Are You Ready (8)
REV. E. PAYSON'S JOYFUL EXPERIENCES AND TRIUMPHANT DEATH
He was asked, by a friend, if he could see any particular reason for this dispensation. He replied, "No; but I am as well satisfied as if I could see ten thousand reasons." In a letter dictated to his sister he writes: "Were I to adopt the figurative language of Bunyan, I might date this letter from the land of Beulah, of which I have been for some time such a happy inhabitant. The celestial city is full in view. Its glories beam upon me; its breezes fan me; its odors are wafted to me; its sounds strike upon my ears, and its spirit is breathed into my heart. Nothing separates me from it but the river of death, which now appears as an insignificant rill, which can be crossed at a single step, whenever God shall give permission. The Sun of Righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and nearer, appearing larger and brighter as He approached, and now fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory, in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun, exulting, yet almost trembling, while gaze on this excessive brightness, and wondering why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm."
On being asked, "Do you feel reconciled?" he replied, "O, that is too cold; I rejoice; I triumph; and this happiness will endure as long as God himself, for it consists in admiring and adoring Him. I can find no words to express my happiness. I seem to be swimming in a river of pleasure, which is carrying me to the great fountain. It seems as if all the bottles in heaven were opened, and all its fullness and happiness have come down into my heart. God has been depriving me of one blessing after another, but as each one has removed, He has come in and filled up its place. If God had told me sometime ago, that He was about to make me as happy as I could be in this world, and that He should begin by crippling me in all my limbs, and removing from me all my usual sources of enjoyment, I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing His purposes, now, when I am a cripple, and not able to move, I am happier than I ever was in my life before, or ever expected to be. "It has often been remarked, that people who have passed into the other world cannot come back to tell us what they have seen; but I am so near the eternal world, that I can almost see as clearly as if I were there; and I see enough to satisfy me of the truth of the doctrines I have preached. I do not know that I should feel at all surer had I been really there."
"Watchman, what of the night!" asked a gray-headed member of his church. "I should think it was about noonday," replied the dying Payson.
The ruling passion being strong in death, he sent a request to his pulpit, that his people should repair to his sick-chamber. They did so in specified classes, a few at a time and received his dying message. To the young men of his congregation, he said: "I felt desirous that you might see that the religion I have preached can support me in death. You know that I have many ties which bind me to earth; a family to which I am strongly attached, and a people whom I love almost as well; but the other world acts like a much stronger magnet, and draws my heart away from this."
"Death comes every night, and stands by my bedside in the form of terrible convulsions, every one of which threatens to separate the soul from the body. These grow worse and worse, till every bone is almost dislocated with pain. Yet, while my body is thus tortured, my soul is perfectly, perfectly happy and peaceful. I lie here and feel these convulsions extending higher and higher, but my soul is filled with joy unspeakable! I seem to swim in a flood of glory, which God pours down upon me. Is it a delusion, that can fill the soul to overflowing with joy in such circumstances? If so, it is a delusion better than any reality. It is no delusion. I feel it is not. I enjoy this happiness now. And now, standing as I do, on the ridge that separates the two worlds -- feeling what intense happiness the soul is capable of sustaining, and judging of your capacities by my own, and believing that those capacities will be filled to the very brim with joy or wretchedness forever, my heart yearns over you, my children, that you may choose life, and not death. I long to present every one of you with a cup of happiness, and see you drink it."
"A young man," he continued, "just about to leave the world, exclaimed, 'The battle's fought, the battle's fought, but the victory is lost forever!' But I can say, The battle's fought -- and the victory is won -- the victory is won forever! I am going to bathe in the ocean of purity, and benevolence, and happiness, to all eternity. And now, my children, let me bless you, not with the blessing of a poor, feeble, dying man, but with the blessing of the infinite God." He then pronounced the apostolic benediction.
A friend said to him, "I presume it is no longer incredible to you, that martyrs should rejoice and praise God in the flames and on the rack?"
"No," said he; "I can easily believe it. I have suffered twenty times as much as I could in being burned at the stake, while my joy in God so abounded as to render my sufferings not only tolerable, but welcome."
At another time, he said: "God is literally now my all in all. While He is present with me, no event can in the least diminish my happiness; and were the whole world at my feet, trying to minister to my comfort, they could not add one drop to my cup."
To Mrs. Payson, who observed to him, "Your head feels hot and seems to be distended"; he replied: "It seems as if the soul disdained such a narrow prison, and was determined to break through with an angel's energy, and I trust with no small portion of an angel's feeling, until it mounts on high."
"It seems as if my soul had found a new pair of wings, and was so eager to try them, that in her fluttering, she would rend. the fine network of the body in pieces."
THE CLOSING SCENE
On Sabbath, October 21, 1827, his last agony commenced, attended with that labored breathing and rattling in the throat which rendered articulation extremely difficult. His daughter was summoned from the Sabbath-school, and received his dying kiss and "God bless you, my daughter." He smiled on a group of church members and exclaimed, with holy emphasis, "Peace, peace! victory!" He smiled on his wife and children and said, in the language of dying Joseph, "I am going, but God will surely be with you!"
He rallied from the death conflict and said to his physician "that although he had suffered the pangs of death, and got almost within the gates of Paradise, yet, if it was God's will that he should come back and suffer still more, he was resigned." He passed through a similar scene in the afternoon and again revived.
On Monday morning, his dying agonies returned in all their severity. For three hours every breath was a groan. On being asked if his sufferings were greater than on the preceding Sunday night, he answered, "incomparably greater." He said the greatest temporal blessing of which he could conceive would be one breath of air.
Mrs. Payson, fearing from the expression of suffering on his countenance that he was in mental distress, questioned him. He replied, "Faith and patience hold out." These were the last words of the dying Christian hero. He gradually sunk away, till about the going down of the sun his chastened and purified spirit, all mantled with the glory of Christian triumph in life and death, ascended to share the everlasting glory of his Redeemer before the eternal throne.
______Fifty Years and Beyond.
What matters on the death bed is not the pain, the position, the name, the achievements, the title, the people, the wealth gathered, the love around the dying but the readiness and preparedness to meet God. Are you ready to meet God? Are you prepared for eternity? The graves mistake you can ever make is to delay in making this decision. Why not make sure of the most important thing today? Only Hod can forgive you all your sins, give you joy unspeakable here on earth and incredible peace about eternity. This is a reality. You can experience this toady by inviting Him in. Amen.
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