I Shall Not Die, But Live

‘“Depend upon it, Sir”, said Dr Samuel Johnson, “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Something similar may be said of a man who is diagnosed with an incurable disease which normally carries a prognosis of about six months. ‘But if that is true, what kind of self-delusion would lead him to the text that forms the title to this book: “I shall not die, but live …”? Not, certainly, any thought of dodging the arrow that has brought down every man since the fall of Adam. Rather, it is the thought that he must now focus on the things that really matter, together with the conviction that, in sober reality, he will not die till his work is done, till the things that God has intended he should accomplish are accomplished.