Welcome to Standing in the Gap, Standing Under Fire with Josh Tompkins, a biblical Q&A that provides listeners with biblical answers to many of their toughest questions. Josh, Hebrews 9, verse 27 says, and it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment. What did the author of Hebrews mean when he recorded this, and what does this mean for believers in salvation? That's a great verse. It's one of my favorites. I use it a lot, and most commonly I'll use that at funerals as we are face-to-face with death. And we need a reminder that that's the way we're all going to go. If Christ doesn't come back, then we will all go that way. And that's what this verse is meant to do. It's meant to remind us that we have an appointment with death. And it is appointed. I love that word appointed. It's that God has set a date. And only he knows it. And that's the date that's set in eternity past, that God determined this. And that's who our God is. He determines, he plans, he predestines what's going to happen. Even from our birth, he knew I was going to be born on the day I was born. And he knows the day that I'm going to die. Nobody else knows that. I don't know that. Doctors don't know that. They can't determine that. There's those websites that try to type in your age and different things. And they try to tell you this is when you'll It doesn't know that. The only one that knows when we will die is God, and He has determined that day. There's nothing we can do to hurry that. There's nothing we can do to push that off. There's a date set on the calendar in heaven, in God's mind, that He knows when we're going to die. So that's the appointment with death. We all have that. You can't skip that. We have appointments all the time with doctors. We have appointments with officials, different things we do. You can't, you can miss those. You can't miss this one. And when that appointment comes, this verse says we have, it's appointed unto man once to die. We die one time. And after that, at that point, there's going to be judgment that we will stand before God and answer for the life that we've lived here. For those who are unbelievers, that's bad news. If you have not put your faith in Christ here, in this life now, you only get this one chance, one life to live. And you must put your faith in Christ now. In this life, you must believe upon him, or you will stand in judgment before God and answer for your sins. If you die on your sins, you answer for your sins, and you will be punished. There will be judgment. So that's a reminder for people who are unbelievers that there will be a time of judgment when you die. You will answer to God. You hear that all the time, only God can judge me. Well, if you're an unbeliever, he will judge you. And that's not a good thing, that's a bad thing. So I remind people in funerals that this is, when that appointment comes, you will answer, so you must be prepared. Not knowing when you're gonna die means that right now, in this moment, in this time, today, you need to get right with God. You need to put your faith in Christ today, now. Don't put it off, because you don't know when your day will come. Now for believers, it's different. When we die, to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord. We stand before not the judge, but we stand before the Savior, the one who died for us, and our sins are covered, and they're atoned for, and he died for our sins. So we stand before him as saved people, that we will enter into heaven and spend eternity with him. So that's good news for believers. This is a verse that has Blessing and cursing, for unbelievers it's bad, for believers it's good that there's an appointment with death and after that the judgment. All right, and thank you for that. That is Pastor and Bible Teacher at West End Baptist Church. We love hearing from our listeners and hope to hear from you soon. If you have biblical questions and would like to have them answered, log on to our website at www.westendbsg.org and leave them there. Feel free to find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by logging in and searching for us using at West End Baptist Church.