What You Must Know, Believe, and Do Before You Die - Albert Martin

The aging pastor Albert Martin pours out his soul to be honest with the souls of his hearers in pressing them to consider the only one question that will ever matter: what must I know, believe, and do in order to be ready to die?
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What must you know, believe, and do to be ready to die? (6:30, 7:10, 28:42)
Why you must consider this question (8:00)
1. The inescapable certainty of your death (8:24)
2. The inescapable certainty of your judgment (14:20)
3. The inescapable certainty of your judgment irreversibly determining your eternal experience (23:20)
God help me, God help you to believe this-there are few words more sobering in all of Scripture than what Matthew 25:41 declares concerning the King's awful sentence against those who will be damned! (23:25)
The Judgment occurs in 2 stages (15:27)
1. Private or Personal Judgment-immediately after death, Luke 16:22 (15:38)
2. Public or Formal Judgment-at the end of the world, John 5:28-29, Matthew 25:31-33, 46 (15:50)
I. What you must know and believe concerning God (29:00, 30:30)
1. You must own God as your Creator (30:50)
2. You must own God as your Lawgiver (33:40)
3. You must own God as your Judge (40:00)
II. What you must know and believe concerning yourself (41:20)
III. You must know and believe what God has revealed about His rescue operation for sinners (48:30, 51:35)
1. It focuses on a unique Person: the Lord Jesus Christ (49:25)
2. It is comprised of a unique work accomplished by that unique Person (52:25)
"He lived the life we should have lived; He placed Himself under the law as the representative of all who will come to Him and cast themselves upon Him. He has a perfect record to put to our account, and in performance to the Father's will, His obedience carried Him through even to the death of the cross, where there He bore the penal, substitutionary, wrath-absorbing, outpoured fury of Almighty God upon our sins." - Albert Martin (52:50)
IV. What you must do (56:55)
1. You must repent
2. You must believe
"You must say, 'I'm ready to get out of the god business. I wasn't made to be a little self-determining god, to choose my own ends and means. I am a creature of God; I belong to God by right of creation. It is not right for me to be living my life centered in myself. I turn my back upon that life of self-determining, self-absorbed passion to please my lusts, and I'm prepared for God to be God in me and over me, and God in the person of His Son to be My Master, and I will be His servant. I am ready to embrace Him as my Prophet to teach me, my Priest to forgive me and intercede for me, and my King to govern over me.'" - Albert Martin (57:43)
"In that posture of repudiating any confidence in what you are or what you can do or have done to bring the favor of God, saying, 'If I ever have God's smile and favor, it must be based on the work of the Rescuer-what He was in life and death and resurrection power. I cast myself upon Him' and if in that disposition you live and die, then your death will be nothing more or less than a rough chariot to carry you away from everything that troubles you into everything that will make your heart glad forever." - Albert Martin (58:45)
"It is an absolute, inescapable certainty that following death is the reality of judgment. For the vast majority of mankind, that judgment will come in two stages. Theologians speak of the intermediate state; I like to call it that private, personal judgment that is made when our spirits leave our bodies in the event of death, and then the ultimate, public judgment that will be made at the return of Christ, when all the dead are raised and stand before God for public trial and consignment to heaven or to hell." - Albert Martin (15:20)