The Last Word of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

On April 9, 1945, at Flossenburg concentration camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer knelt in prayer before his executioners led him to the gallows. Allied forces were days away from liberating the camp. Liberation was coming — but not soon enough for Bonhoeffer. Yet his final recorded words to a fellow prisoner were astonishing in their confidence: "This is the end — for me, the beginning of life."

Bonhoeffer did not cling to the hope of rescue by the Allies. He clung to the promise of Someone greater. He had staked everything — his academic career in America, his safety, his very life — on the conviction that the One who said "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" would keep His word.

In the closing verses of Revelation, Jesus declares, "Behold, I am coming soon, and My reward is with Me." And the Spirit and the Bride respond with the only fitting answer: "Come." It is the same cry that has risen from the lips of martyrs and saints across twenty centuries — not a desperate plea from people with nowhere else to turn, but the confident invitation of those who have already tasted the water of life and know their Lord is faithful.

Bonhoeffer walked to his death as a man walking toward a door, not a wall. "Come, Lord Jesus" was not his farewell. It was his welcome.