HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2011 / JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER / HE SHALL NEVER DIE

 

STANLEY ROUHE
INTERVIEWED BY COLLEEN TINKER WITH RICHARD TINKER

 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011, was a day my husband Richard and I will never forget. We spent about two hours with our friend Stanley Rouhe in his home, visiting and reminiscing with him, eleven days before he died.

We had known Stanley over ten years. He walked into our lives one Friday evening when he entered our weekly Former Adventist Fellowship Bible study at Trinity Church in Redlands, California. As Richard opened the meeting that night, he asked this visitor to introduce himself. He sat, arms folded, and declared, "I'm Stanley Rouhe, and I'm a neurosurgeon. I came tonight to tell you that you don't have to meet here; you'd be welcome to hold your meetings at the Riverside Community [Adventist] Church."

"You have no idea what you just said," I thought to myself, but outwardly we all kept our composure and welcomed him. Before he left that night, we gave him a copy of Dale Ratzlaff's Sabbath in Crisis, the earlier edition of what is now Sabbath in Christ.

The following week he called us. He had just completed reading Dale's book, and he was noticeably emotional. "I get it," he kept saying. Stanley was forever changed.

So on this past June 14, it was Richard's and my turn to be emotional. After ten years of friendship, of sharing burdens and supporting each other through crises and life changes, Stanley was preparing to go home to the Lord Jesus.

"I wish I could take my Blackberry with me," he joked; "I'd like to be able to text you what it's like there!"

Of course, there are no text messages from Stanley, but we know he is with Jesus, for not even death can separate him from His love. He did, however, agree to tell us his story of how knowing Jesus changed the way he faced death. This article is a record of our conversation that day. "Use it however you wish," he told us.

We share here this gift of love—Stanley's love of the Lord Jesus and his love for his family and friends, as well as the love of God for all of us who are bound in the domain of darkness and have no hope apart from His rescuing and transferring us to the kingdom of His beloved Son (Col. 1:13).

 

The past

Colleen: Tell us about your relationship to Adventism. I know you were born in Africa into an Adventist missionary physician's family. You always joked that you were a true African-American.

Stanley: Yes; there were five of us kids. The youngest one, Lyndon, had Down's syndrome. I was the middle. My parents didn't know what to do with the shame of having a Down's syndrome child. Lyndon used to get very angry. My mother was impatient with him; my dad couldn't stand to deal with him. He would discipline him, but Lyndon couldn't understand what was going on. My mother felt guilty for having borne a Down's child, and she just couldn't deal with it. She finally said, "It's too much for me," and she made a choice to take care of the rest of the family.

When Lyndon was very young—perhaps about eight years old or so—my parents began placing him in foster homes. Actually, I believe that decision drew us apart rather than closer as a family. Lyndon finally went to Cave Springs school in Tennessee, and I went to Southern Missionary [Adventist] College (SMC) to be near his boarding school. I visited him a few times during the school year.

At the end of my first year at SMC, Lyndon, Anne-Louise (who I later married), Pert Gray, a friend who was at SMC as well, and I piled into my Karmen Ghia and drove out to California from Tennessee. We were crowded in there; we didn't know any better in those days! That was an experience!

For some reason Lyndon was always somewhat attached to me.

Colleen: Well, you loved him.

Stanley: Yes—when he was at home, I spent some summer evenings trying to teach him to read. He just couldn't do it, and I didn't have the right skills—it was very frustrating for both him and me. We finally abandoned that plan, and it was OK. But we worked on that whereas my dad dismissed him as—well—you know, I don't actually know what he thought would happen to Lyndon. I think he probably thought that, in the end, Lyndon would be "zeroed out".

Colleen: Yes. That's what I always thought would happen to the mentally handicapped. In my Adventist days I believed that they were incapable of understanding "the truth", so God would annihilate them without suffering; it would be as if they had never existed. I'm sure your dad shared that Adventist understanding.

Stanley: Yes. Right. So Lyndon would be zeroed out, and thus my dad's conscience would be cleared.

 

Cultural Adventist but unbelieving

Colleen: We met you not long after you had dealt with stage four prostate cancer. We'd like to have you talk to us about facing death as a non-practicing Adventist compared with now as you are facing death from pancreatic cancer as a born-again believer.

Stanley: Well—before I had the prostate cancer, I was in the Adventist culture, sort-of, but I was not Adventist. For example, you and Richard both struggled with this "Adventist thing" until you were converted. You never really left your basic principles and ethics, and you lived sort-of consistently with what you believed. I did not. I left—not officially—but I left the Adventist church and began drinking. Anne-Louise always smoked, so we both smoked. We had no pretensions about being observant. We didn't consider ourselves non-Christians, but we were just like most people; we didn't believe in the Adventist church.

Colleen: You took theology in college but reached a crisis after preaching a sermon in a local church that you believed had been terrible.

Stanley: Yes. Anne-Louise was from Sweden, and her father was an Adventist pastor. She decided to marry me because we had similar backgrounds and that sort of thing, but I don't believe she would ever have wanted to be a pastor's wife. She went with me when I preached that sermon, and after it was over and I knew it had been a terrible sermon, I said I thought I should change my career goal. Anne-Louise agreed.

I decided to become a doctor, and Anne-Louise liked that choice. In Sweden she had endured her best friend's wealthy Adventist family driving expensive cars while her pastor dad drove a Saab, and that sting had never left.

Colleen: Her reaction was typical of the unspoken but powerful "class system" within Adventism. Physicians receive the most respect—probably for several reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that they typically have some of the largest incomes. Also, the "health message" is considered to be the "right arm of the gospel". So physicians have the advantage of carrying that "right arm" of truth into the world. Only pastors have more spiritual prestige than the physicians. So I imagine that Anne-Louise was still influenced by these cultural pressures.

But what about you?

Stanley: For me it came down to the fact that I couldn't help people as a pastor because I didn't have pastoring in my heart. So I decided—I wanted—to do something that was a service kind of thing. So I went into medicine for my own reasons of wanting to help people, and this decision worked for Anne-Louise for her reasons as well. You heard what was said at her funeral—it was even in the biographical sketch everyone received—everyone who knew her agreed: Anne-Louise had style.

[Anne-Louise had died the week before, and two days prior to our interview we had attended her memorial service on this very patio where we were now talking with Stanley.]

 

Fatal diagnosis

Colleen: I understand. So talk about what happened when you abandoned religiosity and how that affected you when you received your first cancer diagnosis.

Stanley: I fell into many traps. Life presented many distractions, and I felt obligated to make more and more money to maintain the lifestyle Anne-Louise, Helena our daughter, and I were used to living. I made many compromises that could have destroyed me. I was trapped—and it was my own fault.

At the same time, I'd always gotten along pretty well with people, and I could put up with people who had trouble getting along with others, so I had both personal and professional relationships where I tried to keep things smooth and avoid conflict. I managed by always keeping busy.

Colleen: So, when you received your first diagnosis, you were practicing neurosurgery, you were active and busy, and you were not "doing" Adventism anymore. How did you feel, in 1996, when you heard that you had stage four prostate cancer?

Stanley: I thought, "Well, that's interesting."

Colleen: Did they give you a certain amount of time to live?

Stanley: They told Anne-Louise that I had six months. I thought, "That doesn't make sense." This was just one more unresolved issue in my life, and my method of dealing with things was to keep busy. I thought, "I'll just keep working." My object was to keep myself so busy I wouldn't have to think of other things and deal with the issues I faced every day.

Colleen: Work was a way of escape.

Stanley: Exactly. I was diagnosed in 1996, began the lupron injections, and had surgery, even though my doctor recommended against it, in May, 1997. Afterward, I kept practicing while I administered the chemotherapy drugs to myself.

Colleen: So even though they told you that you were going to die, you basically ignored reality and just kept working so you wouldn't have to think about what might happen to you.

Stanley: Right. I thought, "Well, everybody dies." I wasn't going to worry about it. I thought about my whole life and all the stuff I'd done that was wrong. I knew that I'd also done a lot of things I thought were right—I'd helped a lot of people—so I thought, "It's OK if I get taken, because God will see the stuff I've done right, and I know all the stuff I've done that was sinful and wrong. He'll see that, too, so whatever happens is OK. Justice will be done, whatever that means." I didn't feel that I needed any special treatment because I knew all the stuff I'd done that had been wrong. I deserved whatever punishment I might get—I just wouldn't think about it.

Colleen: That rationale makes sense from an Adventist perspective.

 

Lyndon and return to church

Stanley: So nothing changed in my life. I kept working. The years went by, and I was symptom free. And then, about three or four years later, my mother died, and before too long Lyndon was more or less abandoned. He was still living in Tennessee, and my dad was getting older. He told me he couldn't take care of Lyndon anymore and asked me to take over.

Lyndon came for a visit. His teeth needed care; his hair wasn't clipped, and he developed some medical issues on his visit, and I said, "We can't send him back." So I moved Lyndon into our home.

I took him with me on errands, and on Saturdays I'd golf, and he'd go with me. He had a huge collection of sermon tapes that people gave him, and he had a Bible with every single word underlined—so I knew he had "read" the whole Bible! I know he didn't understand it, but he read the Bible, and he listened to tapes. He was clearly Adventist, but he knew things I didn't know.

I'd ask him if he was going to heaven, and he said he was. I asked, "What about Anne-Louise and Helena?" Lyndon replied, "I'm going to take my whole ‘flamily' with me!" He was convinced of that.

Lyndon wanted to go to church. He didn't have very good clothes, and I hadn't bought a suit for quite a while, so we went down to a men's store, and we got ourselves outfitted. We got a couple of suits each as well as some other clothes so we would be presentable in church, and we marched into Riverside Community Church and sat down near the front.

I went to an Adventist church because Lyndon wanted to go to one, but even before Lyndon came I had thought, "If I ever do go to church again, it's going to be a Seventh Day Baptist or a Seventh-day Adventist church. It's got to be a church that keeps Sabbath because I know from Bible history that Sabbath is not Sunday!"

 

There is a God

Just about this same time, Helena had given me a book by Hugh Ross. She had gone to Westmont College and had heard him speak, and she thought I would like the book. When I read that book, I knew for the first time that there really is a God. Clearly there is a God. I no longer had to rationalize or explain him, as friends of mine talk about him today: "God can change time," or "He can change gravity". The more science I read, the more I realized that many assumptions about how God works don't make any sense to me.

Hugh Ross's explanations caused everything to click. Everything made sense! God is outside of time; He's a spirit, not a material body. Suddenly, without any doubt, I knew God's existence was a fact. I didn't have to question it any longer. I know the complexities of DNA; I know the timeline it would require—if it were even conceivable—for life and nature to develop randomly.

When I read Ross's book, my uncertain "faith" that there might be a God became an absolute "fact". I no longer had to concern myself with my questions of whether or not He existed. I now had no doubt there is a God; I knew for certain that He exists. I put that question to bed; it was answered absolutely.

Colleen: So your realizing that God is real coincided with your recovery from cancer and with Lyndon coming to live with you?

Stanley: Yes. This discovery happened after I became well, but even though I had been consciously dismissing my physical condition, I probably was, in the back of my mind, wondering what was going on when I was diagnosed with cancer. But when I realized there really is a God, I got a little more serious about my thought processes, and I decided I really had to figure out how man fits into a relationship with God. What's going on with that?

Now I knew for a fact that God created the universe a long time ago—I didn't care how long ago it was—but I knew He did it.

Sometime after I started going to church with Lyndon I began reading books, trying to figure out what was true. I determined, "This time I'm going to get it right!" My cognitive dissonance was growing; there I was, sitting in church watching the pastor's family and seeing her husband escape the building as soon as possible and wait for her in the car. There were Easter egg hunts on the Sabbath, and the pastor's sermon illustrations were odd and confusing. There was something weird here that I couldn't define.

I finally said to myself, "I don't think Adventists really believe what they're teaching in this church." I still wasn't going to leave the Sabbath, though. Sabbath was not even an issue; the Sabbath was certain. That's why I decided to come and fix you guys [the Former Adventist Fellowship at Trinity Church]; you guys were wrong about the Sabbath!

Colleen: (Chuckling) So you thought that at the bottom line, Adventists were still probably right, but the pastor you were hearing had it wrong?

Stanley: No. I knew the Sabbath was right. The rest of the Adventist doctrines didn't really make sense to me. They didn't make sense like the other conclusions I'd reached about God being the Creator made sense.

Colleen: I understand.

Stanley: People talk about "faith", but Gary (Inrig, senior pastor at Trinity Church) has cleared up that subject for me. The question is not how much faith one has; the issue is the object of one's faith. So, once the object of my faith is God, I no longer call it "faith"; to me, it is a fact. Now, I'm out of the faith business with regard to God. As a matter of fact, I'm out of the faith business with regard to everything! It's not a matter of, "Do you have enough faith?" It's all about God; it's not even about me—whether I have faith or not. I don't know if I've made that clear.

Colleen: I understand what you're saying. "Faith" isn't an ephemeral thing that has intrinsic power in itself, that can be either strong or weak. Rather, "faith" is simply trust in God. The issue is God, not the person's faith. When one trusts God, he no longer has to waver in his own doubt. God is outside of time and above all, and He is trustworthy no matter the details.

Stanley: There was another thing I knew for a fact. Because I knew God existed and that He would save the righteous, I knew—even before I got to other issues—that I was sitting next to Lyndon, and he knew something I didn't. He was trying to sing; he was worshiping; he was "reading" his Bible—and I knew that he was going to be saved. That was a fact.

I thought about that. There I was, sitting next to him, and I didn't even know about myself. I didn't know about my family, either. Wouldn't it be kind-of funny, I thought, if, of all the people in our family, Lyndon is the only one who is saved? Here we all are doctors, dentists, and other professionals, and Lyndon can't even read!

Sometimes I had the odd thought that Lyndon was pulling the wool over our eyes. Sometimes it seemed that he was "somebody" in there, that he was pulling a joke on me that I didn't understand. So, when he'd say things like, "I'm going to heaven, and I'm going to take my whole ‘flamily' with me," it would seem to me that he knew something that is so profound—and neither I nor the rest of us understood it.

How did this person with Down's syndrome, whose neurons didn't even work right, get it when I can't get it?

Colleen: There was clearly another way of "knowing" that isn't governed by cognitive ability.

Stanley: I decided to work really hard to get it. I took their classes and read their literature, but as I read, I was kind-of doubting it. I still felt the Sabbath was right, though, and my purpose in coming over to the FAF group was not to change your minds about anything but to bring you within the Adventist group to fix them. I thought the church needed to be fixed. I didn't want to make you into Adventists again; I just wanted you to come and help fix the church because they were dysfunctional.

Colleen: I see; you'd get us back to the Sabbath and bring whatever we had to help fix the church.

Stanley: You were already having meetings on Friday night, but at a non-Adventist church. I'd just get you back into the proper environment. Sabbath was not the issue; I already knew the Sabbath was a fact!

Colleen: (laughter) Got it!

Stanley: So once I read Dale's book and you guys told me what you did about the new covenant, I realized what the fact really was: I had been misguided about the Sabbath! The Sabbath is still a fact; it's just not a day. It's a relationship with a Person.

Colleen: Talk about what happened when you read that book. I remember your phone call to us that next week.

Stanley: Oh, I read it the next night. I was up in Arrowhead, and I forget exactly which part of the book I was in, but I suddenly realized the truth about being holy. See, my struggle was trying to be holy. I wanted to be holy, so when I went back to church, holiness was my goal. I knew Lyndon was declared holy; he knew he was going to heaven. I knew I wasn't holy. I had to work to become holy, but Lyndon was declared holy. I kind-of resented him, because he got a better deal than I did.

Colleen: And why did you think Lyndon was declared holy? Because he somehow knew God?

Stanley: Well, yes, he knew God somehow, but also he was declared holy because of Christ's death. I thought He died for the innocents who couldn't help themselves. I was kind-of upset with Lyndon. He was going to heaven, and he didn't have to do anything for it. It wasn't fair! I worked all this time; I became a neurosurgeon and helped all these people that needed help, and Lyndon didn't do a blankety-blank thing to get to heaven!

Colleen: Oh, how funny. He got a pass because he was basically unable to do anything!

Stanley: Yes. He was accepted as he was—plus, even though he didn't understand, he had "read" all the books, had listened to all the tapes, and had underlined his Bible and everything. I said, if there's anybody in this world that deserves to be saved, it's him! I know that he'll be saved, and he'll be restored. That knowledge became a fact for me. It did kind-of irritate me, because it meant that I had to work harder to accomplish what he did without any effort.

Colleen: I get that! Because Lyndon couldn't read and didn't mentally understand, his going through all the motions was considered "good enough". But you did understand, so more was required of you. Are you OK, Stanley?

Stanley: Yeah; I'll go get a pill in a minute.

 

The intellectual disadvantage

Colleen: So you were reading through the book, and at some point you realized…what?

Stanley: If I accepted Christ, then I entered into the rest, and I didn't have to work anymore.

Richard (who had been monitoring the recording and taking photos): You were like Lyndon.

Stanley: Exactly right. God accepted him in his condition, and he entered into God's rest. I entered because of Christ, with all my knowledge, and I accepted Him as my Savior that night—and then I realized Lyndon and I would both be in heaven.

Richard: Lyndon's advantage was that he didn't have anything to bring, so he never fell into that trap.

Stanley: Exactly right. And that's why so many of us with our Adventist background, who pride ourselves on being intellectuals, have so much difficulty. We just can't imagine presenting ourselves empty-handed. We have to impress somebody, and we consider God to be "somebody"—to us as Adventists He's not a spirit.

Colleen: After reading the book and discovering that if you accepted Jesus you were saved, what changed?

Stanley: Now I realized that I had obtained my goal: I was saved. I was set free and no longer had anything to do. I knew Lyndon and I would both be in heaven, no matter what. I realized I didn't save myself; Christ saved me. It's done—I don't have to work anymore. I'm retired!

Not only am I retired, but I used to say to Anne-Louise, "I'm now living in eternity!"

Colleen: Well, you are, actually.

Stanley: I now am in eternity, and the rest of what happened in my life might be amusing or interesting or terrible, but none of it would change the outcome. I've known that fact since that instant. So then I thought that all my friends and family would be thrilled to hear this news. This was important information! (Laughter)

I used to sit between cases and talk to the doctors and whoever would listen, and they had to drag me back into surgery because I would have been late. One of my golfing buddies began to call our Saturdays on the green "gospel golf"! They couldn't stop my talking about it.

After awhile, though, I did quit. Oh, I talk about it when the issues arise, but I've sort-of adopted Lyndon's position: I've tried to bring my "flamily" with me. It's not that they're uninterested; they want the same things I do. They just don't yet understand what I'm trying to say.

I still talk about it, but not incessantly as I used to. Most of the people I meet have already heard it more than once (chuckle)!

Colleen: Have your interests changed in the last ten years?

Stanley: Oh, completely. I still have an interest in "things", but I don't have an obsession with anything. Before, if I wanted something, I went and got it: a new car, or whatever. I could afford it, so I just went and bought it. That's changed. Knowing I'm saved took the focus off of me. I've been through some really hard financial times in the past ten years, but in spite of that, I've been able to think of others rather than myself because I didn't need to worry about myself anymore. I was done.

Colleen: So now, this diagnosis is so recent, it's a sudden jolt—

Stanley: Yes.

Colleen: How is your reaction to having a fatal condition different from the first time it happened?

Stanley: Before, I refused to think about it because I wasn't saved. I just decided that I would try to get along the best I could with whatever time I had. I didn't know what the future was. I wasn't afraid of God—and actually, the comforting thought was annihilation. Even if I had to suffer for a while, it would be over at some point. I wouldn't suffer forever.

Colleen: I used to feel the same way. How do you see it now?

Stanley: When I realized I had a fatal disease that would likely kill me within six months, my first thought was, "This is going to be really hard on Anne-Louise." She had become ill over the past years and was bed-ridden. When I told her, she looked at me and said, "This is too much to deal with." And she died in this room [we had moved into the study from the patio] last week. I believe she is saved because she believed in Christ and in His righteousness and that there was no more work for her to do.

Colleen: So, as you think about dying, which you must do when you get a diagnosis like this, what do you think now?

Stanley: It's an interesting thought. I can no longer eat or drink. I can probably have fluids and nutrition provided, but I need to have a purpose for that. Helena needs me to help finish some paperwork; that is a purpose. Living longer for its own sake is not a purpose now. And then, if I'm on nutritional feeding such as a G-tube, there would be the need to decide when to remove it. I think I'd rather have a natural kind of thing—maybe just fluids, because all I need is a few more days.

Colleen: I once heard you say that you have watched many Adventists die terrified.

Stanley: Right. I've watched them become very distraught, wanting medication, crying, terrified because they didn't know what was going to happen to them. Their families were distraught as well. After all, if one believes in soul sleep, when is that going to end? One wonders if they'll ever be awakened? It requires Christ's second coming and the resurrection to be released from soul sleep.

But when we realize Christ's resurrection—not just his eventual coming—is all that matters, death is completely different. He already broke the power of death. We do not go into oblivion. Christians know Jesus was raised from the dead. It's no longer a question of "Am I good enough?" or "Will I be raised to eternal life?" Now it's certain: Christ was raised! It's all about Him; our future is guaranteed; everything is done!

Colleen: Our spirits go to Him, and we are guaranteed that our bodies will be raised and glorified.

Stanley: I know that I'm saved for a fact, and I know Lyndon is in heaven for a fact. I think about things I wish I had done and projects that I can't finish. Because it's so late, I just have to say, "I can't do it." I feel abandoned to God. He'll take care of whatever needs to be cared for. So my mission projects, my this or my that—I just leave them to Him and they will continue or not.

Colleen: So before, you believed that somehow God would make up the difference in your sanctification so you'd be worthy of salvation, and now—your salvation is done.

Stanley: Yes—because He's done 100% of it. As far as the material things I was doing…if He wanted me to complete them, He wouldn't take me out. I can turn all of that over to Him, too.

I bequeath all my problems to You, Lord! Bills unpaid, projects started, even my family. Last Sunday at Anne-Louise's memorial service, I felt like it was my funeral, too. I'm done with all the things that I can do on earth, and long before this, anything that needed to be accomplished in my life—God did that. I have nothing else to do!

 

 

Unity of the Spirit

You know what I've learned, though? Your support, the church's support, the Christian family—that's been huge. This has been an experience that my biological family—certainly that I—had never experienced. This spiritual connection is something that I cherish. It's been an ecstatic experience, really. I mean, it's been wonderful.

Colleen: If there were something that you wanted to be sure was said in this article that your friends and family might read, what would you say?

Stanley: A lot of what Ellen White said was partial truth which ends up teaching no truth. So if you would say, "I believe in soul sleep," I would say, "My spirit's going to heaven." The real issue is that we have to have our spirits incorporated into Christ. We have spirits, and that's where we relate to God.

God is a spirit. He's 100% spirit, so we can't relate to Him in a physical way. He related to us by becoming man, but, in fact, the rebirth experience is a spiritual experience. Nicodemus actually asked a really good question: How can a man be born again? All he knew was the physical part of man.

The New Testament explains the spirit. Without the New Testament, you're stuck as a Jew—or an Adventist. Adventists sort-of halfway accept the New Testament; they'll accept the idea of being spiritual but they veer away from what Scripture says and say they have to obey to stay saved. It's very difficult to know how to talk about this subject with them because they'll all agree with me.

So I say all these things to them about the spirit, about being born again, and they'll say, "Yeah, you're right; pass the beans."

It's like—wait a second! Is it me? This is a big deal!

Colleen: They have to see that you're different.

Stanley: They all know that I'm different. By being born again I entered into a spiritual kingdom with God because of what He did in Jesus—entirely. Because of Jesus, I remain in that spiritual kingdom with Him. When He says that He will be with me forever, it's because He will not let me leave that spiritual relationship. I don't want to leave it—it's not like I'm struggling to get out! He engulfed my life, and I want to remain incorporated in that situation. Being born again through faith in the blood of the Lord Jesus did give me eternal life.

When I talk to people about being saved and this event of being born again, it's like they say, "OK, we get it; yeah, we're all going to be there; we believe in Christ—and oh, by the way, how's your boat doing out on the river this year?" So I don't know; Christ has to deal with them—I don't. I know I can't take that person to the next step. He can come to a place where he can recognize somebody has a passion for something, but he can't go to the next step without an impact from Christ. That comes from Him. But they can resist—I think that is the worrisome thing about it.

Colleen: I agree.

Stanley: They are so close—but what happens to those people who are so close but can't give it up? Oswald Chambers writes a lot about giving up your right to yourself, something he called the "white funeral". You have to attend your own "white funeral". It's "white" because it's not negative at all. It's wonderful; it's a bright funeral, not at all depressing. It was wonderful to die to myself and let Christ save me.

I think I have had an influence in people's lives. They've heard most of what you've heard me say. I don't know how to get them over the next hurdle; I know I can't do it.

Colleen: No, but God knows; He got you over that hurdle.

Stanley: Yes, something will happen.

Richard: It's a miracle each one of us is here.

Stanley: Absolutely. And I wouldn't change a bit of it, because in spite of what I went through, He rescued me. I was the prodigal son. He relates to us spiritually in the spiritual world even after our bodies die; there has to be some kind of spiritual communication until there are new bodies.

Colleen: If there weren't something real that God keeps when we die, we wouldn't have a resurrection but a re-creation.

Stanley: Right. We'll recognize our friends, so there's got to be some part of us that's recognizable, retained, but purified.

(Stanley was growing weary. We had moved indoors, and he was sitting in his recliner next to the open window where he could watch the hummingbirds vie for spots at the feeder that hung outside.)

Richard: Stanley, we really appreciate this. It's a gift to be able to spend some time with you.

Stanley: Thank you. You guys are largely responsible for my exit from Adventism—

Colleen: Well, God did that.

Stanley: I understand, but still I appreciate it.

(The phone rings…)

Stanley: Whatever it is can wait. It doesn't matter…

Richard turned off the microphone and computer, and we sat with our friend for another half hour, talking softly and sharing his reminiscences. The sun was shining, and birds were singing. Richard and I both felt tears fill our eyes—but the gift God gave us that afternoon was that instead of distress, awkwardness, or an agony of grief, the three of us knew that we were united to each other in Jesus. Richard and I would miss Stanley, but we knew the unity of the Spirit that knit our hearts together was eternal. We were one in Christ Jesus, and nothing—not even death—could ever remove us from Him. So we sat quietly with our dying yet very-much-alive friend and shared the profound presence of Jesus.

Eleven days later, Stanley Allen Rouhe entered into his rest in the presence of his Lord Jesus—one day after completing the last of the paperwork his daughter needed him to put in order before he left. We can't see him now, but his testimony continues to call us to trust Jesus and to retire as Stanley did from our struggle to be worthy.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Blessed indeed," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!" (Rev. 14:13)

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him (2 Cor. 5:6-9).

Stanley abandoned himself to God, and he committed his loved ones into His care. He finished well. †

 

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July August September 2011
VOLUME 12, ISSUE 3

Richard Tinker is president and CFO of Life Assurance Ministries. He and his wife Colleen have co-led Former Adventist Fellowship Bible study at Trinity Church in Redlands, California, since 1999.

Colleen Tinker is editor of Proclamation! magazine. Formerly a high-school English teacher, she has worked with Life Assurance Ministries since 2004. Colleen and Richard have two adult sons and a granddaughter.

"I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" John 11:25–26 ESV