If You Were to Die Today

(Based upon James 4:13 through James 4:17)

Would you know the answer to that question? Or would your own sin and pride convince you to shy away from the question?

Do you think that perhaps dying this very moment is not a possibility?

It's been from my own observance that most people are generally very apathetic towards the question above. To think that in an instant death would swallow up all their pleasures, plans and goals isn't a very comforting thought. So they brush the question, "If you were to die this very moment, where would you go?" aside. With barely a thought, it's dismissed. After all, how can they think about dying now when they have life to enjoy many worldly things?

Like a roaring rocket that awaken it's victim, God's Word declares, "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' (James 4:13)

"Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow..." (James 4:14a)

So what makes you think that you are in control of your own death? At any instant your life could be taken away from you. Perhaps it would come as an accident. Or perhaps you got your self in the wrong place in the wrong time and encounter the wrong group of people. But in any means, your very soul this very moment could be snatched away suddenly!

And "what is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." (James 4:14b)

How literally true that was on September 11th, 2001. As the jet airliner crashes into the two twin towers, the extremely hot jet fuel vaporized so many people instantly upon impact. Hey, it could have been you that morning. How much were they different from you? Like you, none of them ever expected to die in a couple hundred degrees of flaming inferno either.

Wake up to reality, my friend! You could die any moment without knowing it! Your brag of you being in control of life, or your own future is foolish talk.

"Instead you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.' (James 4:15)

"As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil." (James 4:16)

The only sense of true security and trust in the future comes from knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. If you choose to repent from your sins and ask Him to save you and make you into a new creation, you can know where you are going whenever death has sneaked up upon you: Heaven.

I hope you do come to Christ. Because, "anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." (James 4:17)

Perhaps this short message was rather quite blunt. It's out of truth and realization of death that this is shared straightforwardly.

--Jimmy Li