The King of Terrors

When you get to be my age, friends, you've seen your share of death. I've been to countless funerals, and through the years I've stared down at co-workers in their caskets and neighbors in their caskets and Sunday school members in their caskets and in-laws in their caskets and friends and family in their caskets. My Bible says in Hebrews 9.27, It's appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment.

Every single one of us will have to keep this appointment with death, for there is no escape in the king of terrors. In the book of Job, in chapter 18, one of Job's friends, by the name of Bildad, comes by his suffering friend Job and gives him a sermon. I've had my share of Bildads in the form of Baptist preachers who have lectured me as well with the wrong advice and wrong opinions and wrong interpretations of my own sufferings, but anyhow, this man Bildad made a comment about death that cannot be ignored.

For in Job 18.14, he described death as the king of terrors. He said this about man. His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.

I came close to dying last year, at least the doctors didn't have much hope for me and were reluctant to even let me out of the hospital as I suddenly suffered heart failure. I saw people all around me, close to death, in the intensive care section at that hospital. Most of them were doped up on drugs to keep them from screaming out in pain, but the reality was they were drugged long before they ended up in there on a hospital bed, ready to die because they never gave much thought to eternity while in good health and in their prime.

But every man, every woman, some old and some too young to die, will face the king of terrors and have that set appointment with death, and then the king of terrors will usher them into eternity. Let me ask you, friend, when the king of terrors visits you and takes you across that threshold where you leave this world and he ushers you into another world, in your case, would it be heaven or hell? In Jeremiah 21.8 we read, Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. I'm at the age where I've had to bury both my parents and my wife and her parents as well.

Every single one of them lived, died and was buried, and they are in eternity either, in heaven or hell. I've got more friends up in heaven than I do down here, but also know a lot of people who died and went on to hell. He that believeth not the sun shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.

So says my Bible. I don't know about you, friend, but I sure don't want the outpoured wrath of God like a furnace abiding on me for all eternity. All eternity! The king of terrors can be exactly that to the person who's not born from above and washed in the blood of Christ Jesus.

I stood over Adrian Rogers in his casket and looked down on his corpse, but when he was still alive and in the hospital, he told those around him, I'm at perfect peace. How is it with you, friend? When it comes time to die, will you go out in perfect peace? The good news is of the gospel spoken of in Romans. God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

There is a place called Calvary where a man was lifted up from the earth to draw man to him. That bloodstained Christ hung there on that scandal of a cross so I could live. Have you ever been born again, friend? Do you know the transforming power of God in regeneration? Have you ever been changed? When Jesus was here in his earthly ministry, as he passed through towns and villages, those who encountered him experienced change.

The Lord Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. There'll be a day, friend, that day will come, perhaps sooner than you wanted to.

It'll be like a payday, but nevertheless, the day of your appointment with the king of terrors will come knocking on your door, and there will be a funeral and a casket with you in it and a barrel in the back to the God who gave it.