Books for a Protestant who is approaching death

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I am trying to find audio books for a Protestant who is very ill and losing his sight. I want to download some things from the internet–these would be books which are out of copyright.

I don’t know whether Protestants have anything which would be equivalent to Catholic preparations for death? Sort of like gentle reminders of the need to straighten out one’s relationship with God?

I don’t really want to include very Catholic material because I think this person might reject that, bit I do know that some Protestants seem to like some Catholic books, like Confessions, Practicing the Presence of God, and the Early Church Fathers.

Anyway, I get secular audio books from the library, bit wanted to include some spiritual materials and have no clue what would be appropriate. I am thinking of including some GK Chesterton…

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
I have spent a lot of time with the dying. I have found that it’s often best to ask them what sort of books (or audio books in this case) they would like to listen to or read. It’s really too hard to predict what they will want, and their normal likes and dislikes may not even apply anymore. Most recently, I was with a member of the Knights of Columbus when he died. This man was “Mr. Catholic” all his life. He didn’t want to talk about religion or God while he was dying, because even up to the very last day, I don’t think he had come to terms with his predicament health-wise, and he wasn’t young either. About two hours before he died, we started playing some of his favorite mass music on You Tube hoping that would bring him some comfort. I couldn’t even tell if he was hearing it at that point. I hope he did and I hope it made him more comfortable.

Having been through this many times, I think you should just ask him what kinds of books on tape he’d like.

PS: thanks for caring for your friend! God bless you!
 
I like what Gary said above, it really is hard to guess what someone would request at that time.

As a thought, you mentioned Chesterton, C.S. Lewis is sometimes another good one. But, it usually depends on the individual and their likes/dislikes; I’ve met many fellow Protestants who can’t get into Lewis.
 
Thanks so much, both of you 🙂 It’s hard to find out what would be appreciated the most because the selection is limited to really old books and what they have at my library (their library is even more limited!). So it’s catch as catch can, because they also want to avoid some of the excesses of current books.

I didn’t mention CS Lewis because his books are not out of copyright and so not available.

So I will just shoot for variety and hopefully some will work for them 🙂 Actually, we are all hoping he’ll be able to get on the Talking Books program so he’ll be able to choose for himself from a wider variety.

Thanks for the help!
 
It really depends on the person, but for my Father-In-Law, Randy Alcorn’s books on Heaven were a cherished companion in his last days.

On my wife’s side, all of the death have sadly been slow and lingering. It may just be because they all come from Amish and Mennonite backgrounds, but for them, the things they wanted more than anything else was to simply hear the Bible in their native tongue and the old German hymns. So, the kids and the grand kids and the great grandkids who still knew PA Dutch took shifts just sitting and reading the Bible and singing songs from the Ausbund to them.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but that’s what I would want more than anything else: To hear the Scriptures the way I heard them when I was young and hear the hymns that I used to sing when I was a boy. Again, this may be a symptom of the way Evangelicalism has become unmoored from its roots, but I can’t even begin to tell you what I would give to hear “The Old Rugged Cross” or “Just As I Am” or some good old fashioned King James just one more time before I go to see Him.
 
BeProfOSX said:
It really depends on the person, but for my Father-In-Law, Randy Alcorn’s books on Heaven were a cherished companion in his last days.

On my wife’s side, all of the death have sadly been slow and lingering. It may just be because they all come from Amish and Mennonite backgrounds, but for them, the things they wanted more than anything else was to simply hear the Bible in their native tongue and the old German hymns. So, the kids and the grand kids and the great grandkids who still knew PA Dutch took shifts just sitting and reading the Bible and singing songs from the Ausbund to them.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but that’s what I would want more than anything else: To hear the Scriptures the way I heard them when I was young and hear the hymns that I used to sing when I was a boy. Again, this may be a symptom of the way Evangelicalism has become unmoored from its roots, but I can’t even begin to tell you what I would give to hear “The Old Rugged Cross” or “Just As I Am” or some good old fashioned King James just one more time before I go to see Him.
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Thanks, I can get an aaudio copy of the KJV for them, which may well be what they heard when they were young.
 
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