Andrew Allis, Granville

Life teaches many lessons. One of them learned recently by the author of this letter is that people you’ve met and known only for a very short period of time can have a disproportionate beneficial impact on your life, more so than people you’ve known for years. In God’s good providence, we met Pastor Roy Erdahl at the Souris Valley Care nursing home in Velva when visiting my father-in-law who is there convalescing from a stroke. Pastor Roy was his roommate.

I only knew Roy for approximately 5 days before he departed from this world, an infinitesimal amount of time compared those whose lives he touched, those who poured into Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Brethren Church in Minot for his funeral (just one of the Churches he ministered at), filling the parking lot to overflowing and leaving only street parking. Nonetheless, in that short time he not only showed us how to “die well” as a Christian (a subject which occupied a good deal of teaching in earlier centuries of the Church’s history, but unfortunately is noticeably absent today), but also greatly highlighted and punctuated to our family the Scripture’s teaching on the reality of heaven.

Pastor Erdahl possessed a vibrant faith in his Savoir, the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore a rock-solid hope in heaven and the final eternal state (the new heavens and new earth). This was no vague wispy ethereal hope, no mere wishful thinking, but a certain hope. Just a couple of days before his death on Wednesday, June 28th, he spoke confidently about going to his heavenly dwelling which God had uniquely prepared for him. This was the reason he was able, without fear, to stare death in the face and not blink or flinch, but even to anticipate it with joy.

Whence comes such confidence, such courage? Its source is Holy Spirit-birthed saving faith. As a true Christian, and later a conservative bible-believing Lutheran Pastor, he knew he couldn’t earn salvation by any effort on his part, any perceived good works of his own, but as he stated several times in the course of those 5 days, this salvation was all by God’s grace, a priceless gift freely bestowed upon sinful people by God.

His fearlessness in the face of death emanated from the knowledge that his sin had been transferred (imputed) to Christ, and that Christ’s righteousness had likewise been imputed to him, i.e. credited to his account. This is what Martin Luther referred to as “the great exchange,” and it is the very heart of the Gospel (meaning good news) message.

In Luther’s own words: “That is the mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners: wherein by a wonderful exchange our sins are no longer ours but Christ’s, and the righteousness of Christ not Christ’s but ours. He has emptied Himself of His righteousness that He might clothe us with it, and fill us with it. And He has taken our evils upon Himself that He might deliver us from them… in the same manner as He grieved and suffered in our sins, and was confounded, in the same manner we rejoice and glory in His righteousness.”

This concept was not Luther’s own concoction but came right out of the bible. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21 states, “For our sake he (God) made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him (Christ) we might become the righteousness of God.”

This pastor acknowledged any good works he had done were the fruit (the result) of his salvation, his justification before God, not it’s root (cause). He trusted, by God’s grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide), in Christ alone (solus Christus) as his Savior, his substitute in life and death, the One who both lived a perfectly righteous life that he could never live, and died the death that he deserved, in his place. He stated often in those 5 days that salvation was every bit a gift bestowed by God, and to be received by the hand of faith, a saving faith which God Himself must impart. Because of this faith, not a mere mental assent but a deep inner knowing generated by the Holy Spirit, he knew he was as sure of heaven as if he were already there.

Here on earth at breakfast time that Wednesday morning, and in heaven immediately afterwards. Heaven was never made more real to us.

This just goes to show that when you feel your life is done, even in your most vulnerable and helpless state within days of your death, God may be using you in mighty and unknown ways of which you are not even aware.

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” Psalm 116:15