Lulu's Cry from Hell

The famous evangelist, Sam Jones, was preaching his last sermon, entitled Sudden Death, at a men's meeting in Kansas City, and his text was Proverbs 29.1. He, that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. And Sam Jones would be dead within 24 hours of preaching that sermon. And Sam Jones placed the emphasis on the word suddenly, suddenly be destroyed.

And he told the crowd, I don't know where or when or how I will die. I may fall in the pulpit, I can't tell. I may die away from home, I can't tell.

But I say this to you, my countrymen. To die suddenly, without a goodbye, without a moment to commit my soul to God. To die suddenly, it's awful, and awful beyond my power to express it.

He, that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. Oh, those awful words, without remedy. In your rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are swung out to where God himself can't reach you.

No remedy, no remedy. There are some, here tonight, in this audience, that before my voice dies out in your memory, there'll be sudden death. Mark my words.

Well, Sam Jones ended his sermon and climbed aboard a train to take him back home to Georgia. But he never made it home. Sam Jones died suddenly on that train at the age of 58, and his sudden death was an exclamation point to his sermon.

And there are many dying suddenly today because we are living in a time of sudden death. Sudden death from the virus of the pandemic, which can sneak up on you like the death angel and quickly remove you into another world. A sudden death from accidents.

You can slip down the stairs, fall in the shower, die in a car or plane accident very suddenly. Or you can be gunned down by a madman just standing in line at the grocery store. Sudden death is all around us today, friends.

You can drop dead of a sudden heart attack. I went out for a brief morning walk and I had a heart attack. I could have died on the spot.

All four of my main arteries were blocked 90%. That's what the doctors told me. I survived quadruple bypass surgery, but I could just have easily died during it.

Sudden death can remove us unexpectedly and without warning. Like the verse in Ecclesiastes, which declares, For man also knoweth not his time as the fishes that are taken in an evil net and the birds that are caught in the snare. So are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it falleth suddenly upon them.

Men live in a dangerous world, and most of them are heading to a terrible place of punishment for sin when they die. For hell yawns before them. Its death jaws, wide open, are ready to receive all comers.

People die every minute and drop into the black darkness of a smoking hell. Jesus described hell as a place of outer darkness. Mordecai Ham had a famous sermon called In Sudden Death from our text in Proverbs about being often reproved and suddenly being destroyed.

And in his sermon, he would always relate the following incident which changed his life. Here are Mordecai Ham's words. Two sisters were living in a log hut near the church.

Both were just young girls and were dying with tuberculosis. At the start of the meeting I was asked to pray for them, which I did, but with no apparent results. I was to visit them on a certain day, and the night before, after I had finished the service and retired to my room, I had an overwhelming experience of the Lord's presence.

I felt so powerfully overcome by the nearness of the Holy Spirit that I had asked the Lord to draw back, lest He kill me. It was so glorious I couldn't stand more than a small portion of it. The Holy Spirit was simply filling me for the experience I was to have on the succeeding day, for God caused me to witness the horrible death of one eternally lost.

The mother of those two girls met me at the door of the little log cabin and begged me to hasten in and do something. "'Lulu is dying!' the mother sobbed. I hurried to the girl's bedside and tried to talk to her about her need of salvation.

I pled with her for a long time, but to no avail. She refused to hearken. Then she closed her eyes in death.

I called to her, "'Lulu, how is it?' A voice came back, not the voice of one living, but that of one who is in another world. It was a voice that came up from the depths without any sign of movement of the dead girl's lips or throat muscles, a voice that I have heard only once in my life and that I have never been able to forget. Lost! Lost! Oh! Oh! So dark! So dark!'