"One gentleman I remember in particular. We were riding to his house. He was fifty-one years old. He was a motor cross racer, and he was having chest pain.We got on scene, we were the first ones there. I began to access him and tried to reassure him. He looked very, very anxious about whatever, and uh, he was pale and kind of what they call diaphoretic. Which means you're real sweaty. He didn't say very much. And he had never had a heart attack and never had any heart problems at all. We got him into the ambulance, began to take him to the hospital. Nothing changed on the way to the hospital. We got him into the hospital, onto the hospital bed. As we unloaded him, I looked at him, he took his last breath. He looked at me, and then he just quit breathing. They started to do CPR on him, he died. About a half hour later, they called me. 'We did everything we could to keep him alive.' "
"What would they have done to keep him alive?" I interjected.
"CPR, numerous drug therapy to try and restart the heart, even electric shock therapy to defibrillate the heart."
"Now, I've heard of clinical death and biological death, do you know anything about that? "
"Yea, clinical death is when the heart and breathing stops. Biological death is the death of the BIOS, the life, the death of the tissue," he explained.
"Which comes first?"
"Clinical."
"How long between clinical death and biological death?"
" About ten minutes."
"And after biological death, is there any chance of coming back? There is a whole school of thought that says that this is possible. Have you ever heard of this happening, and would any of your colleges attest to this being true?'
"Well, I wouldn't attest to that being true."
"Some people say that they see bright lights, and feel warmth and comfort before they come back. What are your feelings on this?"
"It is possible, but you never hear about the people who wake up screaming, 'Don't let me go back! Don't let me go back!', and they end up dying again. I mean, it's not always warmth and warm lights. Some people see fire, and you know, stuff like that. But they don't talk about that stuff in the secular media."
He ended with this statement," Life is going as fast as death is coming."
As a child, I can remember worrying about dying. I had seen almost every horror film ever made. However, I now know that death is a good thing to fear.
Death is the punishment for sinning, breaking God's Law. God's law is contained in the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20.3-17).
John Calvin once wrote, It is natural for us to shrink from death, but for the Christian there is light to overcome this fear. We can never have true happiness in this life. Our natural inclination is to like the world we know, but God does not want us to cling too firmly to it. He constantly shows us how empty it is by giving us troubles and difficulties. Even the good things of this world will not last and we must wait until we get to heaven to find things that are of permanent value (Calvin 110).
What is permanent value? For me, it is knowing Jesus Christ. He has taken away my fear of death, and replaced it with a reverent and proper fear of His judgment to come. Since He has washed away my sins, and remembered them no more, I am free.
He has given me wisdom in His truth. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom (Prov. 1.7).
Therefore you also be ready
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