Christopher Hitchens Has Died

The hope of the atheist is non-existence.  He seeks after the respite of oblivion so that his life will not follow him into death.  He says “Earth, hide me away.”  Woe unto him for the Earth obeys a different Master.

There isn’t much to say, really.  There is only sorrow that will never become joy.  There is only Darkness that will never again give way to Light.  There is only the righteousness of God, and Judgment, and Despair and the certainty that all things in this life must come to an end.

It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.

carl

Carl, I think you summed it up well.

The 3W night light bulb finally burned out.  Poof!

As I think of him now, his personality reminded me a bit of a liberal version of William F. Buckley. I am thankful that God at least used him to expose Christian posers.

RIP or RnotIP.  He had a choice as we all do.  Lord help me to present in The Gospel in an engaging manner.

What a fabulous writer and witty big thinker—two things I love.

I am so saddened that he did not get to know the Truth—the greatest Truth—the awe-some friendship and lordship of Jesus Christ here on earth.  Perhaps, as Matt says, he relented—or my favorite word, submitted to His love—before the end.

I’m just so saddened over it.

I had a friend who died from brain cancer a few years back.  He was a wonderful man but he never embraced His Lord.  Towards the end, he slipped into a coma.  One morning I was mentally lamenting that he had missed his opportunity to submit to the Lord.  A thought as clear as newly polished crystal came to me and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Hound of Heaven had not been silent during my friend’s coma.  Every moment is precious and useful to our Lord.

I pray that he had a last moment to repent.  Even when I disagreed with him 100%, I loved to hear him talk.  And his writing—when he wasn’t damning Mother Theresa and Judeo-Christian thought and religion—was masterful.
Condolences to his brother Peter, who is a Christian.

He haunted my mind following his statement that if reports ever got out that he had changed his views, people were lying, or his mind was gone from his disease…I found some hope in Peter’s Epistles, especially when Jesus goes to preach to the souls of the departed…Or when Paul writes of baptising on behalf of the dead in Corinthians…That the breadth of God’s love expressed in Christ’s mercy, is greater than then the understanding that we have gleaned…Not that anyone sneaks into heaven, just hopefully are loved in…

Here’s a good and sad article about him from Justin Taylor:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-1949-2011/

A man’s man.  Louche, erudite iconoclast. Not the cheap, contemporary iconoclast, born from ignorance, but from a sense of the value, if not to himself, of the icon.

The hope of the atheist is non-existence. as Carl said.  I guess that’s right, although someone like him must lament the loss of the intellectual life. In Paradise Lost, Moloch said to the infernal assembly “To be no more; sad cure; for who would lose, / Though full of pain, this intellectual being, / Those thoughts that wander through eternity ...lost in the wide womb of uncreated night.”

Hitchens suspected there would be rumors of a deathbed conversion—but even more he feared that he might actually call out to God.

As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.”

Lord, have mercy!  Reading that is enough to make my blood run cold.

If he had indeed been able to experience being born again on his deathbed, Mr. Hitchens would now be overjoyed at no longer being simply the “me” he once was, just as we all are when that happens to us.  He could then join the ranks of some very fortunate “imbeciles” whose company he might find quite stimulating. 

The Syrophoenician woman from St. Mark’s Gospel comes to mind, along with Francois Villon‘s reference to himself in Ballade to Our Lady:

A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old,
I am, and nothing learn’d in letter-lore.
Within my parish-cloister I behold
A painted Heaven where harps and lutes adore,
And eke an Hell whose damned folk seethe full sore

One atheist has said: “Praying for the dead is as good as praying for the living. They’re both useless wastes of time.”

The faith of some may be known to heaven alone, but the finally impenitent must be left to their own devices and the just judgments of a righteous God.  If Mr. Hitchens truly ended up with what he thought he wanted, how very sad!

“Oh Galilean, Thou hast conquered!”
            _Julian the Apostate