In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” John 1:1-3

Two very famous men have died within weeks of one another. I did not know either of them except by reputation, but am deeply moved by their passing. Christian Evangelist Billy Graham died at age 99 in North Carolina on February 21. The Reverend Graham conducted hundreds of evangelical campaigns from 1947 to 2005 in almost 2 hundred countries world wide wherein millions of people answered his call to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. He counseled Presidents in the last and into the 21st century and was called America’s Pastor.

Theoretical physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking passed away on March 14 in Cambridge, England. Hawking has been called a “visionary physicist” who probed the mysteries of how the universe began. In mental brilliance he’s compared with and second only to Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. Hawking miraculously also lived with ALS for 50 of his 76 years, eventually losing all his ability to move except for eye movements and one finger. His courage in the face of such a disability is remarkable. It is poetically said that he traveled the cosmos in a wheelchair.

Two men died and left very different legacies.

Dr. Hawking’s legacy is in the rarified realm of quantum physics, cosmology, gravity and black holes, principles I can’t pretend to grasp. He authored “A Brief History of Everything” which brought him and his ideas into the popular culture. Like Einstein he tried to find a “universal, unified theory of everything” which would finally solve theoretical discrepancies about the universe. What I do understand is Hawking’s own words which reveal his heart’s attitude more than his gifted mind. That humanistic legacy rejects anything outside of empirical science. Hawking was an avowed atheist who did not believe in God or in any kind of afterlife. He believed that “We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. ” “No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.” Hawking’s view of the universe is ultimately hopeless. He believed in the existence of many universes and in his recent final work, curiously titled “A Smooth Exit From Eternal Inflation” he predicted the darkened end of our universe. In some of the most depressing, post modern existentialist words ever expressed, The Washington Post wrote Hawking believed that “when he died his mind would go to the same place as the Siri app on that iPhone you dropped in the bathtub. Nowhere. Nothing. He would just be over.” For once I hope WAPO is making this up. Seriously, Siri??

Billy Graham also left a legacy. He passed on the legacy which he had himself received – the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ – whereby men are saved by grace to eternal life. In Billy Graham’s Biblical world view the Word of God created the universe and God keeps it through both darkness and light. God said it. That is enough. We are all sinners, scientists included, in need of God’s loving mercy through relationship with Christ Jesus. His legacy brought a planet full of hungry, dying souls to the kingdom of God. His legacy is the very thing which Dr. Hawking sought and could not find – the unified answer to life’s origins, meaning and purpose. It is neither theory nor principle but a person, the Person of Jesus.

…For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Col 4:16-17

Sadly, the farther Hawking searched the skies, the closer the truth was to him -– as close as his own heartbeat in his wheel chair. All he had to do was turn on the television and listen to Billy Graham’s message.

Two men died, as all men eventually have to die, and stood alone before God to answer for every secret thought and deed. O, that the brilliant scientist known on earth as Stephen Hawking finally took into his heart the Gospel of Jesus preached by Dr. Graham. I pray that at the end, he found Jesus and said “Yes.”