Jacob, I agree that it is wrong to regard human life as ultimately individualistic and isolated. It is also interesting to recall how traditional societies (including OT Israel) would speak of death as a gathering to the fathers - perhaps also the church if we include the communion of saints belief. But I doubt that Mohler would deny this. It would be helpful to have the context (can you provide a link?), but I would have thought that what he has in mind is the existential experience of death, which in the absence of any belief in either God or a communal afterlife is potentially terrifying.

Of course, not everyone fears death in that way. It is not impossible to be reconciled to the idea that death is merely the end of life, but I must say, I can see how dying can appearin the end a very lonely experience.

George MacDonald wrote:

There will come a day — shall we not speak of that which shall be? — when each one of us must do one thing alone. Thank God! there are so many things we can do together, but one thing each of us has to do alone; alone so far as our friends and our neighbors are concerned. We must die alone. The eager heart almost breaking forth that it may keep hold of those that surround us, must stay within. The tongue cannot tell that which has moved in the spirit. It may be we are afraid then, but of all things, we shall feel our loneliness, and that we are dying alone. Alone? No, never, never alone. We live to Him, and we die to Him, and I believe, that through the light of the resurrection of the glorified body of Christ, our death will be such an awakening that the receiving spirit shall cry out: “I am still with Thee!”

I think Andrew is right, and the context of what Mohler said is important in order to fully understand what he meant. I suppose we do not die alone to the extent that our identity has been shaped by those around us. But we do die alone to the extent that we cannot take those very people with us at the moment we die. The only relationship we can take with us is our relationship with God, because it doesn’t rely on any physical medium to remain.

I think that death means nothing more than separation. We were dead to God in our sins. Now we are dead to sin and alive to Christ. This means that we are separated from God, and now we have been separated from sin and are united with Christ. And when people normally say ‘death’ they mean separation from this physical world - whether they mean temporary or everlasting. It is only the atheist who talks about death as if it were ceasing to exist.