Apostolics and End of Life Care
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: Genesis 9

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--apostolics-and-end-of-life-care
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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end-of-life decisions can be very complex and each situation is different and obviously in those cases you'd want to talk to your pastor and you'd want to talk to the family you'd want to pray seek god so let but let me give you some biblical guidance here first of all god is the creator and author of life uh we are stewards of life he's the giver of life he gives he takes away genesis 9 says that we are created in the image of god and therefore if anyone kills another person they're destroying god's image and they will suffer judgment from god therefore and that would even include a person wanting to take their own life so we oppose murder but we also oppose suicide and we oppose euthanasia or that is deliberate killing and that's done by a physician where the physician is responsible but we would uh you know we would also oppose someone administering it themselves because that would be suicide that would be taking of life that belongs to god so when we face these situations first of all we trust god so we pray for healing we pray for deliverance but if it's god's time for the person to go we pray for for god to help us to accept it and to help us with the pain to take away the pain to minimize the pain to give us a peaceful transition so in all these things first and foremost uh let's go to god and i think the problem with many of these human solutions they come from an atheistic approach that we're no different than animals and there is no god and we just do whatever we want to do that we are the primary owners of our own life which that is contrary to what the bible teaches us our body and our spirit belong to god so therefore we should glorify god even in the moment of death and we should trust god that he's in control and that he can guide us that he can let us pass away peacefully that he can help us manage the pain and he can he's the ultimate answer now get having said that let's take a look um as you mentioned modern science medical technology allows us to prolong life artificially so if there is a a reasonable chance of survival we would want to use these extraordinary means temporarily so we might be on a villa later we might shock a heart back into starting we might put people on various machines and tubes to sustain life so that they can go through surgery or they can recover and come back to health and so we do believe that those extraordinary means are are wonderful we thank god for them however the problem comes what if the person is in the process of dying if left alone they would soon die but even with intervention they're not going to recover so if intervention would enable him to recover then we would likely want to do that we don't want to see someone die unnecessarily but if they are obviously at the end of life and they are dying and a machine would prolong their life for a week but wouldn't change the outcome um then i think that's a different case because then you're not choosing life versus death you're choosing how long to prolong life now i don't think we should ever hasten the process or aid the process do anything proactive to cause death or advance death but in those cases could we say when the doctor says there's not going to be a recovery uh would it be wrong to take away the the um you know the advanced technology the machines and say i want them to go home to die in peace or i want them to go out to a hospice where they have appropriate medical care they have pain management um but we're not going to try to keep them alive another day or another week or two weeks when it's not going to change the outcome so i certainly believe that it would be wrong to hasten death or or inflict death but it's not wrong to let natural life unfold without intervention when there's no realistic chance of recovery now we do believe in miracles so it's so we can pray for a miracle but at some point we must seek the will of god and say if this is the end of the person's life in the plan of god then it's not wrong for us to accept that reality and if that means and and of course a lot of cases people fear extreme pain and suffering and so they say why not just prolong the life like not why not just end the life like you would with a dog and the answer there would be wait a minute first of all trust god but second of all we do have quite good measures to to manage pain so we should talk to the physician about how do we manage the pain now in that regard let me just give you a little example sometimes morphine is given at the point of death to help with pain but a lot of use of that could actually advance the death and the thing i think there is it's down to the intention if you give someone a heavy dose of medication for the purpose of killing them that's wrong but if you give them appropriate doses to manage their pain although recognizing it may dull their abilities but that's not your purpose your purpose is to manage the pain the person's going to die either way so it it becomes a judgment call but i think it goes to your intent if your intent is not to kill the person but your intent is to manage the pain in a person that's going to inevitably die then that can be an appropriate medical response now so if a person is capable of understanding i think they can make the choice based on their doctor's advice to say i don't want to prolong my life by artificial means i choose to let god take me when he wants to take me therefore i want to go home or i want to go to a hospice or i want you to unplug all the artificial machines and technology uh all the things that are artificially prolonging my life and i want to just put my life in god's hands i mean if he wants to do a miracle well he can raise me up today uh but if it's my time to go i'd rather just go naturally i think that's a reasonable decision and in fact i would encourage this my wife and i have done this we have what's called a living will which in essence specifies those very things so that takes away the agony of decision our loved ones because if you're no longer capable of making that decision your loved one is forced to but then they can be conflicted and you could have different family members with different opinions so that can cause contention there can be a conflict of interest and so if you've already made your wishes known in a a legal way then that ensures that the doctors and your family members can safely choose what you what you've just stated so i highly recommend that now if someone is dying and they're unconscious and they haven't made those kind of choices then i think the family should talk to the doctors and their pastor and try to reach a consensus but in in summary what i would say in no case should we choose a method that actively kills a person or that deliberately hastens death but if death is inevitable and recovery is not possible then there's nothing wrong with letting nature take its course for example i mean throughout bible days they had no choice but to do that so obviously that wasn't against the will of god but i think we can safely choose a natural means of dying remembering this that of course death is a tragedy it's a result of sin in the human race but for christians death is not the end so while we fight to live and we should at some point when it's god's time we should accept that death is just a passage into eternal life so we we have a hope beyond this life and we can take comfort in knowing um that this death is not final but we're in the hands of god