Dying Statements of the Unsaved
Listen to the difference in the recorded testimonies of those who died without Christ and those who died with Him. First are those who sowed their lives against the Lord Jesus Christ and the truth of the Word of God, and here is what they reaped in death.
1. Talleyrand Perigord: I am suffering the pangs of the damned.
2. Merabeau: Give me laudanum that I may not think of eternity.
3. Francis Newport: Oh, that I was to lie a thousand years upon the fire that never is quenched, to purchase the favor of God, and be united to Him again! But it is a fruitless wish. Millions of millions of years would bring me no nearer to the end of my torments than one poor hour. Oh, eternity, eternity! forever and forever! Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell!
4. Thomas Hobbs: a skeptic: If I had the whole world, I would give it to live one day. I shall be glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at. About to take a leap into the dark!
5. Thomas Paine: the noted American infidel and author: I would give worlds if I had them, that The Age of Reason had never been published. O Lord, help me! Christ, help me! O God, what have I done to suffer so much? But there is no God! But if there should be, what will become of me hereafter? Stay with me, for God’s sake! Send even a child to stay with me, for it is hell to be alone. If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one.
6. Francois Voltaire: the noted French infidel. He was one of the most fertile and talented writers and strove to retard and demolish Christianity. His cry in health concerning Christ was, Curse the wretch! He said once, In twenty years, Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear. Some years after his death, his very printing press was employed in printing New Testaments.
The Christian physician who attended Voltaire during the last illness, has left a testimony concerning the departure of this poor lost soul. He wrote to a friend as follows: When I compare the death of a righteous man, which is like the close of a beautiful day, with that of Voltaire, I see the difference between bright, serene weather and a black thunderstorm. It was my lot that this man should die under my hands. Often did I tell him the truth.
’Yes, my friend,’ he would often say to me, ’you are the only one who has given me good advice. Had I but followed it I would not be in the horrible condition in which I now am. I have swallowed nothing but smoke. I have intoxicated myself with the incense that turned my head. You can do nothing for me. Send me a mad doctor! Have compassion on me-I am mad!’
The physician goes on to say: I cannot think of it without shuddering. As soon as he saw that all the means he had employed to increase his strength had just the opposite effect, death was constantly before his eyes. From this moment, madness took possession of his soul. He expired under the torments of the furies.
At another time his doctor quoted Voltaire as saying: I am abandoned by God and man! I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months’ life. Then I shall go to hell; and you will go with me. O Christ! O Jesus Christ!
7. Charles IX: This cruel wretch, urged on by his inhumane mother, gave the order for the massacre of the Huguenots in which 15,000 souls were slaughtered in Paris alone, and 100,000 in other sections of France, for no other reason than that they owned Christ as their master. The guilty King died bathed in blood bursting from his own veins. To his physicians he said in his last hours: Asleep or awake, I see the mangled forms of the Huguenots passing before me. They drip with blood. They point at their open wounds. Oh! that I had spared at least the little infants at the breast! What blood! I know not where I am. How will all this end? What shall I do? I am lost forever! I know it. Oh, I have done wrong. God pardon me!
8. David Strauss: outstanding representative of German rationalism, after spending years of his life trying to dispense with God: My philosophy leaves me utterly forlorn! I feel like one caught in the merciless jaws of an automatic machine, not knowing at what time one of its great hammers may crush me!
9. Sir Thomas Scott: Until this moment I thought there was neither a God nor a hell. Now I know and feel that there are both, and I am doomed to perdition by the just judgment of the Almighty.
10. M. F. Rich: an atheist: I would rather lie on a stove and broil for a million years than go into eternity with eternal horrors that hang over my soul! I have given my immortality for gold; and its weight sinks me into an endless, hopeless, helpless hell.