So Much Better Now” Are you Sure?

“So Much Better Now” Are you Sure?

The pain has been excruciating, the hours and weeks arduous. The cost to the spouse and family who love her has been gladly expended, but jobs and daily responsibilities will necessarily decrease the hours for the daily vigil now. Added to it all of this is the treatment cost itself, sending up in smoke years of saving.

“Mother is so ill,” they say to concerned friends. “We know it will be such a relief for her when she dies.”

What? So much better when she dies? Not if she does not know Christ.

The unconverted dying loved one isn’t going to be relieved upon death. I wish it could be otherwise, but Christ made no promises for future comfort to those who die without believing in Him.

The deathbed is better than the eternal pain of hell. No hope exists beyond the point of death. Regardless of the love and mercy of God extended to your loved one for all these years, mercy will then end. The door is shut to hope forever.

I know that saying such things seems cruel, but it isn’t meant that way. It is meant to extend to you and to your loved one an urgent message that you must believe in Christ while there is opportunity. If there is breath, and ability to think, there is time.

I am not attempting to answer the difficult question concerning those who die as babies or those who die having never had mental ability. I leave these difficulty questions to God and the discussion of them to another time. But for those who passively or adamantly reject following God and Christ, physical death without having believed inevitably leads to something far worse.

Now do you believe in Christ? Most believe in the Christ of their imagination rather than the Christ of revelation. It is Jesus himself who said so much about hell for those who reject Him. Is this the Jesus you can believe in and can live for?

Christ opens the door to life widely to any who wish to come to him, but shuts the door to hell tightly behind any who die having not done so. Your dying loved one or friend will not be better unless this reality is grasped. Nor will you. May God help us all to see this before it is too late.

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For more on how to believe in Christ, listen to Pursuing God, A Seeker’s Guide at www.WaytoGod.org.

FWIW, I called an old friend last week who gave me my first job in real estate. I knew he was dying, because he had told me at a lunch we had together a couple months earlier.

His voice was very weak on the phone and he told me I don't have much time.

I immediately told him, "hold onto Jesus, everything will be okay".

Later I thought of a whole bunch of better things to say, but that was what the Holy Spirit gave me in the moment.

He responded, I know Him and I will.

His son called me on Sunday to tell me he had died. He then said, "it was so great that you called. I was there and you were on the speaker and everyone heard you". His son had been reading the book of Romans to him daily and I'm sure some of the unsaved family thought it was a bit much. Thankfully, my business mentor came to know the Lord a long time ago.

Thank you for posting this. People need to hear this often. It should be shouted at every funeral.

My beloved husband died suddenly last June. He knew and loved the Lord. He was not called to have a very vocal faith (that would be me). He was not vocal about any of his feelings. His was a very quiet faith, lived out in his life.

What drives me nuts is when people try to comfort me and tell me that he is in a better place. I want to scream at them and ask them how do they know that if they who were very close know he is in the Lord’s presence. I want to shake them and tell them that just because someone you know died and they weren’t a murderer does not mean that they are with the Lord. I think these people are just trying to comfort themselves by thinking and saying this.

Of course, I don’t say “how do YOU know he is in a better place”, unless I know they are a believer in the real biblical Jesus. And then, we comfort each other with the knowledge. I know the others don’t know what to say. What do you say to a new widow? I know they think they are trying to comfort me. It doesn’t. My comfort and my peace and my joy lie solely in the Lord Jesus. But I think they are also trying to comfort and convince themselves that God is not perfectly just and perfectly righteous and only through Jesus can we be forever in a better place. I just try to say that I know where He is because He trusted Jesus to pay for his sins.

Thinking of you sister....

I had unsaved parents, if I say I believe they are in hell, unless someone presented the gospel to them on their death bed, people think I am cold.. but the truth is I have no expectation of seeing them in heaven..but what I know is I will not care ...Heaven is all about God , and His glory , His holiness ...for eternity

I recently lost a beloved sister in law ...she was a wonderful woman as the world calls wonderful..mass every day, ‘eucharistic minister , “corporal works of mercy”...the pillar of our family

When the priest announced at her funeral mass that the full church could “pray to her” because she was already in heaven “ I wanted to cry.. this loved lady is burning in hell unless someone presented Christ to her on her death bed

The other side of her life was a hard drinking, blaspheming mouth a sinner in need of a Savior.. her good works counted for nothing

So when I saw this she came to my mind ...

I loved this lady ... and grieved I never had the oportunity before she died..

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