(Taken from F. R. Havergal’s answer to a remark about “death, which we ALL dread.”)
No, not “all.” One who has seen and accepted God’s way of salvation does not dread death. Perhaps I shall best express myself by just giving my own experience.
I do not fear death. One night I was conscious of certain symptoms which might lead to an all-but-fatal attack I had had once before on the brain. I knew it was possibly my last night on earth. Alone, in the dark, I felt that either death or fatal unconsciousness would set in. I never spent a calmer, sweeter hour than that. I had not one shadow of fear! There was only happy confidence and rest in Him “whom I have believed” (2 Tim. 1:1212For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. (2 Timothy 1:12)).
Was this delusion? Could it be so in the very face of death? I knew it was not delusion, for “I know whom I have believed.”
Now, how has this come to be so with me? It was not always so. I know as well as anyone what it is to “dread death” and to put away the thought of it because I dare not look it in the face.
There was a time when I saw clearly I could not save myself-that I deserved hell in many ways, but in one most of all-this, that I owed the whole love of my heart to God and had not given it to Him, that Jesus had so loved me as to die for me, and yet I had treated Him with daily-hourly-ingratitude. I had broken the first commandment, and as I owed all my life-future and past-to God, I had literally “nothing to pay.” Living for Him and keeping His commands for the future would not atone for the past.
I saw the sinfulness of my heart and life. I could not make my heart better. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” So, unless sin is taken away, my soul must die and go to hell; anyhow, I must stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
Where, then, was my hope? In the same Word of God it is written,
Believe what? That He must keep His word and punish sin and that He has punished it in the person of Jesus our Substitute, “who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:2424Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (1 Peter 2:24)).
If Jesus has paid my debt and borne the punishment of my sins, I only accept this and believe Him. It is no theorizing. I believed Him and cast myself, utterly hopeless and helpless and lost in myself, at the feet of Jesus and took Him at His word and accepted what He had done for me.
RESULT: Peace in believing, which death cannot touch.
Now it is the reality of realities to me-it is so intertwined with my life that I know nothing could separate me from His love.
I could not do without Jesus. I cannot and I do not live without Him. It is a new and different life, and the life and light which takes away all fear of death is what I want others to have and enjoy.