Fear of Judgment | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 25, 1871

Fear of Judgment.

JEROME used to say that it seemed to him as if the trumpet of the last day was always sounding in his ear, saying, “Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.” The generality, however, think but little of this awful and important period. A Christian king of Hungary being very sad and pensive, his brother, who was a gay courtier, was desirous of knowing the cause of his sadness. “O brother,” said the king, “I have been a great sinner against God, and I know not how to die, or how to appear before him in judgment.”

His brother, making a jest of it, said, “These are but melancholy thoughts.” The king made no reply, but it was the custom of the country, that if the executioner was to sound the trumpet before any man’s door, he was presently led to execution. The king, in the dead hour of the night, sent the executioner to sound the trumpet before his brother’s door, who, hearing it and seeing the messenger of death, sprang into the king’s presence, beseeching to know in what he had offended. “Alas! brother,” said the king, “you have never offended me. And is the sight of my executioner so dreadful, and shall not I, who have greatly offended, fear to be brought before the judgment seat of CHRIST?”—Rural New Yorker.