Tim Keller, a best-selling Christian author and noted theologian, has been placed on hospice care at his home following an ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer, according to his son.
"Today, Dad is being discharged from the hospital to receive hospice care at home. Over the past few days, he has asked us to pray with him often. He expressed many times through prayer his desire to go home to be with Jesus," Michael Keller wrote on his father's Twitter page. "His family is very sad because we all wanted more time, but we know he has very little at this point."
In their update, Keller’s family said he was grateful for all those who have prayed for him.
"I’m thankful for my family, that loves me. I’m thankful for the time God has given me, but I’m ready to see Jesus," he prayed, according to the family update. "I can’t wait to see Jesus. Send me home."
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Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, was initially diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer in May 2020.
Since then, he has undergone two years of chemotherapy. He was also participating in the immunotherapy drug trial at the National Institute for Health in Bethesda, Maryland as recently as January.
However, despite the immunotherapy successfully killing 99% of the cancerous tumors, Keller announced in a Facebook post in March the return of additional cancerous tumors requiring him to undergo a variation of the previous immunotherapy treatment.
"They are unfortunately in some fairly inconvenient places, so the doctors encouraged us to go through the treatment again, this time targeting a different genetic marker of cancer," Keller wrote.
In April, he shared he was recovering from the treatments, and it would be a "long and slow process back."
In a social media post on Saturday, Keller's wife, Kathy, shared a health update requesting prayer for her husband after he suffered "complications" from his recent cancer treatment.
"Tim is out of the hospital and recovering at home after complications from his treatment. Please continue to pray during this slow recovery," she wrote.
At the beginning of this year, the 72-year-old longtime pastor shared that since he spends a lot of his time in cancer treatments, he focuses the rest of his downtime on writing, mentoring and being with family.
Keller is also a survivor of thyroid cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2002.
