Spurgeon on Being Prepared for Death

On my drive home today, I listened to the top of the hour news on the radio. I heard 153 people died, many trampled, in a large Halloween crowd in Seoul, South Korea. There were a few murders. Someone died in a car crash. Someone famous died. I listened with a bit of trembling reflecting on my own mortality. "This could be my last drive home," I said to myself, knowing the Lord was listening in. 

Yet, I also noticed the many homes with Halloween decorations. Death is something cute, something funny. There seems to be no fear nor respect of death in our culture. People die, often met with such gloom and painful grief of heart for loved ones. All while parties mocking death fill a celebratory air in homes around us. 

Then I recalled this sermon by Charles Spurgeon entitled, "Our Last Journey" from Job 16:22 which reads, "For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return." Please read with deep consideration of your own soul and be prepared for death:

"May God make you wise unto salvation! To be prepared to die is an immediate duty, will you neglect it? Some imagine that to be prepared to die would involve a life of perpetual gloom. If it did so it were well to face it. When a man comes to die and finds himself prepared, even if he had endured fifty years of perpetual anguish of heart, and had denied himself every worldly comfort, he would think himself well
repaid to have the prospect of a blessed future. Heaven at any price is well secured. A good hope through grace is worth a thousand worlds. But it is a mistake to suppose that melancholy attends upon fitness to die. Why should it? To be unprepared for death, and to know that it may come at any moment, is a fair reason for sadness, but to have that great matter secure must surely be a source of joy. To be prepared to die is to be prepared to live; to be ready for eternity is in the best sense to be ready for time. 

Who so fit to live on earth as the man who is fit to live in heaven? Who hath brightness of the eye? Is it not the man who has looked within the gate of pearl, and seen his place prepared among the blessed? Who hath lightness of heart? Is it not the man who is unloaded of his sin, and has found mercy through the blood of Christ? Who can go to his bed and sleep in peace and wake with joy— who but the man that is reconciled to God by the death of his Son? Who hath the best of this world as well as the world to come? Is it not he to whom death has now become a changed thing, a cherub that has lost its way— no longer destruction, but rather development, and admission into a higher and nobler life? Since readiness for death is peace and happiness, and is above measure needful in prospect of the eternal state, let us see to it at once. We are to be gone so soon let us gird up our loins for our solemn journey. There is no time to spare. The end is drawing near. Every flying moment is hastening on our last hour. It is high time to awake out of sleep, and in earnest make ready to meet the Bridegroom, who is already on his way."