When preaching the gospel, the “urgency level” should be the same whether the person is 18 years old or 80 and whether they are in perfect health or soon to die… I was prompted to think about this by a good article I found. Here was a snippet:
Imagine you have been asked to preach the gospel to 1,000 people on the 100th floor of the World Trade Center the night before 9/11. You know that within 24 hours every person looking at you will die a death so horrific it defies human imagination. Many will be burned alive. Others will jump 100 stories to their deaths on the unforgiving sidewalks of New York. Others will fall with the building and be so crushed that their bodies will never be recovered. What are you going to tell them—that God has a wonderful plan for their lives? You can’t say that to people who are about to die! Instead you would soberly tell them that it’s appointed to man once to die and after this, the judgment. You would tell them that God is holy, that He will judge them by His perfect Law, that Hell is very real and that they desperately need a Savior. You would tell them that they could die within 24 hours, and plead with them to repent and trust alone in Jesus. If you have to change the message you normally preach, then you are not preaching the biblical gospel. Why would you have a different message for people who are walking the streets of this world, and are about to die? Every day 150,000 people throughout this world pass into death, many of whom will die in terrible ways—through horrific car accidents and through the suffering of cancer.
– Ray Comfort
I don’t know about you, but that’s very convicting for me. It is something I need to keep in mind more when talking to people about the things of eternity.
1 Peter 4:12-16 