My sister, Janice, said the (in hindsight, deeply flawed) book, The Late Great Planet Earth, changed her life for the better. YIKES! And she said I gave it to her. Am I embarrassed!
In September, after my cancer diagnosis, my sister had traveled from Colorado to see me in Mississippi. Her visit came to mind as I read Hal Lindsay’s obituary a few days ago. His book, The Late Great Planet Earth, was published in 1970, sold 35 million copies by 1999, and was translated into 50 languages.
Lindsay’s book tied current events to apocalyptic Bible references and concluded that Jesus’ return was close at hand. He referenced the formation of the nation of Israel (1948) and the capture of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War (1967). I heard him speak just two months after the Six-Day War when I was at a conference at the Campus Crusade for Christ headquarters in California.
In certain circles, there was a lot of talk about how we were in the end times. In August of 1968, while attending a high school football game in Tampa, I ran into a mentor who had similar views as Lindsay. He told me, “Hank, this is the year the Lord is going to return. All the signs are pointing to it.” — “Okay,” I thought.
Dates for the Return of Jesus Come and Go
Lindsay was not the first person to see signs of the Lord’s imminent return in current events. In the 1840’s, William Miller set several dates for the end, and when the final date passed, many of his thousands of followers lost interest. However, some of them formed a new denomination, the Seventh Day Adventists.
And Lindsay would not be the last to announce the coming return. In 1988, I received an unsolicited book in the mail, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1988. The rapture is the predicted event when Jesus comes back in the clouds and takes all the Christians off the planet. The Left Behind series of books is built on this event. 88 Reasons set a date for the rapture in September 1988, then October, then 1989, and finally a date in 1993. Here we go again. Or “here we don’t go,” as the case may be.
I digress.
Meaningful Gifts
So, Janice told me I gave her The Late Great Planet Earth before she left for three years in the Peace Corps in the late 60s-early 70s. She had just graduated from college and had a lot of doubts about the faith we were raised to believe. Such doubting is so typical at that stage of life.
And my EMBARASSMENT? Looking back, I am embarrassed that I believed those prophecies were meant for our own time and that I pushed such beliefs onto others. That book, and others like it, claim words written almost 2,000 years ago in the biblical book of “Revelation,” meant to comfort Christians in the first century, are predictions of specific historical events in the 20th century. Crazy.
I asked Janice, “Was it the prophecies of the end times that meant so much to you?” “No. Not at all.” She said it was the connection of Jesus’s life to the Hebrew scriptures. “It made me think, ‘This stuff is true.'” Okay, so that was a relief. The good news is that even a flawed book can encourage spiritual growth.
But WAIT, THERE’S MORE.
Janice told me I gave her another meaningful gift before she left for the Peace Corps — a pendant necklace with a dove as if descending — the Holy Spirit if you will. She said she wore it constantly her whole three years in Thailand. Just before she left to come home, she lost it but replaced it after she was stateside.
This gift I am proud of.
At that same California conference where I heard Hal Lindsay’s prophecy talk, I also heard Bill Bright explain the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That was new stuff for this Southern Baptist boy. I thought the “Spirit” was for the holy rollers and Episcopalians and Catholics who were often crossing themselves saying, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
My takeaway from California was that the Spirit is just the idea of God within — not off in heaven somewhere but right here and now. In recent years, this idea fits right into my learning about the “no self.” No self, only Spirit.
ONE LAST FACTOID from my 1967 trip to Crusade’s headquarters in California: I was attending a conference for athletes and bunked next to a couple of basketball players from LSU. Like me, they both had just finished their freshman year and, at the time, the NCAA ruled that no first-year students could play varsity ball. I asked one of them about his buddy, “Is this guy any good?” He said, “Yeah. He’s REALLY good.” It was Pete Maravich.
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Author Chaplain Hank Dunn, MDiv, has sold over 4 million copies of his books Hard Choices for Loving People and Light in the Shadows (also available on Amazon).
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Photo by David Ballew on Unsplash
Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More by Julie McFadden, RN, is the latest in a long line of books showing the way to a more peaceful and more meaningful dying experience. Why another death and dying book? Why not? Sitting at #8 on the New York Times “Advice” best-seller list, Nothing to Fear is full of advice about navigating the last six months of life under hospice care.
Throughout Nothing to Fear we see nurse Julie addressing spiritual concerns of her patients and their families. She devotes a whole chapter, “Deathbed Phenomena,” to stories about patients having visions of long dead relatives. Here’s her understanding of these experiences returning to her theme of the metaphor of birth:
As the men gather each week, we hand everyone a name badge. Instead of “Hello, My Name is Hank,” each one says simply, “God’s Child.” We all wear one. Incarcerated and free.
My wife and I were signing papers in the VW sales office when we noticed a long line of people holding propane tanks across the street. My wife commented, “Look at all the people getting ready to grill on Labor Day.” The salesman responded, “Are you crazy? They’re getting ready for the hurricane.”
“When I’m dead, I’m dead.… and I just sail off into nothingness, and that brings me a lot of comfort. That doesn’t bring everyone comfort but it brings me comfort.” —Caitlin Doughty, author of 
Two months after he died, Ernest Becker won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book The Denial of Death. I guess, since he was dead, he was not a winner, but his book was.
I’ll get to Becker’s deathbed below but first a few quotes from his classic. Note that Becker wrote in 1973 just as we were becoming aware that we no longer refer to all humans as “man.” I know better now but I will let his original words stand.
Soon after The Denial of Death arrived in late 1973, Sam Keen, one of the editors at the prestigious Psychology Today magazine, called Becker’s home hoping to set up an interview. Keen explained how the deathbed interview came about: “I called his home in Vancouver to see if he would be willing to tape a conversation. His wife Marie informed me that he had just been taken to the hospital and was in the terminal stage of cancer. The next day she called to say that Ernest would very much like to do the conversation if I could get there while he still had strength and clarity. So I went to Vancouver with speed and trembling, knowing that the only thing more presumptuous than intruding into the private world of the dying would be to refuse the invitation.”