"Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, "Write: 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.' 'Yes,' says the Spirit, 'that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them" (Rev. 14:13).

I shall never forget my friend who, though away from us, is alive in another realm. In a figurative way he will always live in every person here; but more than that, we are confident by faith that he has literally entered the eternal phase of living.

Have you ever considered that no child (safe in the warmth of his mother's womb, surrounded by the gentle caress of her encompassing anatomy, fed by the fluids of her body, and protected by her constantly attentive pre-natal care) desires to change his estate. We all come into this world kicking and screaming against this massive intrusion into our society. And yet none of us would return to that existence voluntarily. How like our move to the next phase of our lives. We fear (although lam not certain Edgar did as much as others, except for his concern for Betty). We take every, precaution with, our health (and rightly so). Even the Lord said that we will give all that we have for this existence; and yet, I have a feeling that once any righteous man or woman is forced through the birth canal into that glorious, celestial, immortal, and incorruptible existence that person would never deliberately choose to return to the state in which we find ourselves today. Somehow, I have often thought that a greater sacrifice involved in the condescension of Christ than the few hours of suffering on the cross (and I would never diminish from that for a moment) was his leaving the marvelous rapture of the heavenly to actually reduce himself to earthly flesh and blood.

As We Know Him

Edgar Srygley's life has begun and continued to this point through the grand mixture of happiness and sorrow, successes and failures, wonderful relationships with most and some not so good because a few, I'm afraid, did not fully understand the marvelous man that he is. Everyone experiences those variables, but especially do those whose lives, like Edgar's, touch so many.

He was born from a rich heritage of men and women of faith. We heard him speak on the 1981 Florida College lectureship with justifiable respect concerning his relationship to F.B. (Filo Bunyan) and F.D. (Fletcher Douglas) Srygley (fine restoration preachers of the late 1800s).

He married a wonderful, dedicated, self-sacrificing, sharing companion and helper, who mothered their two marvelous daughters and who lovingly cared for him and tenderly kissed him just moments before his huge heart retired.

Who among us can fail to think today of his love for and pride in that sports car with the EVS, JR license tag or his white cowboy suit with the red fringe, and his mellow voice singing "Candy Kisses" or "I'll Walk the Line." (He did walk a straight line didn't he?) Can you forget his saying, "Take it band," in the middle of his songs, when only Betty on the piano was back there?

I think about how he was always on time, or was always looking for the, coffee pot at almost every banquet the students put on.

How could any of us who "had him " in Greek classes ever forget. Isn't that a great phrase, "we had him" in class. Do you realize that a majority of 'preachers in the brotherhood of those who oppose denominationalizing through institutionalization who know Greek, learned it from Edgar during the past 33 years? Those were wonderful classes under Edgar who joined with men like Homer Hailey and Clinton Hamilton and Jim Cope and others to teach us through the Bible.

I shall always remember the long rides on Sunday mornings to North Florida where he preached at Cherry Sink in the 1960s, the careful help he gave a young preacher named Colly who went to Trenton and who needed to listen to his every word, and the long rides back to Tampa after services at night.

You folks from Zephyrhills will remember with all of us his carefully structured and timed lessons, his turtleneck sweaters, his iron-pumping, weightlifting efforts which went into his marvelous physique. Edgar did not want us to look at him in death, so his casket is closed.

Those of us who worked with him daily recall his meticulous recording of faculty meeting minutes. And we remember a certain sternness with unrepentant moral violators of regulations but -his deep concern and will I have sat beside him (literally, in the same chairs) for seventeen years and I have watched with amazement at times his soft side . . . a side some thought he didn't have. That soft side was crushingly invaded when Linda was taken from him and Betty. And I watched carefully his soft side as I read the vows which Jim and Janet repeated at their wedding . . . and I heard him say things he could only say to someone other than Janet that night.

He cared. I shall never forget thinking of his love for Betty as he taped every musical program Betty directed for elementary students at the Academy. There are a host of other experiences.

Will any of us that were there ever forget his line at the banquet when Kevin Hyde brought in a Baptist speaker who closed his message with a rousing religious song and nobody clapped. Edgar just said, "What can I say?"

Please let me concentrate for just a few more moments on three very special moments in my life, two of which Edgar has probably forgotten.

"Blessed Are the Dead"

The first is a series of chapel talks he gave in the early 70s in which he examined the Greek word makarios (blessed) as it appears in the Beatitudes and in that wonderful statement of John on Patmos when he announced that he had "heard a voice from heaven saying to me, 'Write: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. " "Yes, "says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them'" (Rev. 14:13-14). The word means "happy," Edgar said, but only in a deep, spiritual sense . . . certainly Christians are not in the usual, physical sense "happy" to be persecuted, even for righteousness' sake. The word, he said, is descriptive of the "surpassing bliss" of the "truly fortunate" man whose right relationship with God provides for him "the hope of continuity of life in eternal happiness." The "blessed" man is the man who is blessed!

How true that is. Do you believe it today? Please remember Paul's injunction: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the in ward [man] is being renewed day by day " (2 Cor. 4:16). If God who knows Edgar's heart fully chooses to confirm our estimation that he truly was a man of faith, Edgar is "truly fortunate, he is blessed by God" while we only wait. Our greatest gift to Edgar, while it is difficult to give because of our sorrow, is to be happy over his new-found blessed condition.

Please notice another necessary implication of this text. John said, "Blessed are the dead." He does not say, "Blessed were the dead," or "Blessed will be the dead." He says, "Blessed are the dead." They are alive. You may have noticed, I have not once spoken of Edgar in the past tense. I believe that his basic existence has only just begun, in any kind of relative sense. For that reason, I no more have to put him in the past tense or quit loving him, than I did Sherri when she moved out of our house this spring and moved on to another phase (a married phase) of life away from Lynda and me. We have faith. Let it rule in our hearts today.

Betty, you may remember a verse written by a man named Freeman, perhaps a distant relative, who said,

No, not cold beneath the grasses, not close-walled within the tomb;

Rather, in our father's mansion, LIVING, in another room.

Living, like the one who loves me, like my child with cheeks abloom,

Out of sight, at desk or schoolbook, busy, in another room.

Nearer than my son whom fortune beckons where the strange land looms;

Just behind the hanging curtain, serving, in another room.

Shall I doubt my Father's mercy? Shall I think of death as doom?

Or the stepping o'er the threshold to a bigger, brighter room?

Shall I blame my Father's wisdom? Shall I sit enswathed in gloom?

When I know my loves are happy, waiting in another room?

Robert Freeman

"And to You Who Are Troubled, Rest"

A second special moment came after I participated in a Bible reading contest we used to have at the College. I had been asked to read 2 Thessalonians 1:7-12 in which Paul says, among other things, "and to you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thess. 1:7-8). Edgar was a judge in the contest and he must have been a part of the decision to award me a special book I still have, but after everyone else left and I was feeling pretty good, he came up and said, "Colly, can I ask you a question? Did you pause before 'rest' in the passage. I couldn't quite tell if you were mentally inserting the ellipsis, 'he will give' rest." I confess I really should not have received that book because I hadn't thought carefully enough about the real meaning of the passage which says that God will repay tribulation to those who persecute Christians, and that he will repay "rest" to those who are troubled.

Have you given Christians a hard time? Have you realized that God will take vengeance upon those who do not know him and who obey not his Gospel? I really think Edgar would want me to remind all of you of that today, and he would want you to understand it well, as he wanted me to understand it well twenty-five years ago.

"Graduation"

And the third memorable moment you who are here today will remember well for it was just seven weeks ago today. The graduates were aligned on the porch by the library, dressed in their robes, most of them Edgar's students (at least in one class, or two), and there came Edgar. He had not been able to teach for several weeks, he had been through surgery, he had a myriad of important matters to weigh down his mind, but he walked tall and straight with his students because he had come to graduation . . . and he has come to graduation today!

It is not ours to judge Edgar's destiny. We can only take comfort in the many things we saw in him that at least seem to us to conform to Truth, but I think I know that Edgar, humbly but with confidence in the Lord would share Paul's "graduation statement": "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing" (2 Tim. 4:7-8).

Betty, Janet, I know that all these people who show their respect for God and for you and Edgar by their presence today, love you and love him. None of us will cease loving Edgar. Only the very young or distant will cease to be affected by him in some way or cease to call him and you to mind often. What a wonderful blessing we have to share these moments in hope and to look forward to seeing Edgar again in a little while.

Guardian of Truth XXXIII: 16, pp. 494-495, 499
August 17, 1989