I am a friend of Royce’s and would like to discuss charity for the family. If you can contact me at my email, I’d greatly appreciate it.

God Bless

Our family is praying for you re: the upcoming funeral and how God will use you to witness to lost souls. Moreover, we pray that through Brian’s testimony more people will be won to Christ. It took my own mom’s death for our relatives and her best friend to come to know our Savior. Prayerfully his death won’t be in vain.

Thanks brother!

My heart and prayers are with your family and the family that Brian had just started. I can never know what you’re all going through. I can only relate and sympathize, because I have also unexpectedly lost family and friends who were close to me.

Reflecting on your concerns over Brian’s salvation, what I can say is that I’m absolutely convinced that God calls home his children when He feels that they’re ready to be with Him. I am absolutely convinced that he has good, sovereign reasoning behind it.

I’ve seen it with my cousin and grandmother, who He took at 12 and 80 years of age on the same day from different causes. It may make no sense to us when and why He thinks that they’re ready to come home. How does He pick one who was just starting the most fruitful years of his earthly life and pick another who was in the twilight of her days? Why did he decide to take them at the same time in totally unrelated ways?

The only clue God may have given for why and when he took either of them may lie in the timing and the depth of their conviction.

From what you’ve told me and what I’ve read on your forum, I see something similar between Brian and my own family members who died. How does God decide to end the life of a man who was just turning to Him, one who was just provided the responsibility of raising a son of his own? Here is a man whose stage in life couldn’t be more unlike my boy cousin and my elderly grandmother.

What they all had in common was that they have witnesses on earth who heard their testimony. What they all had in common was their acknowledgment of their own depravity. What they all had in common was that they turned to the Son. They all had the Holy Spirit working in them.

I am convinced that He picks us as He would ripe fruit. Only He knows when is best, and He knows the depth of a person’s conviction. I’m not saying that the rest of us are still alive because He doesn’t feel we’re not ripe enough, convinced enough, or godly enough to be with Him. I’m just saying that He calls for us when He feels that our time on earth is done. He has always known who and when we would be coming to Him. However, he cannot allow us to Him until we have accepted his Son.

16 “For God so loved the world, [7] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John3:16

And it may not seem to be enough that someone is a “young” Christian or one who is an “immature” Christian. I can only be convinced from scripture that this does not completely matter to our Father:

40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.� 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.� 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.� Luke 23:40-43

As sudden and new as that robber’s conviction may have been, He knows our hearts. Even if a person is convinced for a fleeting moment before his death, God may still allow this person into his Kingdom. After all, he is a loving and merciful God. He forgives us.

It is the testimony and the subsequent deaths of my cousin and grandmother which became the impetus behind my own rebirth. It was the miracle of their salvation through the Son that made me realize that there was hope for me. I have you to thank, Sam, for helping me along the way through your ministry. I can only pray that He has chosen me for his mercy and grace.

As tragic as Brian’s death may seem, it seems to me that there is real hope that he is by His side. The days before his death reflect a time passed by a man who seemed to have the Holy Spirit working in him to reveal the grace of God. I have a hard time believing that the Father would lead a man to water but not allow him to drink. He is, after all, merciful. What we can pray for are for the living, that the miracle of salvation revealed to Brian shortly before his death will be the impetus for those who knew Brian to get to know Him.