Joni Eareckson Tada has made a heartfelt appeal to terminal cancer patient Brittany Maynard who has spoken openly about her decision to end her life by physician-assisted suicide on November 1.
Maynard, 29, was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer in January and has been given only have months to live by doctors.
But in a video that's gone viral, she shares about how she wants to die on her own terms and with dignity.
After receiving the heartbreaking news, she moved from her home in California to Oregon, where assisted suicide is permitted by law for the terminally ill who are of sound mind and able to swallow the life-ending drugs without help.
In a video posted on YouTube last week, Maynard said: "I can't even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don't have to die the way that it's been described to me, that my brain tumour would take me on its own.
"I will die upstairs in my bedroom that I share with my husband, with my mother and my husband by my side and pass peacefully with some music that I like in the background."
In a statement addressing Maynard's decision, Tada, a quadriplegic and breast cancer survivor spoke of her sympathy for her and the pain she is going through.
"No one - absolutely no one - welcomes the pain that dealing with a terminal disease invariably brings," she said.
However, she pleaded with Maynard to change her mind about her plans for assisted suicide, and to instead use her remaining days to get to know Jesus.
"But if I could park my wheelchair beside her, I would tell her how the love of Jesus has sustained me through my chronic pain, quadriplegia and cancer," she said.
"I don't want her to wake up on the other side of her tombstone only to face a dark, grim existence without life and joy; that is, without God.
"There's only one person who has transformed the landscape of life-after-death, and that is Jesus, the One who conquered the grave, opening the path to life eternal. Three grams of phenobarbital in the veins will only provide a temporary reprieve. It is not the answer for the most important passage of her life."
She concluded: "The hours are ticking away; please, Brittany, open your heart to the only One who can do something about your pain and your death. Life is the most irreplaceable and fundamental condition of the human experience, and I implore you to take a long, hard look at the consequences of your decision which is so fatal, and worst of all, so final."
