Yeah, and good morning. It's a blessing to see each one of you. I appreciate the song service. I appreciate the goodness of the Lord and his many blessings on us. It's a wonderful day to be alive. I've said, and I think probably mistakenly said, that I may have fit in better in another time, in another place. When I look around and I see the condition of the world and the way things are, the way people carry on, I certainly don't feel like I fit in. I don't know about you. Sometimes it looks like maybe we'd fit in better somewhere else in a different time. But I believe we're here for a reason. In such a time as this, we're here. It's a good day to be alive. It's a blessed day to be alive. This is the best age that has ever been, the church age. Many of the many dispensations, this is the most blessed one. And I'm grateful that the Lord has chosen us to be here today. You're not here by mistake or accident. It's not a coincidence that we have arrived at this place this morning. He's the author of our salvation, the author and finisher of it this morning. And I believe he's at the controls. He's not the co-pilot, he's the pilot. Amen. And I'm grateful that he's in charge. There's nothing gonna get by him this morning. There's a lot of things I'm unsure of that I don't know. But even in misunderstandings and in times of confusion and doubt, God is not fearful, he's not afraid. We talked a lot about fear this morning at Sunday school. It's a very relevant subject to talk about right now. things is all kinds of messed up. And it's nearly impossible to live in a world as messed up as this world is and not get messed up a little. It's gonna happen to us. But understand this, that we have overcome, if we're saved by the grace of God, we have overcome the world. So no matter how bad it gets out there, God has given us power to overcome. If you're not saved, that's even more reason you need to seek out the Lord while He may be found. You're not going to survive outside of the salvation of God. There's no survival. People are trying to figure this out, and they're not going to get it figured out. They're trying to come up with answers, and they're looking in all the wrong places. But this old timey way that them old fogey folks that they tend to be referred to and described as that didn't know much and didn't have much, I promise you. What they had was the answer. What we have in our possession today is still what it takes to fix what's wrong with people. I'm grateful to know the saving grace of God. There's no telling what kind of shape you and I'd be in this morning had the Lord not saved us when he did. I'm grateful he saved me. In the nick of time, He saved me, praise the Lord. All right, it's a blessing to see each one of you. I want you to look with me in the book of Hebrews. We're gonna be in chapter number nine. Hebrews chapter number nine, I desire your prayers. The Lord will help us this morning. I want to be found in the will of God every time I stand. Sometimes as a preacher, when things get sideways in the world, it's easy to get off in the flesh sometimes and want to straighten folks out and straighten things out. And I don't want to be that kind of preacher. I want to be a Bible preacher. I want to be one that's usable, pliable in the hand of God. And if preachers is up here cracking whips trying to straighten things out, then they've done got off away from the preaching And I don't wanna be that kind of preacher. If it's not in the spirit of God, it ain't preaching anyhow. Folks might not agree with that, but that's just the truth. Praise the Lord. Hebrews 9, if you found that chapter, a very familiar verse. Verse 27, that's all I'm gonna read. I've quoted it here lately. The Lord's burned a hole in my heart with it this week, and all I know to do is read it to you. Verse 27, and as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment. That's a very well-known verse. A lot of Baptist people quote this verse. I'm afraid some people don't have a full understanding of what it means and the far-reaching ramifications of what this is saying to you and I. And as it is once appointed unto men to die, there's a great appointment with death for all men. There are two things that are universal. and that's death and judgment. The color of your skin doesn't matter. Your language doesn't matter. Your culture does not matter. Young or old, middle-aged, death is no respecter of person. It gets everybody. It's not our favorite subject. It's not a subject to shout over. I've never been in a service where a preacher preached on death and folks was running the aisles. I don't assume it'll be that way today. Death is still a certain reality that we all face and is different as we all are and unique in our many different ways. Some of you like Ford, some of you like Chevrolet, some of you like the red and white on Saturday, some like the orange and blue. You see, we've all got our different little unique ways that makes us unique in who we are. As different as we are, we've got these two things in common for sure, and that is we all have an appointment with death and judgment. It's coming. And this is not a matter of how we feel this morning, it's a matter of fact. Now, I'm gonna step out and say something this morning, and I've got some sideways looks when I've said this before. But I believe that each one of you can agree with me when I say this. You don't even need a Bible to prove to people that death is certain. You don't even need a preacher to convince people that death is certain. There's enough graveyards and funeral homes to prove without a preacher and a Bible that death is on everybody's trail. One thing that really amazes me in this day and time is how much money, time, and effort is spent on trying not to die. Even though people are certain they will die, they will spend their life savings trying not to die. I talked about some of this in Sunday school this morning. I made this statement. When Christians can get to a place where they see death as deliverance and not the end all, the most disappointing and discouraging defeat of all mankind, when we can look past death and see it as deliverance from this body that has enslaved us, and imprisoned us by the curse of sin. You know, I believe it's then we can rejoice, for God sees death a whole lot different than we see it. For the Bible says that precious in the eyes of the Lord are the death of his saints. The Bible also tells us we should weep when one is born, and then we, or we should, yeah, we should weep when one's born, and then, you know, rejoice when they leave. when they do die, and that seems contrary to human nature. You know, I've buried folks that are close to me, and many of you have as well, and it doesn't seem like a rejoicing matter, especially when you see your loved ones laying in a bed of sickness, and their bodies racked in pain, and they're suffering. You know, that's not much to rejoice over, but I can recall the very evening when Daddy breathed his last breath, and the machine, that ventilator they had in his mouth, it continued to work even after his heart quit beating. And we had family in the room, even though the machine, the blood pressure machine had flatlined, and the buzzer was going off continue, his heart had stopped beating, but his chest was still pumping. And there was family members in the room when that happened. They said, he's still alive because he's still breathing. What they didn't understand was that was an artificial machine making his chest go up and down. You see, he was gone. The heart had quit beating. And life, my friend, is very fragile. It's a fragile thing. And machines and medicines and doctors may give you a sense of longevity. They may extend quality of life. They may even extend your life to a certain extent. But rest assured, friend, there's coming a day when machine and doctor and medicine is not going to stop the inevitable. You're going to die. You're going to die. Your heart's gonna beat for the last time. Your lungs is gonna inhale, exhale for the last time. And your spirit is gonna leave this world and go out into eternity. And another thing that's for certain when you do that and you leave this world in spirit, you're gonna leave with whatever you did with Jesus. whether that be you received him as Lord and Savior, or whether you rejected him as Lord, you're gonna leave in that condition, and there's no opportunity past death for you to fix what's wrong with your natural-born soul. If you get saved, you'll do it on this side of eternity, this side of death. And if those that, my friend, leave this world unsaved, undone without God, my friend, it doesn't matter what religion has told you this morning, if you leave unsaved and undone without God, you'll be resurrected that way in the judgment. Amen. So however a tree falls, so shall it lie. And so it's once appointed unto men to die. The saddest thing that I can think of that is happening today is men and women spending all their resources trying not to die, only to find out in death that they had not lived. That's one of the saddest things I know that's going on this morning. People all over this world are wasting their life and their substance. They're wasting all their resources trying to find a way to stay healthy and stay young. Oh yes, they're selling creams and lotions and oils that our skin won't wrinkle and won't age and decay. They promote vitamins and advertise all types of medicines and supplements that men can be stronger and run faster and jump higher. and do all these magnificent feats of life. But yet, somewhere, somewhere down the road of life, in some place, there's a preacher preparing a message to preach over your dead remains. It makes no difference if you're a sports superstar, if you're an astronaut, a doctor or a lawyer, educated or uneducated. The rich and the poor, the Bible said, they meet together and the Lord is the maker of them all. Amen, the rich man and the poor man, the beggar Lazarus. They had one thing in common, though they were on opposite ends of the social spectrum. They were on opposite ends of the financial spectrum. They had one thing in common, they both died. Amen. I'm telling you, friend, today's saved and unsaved alike. you're going to meet the appointment of death. Just as sure as you live, you're going to die. And until folks realize the ramifications of what death is, I don't believe they'll ever try to fix what's truly wrong with them. I told you, I believe it was last week, maybe the week before, that salvation used to be a universally understood word among all denominations, our most fundamental denominations. Amen, salvation was deliverance from sin. It was repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now salvation means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. You know what salvation means to you this morning? It simply means this. Whatever your greatest fear in life is, that's what you feel like you need to be saved from. Amen. When folks fear financial ruin, They're trying to save themselves from financial ruin. When folks fear disease and cancer, my friend, they try to save themselves from disease and cancer by exercising, by supplements, and by vitamins, and by doctors. They're trying to save themselves from what they fear the most. And people will never get saved from hell until they fear hell the most. Amen. I believe folks has really gotta get lost in order to get saved. And hell is not some fantasy. Hell is not some joke that Hollywood has made up this morning. Hollywood, friend, is not some skit. My friend, it's not a play this morning. I know the world has perverted that word. They've made a cuss word and a bad word out of it this morning, but hell is a real place full of real people. My friend, folks that you and I know that sit on the same pews with us, that work with us, that bank with us, that you pass at the grocery store, that you pass on the highway, they're facing death and eternity, and my friend, I have a surety this morning they'll wind up in hell if they don't get saved from sin. Amen. And I believe there was once a time in America, my friend, and I believe I was alive to see some of it. I caught the tail end of it as a child, but there was a time, Brother Danny, in this country when the church truly believed that if people died lost, they'd lift their eyes at that very instant, they'd lift their eyes in hell. in the wrath of God, in the torment of the flame. But we live now to see a day when nobody goes to hell. Nobody fears hell. Preachers don't preach about hell. We don't teach our children there's a heaven to gain and a hell to shun. I mean, hell has just become some cartoon, some comedy act. I want you to know, friend, that when we feared hell, when this country feared hell, we used to pray, we used to have a burden, we used to preach with all our heart, we used to worship God and try to reach sinners because we believed. If they died lost, they'd wind up in that terrible place. Folks don't much believe that anymore. They believe the world says there's good in every man. But the Bible says there is none good, no, not one. Hey man, what the world says about man, the Bible says quite different, friend. Their Bible says there's not good in any man. but the world would have you to think there's good deep down inside of all of us. My friend, nothing can be further from the truth. We're not good. We're not inherently good. We're not inclined to do good. Everything about us by nature is wrong. where children of that wrath by nature were appointed unto death because of sin. When lust is finished, it bringeth forth sin. Or when it's conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And when sin is finished, it bringeth forth death. Amen. Job said he had an appointment with death. Amen. The Bible said he was a perfect man and executed evil in his days. My friend, God honored his life He blessed his life. He bragged on Job so much that he put him up before Satan and said, here's the man you need to try to work on. And man, Job was a wonderful man of God. But yet the curse of sin brought devastation and destruction on his life. You wanna know why my daddy died? It was because of sin. It wasn't because he was out here living like a hellion. It wasn't because he was in the honky-tonks and laying up drunk and running around on Mama, my friend. If you could live squeaky clean in a white washroom with padded walls and never go into the outside world and expose yourself to the pollution of this world, you'll still die a sinner because the law of sin is in your members. That's the reason why we buried my daddy. That's the reason why they're gonna bury me one day. Because of the law of sin, death is certain, and it's real. It's not a popular subject. It's not fun for me to preach on. I don't enjoy it no more than you enjoy hearing it. But it's certainly the most pressing danger facing all men, and that's dying lost. A lot of folks think their most pressing danger is education. You would not believe the push, and I'm in the educational system, the push that's going on to get our numbers higher, our children more educated, more technically sound. more capable of going into the world and accomplishing great things. Oh yes, I want you to know, they're no longer interested in your children acting right and respecting their elders, amen, and obeying rules and living under authority. They don't care about any of that anymore. They just want to make sure their numbers is up so they can get a check. Amen. You heard it straight from me. You tell them I said so. They employ me if they fire me next week. I'm like the old saying goes, I was hunting a job when I found that one. I believe God give me this one, I believe he'd give me the next one. Amen. Praise the Lord, they're hunting a check. They don't care if your kids do, right? I told you last week we nearly got a candy apple all of them to do right anymore. We gotta give them sweet tarts and Skittles to make them act right. We reward them for doing right and doing their homework when they ought to be doing that because it's right. And because mom and daddy told them it was right. Amen, we need to quit, my friend, giving them sweet tarts and candy for doing right and teach them that you ought to do right just because it is right. Amen. Praise the Lord. I don't know where this crowd of mommas and daddies was when I was growing up. Amen. Compared to the way they act today, you'd have thought my mom and dad didn't care anything about us at all. Amen. Me and Shane go to the wood stake on all day, and I don't remember none of them coming looking for us, asking us if we was hungry or anything. You know what they figured? If we got hungry enough, we'd go back to the house. Amen. Of course, we lived in a world back then when you didn't have child predators living every block down the road. Amen. That's right. You could go to bed and leave the door unlocked. I remember in the summertime, every window being open. Amen. I believe we put 100,000 miles on about six Sears box fans. And I wanna tell some of you youngins, we ain't got many here, but some of you younger folks, that was the only air conditioner we had. And was grateful to have that. Amen. And all it did was stir up hot air. But I was certainly grateful to have it. And you know what? Amen. You know what I learned to do? I remember Daddy and Lawrence going to the woods. I haven't told him, but I've still got memories of them going to the woods and cutting wood down to have heat in the winter. And they'd have to do that in the summer and it 90 degrees and prepare for the winter. And our kids today, I said at this point, we've raised a generation of children that would not know how to put a tomato plant in the ground and take care of it till it bared fruit. Amen. That's the world we live in today. And we've made death some, you know, and I don't mean to be ugly, so I'm about to lose some of you right here. I'm afraid, I hope not. But I'm just gonna tell you the way I look at this. Amen, it's no longer a funeral, but it's something, they call it some kind of celebration now. Some people may like that, and if you like that, you're about to get hurt at me, I don't like that. And I'll tell you something else I don't like. Amen, disrespecting the funeral. And disrespecting the dead, I don't like that either. Amen, now I go to the funeral home, you got men coming up there in their cutoffs and tank tops, and they look like they ain't had a shower in three days, and come dragging in looking like that. And the ladies, and I don't even, I'm afraid to even call them ladies. Some of them don't even know what a lady is. And they come up there looking all sort of, and I want you to, I want to say something right here. This building, this is a building, this is brick and mortar. I understand there's a lot of effort went into this, and we call it the house of God because it is, and I believe God honors it as such. But I want you to know something. Hey man, when we pull up in the yard out here on Monday, it's the same church it is on Sunday. Amen, just because it's Monday don't mean all the rules is off. Isn't that amazing? I'm gonna get up on something right here real quick, God help me. Amen, I hope nobody brought a box of rocks, because I'm probably gonna leave here with a knot on my head. Amen, but I know the way back home, I'll put that little Nissan in the wind if I have to. But I'll say this to you, amen, I'm all about vacation, I enjoy it, but isn't it amazing how people forget their religion when they go on vacation? I'll tell you what happened one time, and this is told to be the truth. There's a preacher riding with another preacher. They were heading to a meeting. Amen. They were talking about Bible things and trying to get to know each other better. bring up something about the scripture and then the other man would comment on it and tell him what he thought and how he believed on it. And the gentleman that was doing the revival was just an old school missionary Baptist preacher. He come from the old school way. And this cat that was driving was one of these young bucks and he come up in the new way and more liberalized way of doing things. and this man knew that down at his church, you know, they had started playing games and having carnivals and sleepovers and shut-ins and all that kind of stuff over at the church building. This old man was very much aware of what they were doing over there. A man, and he didn't come with any bitterness, he just wanted to obey the Lord, you know, and if God wanted him there to preach revival, he's gonna preach revival and do the best he could. And I've been there, Brother Max. I've been in those places when on Friday night they was glad to see me go. But what they didn't know, I was just as glad to get in the car and go. Hey, man, there's some places that I'd just as soon not go back. And there's some places, Brother Danny, that I used to could have gone and could have put my family there, could have even moved my membership there, and 10 years later, you can't even recognize the place. Amen. They were going on and on, talking back and forth about the Bible. And sure enough, as they drove down the road, there's an old hippie fella. He passed walking down the road, had a backpack on his back and a ponytail, cut off sleeves and short britches and tattoos all over him. And he was just dragging his old self down the side of the road and said that young, A preacher looked over at that and seen him. He said, now isn't that about the most vulgar thing you've ever seen? He said, that's despicable that a man wouldn't clean up no better than that and just walk out in public looking like that. And that old man preacher said, yeah. He said, it is. He said, but, he said, if you take that same man and you put him down there beside that swimming pool y'all built, he'd fit in real good, wouldn't he? You wouldn't be able to tell the difference in him and everybody else running around down there. So I want you to understand something this morning. We, a lot of times, talk out both sides of our mouth. We say one thing and do another. You might get down by the blue water during the summer, and I like going down there too. Hey man, but I believe a preacher oughta look like a preacher and go ashore just like he does in Abbottville. I believe you ought to walk like one, talk like one. Amen, and I want you to know, if your membership's here at Antioch, when you leave this building, you're representing everything we do. Amen, and I wouldn't want to live contrary to what's being preached over the book board. I wouldn't want to be guilty of that. Amen. You're talking about fooling with something that's dangerous. That's dangerous business. How in the world did I get off on this? Sometimes I wonder about my own sanity. I say to you this morning that there's a lot of people trying not to die, and in the whole process, they never did live. You never did enjoy life because you didn't have life. You realize that life only comes when we know the Lord Jesus Christ. You don't know how to love until you get born again. Men may have a surface affection for their wife, but they cannot truly love their wife if they're not saved. You can't love the Lord if, this morning, there's people say they love the Lord, and Jesus knew that crowd. He said, with your lips you do honor me, but your heart is far from me. There's people say they love him all the time, and Jesus said to them, he said, why do you say that you love me, and do not the things which I say? It's not what we say about the Lord, it's a lot of times what we do that'll say It's not how high you jump, but how you walk when you hit the ground. You know, there's a lot of folks that jump high. If I could preach louder, I'd preach louder. If I could jump higher, I'd jump higher. But it's not all about how loud you are and how high you jump, but it's your life is testifying by your footsteps, by the decisions you make. You know, Romans dealt with this and talked about the original sin. And that being Adam and our Adamic nature is that because Adam sinned, even the Bible said, even though we didn't sin after the similitude of Adam. As by one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin. So then we get wind up in Hebrews and it tells us because of all this, it's once appointed unto man to die. So we chose this. Was not forced upon us, this was our choice. And we took on the nature of Adam. And because of one man, sin entered the world. But aren't you glad it don't stop there? Amen, by the obedience of one, Paul said in Romans, many were made righteous. So I'm thankful that even though the first Adam, as the old saying goes, sold us out to the pawn shops of sin and hell, the second Adam delivered us from that power and that bondage and gave us life. And not just life, but abundant life. Not just abundant life, but a life that's worth living. You ever wonder why so many folks is killing their self and going crazy and popping pills to stay sane? Because they don't have a life that's worth living. They want to end it all because life is not worth living to them. They don't need 12 appointments with a psychiatrist. They may need some kind of help and support, but what they truly need is a salvation experience. I believe that with all my heart. I believe that God is able what man cannot fix, God can fix. Jeremiah asked a question, is there anything too hard for God? The answer is no. No, there's nothing too hard for God. Everybody in this building is gonna have a funeral service. It's what you do with your life. You see, folks want a preacher to come up here and say nice words, and they should. They should honor the dead and have respect for the dead, and they should do that. But I want you to know something. No matter what that preacher says in the pulpit, whether it be at the funeral home or the church or wherever your service might be, at the graveside, it doesn't matter. You preached your own funeral by the way that you've lived. And nothing that man ever could say behind a book board is gonna put you in or out. And where you wind up in eternity is going to be the place of your choosing. You're gonna go because that is exactly where you should go. I said on the radio this morning, everybody that's going to heaven is supposed to go. and everybody that winds up in hell, they're gonna know, I believe, you may not agree with me on this, but I believe before they leave this world, they're gonna know that they're headed there. It may be in the very last moment they're alive, but they're gonna realize that's exactly where they're going, and when they arrive and they get there, they're gonna realize they deserve to be there. They're not gonna feel that they've been unfairly done in an unjust way. They're gonna know that they ought to be there. And they should be there, and they deserve to be there. Amen. The rich man in hell, he asked for a drop of water to cool his tongue. He didn't ask Abraham to get him out. because he knew that wasn't gonna happen. Everybody that's in hell knows they're there to stay. They're there to stay until the judgment. And that's the only relief they're gonna get. People say, is there anything worse than dying? Yes, dying lost. Dying lost, is there anything worse than that? Yes, opening your eyes in hell. Is there anything worse than that? Yes, that's being resurrected from hell, only to stand before a holy and a righteous God and hear the words, depart from me, for I never knew you, and then cast into outer darkness. You think there can't be anything worse than dying? You need to think again. Because it does get worse if you die lost. It just keeps getting worse. It keeps getting worse. So I beg of you this morning, knowing all these things. I didn't have to preach this today to prove to you that men die, women die, kids die, mamas die, daddies die, mamas die. Somewhere today, they're bearing a child. Somewhere today, they're bearing an infant. Somewhere in this world today, they're bearing mama or a papa, a mom or a dad. All over this world, people are leaving. Time's drawing nigh, it's getting short. We're gonna stand now while they come get us a song. I pray this morning that you'll not only understand that death is real, but your conscience will be awakened to what you must do about eternity. Eternity is real. You see, the Bible says it's once appointed unto man to die after this, the judgment. There is an after this. Death is not the end of everything. There's an after this when it comes to death. Would you stand to your feet, please, while they give us a song? If you need to alter, we'd love to pray for you.