The night I lost my father

My father passed away on 7/16/25. He had always been healthy and robust except for the last 2 years of his life. It was then his health began to decline rapidly. He started eating less and less and losing a lot of weight. Then he started moving less and less. I admit, I got frustrated with him at times because I didn't think he was trying hard enough to help himself. Now, I understand it wasn't his fault. He was sick, more sick than even I realized. Looking back, it was obvious, but at the time, I couldn't see it or maybe I didn't want to. I just thought it was his age or that he was being stubborn. Obviously, I could see his health declining. He was wasting away before my eyes. We did try to help in every way possible, from doctors to supplements, but to no avail. I even went on a three-day prayer fast for him.

On that final day or two, I knew his time was short. I closed the door and talked to him alone. I told him all the things on my heart, all the things I didn't say before because it would be an admission that he was going to die. I don't know if he heard me. By then he was comatose and unresponsive. Maybe it was more for me than it was for him, but I told him everything I wanted to say. I told him he was the best dad I could ever ask for, and that I was proud to be his son. I told him that he can go home now and that I would see him again. I held his hand one last time and gently caressed his head.

I can't remember if he passed that night or the following night. I remember dinner was ready and it was time to eat. I looked over at my wife, and I could see she was starting to cry. I think she knew before I did that he was about to pass. I went to check on him before I went to eat, and I noticed his breathing had changed. It was much more shallow. With tears in my eyes, I told my mother that I think he was about to go. We all huddled around his bed. It was not maybe more than 20 minutes later that I saw my dad take his last breath and die. We all were crying. I heard my mother cry harder than I think I've ever heard her cry before.

Nothing can prepare you for that. It never crossed my mind that one day I would watch my father die and be carried out in a body bag. It was a very surreal experience. Even now, it almost doesn't seem real. My father can't die; it seemed like an impossibility. For 50 years he was a part of my life. Except for a few weeks during all that time, I saw and talked to him every single day. And now, suddenly, he was gone. When he died, it felt like he took a piece of me with him. There's a void in my heart that cannot be filled. I've never been much of a cryer, but sometimes it still hits me. I suppose I will miss him for the rest of my life until the day we are reunited. A part of me wants to join him now. However long I have left on this earth, 30 or 40 years if I'm lucky, feels like an eternity without him in it. But I know in the scheme of things a few decades is just a blip in time. Soon enough, I will be joining him.

The difficult thing I've had to deal with is the way he died. I never thought my dad would die sick and infirm. That's not the way I wanted him to go. I didn't want him to go at all, but I would have preferred if he passed away in good health. I don't know why he died the way he did or why our prayers didn't work. I've known some other good, faithful Christians who were taken from this earth by sickness and disease. I know healing works; I've seen evidence of it. Why it didn't work for them is a mystery. Maybe on the other side it will all make sense. It has made me think a lot about death, maybe more than is healthy.

I take solace in knowing he's not suffering anymore. He's whole again, and I know where he's at; he's happier than he's ever been. Whatever he went through on earth doesn't even compare to the glory he is experiencing now. He wouldn't want to come back now even if you asked him to. And while I don't understand why he died the way he did, the time he was sick was relatively short. He had far more good, healthy years than not. I'm also thankful to have had him in my life for half a century; not everyone gets that, and I know I will see him again. So Dad, it's not goodbye; it's see you later.

Is the story of the rich man and Lazarus a parable?

Some think the story of the rich man and Lazarus is just a parable. But this particular story stands out from other parables. For one, it uses specific names and mentions real people that have lived (Abraham and Moses). If it's a parable, it would be the only parable in the bible to use specific names. It would also be the only parable to mention the afterlife. Second, Jesus never says that it's a parable. Usually, but not always, it will say if it's a parable or not. But there's another reason that lends credence to the idea that it's not a parable. Recall what scriptures tell what us where Jesus went and what he did after he died on the cross:

He descended to the lowest parts of the earth (Eph 4:8-10)

He went to the heart of the earth (Mat 12:40)

He went to paradise (Luk 23:43)

He preached to the spirits in prison (1Pe 3:18-20)

Scriptures tell us Jesus went to hell (Hades), but it also says he went to paradise. So, which is it? It seems like a contradiction unless we take the story of the rich man and Lazarus literally. It also makes perfect sense.

The saved souls who died prior to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ couldn’t automatically ascend to heaven because their sins had not been atoned for. It would have been necessary for God to partition off a part of hell as a temporary paradise for the pre-Christian saints to reside. He placed a gulf between them and the lost souls, so it could not be crossed. Jesus, however, in his divinity, was able to cross the gulf, as he holds the keys of Hades and of Death (Rev 1:18). After he descended to hell, to paradise, aka Abraham’s bosom, he was able to cross the gulf to preach to the spirits in prison.

After Jesus was resurrected, what happened? The tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who died were also raised from the dead (Mat 27:52). Who were they, and where did they come from? They were the saints that were in Abraham’s bosom. After Christ ascended to heaven and shed his blood on the mercy seat, the pre-Christian saints were able to finally ascend to heaven with Christ. Thus, the story of the rich man and Lazarus is more than a parable.

The nature of reality: Is this all there is?

The materialist would tell you that the universe, and everything in it, is all there is, all there will ever be. They only believe in what they can touch, taste, feel, etc., and can’t possibly envision something more. However, a physicist, if they were being honest, would know better. A physicist would know that what we can see and feel is merely a stubborn illusion. The reality is, what we can perceive is a very small fraction of all that exists. We are limited by our five senses and three spatial dimensions. Beyond that, we can’t detect more. Even our senses are limited in what they can detect. 

Take sight, for example. We identify objects by their shapes and colors. However, what we perceive as color is merely light waves bouncing off objects, entering our eyes, and then being interpreted as colors by our brains via electrical signals. So, not only do colors not physically exist, but we can only see a mere 0.0035% of the entire light spectrum. If we could somehow see the world apart from our limited human perspective, it would look very different.

Light is interesting in that it can behave like a particle or wave depending on how it is observed. Certain experiments, such as the double-slit experiment, indicate that physical objects do not have an independent, objective reality on their own but that they only appear when we observe them. That means that consciousness doesn’t merely affect reality; it creates it too. That also begs the question, where does consciousness reside? Is consciousness solely a product of the brain, or does it exist externally, perhaps in another reality? There are theories, but scientists don't know for sure.

Then there is touch. We think that what we can touch is solid. However, if you were to place your hand against a wall, it wouldn’t actually touch. What you would feel is the electrometric fields at play between the atoms in your hand and the atoms in the wall, much like two magnets repelling each other. What is also interesting is that atoms are mostly empty. Atoms have a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons that are orbited by electrons. If you had an atom the size of a football stadium, the nucleus would be like a marble in the center with the electron cloud occupying the rest of the space. An object may appear solid, but it's not. It's been said that if you removed all the empty space in an atom, our bodies would be reduced to less than the size of a pinhead. 

All this is to say, there’s much more to reality than we can perceive. Our senses can’t detect even 99.9% of the world around us. The problem is that people have difficulty envisioning something beyond our limited human perception. That's understandable. We were born into a world of three spatial dimensions and one dimension of time, it’s all we’ve ever known. Our minds can’t truly grasp anything beyond that. But what if there are more dimensions beyond our perception? How different would things be?

The best way to visualize what adding an extra dimension would be like is by taking one away. Imagine a flat two-dimensional world. Life would be drastically different. In fact, I doubt complex life could even exist. But if it could hypothetically exist, such lifeforms couldn’t perceive anything beyond their two-dimensional world. A three-dimensional object could hover a millimeter over their two-dimensional world, and they would never even know it unless the three-dimensional object chose to intersect with their two-dimensional world.

Now, imagine if you add a fourth or even a fifth dimension to our own. How different would our reality be? Suddenly, things that would have been impossible before would suddenly be possible. String theory leaves the door open for such a possibility. In string theory there exists 10 to 11 dimensions, depending on the model. So, even science acknowledges the possibility of more dimensions beyond our own. Reality is far bigger and wilder than we can imagine. Even at the quantum level, things behave in odd ways that defy the laws of physics, such as a particle existing in multiple locations at the same time.

In conclusion, there is much more to reality than meets the eye. This universe we live in is a closed physical construct, governed by certain laws like a computer code that dictates how it behaves. Such a physical construct could only have been created by an outside force. As Christians, we understand that force to be God. This world we live in is just a shadow of a much larger reality. When we die, we leave this physical reality and move into a higher reality that is more real than our own.

The spiritual sixth-sense

I've never had many supernatural experiences in my life. The only two that might qualify were when I was a child. I tend to think children are naturally more sensitive to the spirit due to their innocence, which is probably why I experienced them. They were more like spiritual senses than anything, but on opposite ends of the spectrum.

The first occurred when I was really young. It was in the morning; I think I may have been going to daycare. My parent, I can't remember which one, pulled the car out of the driveway with me in the passenger seat. They got out of the car briefly to do something, I don't know what, and left the engine running. I was left alone for a moment, and a strange feeling came over me. It was a sense of urgency, like something was about to happen, but I didn't know what. I have not felt anything like it before or since. Then, suddenly, the car started backing out of the driveway into the street. This, of course, freaked me out. I was too young to know about stepping on the brakes to make it stop. I only knew that it scared me. Luckily, there were no cars coming, and the car gently backed into a chain-link fence and stopped. I believe this was an angel trying to warn me, but I was too young to know what to do with it.

The second one occurred in school; I was maybe in the third grade. This time was darker. I was minding my own business when another strange feeling came over me; it was more like an impulse. I had a sudden, intense urge to jump onto this other kid's back. Mind you, such things were out of character for me. I was a shy kid, and it wasn't in my nature to jump on other kids' backs for no reason. But I acted on the feeling, and unbeknownst to me, he had several sharp pencils in his back pocket pointing up. Luckily, it only left some red welts, and I didn't get into any trouble. In retrospect, I believe this was an evil, mischievous spirit trying to do me harm. And that's it. Not very spectacular, I know, but there it is.