No one enters into the experience of entire sanctification without going through a “white funeral,” a burial of the old life. If this crisis has never taken place, if you’ve never put your old life to death, sanctification is nothing more than a vision. It is a death followed by one resurrection—a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can upset such a life. It is one with God for one purpose: to be a witness to him.
Have you come to your last days really? You may have come to them many times in your thoughts and dreams; you may have grown excited at the thought of being baptized into death with your Lord. But have you actually done it? You cannot die in excitement. Death means you stop being, stop striving. Do you agree with God to stop being the kind of striving, eager Christian you’ve been up to now? We circle the cemetery all the time, refusing to actually go to our deaths.
Are you ready to be buried with Christ, or are you playing the fool with your soul? Is there a moment you can identify as your last? Can you go back to it in your memory and say, with a chastened and grateful spirit, “Yes, it was then, at that ‘white funeral,’ that I made an agreement with God”?
“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). When you realize that sanctification is what God wants, you will enter into death naturally. Are you willing to do it now? Do you agree with God that this day will be your last? The moment of agreement depends on you.
