February 22, 2017
Thomas Goodwin, pastor and author

On this date, February 22, 1680, Thomas Goodwin died. His last words are reported to be “Ah, is this dying? How I have dreaded as an enemy this smiling friend.”

“When Thomas Goodwin was born in 1600, he was a premature baby. Consequently, his health was rather shaky. But since his godly parents hoped to see him in the pulpit, rather than farming or soldiering, bodily weakness was not a serious impediment to his future. The couple provided their son with the best education they could afford, and it paid off. At thirteen he went to Christ’s College, Cambridge University, where he did very well in his studies. Proud of his abilities, his whole thought was how he might turn them to personal advantage. He seemed destined to become another professional clergyman of the type that is scholastically brilliant but spiritually arid.

Instead, he became a Puritan great, a man who influenced his own generation through his preaching; and future generations through his printed works. Alexander Whyte, a famed Scottish preacher, tells what his discovery of Goodwin meant: “In those far-off years I read my Goodwin every Sabbath morning and every Sabbath night. Goodwin was my every Sabbath-day meat and my every Sabbath-day drink. And during my succeeding years as a student, and as a young minister, I carried about a volume of Goodwin wherever I went. I read him in railway carriages and on steamboats. I read him at home and abroad. I read him on my holidays among the Scottish Grampians and among the Swiss Alps. I carried his volumes about with me till they fell out of their original cloth binding, and till I got my bookbinder to put them into his best morocco. I have read no other author so much and so often. And I continue to read him till this day as if I had never read him before.” (christianity.com, Goodwin Found Death a Smiling Friend, by Dan Graves)

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” John 11:21-27

Some of the great people of faith have been people we have never nor will ever hear about. Thomas Goodwin is a good example. He was born premature, which in the 17th century should have been a death sentence. But he forged his way through life to become a pastor and apparently excellent preacher. His final words, be they apocryphal or not, are the words of a man dying with trust in his faith. I should hope I might say something so profound when I die:

“Is this death? How I have dreaded as an enemy this smiling friend”. When you die in the faith, when you put your complete trust in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then death is not something to be feared – but after a life well lived, it can be a welcome friend.

Pastor Dave