Sermon Illustrations
Dallas Willard’s Last Words: 'Thank You'
The Christian writer and philosopher Dallas Willard died at 6am on May 8, 2013. In his biography on Willard titled Becoming Dallas Willard, Gary Moon describes Dallas’ last moments:
At 4:30 a.m. a nurse came in to turn Dallas in the bed. Her visit awakened [Dallas’ good friend Gary Black who was in the hospital room with him]. Moving Dallas awakened him too. Gary took Dallas’s hand. Dallas turned to him and told him to tell his loved ones how much he was blessed by them and how much he appreciated them. … Then, as Gary described, “In a voice clearer than I had heard in days, he leaned his head back slightly and with his eyes closed said, ‘Thank you.’” Gary did not feel that Dallas was talking to him, but to another presence that Dallas seemed to sense in the room. And those were the last words of Dallas Willard. “Thank you,” he said, to a very present and then finally visible to him God.
Source:
Gary Moon, Becoming Dallas Willard (IVP, 2018), page 240