My father, Art Batzig, started showing signs of dementia two and a half years ago. He died this morning after a long battle with a horrible disease. Walking through this has truly been “the long, slow death”––as so many have called it. Our family spent many months relocating dad to be closer to my sister and me, and to help attend to the many needs caused by this terrible disease. This past week, I walked through the inestimable grief of his death. I now know the pain of losing my father––the strongest man I ever knew.

My dad wasn't just physically strong. Dad had the strongest intellect, will, emotions, wisdom, and intuition. I have been meditating on why it’s so hard for a son to lose a father. Chief among the reasons is the fact that I have lost the first and foremost influential spiritual leader in my life. Dad placed his greatest energy into being a strong spiritual leader for our family. He instructed us from our earliest days and lent us spiritual support through years of blessing and burdens. This has made his death the hardest loss for me as a son.

My father had an unwavering devotion to the living God. Dad was preeminently a man of the Word of God and prayer. He taught me what it was to seek after the triune God in Christ and to grow in Him by means of Scripture and prayer. My earliest memories were of him teaching my sister and me the precious doctrines of the Christian faith (e.g., the attributes of God, the triunity of God, the electing grace of God, the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and the foundational nature of God's covenant promises).

Dad was a man who knew his sinfulness. He would often tell me, “Nick, the person I trust least of all is myself.” Throughout my childhood, he constantly reminded me to focus on the sin in our own hearts more than that pervading the world in which we live. Dad clung to the cross and the message of the gospel, because he knew felt his dire need for God’s forgiveness and reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 1:8–2:2). He understood the nature of human depravity and the depravity of his own heart (Rom. 3:10–20). Accordingly, he had a heart for believers who had stumbled and fallen (Prov. 24:16; James 3:2).

He also frequently encouraged me to pray for the salvation of those who are lost. Dad would constantly remind me that we should be praying for the salvation of our enemies and the most notoriously wicked individuals, since all of us deserve God’s judgment and none deserve His mercy and grace. He would remind me of the way in which the Lord had graciously redeemed Saul of Tarsus, the great persecutor of the church––turning him into the great apostle Paul (Acts 9:1–22). My father regularly emphasized God’s undeserved goodness and faithfulness to us (Gen. 32:10). He loved every Old Testament passage of Scripture that highlighted God’s promise to forgive our sins and remember our lawless deeds no more (Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 43:25, 44:22; Jeremiah 31:34; Micah 7:18–19). He loved every promise in the New Testament of what God had done in Christ to accomplish the promises of the Old Testament regarding the forgiveness of sin (2 Cor. 1:20–21; 1 John 2:2). 

My father was also an exceptionally gifted musician. My earliest childhood memories include him sitting down at a piano to teach us the great hymns of the faith. My father loved gospel-focused hymns such as, “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us,” “And Can It Be,” “Like a River Glorious,” “How Firm a Foundation,” “Man of Sorrows,” "My Hope is Built on Nothing Less," “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness,” “He Leadeth Me,” “None Other Lamb,” etc. I didn’t realize it then, but my mind and heart were being shaped by the hymns my dad taught me from my childhood.

Dad was deeply committed to teaching my sister and me the Scriptures, Reformed theology, and the creeds, confessions, and catechisms in the context of daily, family worship. While a student at the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in the early 1970’s, he had seen one of his professors reading a small devotional book. It was a copy of Samuel Bagster’s Daily Light on the Daily Path. Bagster was a nineteenth century publisher, who––together with his sons––compiled a year’s worth of morning and evening devotions, purely from Scripture, with a Reformed systematic theological and devotional focus. That little book became the staple for family worship. I have carried the practice of reading it to my wife and sons. I owe this practice to my father’s example in the home in which I grew up. 

My dad was a very fine lay theologian. He studied under many of the great professors from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA. When I was a boy, we would vacation in the Pocono Mountains with Dr. Cornelius Van Til after his wife had passed away. Dad knew and loved the great theological works of church history. He built a significant theological library in our home (now housed at the church I pastor in Charleston, SC). Dad taught me the great figures of church history, with a special emphasis on the reformed tradition. Our home was filled with books by the Reformers, post-Reformation scholastics, English Puritans, theologians of the Dutch Second Reformation, the Scottish Presbyterians, British Evangelical Calvinists, Princetonians, and the original professors of Westminster Theological Seminary. He had a vast grasp of theological literature, ranging from academic to devotional. In many respects, my dad fast tracked my knowledge of the great theological works and gave me a foundation upon which to profitably build.

My father taught me the value of caring unwaveringly for the needs of family members. He cared for his parents in their latter years in a way that so many do not. He modeled for me the importance of marital fidelity. He was married to my mother for 45 years. He was steadfast in his commitment to her. He knew the dangers that always pose a threat to marital union and vociferously guarded against them. He also modeled sacrificial love in how he supported and provided for my sister and me in the manifold activities of our lives.

My father had a heart for the needy. He was always engaged in some form of mercy ministry. He took me to homeless shelters when I was a boy so that I could learn how to care for those in need. Dad had us in the Skilton House––the mercy ministry of Dr. John Skilton––in the Vietnamese section of Philadelphia.It was there that I had modelled before my young eyes the sweet harmony of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. After I was converted in 2001, dad and I would often minister together in assisted living homes and nursing homes in Greenville, SC. Dad had a special place for the infirm elderly, always insisting that they were some of the most neglected among us.

Dad modelled what it meant to work diligently and skilfully. He was the most diligent worker I’ve known. He worked in a variety of roles for the federal government for over forty years. From 1989 to 2002 he served as the Assistant to the Director and Branch Chief of the Federal Law Enforcement Traning Center (FLETC) in Brunswick, GA–where he trained agents from all 70 U.S. law enforcement agengies. While serving in that capacity, dad initiated the chaplaincy program at FLETC in order to get the gospel to the new agents in training, as he had started the Reformed Bible Institute in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA while working for the U.S. Forest Service. Dad also ran a small landscape company on the side. He loved to work with plants and trees, because he understood that we, as image bearers of God, are called to cultivate the beauty of the world God has created. He built and sold several homes to help provide for the burgeoning needs of our family.  He taught me the importance of entrusting myself and my work to the Lord in prayer, planning diligently for that in which I am engaged, and in being productive in my labors. He used to say (like a broken record), “Nick, we need to pray, plan, and do.”

In addition to his vocational labors, my dad was an exceptional athlete. Dad played Major Division Soccer for the Philadelphia Lighthouse in the 1970’s. He coached soccer for the Upper Merion Soccer Club in Gladwyne, PA. In the 1990’s, he helped establish the Georgia State Soccer Association throughout the state of Georgia.

While so much more could be written, I wanted to honor the spiritual legacy that Art Batzig left our family and me, his only son. I praise God for the dad He graciously gave my sister and me. I long to be with him in glory, when the Lord calls me to that great assembly of the spirits of the righteous made perfect (Hebrews 12:22–24). His faith is now sight, and, his prayers, now praise. He ran the race, fought the fight, and kept the faith. Now, there is a crown of righteousness for him in the presence of the Lamb of God.