The Sign of Life

The Sign of Life
2 John 1-6

When I was doing research on life after death, and on what people believed about it, I came across some disturbing material from the nineteenth century. People had realized that sometimes the doctors made a mistake, supposing someone to be dead when they were only in fact in some kind of a coma. Breath and pulse can be so faint that you wrongly suppose they’ve gone altogether. Sometimes coffins were discovered in which the supposedly dead inhabitants had been trying to claw their way out, to scratch the lid with their fingernails, until inevitably dying of suffocation. Being naturally afraid of this possibility, some people gave orders that their coffins should be fitted with either a speaking tube or a bell-rope or some other means through which they could, if necessary, indicate that they were still alive...

Taken from Early Christian Letters For Everyone by Tom Wright