For Part One, Part Two or Part Three, choose the appropriate link.
The Final Literature Quote from Ezra Taft Benson's Talk 'Life is Eternal'
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| Picture by Zooey, Flickr |
"What is death like? Here is a simple incident as told by Dr. Peter Marshall, chaplain of the United States Senate:
In a certain home, a little boy, the only son, was ill with an incurable disease.
Month after month the mother had tenderly nursed him, but as the weeks went by and he grew no better, the little fellow gradually began to understand the meaning of death and he, too, realized that soon he was to die.
One day his mother had been reading the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and as she closed the book the boy lay silent for a moment, then asked the question that had been laying on his heart. “Mother, what is it like to die? Mother, does it hurt?”
Quick tears filled her eyes. She sprang to her feet and fled to the kitchen, supposedly to go get something. She prayed on the way a silent prayer that the Lord would tell her what to say, and the Lord did tell her. Immediately she knew how to explain it to him.
She said as she returned from the kitchen, “Kenneth, you will remember when you were a little boy, you would play so hard you were too tired to undress and you tumbled into your mother’s bed and fell asleep.
In the morning you would wake up and much to your surprise, you would find yourself in your own bed. In the night your father would pick you up in his big strong arms and carry you to your own bedroom.
Kenneth, death is like that; we just wake up one morning to find ourselves in the room where we belong because the Lord Jesus loves us.”
The lad’s shining face looked up and told her there would be no more fear, only love and trust in his heart as he went to meet the Father in heaven. He never questioned again and several weeks later he fell asleep, just as she said.
That is what death is like.
(See Catherine Marshall, A Man Called Peter (New York: McGraw Hill, 1951), pp. 272–73.)"
Dr. Peter Marshall
This was a person I'd never heard of - I knew that there was an official Chaplain of the US Senate. The current US Senate Chaplain is Barry Black, but I'd never heard of Peter Marshall before. Not Peter Marshall the game show host, which is the one I did know about. Turns out the former is the husband of my ninth cousin, Catherine Wood (Aha! Another writer in the family! And a pretty prolific one too!)
(And just because I know someone might ask - yes, Peter Marshall the game show host whose real name was Ralph Pierre LeCock - bleah, I would change my name too! - is my eighth cousin three times removed. There!)
Apparently Dr. Marshall passed away relatively young, and his wife Catherine wrote his biography - A Man Called Peter - which is available for free at archive.org.
Not only that, but there was a movie made from the biography that I absolutely have to go see now - it's available to buy or rent on YouTube. I don't know if 'my heart will sing with joy' like the movie poster says, but it sounds like a pretty good watch.
