Dear N.,
My mother has died!! I have not had one evening left. The decease of my mother was very remarkable. Saturday, the 16th of December, my mother got a heart attack, and was brought to the hospital. When she was at the Heart Department, she was laid among all kinds of apparatus. When she was there for only ten minutes, my father and brother had a very anxious moment. The heart of my mother stopped. They saw it on a monitor. Three nurses ran to my mother. One started to knock on her breast as fast as she could with two hands, the other began to blow air into her mouth with an apparatus and the third gave her electric shocks with another apparatus. Happily these things helped.
Saturday evening and Sabbath and also Monday morning, she was improving well. The doctor said, “wonderfully good”, but Monday afternoon she got fever, and in the evening it was going wrong — she got moisture in the lungs and a new heart attack and a heart rhythm of 170-180 per minute and some other things. At nine o’clock in the evening the hospital ‘phoned my father and brother. My mother wanted to have my brother beside her to support her and my father. My brother ‘phoned me immediately when he understood what was wrong. I ‘phoned my youngest sister and her husband and went to the hospital.
My mother has always visited the church, read good books (very often M’Cheyne) and was very good to us. I can’t conceive a better mother than she. But she never told us that she was regenerated, had found the Lord Jesus or had been reconciled with God. When my father and brother entered the room she cried out “I am going to die!” and when I entered, she cried, “M., I am going to die!” N., when I still live thousands of years, I can never forget that voice and those eyes, so anxious. When my sister entered, she cried out the same. We tried to calm her, but nothing helped. “Now I must appear before the Judge of heaven and earth, and I cannot,” she said. “Shall not you despair,” we said, “I cannot anything else,” she said. “For the thief on the cross, was also grace,” my father said. “That favour is not for me,” she answered. This lasted about three quarters of an hour. In this time she also cried out “Lost, lost, forever lost! Too late, forever too late.” The agony of her soul was hard to behold. We were praying and trembling all the time. After that my father prayed loudly for her. When he said “Amen,” she said, “Now I see there is a perfect deliverance, even by the approaching of
death.” She said “When I get a lengthening as Hezekiah, I should call to the Lord by day and by night. O when I got only 15 days, how should I call.” After that the Lord said with power in her heart “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6). She said unto my father “this I get from the Lord,” and repeated the text loudly. He said “Now, that is great.” My youngest sister cried out “Mother, is your soul saved by now?” “No,” she answered, “but I shall seek Him and I shall find Him: that He Himself has promised.” In this time she often prayed loudly “Look upon me with favour from on high.” A while after, she said, “I see an abyss and that is dreadful, what is that deep, when you come therein, that is dreadful, but at the other side I see a height, a bliss, and O now I am set at the side of the bliss!” A while after — “And in the bliss the Lord Jesus revealed Himself to me and I have embraced Him and I have pressed Him to my bosom, I held Him fast; what is He good what is He dear!!” After that she asked my brother to call for us all, to take leave of us.
The following moment of entering the room, is also never to be forgotten. When we came in she immediately began to call “I have seen the Lord Jesus and I have flown to Him and I have embraced Him and pressed Him to my bosom, and I have spoiled Him as a little child and I held Him fast. O, how good is the Lord Jesus, but the abyss is dreadful.” After this she gripped our hand, the one after the other and said “Promise me, promise me now immediately that you shall ask for it, every day and night shall continue to ask for it and shall not wait until the latest moment as your mother has done, because when you come in the abyss, that is dreadful. But your mother is so happy, I am so happy, I have seen the Lord Jesus and I have flown to Him. I have seen the abyss and that one is dreadful and I have seen the bliss and there stood the Lord Jesus. I have flown to Him over the abyss, but I did not fall in it, because He stood at the other side.” She warned us for seeking earthly things, because they are corruptible and worthless. There is nothing in them. When she had taken leave of everyone, she said “I hope it will be done soon.” My sisters and we all wept, but especially my sisters fell over her and wept very hard and said, “Mother, dear mother, we can’t miss you.” But my mother had no tear and answered, “O, you can miss me, you can’t miss the Lord. He can take care of you all.” My sisters said, “You have always been so good for us.” “What,” she said, “I have educated you wrong. I have done everything wrong. I have been a bad mother.” My father said “Had you ever thought, that your name was
written in the Lamb’s Book of Life?” “No, never,” she said, “Such a bad woman, I am the most ungodly woman of the world.” Two hours before she died my wife was called by her. She spoke to her “Now I am feeling what you are feeling when you have asthma, but it does not matter when I must die oppressively, I am so happy. Now I shall keep that child forever in my arms.” When death approached, she said, “Life, eternal life, eternal life.” The latest 15 minutes she lost consciousness on account of tightness and died, oppressive to the body but as for the soul, redeemed forever!
With kind regards,
M.