Pastor Olaf Latzel: Angst vor dem Tod, das Sterben der Gläubigen und Ungläubigen, Himmel oder Hölle

What do you do when tonight your last hour has passed? They are all afraid of death. And I tell you that as a pastor, who, as I said, has been doing emergency care for ten years, who has visited many people on the intensive care unit on their last way, 24 hours before their death, 48 hours before their death, people who were not religious and then suddenly no longer knew what was going on, and said, let's call the radicals. I heard that a lot. Really, people, I got there, they called me and said, I let them come because they told me the truth. They were not religious, but for some reason they have the impression, I wouldn't lie to them either. I wouldn't say anything about what a lot of sick people from the intensive care unit do, they don't have empty words, and then they ask. And then you feel the fear in these people. They don't want to die. And they cling to hope. And then they ask me, this salvation prayer that you probably offer in your church, can you give me that too? Because the doctors have treated them, and they would like to stay five or ten years longer on this broken world, because they have nothing else. And then they are all afraid. They don't want to die. They are afraid, they are on the run from death. The human being in the world is always afraid. Afraid to lose his money. Afraid not to be loved enough. Afraid not to get enough social recognition. Afraid that the pension is not enough. Afraid that I will get seriously ill. And above all, the one final fear. Fear of dying. With death, the human being in the world is not finished. He runs away when the strips of shame come. The strips of shame of bankruptcy. The strips of shame of cancer. I visited a woman. She asked me to visit her mother. And she was cancer sick. And it was final. It was clear that there was nothing more to do. And then I talked to her. And I pronounced it. Her cancer. And then she said, Mr. Latzel, please don't say that word. I said, what? At first I thought she didn't want me to say the word Jesus. The word cancer. I said, but you have cancer, right? But I can't stand it. She couldn't hear the word. She was full of metastases. But she still couldn't accept it. Away from herself. Escape from death. You can experience this in many areas of our society. I just asked Lutz about burial. People tell me, Mr. Latzel. Then I ask during a mourning conversation, how should it be? Then they say, Mr. Latzel, you can do whatever you want in the cemetery. We won't be there. I say, why not? We won't be done with it. We want to keep the mother in memory as she was. The sight of the urn or the sight of the coffin. We can't stand it. Then you do a burial without the relatives. Although everything else was fine. So not because of the heredity or anything else. They just can't stand it. Or people. I experienced this very often. As an emergency care provider, you are there. Then the emergency doctor comes and writes out a death certificate. And the next thing is the prescription that is written out. Not some pharmacist. Not for the widow. They don't say that. I'll give you something to calm you down. I experienced this very often. Six, eight weeks later after the burial. Then the visits. Then they say, Mr. Latzel. I don't remember the funeral at all. I was like kicked out. You can see that. They sit like that. Like, yes, it doesn't excite. Because the drugs, the sedatives, they just don't get along with it. They don't get along with death. The human world. In our society, death is repressed. The elders can tell about it. When the husband died earlier, or the wife. He was blacked out. The widows live their whole lives. When the father died. I still remember my mother. She wore black for a year. The Bible tells us that we should think about death. Teach us to think that we are weak. That we become smart. Who knows that he is dying. Who knows that he needs a savior, Jesus Christ, who gives eternal life. But if this world and the devil keep us away from the thought of death. Yes, then it is no longer so important that we deal with Jesus. And the devil keeps us busy. That we can't find a way to deal with death. This is important. Death is part of life. If Jesus doesn't come back before. Then we will all die. There will be no one left of us in a hundred years. Then we will all lie in the cemetery and be eaten by the maggots. Or the elders are already eaten. There is only a little humus left. That's it then. Death is certain. It is coming. But as a Christian, I don't have to be afraid of it. Because I know what is happening. The people who don't have Jesus, who don't reject God. They are on the run, on death. Like the earthlings here. They see the beam of light. Oh, they can bring death. Run away immediately. We as Christians can say. Great. Great that we have to die. Because dying is our gain. Look at what pastors say. I say the Bible. Dying is our gain. So if that's true, what's in here. I am convinced of that. Then it is so that those who believe in Jesus Christ get eternal life. And a glory, I can't even describe to you. I always explain this to my confirmants. I always take a glass of water with me. I say to them. Now imagine the best life you could have here on earth. A lot of money. Top health. Pretty woman or pretty man. Healthy children. The top life. 95 years of the best health. Imagine that. Then I say. This life is like this drop. I always have a drop in the water glass. Like this drop of water here. That's the best thing you can imagine here on earth. But what awaits us in eternity in heavenly Jerusalem. That is more than anything else. Water of all oceans here on earth. It is important that we know what happens when we die. That's a question I ask people again and again. There are three questions. I expect an answer from thinking people. First. Where do you come from? Second. Where are you going? Third. What is the meaning of your life? And where are you going is important. It is not important to know where you will spend the next vacation. People deal with it. It's not worse than some doctor's work. You are watched on the internet. You go to Gran Canaria for two weeks. In December. All pictures are watched. You can really deal with it for half a year. You watch this video clip. Everything is nonsense today. What you can do with modern technology. People sometimes know more when they arrive than they can actually see. Then they are completely briefed. Gran Canaria has nothing new to offer. But if you then ask. What do you do when your last hour has struck tonight? Where are you then? Then it is often the zero line. If you insist a little. What happens after death? Then there are also answers where you say. This cannot be said by an intelligent person. Then there are statements like. If I die. Then I will stand in front of Peter's door. Then I ask. Where did you get that from? That is sung in a carnival club. Yes, I say. In a carnival club. But. That's not in the Bible. You can forget that right away. Then you have the answer again and again. That people say. Yes, if I die. Then my body breaks. But my soul comes out of the body. And the soul then floats in such a different sphere. And then I will somehow continue to live in the soul. I say. Where did you get that from? Yes, it is in the Bible. I say. That is not in the Bible. The Bible says something about a body-soul identity. Unity that is there. What you are talking about is your Greek thinking. But it has nothing to do with the Bible. Other people say. Yes, then you have to go to hell. So when you die. You have to go to hell. And then you are looked at by the living God. As much crap as you have built. So many thousand years you have to go to hell. And such a Hitler. And such a Stalin. They are then a million years in it. But I only 43 days or something. And then I am left out. And then I have eternity. I say. Where does that come from? Yes, it is also in the Bible. I say. Not in my Bible. Now on Sunday evening. I think a young man wrote to me. A man wrote. I say. You can not speak of God like that. That he is an angry God. I also spoke of that. What else should I say? Because you don't like it. Then he wrote. In the Bible it says that. Who does not have Jesus will not be judged. Who does not have Jesus for lawyer, he will meet as a lawyer. And I have to tell people that. And there are even people among us here. Who have not yet been reborn. Who do not yet believe that Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. I say to them in the name of the living God. Let yourself be called by the living God. come to believe in Jesus, on whom you are saved, because otherwise you will spend eternity in hell with the rebel who is also tormented in hell. In this world we do not only die the biological death, it will come at some point. But in the life that we have in 60, 70, 80 or 90 years, we die many deaths. The Bible speaks of it in a very great chapter, that is Preacher 3, there is a time to collect stones, to throw stones away, a time to laugh, to cry. There she reports in great pictures that it all comes to an end here on earth and that you die many different deaths. I always talk about the death experiences that we have. These are such death experiences. There are such physical death experiences. At 25 you are still the hero, the football player. At 40 everything is broken, you can no longer play football, then it gets less. At 60 you get a prostate operation, then you are down there as a man, you have to wear a diaper. At 80 you sit in the wheelchair, you can no longer go to the toilet alone. These are death experiences. They don't start until you're 80, they start before that. And that's very, very bad for many. There are not only physical death experiences, there are also professional death experiences. You were there for 20 years, the hero in your company suddenly makes bankruptcy, then you stand there, you are unemployed, no one wants you anymore. Then you hit such a deep hole. I knew the director of the gymnasium, he was the man, really strict, then he was retired. Half a year later he was in the teacher's room again, no one wanted to know anything about him anymore. He was just a pensioner who pushed the vacuum cleaner of his wife through the bathroom, that was it. Deep crisis, deep depression, such a death, I was no longer needed, I was no longer asked. Such a professional death experience. There are social death experiences. A dear person dies there. Now I am suddenly a widow or a widow. My child may die there. I am no longer a mother. Or my marriage is broken. Everything is over, nothing to be tied to, nothing to do anymore. Then you stand there, powerless. I say again, there are many deaths in this world that we die. Sometimes the biological one is not even the worst. These are people who have suffered so much suffering in their lives, so many death experiences, so many deaths have died, that they are already waiting for the death. But not because they know that a heavenly Jerusalem is coming, but because this life is such a misery, with all the fear, with all the despair. And because they don't have Jesus. But that is the big advantage. We Christians also have to be in a death experience. We get sick too. We may also have to experience the prostate surgery and are no longer close to the bottom. We also get cancer, we also have to go through severe cases. But we are never alone. We have the Lord with us, who gives us new strength again and again. And when we come into contact with him, when we touch him, just like here, the one to be buried, he comes into contact with the word of God. When we come into contact with him, we get new strength. Then we are put on our feet again. Then we ask ourselves, how do we come into contact with this Jesus? He was lucky, there was the messenger of God. Now no one should dig him out in the theater of the day and throw him on his knees. That would be a cult relic, as it was in the Catholic Church. We don't have Jesus physically here either. We have this here. That's why I'm talking about the transporter. We don't need a transporter of the word of God anymore. In order to come into contact with him, we have the word of God ourselves and we can get all the consolation out of it. Yesterday a brother was here. You may have seen him, he was also sitting in a wheelchair. I embraced him. That's Jens Zieroll, he's from Mülsengrund. He was the head of the whole district . When I was up there for the first time, I evangelized in the Admansdorf. I still remember how he came to the kitchen at Bayer's, that's all Formelol up there. That was a real guy, so strong. And then people had already told me that he was very sick. I had already visited him a few times. I saw him yesterday, he was sitting in a wheelchair. Thin, just a little guy. He said, some things are difficult, says Olli. But the salvation is there. And he said yesterday, I don't know how people want to get through this if they don't have Jesus. I don't know either. How do people want to live with all their evictions, with all the things they go through without Jesus? That's so sad, even with the emergency care that I did for a long time. You get to people who have nothing, there is only misery. And unfortunately they don't have Jesus. And I experience it the other way around, there are people who have to endure difficult times. And that's hard and they cry, but there is someone who gives them strength, Jesus Christ. And if you also have a death experience, if you no longer have strength, no longer have life, then you have to get in touch with Jesus. Just like here in Berlin, you get new strength and you get it when you go to the church. It's so easy to say, read the Bible, read the Bible every day, over and over again. Pull yourself in right. And when the word of God fills you, then the living God fills you, because God, because Jesus is the Bible. And that's the wonderful thing, that you get new strength. How often the Lord's men, it says in Isaiah 40, how often the Lord's men get new strength, that they ride with wings like eagles, that they run and don't get tired, that they walk and don't get tired. And we should know that for the death experience, for all the evacuation experiences that we do in this world. No matter what comes, for us it goes on and on, because Jesus gives us strength. And the wonderful thing is that he not only puts us on our feet here in this world, but when one day the ultimate, final evacuation experience comes, namely that here, bam, no cardiologist can do anything anymore, the thing here stops rumbling in my chest and I'm dead, then the final, ultimate help comes. As we said in the first point, bam, then you hear, when you follow Jesus, immediately the voice of the Saviour. And he says, come to me, my child, you have believed in me, you now have a place to live in heavenly Jerusalem. Hallelujah, what a wonderful God we have, who gives us new life, again and again. Be it for the evacuation experiences in this world, but also for the evacuation experiences that we have to make one day. We just have to see that and then we just have to believe in Jesus. That is what we learn here in this story, that there are people who live without God, without God's word. In the Old Testament, they lived without God's promises and they are afraid of the scourge, of the people who come there. And so it goes, people, without Jesus. If you are without Jesus, then you will always be in the throes of death. You are afraid of your own death, you are afraid of everything that can happen in this world, you lead a life in fear. The most common sentence of the Bible is, do not be afraid. And I am so happy and grateful that I do not have to run away from death in this world, but that I know, now I am speaking again of the conscience of salvation, that I know 100% what happens when I die, that I am at salvation in heavenly Jerusalem, that he has a place to live for me. I look forward to that. When I think about it, then the Holy Spirit is there, he makes it bigger and bigger to say hallelujah. Then I can still enjoy this life, but then it works in a completely different way. Then I can say, nice what I can take with me, but I am also happy when the Lord brings me home. I'm really looking forward to it, even though I have a great life. I do not have to be like the eartheners here, who run away as soon as the first stripes appear on the horizon, no, but I can stand it, I don't have to run from death. And I hope that you will not be like the eartheners. As soon as the doctor comes around and has the wrong message for you, or some things happen in your life that do not fit, that immediately cause fear and horror, but that you can just stand still, because you are not on the escape, but because you have a living God who helps you. Today we want to learn from Elisa to pray for our Lord and Savior again and again. And many, I know, have become lazy in what it is to do. To pray for the children and grandchildren and address them. And I've done it so often and it doesn't help. To sit down, to pray for the neighbor, to do something, it doesn't help. I've been at it for 20 years, it doesn't help. Please believe me one thing, the things you do in the Lord, they don't stop when you close your eyes, but they go on. These are things that have eternal value. And there are so many great stories, not just here, where a person comes together with Elisa and he gets new strength, but he works beyond death, where a lot of people work beyond death with what they have done in the Lord. What you do on earth, you can forget at some point, that is forgotten at some point, there is a picture of you, nobody knows who you were. But what you do in the Lord, you work beyond what is in this world. And I would like to tell you that in front of your prayer service, in front of your commitment. You work beyond death when you do things in Jesus Christ. You may one day, in eternity, recognize, in 1. Cor. 13 it says that we will then be recognized as we are recognized, who had already prayed for you so that you would come to faith. Some will recognize, people prayed for me, I wasn't even in the world yet. Then some great-grandfather, who was a believer, already folded his hands for the children, for the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren. There are things that run beyond death. Last year I married a woman, a very faithful sister in our community. She met her husband at the elementary school at the age of 15. They were married for almost 50 years. She always spoke only positively about the man, a very excellent husband. He only had one mistake, he was not a believer. She was already a little child in the family, a believer, and she always tried to pull him. We got married, she was very young, had a child, started a family. She belonged to the community every Sunday, worked with us in the diocese, was in prison. A burning Christian. But her husband was not with the Lord. Out of the church, not with us in the community, did not come with us, nothing. He always pulled, she came every Sunday with her son, he did not. Then this woman got a stroke in the last few years, a stroke and was on the intensive care unit. And I have to say, with this woman, she prayed for a man, she folded her hands for him again and again. So, no stroke, nothing. For five decades, nothing moved. Now the woman is on the intensive care unit, the doctors have said, there is nothing more, we have to turn off the machines. Then the man says to whom they say that, I don't decide that, then the pastor has to go first. Do I come to it, they tell me that, I say, I can't tell you that, but if it were my wife, I would tell you now. Then he says, we'll do that, but only when I have entered the community. I say, what? My wife is dying, he doesn't say anything before I have entered the community. I say, no, we have to do it now. I go, get the application form, he fills out the form, then they turn off the machines. Since then, he comes to the service on Sundays. The woman is an eternity, she has folded her hands for decades, no stroke, she is not quite from this world yet. Here in Edes, you probably didn't notice that. There he does something, there he comes to me again and says, the prayer was for me, it was for me, so it's not really packed yet, but that's madness, how God works beyond death with prayers. That doesn't stop, so to speak. And just when they were asked for burial, I experienced things at the burial. Really, people came, they said, Olli, they knew they were going to die, my children are not with the Lord. And at the burial, you don't make a fuss about my person, but you really blow the gospel in front of them. And then you speak to everyone personally, in my name, you introduce yourself, can I rely on that? I say, no problem, if you want that. These are funerals, they are already dead. And then you speak to the congregation and say, and your father is dead, and he was with me six weeks ago, and he said that I would speak to you three, and now I address you, Katrin and Emil, and what they are called. And I want to tell you again, not on behalf of the living God, but your father as a last wish. You have to be with him for eternity one day. You don't even believe what that means. Returning, even before we put the coffin down, in the cemetery hall. To say, we come out of the dead. And please, I want to encourage you. If you do things in the Lord, then don't think it's in vain. You may not see the result, but that's not bad either. But what we do in the Lord is not in vain. Some service we do, I say this with all my heart, is for the concealment of people. Isaiah gets the task to preach, so that they don't believe. So he didn't have an awakening, he didn't have a full soul. That was to conceal, that one day the Lord can say in court, and I have the prophet for you, and you don't. We don't know that. But we are not responsible for the results. We are responsible for carrying out the task of the Saviour according to the task. I say this again and again, except in my standard speech, we don't work result-oriented, but task-oriented. And we should know that. If we really do the task as the Saviour says, then our work is not in vain. And then it will be very often that what he does, that what he invests in the Kingdom of God, especially with your prayers, that it will remain. Prayers, that means, it's a revelation, a great picture, that in front of the throne of God, there are bowls where the prayers of the saints are collected. They don't get lost, not like at my desk, where I always have to clean up my wife or my secretary, something gets lost there. But the prayers of the saints remain and they go on. And we have a problem in Germany. In Germany, too little is prayed. Too little is prayed. We have become very prayer-weak. When I come to the congregation and ask, what's going on, we don't have a prayer circle anymore, we have dissolved it. I want to encourage you, even if you don't have a prayer circle, be faithful prayers. Pray what the stuff holds. Especially for awakening. Pray for your children, for the grandchildren, for your spouse, for your neighbors, for your superiors, whoever is still not believing. Pray what the stuff holds. And even if you don't experience it, this work is not in vain, because it happened in the Lord. And that is the wonderful thing, that we act, even if we have died, because we are part of a much greater thing, the Word of God. And if we follow the Word of God, pray for people, continue the Gospel, then this is not to be changed. This is something great. To know that when we cooperate in the Kingdom of God, that we live as the Word tells us, that we are involved in something much greater. And we want to remember that to Elisa. He was already dead, and yet he continued to act. Not only that he was buried, that he became alive. No, we look at Elisa, the man of God, and 2000 years later, in Chemnitz, we can learn something from this person. And we are not as great figures as Elisa, but even we, when we work in the Lord, then our work is not in vain. And with that, I would like to conclude this Bible seminar on Elisa. Once again with these words, with this appeal from 1 Corinthians 15, verse 58. Therefore, my dear brothers, be firm, be unwavering, and take more and more in the work of the Lord, because you know that your work is not in vain in the Lord.