The 19th century Spanish general Ramon Narvaez was on his deathbed, and toward the end, was visited by a priest. Eventually, the discussion came around to the condition of the officer’s soul.
The priest asked him “Sir, have you forgiven your enemies?”
“I have no need to forgive them,” the officer weakly replied, “I’ve had them all shot.”
The myth of the dramatic deathbed conversion is usually just that - a myth. A person who has spent a lifetime ignoring God is usually still ambivalent about what awaits him beyond death’s door.
Consider what John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury from 1691-1694, said about deathbed conversions:
Do we think that when the day has been idly spent and squandered away by us, we shall be fit to work when the night and darkness come - when our understanding is weak, and our memory frail, and our will crooked, and by long custom of sinning obstinately bent the wrong way, what can we then do in religion? What reasonable or acceptable service can we then perform to God? When our candle is just sinking into the socket, how shall our light “so shine before men that they may see our good works”? ... I will not pronounce anything concerning the impossibility of a deathbed repentance, but I am sure that it is very difficult, and, I believe, very rare.
The grace of God
