Dying to Speak

At East Point Church we are currently working on two writing projects to add to our list of East Point Books.  One of the books is on the last sayings of Christ on the cross.  In preparing for this most encouraging project, I have come across some interesting last words believed to have been spoken by some famous and not so famous people.  Here are a few:

“If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now.”  – Emily Jane Bronte, suffering from tuberculosis, stubbornly refused to see a doctor until it was too late.  She died at 30 years old.

“How were the circus receipts in Madison Square Garden?”  – P.T. Barnum of the Barnum and Baily Circus.

“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—-.”  – Gen. John Sedgwick, corps commander of the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War.  At the Battle of the Wilderness, while others were diving for cover from the Confederate sharpshooters, Sedgwick scoffed and took a bullet in mid-sentence.

“We have been together for 40 years, and we will not separate now.” – Ida Straus refused the lifeboat offered to her aboard the Titanic.  She stayed with her husband as the ship sunk into history.

“Cool it, brothers.” – These were the last words of Malcolm X.

“Well, folks, you’ll soon see a baked Appel.” George Appel spoke these words prior to being put to death in the electric chair for killing a New York policeman in 1928.

“I wish the whole human race had one neck and I had my hands around it.”  These are the words of the unrepentant, unremorseful mass-murderer Carl Panzram before he was put to death in Mississippi in 1930.

In contrast to Panzram, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as he suffered death at the hands of those to whom he offered his life, cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).