A preacher of the gospel asked his hearers, “Who is the last person you expect to die?” and then answered the question for them, “Yourself!” And yet you may be the next to go.
Little did a young lady think, as she took her journey to the seaside, that she would never return again; but that she would take another journey, and a most important one, from which there is no return, the journey from time into ETERNITY. Yet so it was. She went to enjoy the air and the lovely view from a grand hill, with its rugged rocky side descending sheer on to the beach, and into the sea beneath. She spread her mackintosh on the grass, and sat down to enjoy the sea, the air, the view. But the mackintosh began to slip, and slipped with her over the cliff, and she was killed. Her short journey of life here finished, she had passed from time into ETERNITY. And who can tell when you shall pass from time into ETERNITY?
A coal-heaver once preached a very short and very excellent sermon. He said, “To live hard is hard; to die hard is harder: a hard ETERNITY is hardest of all.” He knew what it was to live hard; he had seen many a hard deathbed: he had been saved from a hard ETERNITY through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, Who had suffered in his stead on the Cross of Calvary.
“He took the guilty culprit’s place,
He suffered in my stead;
For me, O miracle of grace,
For me the Saviour bled.”
A dear young girl coming home from school on her cycle, met with her death just outside her father’s gate. Her bicycle skidded, and she fell under the wheels of a great lorry and was killed just outside her home. How soon her short span of life here was ended, and she, too, had taken that journey from which there is no return, the journey from time into ETERNITY.
A man went to his daily work in the gravel pits. At dinner time he sat down to eat his dinner of bread and fish, when a heavy load of gravel fell upon him and he was killed. He, too, had taken the journey from which there is no return, the journey from time into ETERNITY. Little did he think, when he left his home in the morning, that there would be no coming back in the evening for him. Little did he think when he sat down to eat his dinner, that, before he could finish it, he would have passed from time into ETERNITY. Yet so it was; and he was found, after the breath had left his body, with a piece of bread in one hand, and a piece of fish in the other.
So sudden were the calls to these precious immortal souls to pass from time into ETERNITY. But, dear reader, we are expecting something more sudden still, an event that will take place in the twinkling of an eye. Yes, “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16, 1716For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16‑17)).
“Are you one of those people who are going to be caught up?” asked one young sailor of another.
Dear friend, we would ask it of you, “Are you one of those people who are going to be caught up?” or should you be left behind for judgment if the Lord comes today?
“G — ,” said a young Christian to the only son (a boy of 13), in a house where he had come to tea, “Father and Mother are going to be caught up. What about you?”
G— melted into tears, and went upstairs. When his mother shortly afterward followed him, he burst into tears again and exclaimed, “Mother, I shall go with you!”
Dear friend, will you go with us? Shall you be caught up to meet the Lord in the air? Or will you, alas, alas, be left behind for coming judgment?
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:3131And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31)), but “Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” “Behold, NOW is the accepted time: behold, NOW is the day of salvation.”