The term euthanasia literally means “good death”—the premises are built into the name. To mainstream the idea that medical professionals should kill patients, we must use terms that distract from that reality: end-of-life care; physician-assisted death; medical aid in dying. Euthanasia activists paint a picture of people being put out of their suffering surrounded by their loved ones as soothing music plays in the background, dying peacefully and with dignity. If you didn’t know better, you’d hardly think someone was being killed—and that’s the point.

This essay was first published at The European Conservative.
Nearly 3,000 people died by euthanasia in Belgium in 2022. One of them was 36-year-old Alexina Wattiez, who was suffering from terminal cancer. In 2021 she was told that she likely had less than a year to live; by March 2022, Alexina was declining rapidly. She decided to request euthanasia. A doctor and two nurses came to her home where she lived with her partner Christophe Stulens and his 15-year-old daughter Tracy to administer the lethal injection. After a brief sleep before the fateful event, a nurse woke Stulens and his daughter and asked if they wanted to say goodbye. 
After the farewell they left the room to wait on the terrace and the doctor went in with syringes. They expected Alexina’s death to be swift and silent. After a moment, they heard screams. “I recognized her voice,” Stulens said. “Afterwards we saw her lying on the bed with her eyes and mouth open.” A post-mortem examination revealed the truth: Alexina had been suffocated to death. Some news reports indicate that the doctor used a pillow when the drugs failed to kill her; others say that the nurses took turns holding the pillow over the young woman’s face until she asphyxiated.
The family is now suing, with their lawyer stating that they are seeking to ensure that this sort of thing—being killed via suffocation rather than lethal injection—never happens again. The Public Prosecution Service of Liège has also apparently opened a murder investigation, although they haven’t explained why one method of killing administered by medical professionals would be homicide and the other healthcare. In fact, Belgian politician Jacques Brotchi hastened to make the distinction. “What happened is not euthanasia,” he assured the press. “Such a definition of this terrible situation devalues the gesture of euthanasia, which accompanies a person to the end without pain.”
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A generation ago, the world called Christians fools because they believed in Jesus as He is revealed in the Bible. Today the world calls Christians bigots because they believe what Jesus teaches in the Bible about right and wrong. We are in a time when being faithful to Jesus is becoming more costly. The cost may continue to increase, but we must resolve to overcome and to remain faithful. 

I believe that the book of Revelation is especially relevant today but maybe not for the reason that many might expect. The church always finds special comfort in the book of Revelation when the church is experiencing persecution. We are today experiencing what may prove to be the early stages of a time of persecution. Some Christians have experienced various forms of persecution because they could not in good conscience provide certain services upon request for a same sex “wedding.” Some Christians in the medical profession may have been excluded from certain positions because they could not in good conscience take the life of a criminally innocent person either in the womb or in old age. Some Christian teachers may not be welcome in certain schools because they will not teach young children racial prejudices or sexual perversions. These are just a few examples, but I think that they are sufficient to give a sense of the times in which we are living. We don’t know if this persecution is going to intensify and expand, and we don’t know to what degree it will affect our own lives. We pray for a coming spiritual awakening that will radically change the direction in which our culture has been heading. Yet as long as persecution is on our horizon, the book of Revelation will have a special relevance for us. What was comforting to those seven churches in the closing years of the apostolic age can also provide comfort for persecuted Christians from then onwards down to the end of the age.
We find some insights on enduring persecution in Jesus’ letter to the church at Smyrna, found in Revelation 2:8-11. We learn here that Jesus is well aware of the church’s difficulties in a hostile world. In verse nine, Jesus said to the church at Smyrna, “I know your works, tribulation, and poverty (but you are rich) …” When we first read this, we might assume that this church existed in an impoverished area where jobs were scarce and resources were limited. But no, Smyrna was a large and prosperous city. The Christians there were poor because of prejudice against Christians. One could not there openly confess Christ and also get ahead socially and financially.
Like every pagan Greek city, Smyrna had its own patron deity. In addition, each trade guild would also have a patron deity. There were occasions when and situations where everyone was expected to give a certain token worship to a particular pagan deity, whether the patron deity of the city or the patron deity of a trade guild. Many would not take kindly to Christians who in principle refused to participate. Many would quickly blame such Christians for offending the gods whenever anything bad happened in the city.
Yet what was perhaps an even greater challenge in Smyrna was the rising cult of Caesar worship. The city of Smyrna had been loyal to Rome long before Rome became the dominant power in Asia Minor. About 195 B.C., Smyrna became the first city in the world to build a temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Rome. In A.D. 26, all the major cities of Asia Minor petitioned Rome to be the site of a new temple dedicated to the worship of the Roman Emperor Tiberius while he was still alive and ruling. Smyrna was chosen for this honor and became a temple warden for the imperial cult. Cicero, the Roman orator, called the city of Smyrna Rome’s most faithful and ancient ally. We can only imagine what it would have been like to have been a Christian in the city of Smyrna during Roman times and to have refused to offer a pinch of incense to the goddess Rome or to the Roman Emperor Tiberius.
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Spurgeon’s confidence that Heaven is the place of great union with Christ and reunion with redeemed loved ones. As a caring pastor, Spurgeon desires his people to understand that embracing the gospel should change their view of death. He says, “Let no doubt intervene; let no gloom encompass us. Dying is but going home.” Only six years later, at age fifty-seven, Spurgeon himself would go home to Jesus, joining his friend Charles Stanford.

As of Monday morning, Nanci is with Jesus. So happy for her. Sad for us. But the happiness for her triumphs over the sadness. Grieving is ahead, and it will be hard, but these last years and especially this last month have given us a head start on the grieving process. I am so proud of my wife for her dependence on Jesus and her absolute trust in the sovereign plan and love of God.
Nanci is and always will be an inspiration to me. I have spent the last two days with family and friends, thanking God for His grace and the promises of Jesus that we will live with Him forever in a world without the Curse, and He will wipe away all the tears and all the reasons for the tears. All God’s children really will live happily ever after. This is not a fairytale; it is the blood-bought promise of Jesus.
What a great and kind God He is. As of Monday, Nanci now lives where she sees this firsthand, in the place where Joy truly is the air she breathes: “In your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
Thank you so much for all your prayers, some of you for four years of praying consistently for Nanci. My heart is full of gratitude to you. Don’t feel your prayers were not answered—many of them were, and many others were answered in a better way than we could ever ask.
Today’s blog is excerpted from my book We Shall See God. It’s the first of 50 entries drawn from Charles Spurgeon’s sermons on Heaven, and it’s entitled “Dying Is But Going Home.” It seems fitting to share right now. Spurgeon delivered this sermon on March 21, 1886, just three days after the death of his friend and fellow pastor Charles Stanford. In it, he encourages his congregation to view death as a home-going, as the gateway to full union with Christ:

Breathe the home air. Jesus tells us that the air of his home is love: “You loved me before the foundation of the world.”
Brothers and sisters, can you follow me in a great flight? Can you stretch broader wings than the condor ever knew and fly back into the unbeginning eternity? There was a day before all days when there was no day but the Ancient of Days. There was a time before all time when God only was, the uncreated, the only existent One. The Divine Three—Father, Son, and Spirit—lived in blessed camaraderie with each other, delighting in each other.
Oh, the intensity of the divine love of the Father to the Son! There was no world, no sun, no moon, no stars, no universe, but God alone. And the whole of God’s omnipotence flowed forth in a stream of love to the Son, while the Son’s whole being remained eternally one with the Father by a mysterious essential union.
How did all this which we now see and hear happen? Why this creation? this fall of Adam? this redemption? this church? this Heaven? How did it all come about? It didn’t need to have been. But the Father’s love made him resolve to show forth the glory of his Son. The mysterious story which has been gradually unfolded before us has only this one design—the Father would make known his love to the Son and make the Son’s glories to appear before the eyes of those whom the Father gave him.
This Fall and this redemption, and the story as a whole, so far as the divine purpose is concerned, are the fruit of the Father’s love to the Son and his delight in glorifying the Son.
That [the Son] might be glorified forever, [the Father] permitted that he should take on a human body and should suffer, bleed, and die. Why? So that there might come out of him, as a harvest comes from a dying and buried grain of wheat, all the countless hosts of elect souls, ordained forever to a joy exceeding bounds. These are the bride of the Lamb, the body of Christ, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Their destiny is so high that no language can fully describe it.

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