What Happens At The Moment of Death?
David Way · Tidal Church Moncton · October 13, 2024 · What Happens When You Die? series
David Way shares stories of loved ones near death, along with Luke 10 and Ecclesiastes 3:11, to show that death does not have the last word. God has set eternity in our hearts, and anyone can know their name is written in heaven.
More from David Way · The What Happens When You Die? series
Transcript
[0:01] Good morning, Tidal Church. Good morning. That's much better. And if you've come here this morning and maybe you feel like the tide has gone out in your life, the tide always comes back in. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank You this morning for Your love. We thank You for Your provisions. We thank You, most of all, for Your Son Jesus, who made it possible for us to have eternal life, to know that one day we will be with You forever. And so, God, we're thankful today. We give You praise and honor. In Your name we pray. Amen.
[0:47] Now, ladies and gentlemen, if this freaks you out this morning, I want you to know, I declare unto you that death does not have the last word. Can you say amen? Amen. On March the ninth, 1981, I received a phone call that I didn't want to receive. It was a pastor calling, and he said, David, I've got sad words for you today. Your father passed away last night.
[1:33] And of course you can understand the numbness and the shock and everything that went through my heart and soul. My dad. I'll tell you a little bit about my dad. He was a true follower of Jesus, and he had a ministry. Listen to this. Now, he had a ministry of visiting the sick. He wasn't a pastor. And quite often people would call him when somebody died because there was no undertaker in our hometown. And my dad would do what they called lay the person out. He would dress them and prepare them for the time of visitation. And so quite often, my dad would be called to a home.
[2:20] During my younger years, TB was an epidemic in Newfoundland and people were dying left and right and just before somebody was ready to cross over, they would call my dad. Of course, my dad would lead him to the Lord. But the interesting thing, even at seven years of age, my dad would drag me along with him. I mean, drag me because I didn't want to go. I mean, who wants to go into a room that's full of contagious disease and death at seven years of age? But I guess God was preparing me for the hundreds of times since that I've had the privilege, the awesome privilege of being in a room when somebody, some of you here this morning, somebody you love, pass from death to life that we've been singing about, where time and eternity intersects in that moment.
[3:26] That's very special, folk. It's not something to fear, it's something to rejoice in. So four days later, on March the 13th, we went to my home church, the Full Gospel Pentecostal Tabernacle in Glovertown, Newfoundland. You think you have a problem with name change here, Full Gospel Pentecostal Tabernacle. Try that. But we used to call it the Mission. Everybody in town called the Mission.
[4:12] And in that church, on a Sunday night in evangelistic service, my dad would lead the after service. Now, if you don't know what an after service is, come and see me after the service. Okay? I don't have time to explain it now. But he would lead the congregation very often in his favorite chorus, his favorite chorus to sing. It goes like this: Home by and by when our journey is over, and we shall meet on that beautiful shore, sweeping through the gates with our hearts filled with joy. Glory to God, we'll be home by and by. And they would sing that over and over again. So we're sitting in the service and I'm not very comfortable because I'm used to being on the platform, and the funeral service, usually I'm sitting there wedged between my two older sisters.
[5:05] One is the Baptist and one is the Catholic. And I don't remember much about the service because my spirit was numb and my mind was numb, and I was filled with grief. After the benediction, we stood in line, the family members behind the casket as it was being wheeled out of the church. And the congregation stood and they started singing, "Home by and by, when my journey is o'er and we shall meet on that beautiful shore." And they were singing it. As we went out, we made our way up the hill to the cemetery, the pastor and the family.
[5:56] We waited for the congregation to come to join us. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes went by. If you've never stood in a wind blown cemetery in the top of hill in Newfoundland in March, you don't know what cold is. And we stood there and we waited and we wondered why nobody was leaving the church. What's going on? How come? Finally, one or two people came and then they all filed out. And after the committal, they told me what happened. As they were singing that chorus, the presence of God, the tangible glory of God literally came down into that tabernacle and they couldn't leave.
[6:49] They were raising their hands and praising God. And some of them were waving handkerchiefs. We don't do that here, but it wouldn't be a bad idea once in a while, as long as it's clean. But God was real. The presence of God was real. You see, ladies and gentlemen, they could praise God and they could entertain the presence of God because God dwells in the praises of the people. And they could do that because death does not have the last word. Amen.
[7:35] About 10 years ago, a beautiful lady from this church was in the last moments of her life. Her name was Pauline. I got a call from McNair Manor in Riverview, and they said, "You need to come over. Pauline doesn't have much longer to live." She had suffered from dementia for a long time, and she really wasn't aware of her surroundings. And as I went in the room, I realized that she was not responsive. She was literally unconscious.
[8:24] Her son, Jimmy, who's in the house this morning, and his sister Donna were there sitting on each side of the bed. And I went up to the bed and I just sat down on the foot of the bed. Pauline wasn't a very tall lady, and I said, "God, how? How? What do I do now? How do I pray?" And as clear as though it were a tangible voice, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "Sing." I'm not a real good singer, but I was a better singer than my dad. He was deaf as a post.
[9:11] But every time that he went to visit somebody who was sick or dying, he always sang. And so I leaned over close to Pauline's ear, and you have to understand that she hasn't known anybody for some time. Many months. She's unresponsive. She's in the last throes of physical death. And I started to sing, "There's a land that is fairer than day, and by faith I can see it afar, for the Father waits over the way to prepare us a dwelling place there." As I started at verse two, "We shall sing on that beautiful shore." Guess what happened? Pauline opened her eyes and she sang with me.
[10:00] We sang a duet, word for word, the next two stanzas and the chorus, "In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore." Why do you suppose that Pauline Berry could sing like that? Because, ladies and gentlemen, death does not have the last word. She had eternity within her heart. Just a few months ago, I was sitting in my La-Z-Boy. I do have a La-Z-Boy. I'm not a lazy boy, but I like to relax sometimes.
[10:47] It was 10:30 at night and I was watching the Toronto Maple Leafs win, as they always do. And the phone rings and somebody calling from the city hospital in Bunton, Tina doesn't have much longer to live. Can you come to the hospital? I arrived at the hospital just a little before midnight, and I sat on one side of the hospital bed holding Tina's hand, and the family were on the other side. And we visited and we prayed and we talked and we reminisced. At some point during the evening, Tina started to get to the point that she was uncomfortable and couldn't get her breath.
[11:40] And so one of the family members pressed the button and jacked up the hospital bed. So she was sitting up and she was very lucid at that moment. Okay, I want you to understand that she, you know, she was aware of her surroundings. She was with us, and all of a sudden she said, somebody said, "Is there anything we can get for your mom?" "How you doing?" She said, "Yeah." She said, "I'd like some Earl Grey tea." She didn't ask for Red Rose or Tetley or King Cole. She wanted Earl Grey tea. So one of the grandchildren went into the kitchen, the adjacent kitchen, and brewed up some tea and brought it in. And she kind of whispered, you know, it's not Earl Grey, but she wasn't no difference.
[12:26] And I guess she didn't. She took a few sips of a straw and they put it down. And so I'm still holding her hand and all of a sudden her eyes get big and she's looking at this blank wall. And she said to me, she said, "Pastor David, is that your mother or my mother? Is that your wife standing there?" Now, my wife does look like an angel, but that wasn't my wife. She was a hundred kilometers away. But Tina saw the presence of another world. She was ready to go. She knew Jesus. And she had been hooked up to an oxygen tank for long enough.
[13:14] She was about to breathe the sweet breezes of the heaven world, because, ladies and gentlemen, death does not have the last word. Amen. There's a story in Luke 6, or chapter 10 rather, and we're not going to read it this morning, but I'm going to paraphrase it for you. But if you don't trust this story, I'm telling you, please, when you go home today, read Luke 10. Okay? So there's this group of people, group of disciples that Jesus had. How many know that Jesus had more than 12 disciples? You didn't know that. Not a hand went up. Well, He did.
[14:01] In fact, He had, if you read Luke 6, He had 72 people that were His disciples. You see, there's more Christians around than what you think. There's more Christians around in this city than they're here this morning. Amen. I'm glad for that. I'm glad there are more people than we know that will be in heaven. But these 72 disciples were called before Jesus. And He said, "I'm gonna send you out and you're gonna be My ambassadors, and you're going to go out and you're going to preach to the gospel of the kingdom, and I'm going to give you power to heal the sick. And you're going to be able to cast demons outta people who are possessed and broken." And so they went out little.
[14:47] And by the way, these were all men. Okay? So how do you know they're men? Doesn't say that in the Bible, but Jesus said, "You can't take your purse with you." So He wouldn't say that to a woman. So I think these were all men. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So they come back after a bit and, they're all excited and they got their report cards and everything. Man, this one was healed and so on. And they said, "Even the demons are subject to us." And Jesus said, this is my words now. He said, "Hold it, boys, hold it, hold it." He said, "That's wonderful. But you know, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.
[15:34] I gave you power over all the power of the devil. That's no big deal." That's the way it should work in your life and my life. That we have power, the power of God, the power of the Holy Spirit within us. He said, "Don't rejoice, don't focus on that, but rather rejoice that your name is written in heaven." At the end of the day, the only thing that counts, people, is that your name is written in the Book of Life. It's the only thing that counts. When I was a kid growing up, the Sunday evening service, quite often we would sing an old hymn. It was entitled, "Is My Name Written There?"
[16:20] "Lord, I care not for riches, neither silver nor gold. I would make sure of heaven. I would enter the fold. In the book of Thy Kingdom, with its pages so fair, tell me, Jesus, my Savior, is my name written there?" And then on the chorus, everybody in that full gospel tabernacle, including the kids, we would sing as only Newfoundlanders can sing. "Yes, my name's written there, on the page bright and fair, in the book of Thy Kingdom. Yes, my name's written there." Ladies and gentlemen, death does not have the final word. Can you say amen? I'd like to change gears a little bit now.
[17:07] I've been preaching to the choir, at least a few of you said amen. And I'd like to talk to anybody here this morning who can't resonate with the joy and the hope that we have that one day your name will be written in heaven, or that you will be in heaven when you leave this world. Maybe you're like some of the folk on the video who said, "Well, there's nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing after this." If that's so, then how did you get here?
[17:56] Okay, Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11 has a wonderful, obscure part of the verse in here that many kind of skip over. I mean, you've heard the term, you've heard the song, "He has made everything beautiful." But the next line says, He has also set eternity in the human heart. God has placed eternity within the human heart. Now, if there is no God, if there is nothing after death, then there can be no eternity. But I'm so glad today that there is a God and there is an eternity.
[18:49] And you say, "How can you be so sure? How can you really know that? How can you possibly be so positive? Isn't that all just a feeling? Isn't that all just hallucination?" I want you to know that Tina Dunning was not hallucinating when she saw the presence of an angel in that moment when time and eternity are intersecting. So how do we know there is a God? How do we know there is eternity? How do we know there's anything after life? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I read a book.
[19:36] I read a book one day, and it told me in Genesis chapter 1 that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And then in John chapter 1, I read about a Savior who came to make it possible for us who are sinful and broken and unworthy to know that there is something and to experience eternity this side of heaven. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. Through Him all things were made.
[20:24] And without Him was nothing made that was made. In Him was life. And that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." And then it goes on to say, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld Him, as of the only begotten Son of God." And so today, ladies and gentlemen, we have a book that tells us that there is a Savior. 1 John, chapter 5, verse 13 tells us this, that we can know that we have eternal life.
[21:20] "These things are written that you might know that you have eternal life." Amen. And so today, if you're here and you say, "Well, I don't know what you're talking about, but I've never experienced this, I don't know what it means to really know that God is real, to really know that there is eternity, that heaven is real." You can know today. All you have to do is open your heart. The Bible says we can believe with our heart and confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, that we will be saved.
[22:08] It's not complicated. And so today we're gonna give you an opportunity. We are going to invite you, even in a moment, to walk down this aisle and somebody will be here to pray with you. If you're watching online, you can just open your heart and say, "Jesus, I need You. Come into my life, forgive my sins." And the Bible says, if any person be in Christ, he is a new creature; all things have passed away. All things have become new. Would you stand together with me?
[22:54] And ladies and gentlemen, let me just say this one thing to you. If you miss heaven, you miss it all.