Derek Thomas
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Are you in a right relationship with Christ?
Have you tasted of the good things of the world to come?
But that was the kind of question that Puritan pastors often asked.
Bunyan, in another one of his writings, puts it like this, "'Consider thou must die but once, I mean as to this world.
For if thou, when thou goest hence, dost not die well, thou canst not come back and die better.'"
Isn't that an interesting thing?
Bunyan is saying we only have one attempt at death and we need to die well because we can't come back and do it all over again.
We can't press the re-record button and have another go at it.
which for Bunyan meant age expectancy in the 17th century.
Very few people made it past 25 or 30 years of age.
Most of the Puritan preachers died in their 50s or early 60s.
Very few of them made it into what we now regard as pensionable age.
So they're exhorting one another as Christians to die well.
I remember reading in the biography of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, for example, how as a doctor facing cancer, how that was one of his great concerns.
He talks about it with great sincerity and earnestness, that he wanted to die well.
But then something quite unexpected happens right at the end of Book One of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.