Famous Last Words
Famous Last Words — and the Ones That Actually Matter
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
We've all heard the phrase "famous last words." As it turns out, quite a few last words really have been recorded from famous people, and they're a strange window into a life.
P.T. Barnum, the great 19th-century showman, reportedly asked, "How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?" Benjamin Franklin said, "A dying man can do nothing easy." George Washington simply said, "'Tis well." Winston Churchill, one of history's great statesmen, said, "I'm bored with it all." Steve Jobs said, "Oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow." And perhaps the most famous last words of all belong to Julius Caesar: "Et tu, Brute?"
Last words tend to reveal what a person actually valued. Which is what makes the last words of Jesus to his closest followers, recorded in Acts 1, worth paying attention to.
Where the Church Begins
Acts was written by Luke, a physician and traveling companion of the apostle Paul, as a sequel to his Gospel. Both books were written to one person, a man named Theophilus, though clearly meant for much wider circulation. By volume, Luke wrote more of the New Testament than any other author, including Paul, and he's the only Gentile writer in the whole collection.
Acts opens with the risen Jesus spending forty days with his disciples before his ascension. His followers, still expecting him to set up an earthly kingdom, ask him directly: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
Jesus doesn't answer the question they asked. Instead:
That's essentially it. Those are Jesus's final instructions before he's taken up into heaven. Buried in those two verses are four insights about what God's future for his church actually looks like — insights that still apply to any church, anywhere, trying to figure out what comes next.
1. The power comes before the mission
Notice the order. Jesus hasn't even told the disciples what to do yet — that comes in the very next phrase. He starts with power, not assignment.
God never intends for his people to serve him on their own strength. The mission's foundation was never money, manpower, or method. It was, and is, the power of the Holy Spirit.
William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, once wrote: "I will tell you a secret. God has had all there was of me... On that day I made up my mind that God should have all of William Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in the Salvation Army, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life." That's not a formula reserved for the spiritually elite or the large and well-resourced church. Every church has access to the same Spirit.
2. Witnesses, not witnessing
The Greek word translated "witnesses" here is martys — the same root as our word "martyr." It was a legal term for someone testifying to what they had personally seen, heard, and knew to be true.
That's a narrower assignment than it sounds. Everyone who follows Jesus has a testimony of what God has actually done in their life. Being a witness isn't primarily about mastering an evangelism technique or seeking out strangers to convince — though sharing your faith clearly and courageously matters. It's about letting your everyday life, your actual interactions with actual people, testify to what's true. We're not told to go witnessing. We're told to be witnesses.
3. They responded with expectant belief
After Jesus ascends, two messengers appear and tell the stunned disciples to return to Jerusalem, where they gather with about 120 people — the apostles, Jesus's mother Mary, his brothers (who had previously doubted him), and a number of women who had followed and supported Jesus throughout his ministry, including Mary Magdalene.
They didn't know what receiving the Holy Spirit would actually look like. There was no precedent for it. But they stayed anyway, believing Jesus's promise even without understanding it.
R.A. Torrey — one of the great evangelists and educators of his era, and an early leader at what became Biola University — began ministry as a terrified, tongue-tied preacher who memorized his sermons and could barely get through them. Everything changed when he grasped that preaching wasn't meant to happen in his own strength but in the power of the Holy Spirit. He came to love preaching so much that, by his own account, he'd rather preach than eat.
The question worth sitting with: do we actually expect God to use his Spirit in our lives, or do we just admire that expectation in other people's stories?
4. They responded with expectant prayer
Acts 1:14 says the believers "all joined together constantly in prayer." The Greek scholar A.T. Robertson notes that this wasn't a scheduled prayer segment within a bigger meeting — prayer was what they were doing, continuously.
Consider who was in that room: strong-willed disciples who had argued over who would be greatest in the kingdom, brothers of Jesus who had once tried to have him institutionalized, women, rich, poor. And yet Luke says they were "of one mind" in prayer. Not because they agreed on everything, but because they were all looking to the same source for the same thing.
Bible teacher William Newell once asked a mission director in China to "pray for me, that I shall be nothing." The director answered, with a smile, "Newell, you are nothing. Take it by faith." That's uncomfortable to hear and also exactly right. We are not the source of what the church needs next. We're the ones who get to depend on the one who is.
Jesus's last words to his followers weren't a strategic plan, a fundraising goal, or an org chart. They were a promise of power, a redefinition of mission, and a call to wait — expectantly, prayerfully — for what God was about to do. The disciples didn't have the Holy Spirit yet, and they still didn't fully understand what was coming. But they were postured to receive it.
That's still the starting point for any church, or any follower of Jesus, wondering what the future holds: not a better plan, but a deeper dependence.
P.T. Barnum, the great 19th-century showman, reportedly asked, "How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?" Benjamin Franklin said, "A dying man can do nothing easy." George Washington simply said, "'Tis well." Winston Churchill, one of history's great statesmen, said, "I'm bored with it all." Steve Jobs said, "Oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow." And perhaps the most famous last words of all belong to Julius Caesar: "Et tu, Brute?"
Last words tend to reveal what a person actually valued. Which is what makes the last words of Jesus to his closest followers, recorded in Acts 1, worth paying attention to.
Where the Church Begins
Acts was written by Luke, a physician and traveling companion of the apostle Paul, as a sequel to his Gospel. Both books were written to one person, a man named Theophilus, though clearly meant for much wider circulation. By volume, Luke wrote more of the New Testament than any other author, including Paul, and he's the only Gentile writer in the whole collection.
Acts opens with the risen Jesus spending forty days with his disciples before his ascension. His followers, still expecting him to set up an earthly kingdom, ask him directly: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
Jesus doesn't answer the question they asked. Instead:
"It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:7–8)
That's essentially it. Those are Jesus's final instructions before he's taken up into heaven. Buried in those two verses are four insights about what God's future for his church actually looks like — insights that still apply to any church, anywhere, trying to figure out what comes next.
1. The power comes before the mission
Notice the order. Jesus hasn't even told the disciples what to do yet — that comes in the very next phrase. He starts with power, not assignment.
God never intends for his people to serve him on their own strength. The mission's foundation was never money, manpower, or method. It was, and is, the power of the Holy Spirit.
William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, once wrote: "I will tell you a secret. God has had all there was of me... On that day I made up my mind that God should have all of William Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in the Salvation Army, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life." That's not a formula reserved for the spiritually elite or the large and well-resourced church. Every church has access to the same Spirit.
2. Witnesses, not witnessing
The Greek word translated "witnesses" here is martys — the same root as our word "martyr." It was a legal term for someone testifying to what they had personally seen, heard, and knew to be true.
That's a narrower assignment than it sounds. Everyone who follows Jesus has a testimony of what God has actually done in their life. Being a witness isn't primarily about mastering an evangelism technique or seeking out strangers to convince — though sharing your faith clearly and courageously matters. It's about letting your everyday life, your actual interactions with actual people, testify to what's true. We're not told to go witnessing. We're told to be witnesses.
3. They responded with expectant belief
After Jesus ascends, two messengers appear and tell the stunned disciples to return to Jerusalem, where they gather with about 120 people — the apostles, Jesus's mother Mary, his brothers (who had previously doubted him), and a number of women who had followed and supported Jesus throughout his ministry, including Mary Magdalene.
They didn't know what receiving the Holy Spirit would actually look like. There was no precedent for it. But they stayed anyway, believing Jesus's promise even without understanding it.
R.A. Torrey — one of the great evangelists and educators of his era, and an early leader at what became Biola University — began ministry as a terrified, tongue-tied preacher who memorized his sermons and could barely get through them. Everything changed when he grasped that preaching wasn't meant to happen in his own strength but in the power of the Holy Spirit. He came to love preaching so much that, by his own account, he'd rather preach than eat.
The question worth sitting with: do we actually expect God to use his Spirit in our lives, or do we just admire that expectation in other people's stories?
4. They responded with expectant prayer
Acts 1:14 says the believers "all joined together constantly in prayer." The Greek scholar A.T. Robertson notes that this wasn't a scheduled prayer segment within a bigger meeting — prayer was what they were doing, continuously.
Consider who was in that room: strong-willed disciples who had argued over who would be greatest in the kingdom, brothers of Jesus who had once tried to have him institutionalized, women, rich, poor. And yet Luke says they were "of one mind" in prayer. Not because they agreed on everything, but because they were all looking to the same source for the same thing.
Bible teacher William Newell once asked a mission director in China to "pray for me, that I shall be nothing." The director answered, with a smile, "Newell, you are nothing. Take it by faith." That's uncomfortable to hear and also exactly right. We are not the source of what the church needs next. We're the ones who get to depend on the one who is.
Jesus's last words to his followers weren't a strategic plan, a fundraising goal, or an org chart. They were a promise of power, a redefinition of mission, and a call to wait — expectantly, prayerfully — for what God was about to do. The disciples didn't have the Holy Spirit yet, and they still didn't fully understand what was coming. But they were postured to receive it.
That's still the starting point for any church, or any follower of Jesus, wondering what the future holds: not a better plan, but a deeper dependence.
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