When men feel that the day of their death is far off, they find it easy to adamantly maintain that there is no God. They may indulge in all kinds of sophistry in order to promote their unbelief. But its very interesting to know what some famous skeptics have said on their deathbed, just before dying.
Caesar Borgia: “While I lived, I provided for everything but death; now I must die, and am unprepared to die.”
Thomas Hobbs, political philosopher: “I say again, if I had the whole world at my disposal, I would give it to live one day. I am about to take a leap into the dark.”
Thomas Payne, the leading atheistic writer in American colonies: “Stay with me, for God’s sake; I cannot bear to be left alone, O Lord, help me! O God, what have I done to suffer so much? What will become of me hereafter? I would give worlds if I had them, that The Age of Reason had never been published. 0 Lord, help me! Christ, help me! …No, don’t leave; stay with me! Send even a child to stay with me; for I am on the edge of Hell here alone. If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one.”
Sir Thomas Scott, Chancellor of England: “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.”
Voltaire, famous anti-christian atheist: “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.” (He said this to Dr. Fochin, who told him it could not be done.) “Then I shall die and go to hell!” (His nurse said: “For all the money in Europe I wouldn’t want to see another unbeliever die! All night long he cried for forgiveness.”
Robert Ingersoll: “O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!” (Some say it was this way: “Oh God, if there be a God, save my soul if I have a soul, from hell, if there be a hell!”
David Hume, atheist philosopher famous for his philosophy of empiricism and skepticism of religion, he cried loud on his death bed, “I am in flames!” It is said his “desperation was a horrible scene”.
Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor, and who, like Adolf Hitler, brought death to millions to satisfy his greedy, power-mad, selfish ambitions for world conquest: “I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth. Such is the fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ!”
Sir Francis Newport, the head of an English Atheist club to those gathered around his deathbed: “You need not tell me there is no God for I know there is one, and that I am in His presence! You need not tell me there is no hell. I feel myself already slipping. Wretches, cease your idle talk about there being hope for me! I know I am lost forever! Oh, that fire! Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell! …Oh, that I could lie for a thousand years upon the fire that is never quenched, to purchase the favor of God and be united to Him again. But it is a fruitless wish. Millions and millions of years will bring me no nearer the end of my torments than one poor hour. Oh, eternity, eternity forever and forever!, Oh, the insufferable pangs of Hell!”
Charles IX was the French king who urged on by his mother, gave the order for the massacre of the French 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 loved Christ. The guilty king suffered miserably for years after that event. He finally died, bathed in blood bursting from his 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 drop with blood. They point at their open wounds. Oh! That I had spared at least the little infants at the bosom! 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.”
David Strauss, leading representative of German rationalism, after spending a lifetime erasing belief in God from the minds of others: “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!”
In a Newsweek interview with Svetlana Stalin, the daughter of Josef Stalin, she told of her father’s death: “My father died a difficult and terrible death. God grants an easy death only to the just. At what seemed the very last moment he suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry. His left hand was raised, as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse on us all. The gesture was full of menace. The next moment he was dead.”
Anton LeVey, author of the Satanic Bible and high priest of the religion dedicated to the worship of Satan. One of his famous quotes is, “There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised.” His dying words were, “Oh my, oh my, what have I done, there is something very wrong…there is something very wrong….”
It does not have to be…
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…
