one thing to be wounded and to go to God, and time and the grace of God heal those wounds.

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It's another thing to feel the spiritual wound, you know, the angry conscience, the awareness that you failed, and the wound is polluted by shame and guilt, and there are things in the

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Christian life that the shame and the guilt that you bear are so deep and costly that you don't even want to bring them to God.

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Just kneeling in your prayer room and saying the words to God that would honestly display what you've done or what you failed to do in a situation, you feel them so deeply that you don't even want to say them.

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It's as if you can't even bring yourself to be honest, but you must. If you don't, then that kind of a wound never really heals spiritually, because it's the pollution, the infection that's there not being cleaned.

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It doesn't heal, and I find that there are people who live the rest of their lives as Christians in real despondency.

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It's as if they are paralyzed or crippled, and they limp along at this poor dying rate, and sometimes it's because that something they have failed to do, and in this case, perhaps they have failed to point a loved one to Christ, and they've said goodbye to that loved one now, and there's no more opportunity to be an influence for good in that life, and the sense of shame and guilt and sorrow has overwhelmed them.

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What do you do? Well, if there is genuine guilt there, and it's not just the accusations of an enemy, you know, the kind of the vague, you could have done better, and if you would have done better, they would have been a

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Christian. That's a very popular lie. We feel like if we would have been more prayerful, then this person would have loved the

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Lord. You know, maybe you say it this way, if I would have been George Mueller, if I would have been a prayer like that man, if I would have been like Hudson Taylor, if I would have had that kind of prayer life, my children would all be converted, and that is not true.

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So you have to reject those as lies from the enemy. You wouldn't say if I would have prayed better,

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I would have earned forgiveness for them, or I would have guaranteed, if my life would have been a little better,

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I would have guaranteed the salvation of everyone I love. We wouldn't say that. We know that that's wrong, and it's equally wrong to say that the failures that I have seen in my life, the imperfections in my

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Christian walk with God, and they are serious because they are against God, and they do impact the people around us, but you do understand that that doesn't guarantee the damnation of the people you love.

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So we take the honest look at ourselves, and the guilt that we feel, and we take it to the mercy seat, and we meet

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God there, and as serious a thing as it is to have failed in pointing loved ones to Christ, as big a deal as that is, it is not to be compared with how big a deal the infinite worth of Christ's death has, and his obedience.

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He has washed you, and if you are in Christ, he has clothed you with his righteousness, and so you can bring that to God, and there is real forgiveness.

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That doesn't remove all the pain, but it cleans out the wound, and I feel, you know, from my own experience and watching others as a pastor, that that is really the first step to being healed and resting yourself in God.

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So if you are tempted to blame yourself, and that bitterness has not been dealt with, you must go to the cross, or there won't be any healing.

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Well, that's one wrong way of responding. You're overly brokenhearted, and you either adjust the

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Bible, or you blame yourself, and you remain paralyzed, but another wrong response, he says, to seeing people pass away, and we're not sure where they are spiritually.

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Another wrong response is that we would be harsh in our judgments. So we wish to see more clear evidence that they walk with the

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Lord, that's true. We wish to see more clear evidence that they belong to Christ, that they love

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Christ, that's true, but Alexander says, be careful that you don't harshly judge them.

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You can be rash in your judgment and say, well, since I didn't see enough evidence, well, they must be an unbeliever, and when they lie in the casket, you pronounce them damned.

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And so he said, we have to be careful against that. It is a mercy of God that we do not know everything about each person's soul that we love.

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It is a mercy that we do not know exactly what happened in the last days, weeks, hours, or minutes.

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There is, of course, a possibility that God was dealing with them in such an extraordinary kindness that they were saved, you know, even on their deathbed.

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So we have to be careful not to say that a person is definitely damned.

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He gives us this statement, and I think this is a good guide. We may indulge hope for our deceased friends as far as we can, consistently with the truth of God.

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In other words, if a person dies denying God and saying that their righteousness is just enough, it's all they need, and they are taken in that moment, well, then

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I think we don't have reason to hope, consistent with Scripture, that their soul is right with God.

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Why would you? But if there are areas of their life that we are ignorant of, and maybe there are evidences there where we didn't see, we weren't around them toward the end, etc.,

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then we are allowed to hope, as far as it's consistent with the

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Word of Truth, that perhaps God was merciful, and so we don't pronounce them with Christ, and we don't pronounce them judged forever.

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He goes on to say one more thing. It's not just that we are free to hope for the spiritual state of a deceased friend, as far as it's consistent with the

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Word of God, the truth of God, but he says also, but let not one seeking healing for his wounded spirit do so by denying the faith.

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So we cannot adjust Scripture to make room for people that we love, but who have rejected Christ.

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What about deathbed repentance? Well, again, he says there are some different views on this, and there are two extremes which we want to avoid, to treat every deathbed repentance as an impossibility, that it can't be true repentance in faith, and he says that's wrong.

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Though we cannot see the evidence and fruit that flow out of that from a lifetime that follows, that does not mean that God cannot be merciful, and a person cannot be born again, even in the last hours of life.

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On the other end, he says, do not label every expression of natural fear and anxiety about the coming of death, do not label that the supernatural work of conversion, of real repentance, of real faith, of the new birth, because as people approach death, they may talk very spiritually about what's to come, and oh, you know, it will all be right,

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I know that God's going to make it all right, and there's these vague statements, but that doesn't necessarily equal living faith and repentance.

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So guard against both of those errors. Alexander gives, in a paragraph toward the end of this letter, some advice to those who are elderly and who have never embraced

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Christ. So he says this, if there are among my readers any that are elderly who are still impenitent or unrepentant,

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I would earnestly and affectionately exhort you not to despair of God's mercy. There still may be hope in your case.

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My dear fellow sinner, there is nothing in God's Word which would exclude you from salvation unless you voluntarily and obstinately exclude yourself by a rejection of the overture of reconciliation, of the offer of reconciliation.

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Christ says to you, as much as he does to any other, you will not come unto me that you may have life.

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Well, at the very end of the letter, he switches to what does death look like from within Christ, and he doesn't give much material here, but basically what he says is this, death is still frightening, but if we can hold up the torch of Scripture, and with the truths of Christ, we walk toward the grave, this torch burning brightly will dispel the gloom that gathers around the grave for a

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Christian, because death will usher you into an infinitely better life that can know no ending.

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It cannot experience any mixture with sorrow or imperfection, and if that is in fact true, while there are still some frightening things about being separated from this body, there are still some sad things about saying goodbye to loved ones, and sweet memories that we have, and the places that we've been, and there are, of course, even the sorrows of saying goodbye to loved ones who still remain unrepentant, yet death will usher you into the presence of Christ, and in light of that, we do not have to despair.

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Well, next week we'll look at the final letter, where he talks about how we might prepare ourselves for death so that when it comes, we are not overwhelmed by the temptations that often come during that time.