Will Sudden Death Visit You

When I was in England conducting my research on my biography of George Whitefield, I was in Gloucester at the church of St. Mary the Crip, and it's the church where Whitefield preached his first sermon, which drove 15 people mad. As a matter of fact, the man who ordained Whitefield, his name was Bishop Benson. When he heard that Whitefield had driven 15 people mad, his remark was he had hoped the effect of the sermon would not wear off soon.

And when George Whitefield preached, friends, things began to happen, many of them out of the ordinary. And while I was researching Whitefield's life at St. Mary the Crip, I came across a rare document written by a man who'd been converted under Whitefield's mighty preaching. It seems this man went to hear Whitefield preach in the open air outside of London.

And as he stood with the crowds beneath the sky listening to the great evangelist, the man standing next to him suddenly dropped dead and fell to the ground. It made such an impression on this man that he went home with his thoughts consumed with eternity, the brevity of life, and Whitefield's sermon on the need for Christ that he soon became converted. And it was this person's sudden death so near to him that moved him to seek Christ.

Older preachers in former days understood what topics to preach to turn man's hearts to eternity. Sam Jones often preached a sermon called Sudden Death. In many towns in the South where Sam Jones preached, if an infidel opposed him, it would not be uncommon for that man to meet a quick and sudden death.

And I was rereading the life story of the evangelist Mordecai Ham, who it was said that 200,000 souls were saved during his 50-year itinerant ministry, including a young Billy Graham. Ham often preached a sermon entitled And Sudden Death. In fact, it was in one of Mordecai Ham's meetings where his preaching raised such issues that his hearers had to embrace them or face terrible consequences.

Ham recalled that deaths took place during many of his great campaigns. He said ambulances would have to come and carry bodies away from our services. When a person deliberately fights the pleading of the Holy Spirit, nothing is left for him.

And there's a story about Mordecai Ham, which illustrates this very point. One evening, a saloon keeper stood on Ham's tabernacle platform before a capacity audience. He was in great distress and mine and declared he wanted to get out of the liquor business, but he wanted someone to buy his stock of liquor so that he could pay off his debts.

Mordecai Ham answered that he could not and would not buy the liquor. He knew no one who would want it, but he added, it is evident that the Holy Spirit is striving with you, telling you to quit your saloon business. Don't wait for someone to buy your stock of booze.

Get out now. He then quoted the verse, he that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy. Ham said, I had preached that night on the subject and sudden death.

The man turned and walked off the platform. I could see he was unwilling to pay the price that night. When he went back to his saloon, his bartender shot him and he died a horrible death.

Well, that story about Mordecai Ham illustrates how preachers of former days preached different messages than we do today, friends, and they had better results. There's a reason. I remember a time when a younger evangelist came to me asking for some advice.

He said he wanted to have the results of say like a Mordecai Ham or Sam Jones or someone like that. I told him if he wanted to see the same results of a man like Mordecai Ham, he'd have to be willing to preach the same kind of messages that Ham preached, which was ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration, emphasizing all four of those doctrines. But this younger evangelist did not want to preach up those great doctrines, and many today don't want to preach on popular sermons, which would risk the reputation and popularity among their hearers.

They just preach what people want to hear rather than what they need to hear to save their souls. Well, my message today, friends, is entitled Will Sudden Death Visit You? And my text can be found in the book of Proverbs in chapter 29. You can turn in your Bibles there now.

We will be in the same text that Mordecai Ham mentioned, and it's the text that men used in older days to bring the fear of God and have them face eternity before them. I didn't come here to entertain you, but to warn you of your great danger of downing your sins and to tell you about your great rebellion as a sinner against a holy and sovereign king and to point you to the only one who can save you, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ, who hung on a bloody cross for sinners. Let me read you my text, friend, and I must say that if you have been fighting God and resisting him as the Spirit of God has been wooing you, then you're in great danger, my friend, a great and terrible danger of being suddenly removed without warning through a sudden death.

God's Spirit will not always strive with man. I believe there is a day in a man's life where he can grieve away his day of grace and then just become a reprobate silver. I look around this nation today and I see a nation forsaken of God, a reprobate silver, so you must be careful, friends, not to harden your neck against God, for he can and will suddenly remove you if necessary.

We have a nation of young people today, teenagers who are hardening their necks against a holy God and daring them to do anything about it. It's as if this entire nation from the top down to the bottom has become a God-hating nation, shaking its angry fists in the face of God in rebellion to his laws and daring him to do anything about it, and it's a great mistake. It's a mistake to take his silence and assume it's because he's an impotent God, but he's anything but that.

When God is silent, friend, it's time to tremble, for he is silent because he is preparing to judge, and he has spoken for the last time through his son, and people who reject Christ are guilty of crucifying Christ. Listen carefully to my words from my text from Proverbs 29 and verse 1. He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed in that without remedy. What is a reproof, we may ask? A reproof is anytime someone hands you a gospel tract and you disregard it.

It's anytime you hear a sermon and harden your neck against it. Anytime you see a billboard with a Bible verse and turn away, that's a reproof. Anytime you're channel surfing the television, you come across a sound gospel program where the true gospel's being proclaimed, that's a reproof.

Time and time again, the Spirit of God has reached out to you, and you keep turning away and hardening your neck. You are being reproved, and you are in great danger of suddenly being removed, friend. Will God have to kill you? Will he have to suddenly remove you? Will sudden death have to visit you? When I was writing my biography on the life of the Baptist evangelist Ralph Barnard, I came across some amazing incidents in his life along these very lines of sudden death.

It was as if Barnard's entire ministry was a warning to sinners to repent or meet sudden death. Time and time again, in a Ralph Barnard meeting, someone would be stricken with sudden death and have to be removed on a stretcher. It was said Ralph Barnard's 40-year itinerant ministry that he was the human means, bringing a hundred thousand souls to Christ.

And I believe it, friends, he had a mighty ministry indeed. And I want to take some time to relate an incident or two from the life of Barnard as it relates to my topic today on sudden death. Here now are Barnard's words.

God does reprove sinners, but you know how people in our day meet God's reproof? They harden themselves. He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck. God does the reproving and man does the hardening.

He says God is not going to move me. I wouldn't mind being a church member and I don't mind what they call being safe now, but God is not going to change me. God is not going to give me a heart of flesh.

God is not going to plant a holy disposition in me. God is not going to start the work and make me like a son. No, I will not be changed, so I will fight this business.

If God thinks he's going to run my life, he's got another thing coming. That's how men talk today. Men harden themselves.

They can't be neutral, so they harden themselves. They can't get rid of God, so they harden themselves against the reproof of God. They say I don't believe in God, but they go to bed at night and wake up scared.

Then they'll pray to that God to keep them out of hell like I used to before morning. Men harden themselves. Am I talking to you? Every time God warns you, do you grit your teeth and spit in his face and go down the road that leads to hell? You know you have to harden yourself to do that.

I remember in a certain city after I had brought a message one morning in an evangelistic campaign, I was shaking hands with some people and I felt someone pulling on my coat. So I looked around and there was a little three and a half year old girl, a curly haired and beautiful, a little gift from heaven. And I picked her up in my arms and she put her little arms around my neck and began to cry, oh brother Barnard, I want my daddy saved.

Oh brother Barnard, I want my daddy to get saved. Now the little girl didn't know exactly what it meant to be saved, but she knew that life in her home was hell and she knew something needed to happen to her daddy. She was pitiful and she just broke my heart.

Her mother soon came and she began to sob and she took the little girl out of my arms. Then I said to this wife and mother, I will be on the radio this afternoon at three o'clock. Your husband curses preachers.

He curses God and he's ordered me and your pastor out of his home. He never goes to any assembly of God anywhere and he brags about how tough he is. But if sometimes I know he'll listen to the radio and you make it convenient for him that maybe he'll listen to me this afternoon and I'm going to preach to him.

Well that afternoon over the radio, I stopped about the middle of my sermon and asked the audience to pardon me. I said, I believe there's a man listening to the sound of my voice right now and I believe God sent him the last call this morning. Then I told over the radio how the little three and a half year old girl had come and climbed up in my arms and put her arms around my neck and cried, oh brother Barnard, I want my daddy saved.

I want my daddy to get saved. And I said, I believe that daddy of the little girl is listening to me now. I said, you wouldn't listen to God.

You haven't listened to the pleas of your wife and your little child. You haven't listened to anybody. But now here is God talking to you through the tears and heartbreak of your little three and a half year old girl.

If there's a spark of manhood in you, get down on your knees and begin to repent of your sins and cry to God for mercy. You know what he did? He got up, turned that radio off, slammed his head on his head, opened the door and cursed me. He cursed the radio, cursed God and cursed his wife and slammed out of there and went down to the nearest honky-tonk.

And within 20 minutes after he got out of the house, a man pumped five bullets in his body. You say that was accidental. No sir, bless the Lord.

He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck. What's going to happen to him? Judgment is coming. God is going to get hold of him as he did that man.

God kills people who harden themselves against him. The result of hardening yourself under the reproving, convicting, pleading, persuading power and the person and presence of God and the Holy Ghost is sudden death. God warns, he said, I kill and I will make alive.

Well I like that story about Ralph Barnard, friends, because it illustrates our point so vividly that God is a God who must punish sin. And listen friend, God will punish sin. Hell is a place of misery and torment.

We're God sends unrepentant sinners who deserve punishment for sin. Hell is a real place. Even if we preachers don't mention hell much anymore, that doesn't lessen the reality of a burning hell.

And if we don't preach on the blackness of sin enough and the wickedness of the human heart, it doesn't lessen the evil of sin or depreciate the deceit of the human heart. And if you are here today and if you are fighting God and resisting him and you're being reproved under his wounds of his Holy Spirit, I can promise you this friend, you stand on dangerous and slippery ground. God can remove you quite suddenly and without warning.

You may be in the best of health today, but that can change dramatically tomorrow. You could be removed by an unforeseen accident or a tragedy. God will not be mocked.

God will punish sin. Will God have to visit you with sudden death? He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, so suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy. Sam Jones was preaching his very last sermon and the title of his sermon was sudden death.

He warned the men there it was a men's meeting to repent and turn to God or God could visit them with sudden death. And after his message, Sam Jones climbed up on a train to head back to Cartersville, Georgia. And while he was on that train between St. Louis and Memphis, he suddenly dropped dead while sitting in the train car to illustrate his point in his sermon like an explanation point to it.

Listen friends, sudden death is all around us. You could be cut down just going out in public today. God will punish sin.

The Holy Spirit will not always strive with man. You can send your day of grace away. Let's take now some time to go to God and earnest prayer.

Some start praying right now and I want to speak to you friend if you're here and you're unsaved. If you're within the sound of my voice and you've been fighting God, you haven't turned to him. You haven't surrendered to him.

He's been reproving you. I want to tell you right now that God will not always strive with the spirit of man. You must come and come to Christ.

Throw down your shotgun of rebellion and submit to a sovereign king. I'll leave you now with some gospel invitations and do not take them lightly as they may be final reproofs to you. But seriously consider them.

Apply them to your soul and beg God to give you the grace of saving faith. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there is none else.

And the spirit and the bride say come and let him that heareth say come and let him that is a thirst come and whosoever will let him take the water of life freely.