Preaching as a Dying Man to Dying Men

The Urgency We’ve Lost

You’re sitting in a coffee shop, catching up with an old college friend. You haven’t seen him in years. The conversation flows easily: work, family, hobbies, the usual catching up. He mentions he’s going through a rough patch. His marriage is struggling. He’s questioning a lot of things he used to be certain about. He’s searching.

And there it is. The opening. The moment when you could say something about Jesus, about the hope you have, about the Gospel that’s changed everything for you.

But you don’t.

You sympathize. You offer some generic encouragement. You tell him you hope things get better. And then you change the subject, relieved that the awkward moment passed without you having to “go there.”

Later, driving home, you feel it. That nagging sense that you missed something. That maybe God orchestrated that whole conversation to give you an opportunity to share Christ. But you let fear win. Fear of being weird. Fear of damaging the friendship. Fear of not having the right words.

And then you rationalize it: He knows I’m a Christian. If he wanted to talk about faith, he would have brought it up. I don’t want to be pushy. There will be other opportunities.

But what if there aren’t?

This is the question that haunted Richard Baxter, the 17th-century English pastor whose urgency in evangelism shaped generations of Christians after him. And it’s the question that should haunt us: What if people are perishing while we stay silent?

The Line That Changed Everything

Richard Baxter is best known for a single, searing sentence that has echoed through church history for over three centuries:

“I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.”

Read that slowly. Let it sink in.

As never sure to preach again. Every sermon might be his last. Every conversation might be the final opportunity. He preached with the urgency of a man who didn’t know if he’d have tomorrow.

And as a dying man to dying men. He wasn’t speaking from a position of superiority or security. He was a sinner addressing sinners. A mortal speaking to mortals. A man on his way to eternity addressing others on the same journey. And he knew, deeply, viscerally knew, that eternity was real, that judgment was coming, and that where people spent forever mattered infinitely more than anything else.

This wasn’t rhetorical flourish. This was Baxter’s actual lived reality.

He suffered from chronic illness his entire adult life. Kidney stones. Tuberculosis. Bleeding. Constant pain. He wrote in his autobiography, Reliquiae Baxterianae, that he lived for decades convinced each year would be his last. Death wasn’t theoretical for Baxter. It was his constant companion.

And this shaped everything about how he did ministry.

When he arrived in Kidderminster in 1641 as a young pastor of twenty-six, he found a town of about 800 families, most of them spiritually dead. They were baptized, they attended church occasionally, they knew the Lord’s Prayer. But they didn’t know Christ. They were, in Baxter’s assessment, unconverted, going through religious motions while their souls remained untouched by saving grace.

Baxter could have been content with preaching solid sermons on Sundays, maintaining the machinery of parish life, collecting his salary, and living quietly. Most pastors did exactly that.
But Baxter couldn’t. Because he believed that unconverted people were headed for hell. And he loved them too much to let them go there without warning.

So he preached. With tears. With urgency. With power. Not to manipulate, but because he genuinely believed that eternity hung in the balance and that God had appointed him as a watchman to warn the people.

Why Hell Matters in Gospel Proclamation

Here’s where modern Christians get squeamish, I know I do. We don’t like talking about hell. It feels medieval, fire-and-brimstone, manipulative. We’ve seen too many street preachers with “Turn or Burn” signs. We’ve heard about too many hellfire sermons seemingly designed to terrify rather than convert. So we’ve swung the other direction: we talk about Jesus as friend, life coach, the one who makes you whole and gives you purpose. We emphasize God’s love and grace.

All of which is true. But it’s not the whole truth.

Jesus talked about hell more than anyone else in the New Testament. More than Paul. More than Peter. More than John. Read the Gospels honestly, and you can’t avoid it. Gehenna. Outer darkness. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. The fire that never goes out. Eternal punishment. Jesus spoke these words. Not gleefully. Not to scare people into obedience. But truthfully, because he was describing reality.

And if hell is real, and Jesus said it is, then it changes (or ought to change) everything about evangelism.

Baxter understood this. In his massive work A Call to the Unconverted, which sold 30,000 copies in its first printing (in 1657, when the population of England was only about 5 million), Baxter wrote with aching urgency to those who claimed Christianity but showed no evidence of genuine conversion:

“Do you not believe that there is a Heaven and a Hell? That all the unconverted shall be damned, and all the sanctified only shall be saved? Why then do you delay? Are these not matters of everlasting consequence?... O sirs, what should I say to you, or what should I do for you? Shall I come to you with tears, or shall I come with a rod of correction?”

Notice the pastoral heart here. Baxter isn’t threatening. He’s pleading. He’s asking: Don’t you believe what Scripture says? Don’t you understand what’s at stake? If you knew a building was on fire and people were inside, would you calmly suggest they consider leaving, or would you shout with urgency?

Hell is the fire. And far too many people don’t appear to believe the building’s burning.

The Biblical Foundation for Evangelistic Urgency

Baxter didn’t invent this urgency. He found it in Scripture.

Look at how the Apostle Paul describes his own ministry in 2 Corinthians 5:11: “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”

Paul’s evangelistic zeal wasn’t rooted merely in love for people (though it included that). It was rooted in the fear of the Lord, a holy awe before the reality of God’s judgment. Paul knew what awaited those who rejected Christ, and that knowledge drove him to persuade, to plead, to argue, to warn.

Romans 9:1-3 shows the depth of Paul’s anguish: “I am speaking the truth in Christ - I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit - that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

Read that again. Paul says he would be willing to be damned if it meant his fellow Jews would be saved. That’s not casual concern. That’s soul-wrenching agony over people headed for destruction.

Or consider Jude 22-23: “And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.”
Snatching them out of the fire. Not gently suggesting they reconsider. Not offering helpful advice for better living. Snatching. With urgency. Because fire doesn’t wait.

Ezekiel 33:7-9 gives us the watchman imagery that Baxter took so seriously:

“So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.”

Their blood on your hands if you don’t warn them. That’s sobering language. And Baxter took it literally. He believed that if he failed to warn the unconverted in Kidderminster, God would hold him accountable for their damnation.

This is the biblical foundation for evangelistic urgency: people are perishing, eternity is real, judgment is coming, and God has appointed us as ambassadors to plead with them to be reconciled to him (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Wesley’s Urgency: “You Have Nothing to Do But Save Souls”

John Wesley came at this from a slightly different angle but with the same burning conviction.
Wesley famously told his Methodist preachers: “You have nothing to do but save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work.”

Nothing to do but save souls. Not “among other things, try to save souls.” Not “when you have time, save souls.” But: this is your primary calling, your consuming passion, your life’s work.
Wesley preached with tears. Eyewitness accounts describe him weeping in the pulpit as he pleaded with people to turn to Christ. He rode over 250,000 miles on horseback across England, Scotland, and Ireland, often preaching three times a day, because he couldn’t bear the thought of people dying without hearing the Gospel.

In his journal entry for June 6, 1772, Wesley writes of preaching to a crowd of miners: “I enforced those awful words, ‘It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.’ Many of the wild beasts of the people were presente; but the Lion of the tribe of Judah had them all in chains.”

Notice the language: “awful words.” Not awful in the sense of terrible, but awful in the old sense: awe-full, striking the heart with holy fear. Wesley preached judgment not to terrify but to awaken, to shake people out of their spiritual slumber before it was too late.

And like Baxter, Wesley believed that the fear of hell was a legitimate motivation for evangelism. Not the only motivation - love for God and love for neighbor were primary - but a real one. If you truly love someone, you don’t let them walk off a cliff while you stand silent.
Wesley wrote in his sermon “The Way to the Kingdom”: “First, repent; that is, know yourselves. This is the first repentance, previous to faith; even conviction, or self-knowledge. Awake, then, thou that sleepest... God calleth thee now by my mouth; and bids thee know thyself, a sinner; yea, a guilty, helpless sinner, though thou feel it not.”

Awake. Know yourself a sinner. These aren’t soft, therapeutic words. These are urgent, life-or-death words. Because Wesley, like Baxter, believed the stakes were eternal.

The Danger of Casual Christianity

Here’s what Baxter and Wesley both saw clearly, and what we’ve largely lost: casual Christianity kills evangelistic urgency.

If you believe that most people are basically good and will probably make it to Heaven somehow, then there’s no urgency. If you believe that hell is either non-existent or that a loving God would never send anyone there, then there’s no urgency. If you believe that people have endless opportunities to respond to the Gospel even after death, then there’s no urgency.

But if you believe what Scripture actually teaches, that all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), that there is no other name under heaven by which people can be saved (Acts 4:12), that whoever doesn’t believe is condemned already (John 3:18), and that it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment (Hebrews 9:27), then urgency is the only appropriate response.

Baxter saw nominal Christians all around him in 17th-century England. People who were baptized, who attended church, who knew the creeds and prayers, but who showed no evidence of genuine spiritual life. They were, in his assessment, unconverted. And unconverted people, no matter how religious, are lost.

So he pleaded with them. He warned them. He wept over them. Not because he was cruel or enjoyed scaring people, but because he loved them and believed the truth.

In A Call to the Unconverted, Baxter writes:

“I confess I am in a strait what course to take with you. I know not what to say, or what to do, to save you. But surely it belongs to me to seek your salvation, and I must do my best, and leave the success to God.”

Do you hear the pastoral heart there? The agony? He’s willing to do whatever it takes - plead, warn, reason, beg - if it might be the means God uses to awaken someone from spiritual death.

What This Means for You Right Now

So what does Baxter’s urgency mean for you in 2026?

It doesn’t mean you stand on street corners with megaphones shouting at people. It doesn’t mean you manipulate or coerce or use fear tactics to pressure people into decisions. Baxter himself rejected that approach. He wrote, “Win them by love, and you win them indeed.”
But it does mean you take evangelism seriously. Really seriously.

It means you stop making excuses for your silence. You stop hiding behind “I don’t want to be pushy” or “I’m not good with words” or “They already know I’m a Christian” or “I’ll let my actions do all the talking.”

It means you actually believe what you say you believe. If hell is real, if people are truly perishing without Christ, if there really is no other name by which people can be saved, then how can you stay silent?

Baxter put it bluntly: “If you believed that your neighbor’s house was on fire, would you not wake him? And yet you can let your neighbor’s soul perish and never warn him of his danger?”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: our lack of evangelistic urgency reveals our actual beliefs, not our stated beliefs. If we really believed that people without Christ are headed for eternal separation from God, we wouldn’t casually let weeks, months, years pass without ever sharing the Gospel with those around us.

But most of us do exactly that. We live as functional universalists, acting as though everyone will be fine in the end, as though eternity doesn’t really hang in the balance, as though our silence doesn’t matter.

It does matter. Desperately.

Love Compels Us to Speak

But here’s the crucial balance: urgency must be rooted in love, not fear. Not our fear of being held accountable (though Baxter took that seriously). Not our fear of judgment. But love for God and love for neighbor.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15: “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

The love of Christ controls us. Compels us. Drives us. This is the engine of evangelism - not guilt, not duty, but love. Love for the Christ who died for us. Love for the people he died for.
Baxter understood this. Listen to his pastoral heart in The Reformed Pastor:

“O what a joy will it be to meet so many in heaven who shall there bless God for your labors! What a comfort to think that you have turned many to righteousness, and that they shall shine as the stars for ever and ever!”

This is the positive vision: the joy of heaven, the glory of seeing people reconciled to God, the privilege of being used by God to snatch souls from destruction and bring them into eternal life.

Yes, hell is real. Yes, judgment is coming. Yes, people are perishing. But the Gospel isn’t just bad news about sin and death. It’s gloriously good news about Jesus: his life, his death, his resurrection, his offer of forgiveness and new life to all who believe.

We share this news not primarily because we’re afraid of what happens if we don’t, but because we love people enough to tell them the truth, the whole truth, both the bad news that makes the good news so good.

Key Principle

Evangelistic urgency flows from believing that eternity is real, that people are truly lost without Christ, and that God has appointed us as ambassadors to proclaim the Gospel with both love and honesty about the stakes involved.

This isn’t about manipulation or fear tactics. It’s about taking God’s Word seriously when it says that all have sinned, that the wages of sin is death, that Jesus is the only way to the Father, and that judgment is coming.

Baxter preached as a dying man to dying men because he knew it was true. We’re all dying. We’re all headed for eternity. And where we spend eternity depends on whether we’ve been reconciled to God through faith in Christ.

If you believe that, really believe it, then everything changes. Your conversations with coworkers change. Your relationships with family members change. Your prayers change. Your priorities change.

Because you can’t genuinely believe people are perishing and remain silent.

Reflect

• Head (Understanding): Do I truly believe what Scripture teaches about heaven, hell, sin, judgment, and salvation? If I really believed that people without Christ are lost, how would that change the way I live and speak?
• Heart (Examination): When I’m honest with myself, what keeps me from sharing the Gospel? Is it fear of rejection? Embarrassment? Apathy? Unbelief? What does my silence reveal about what I actually believe?
• Hands (Application): Who in my life needs to hear the Gospel? What specific opportunity might God be giving me this week to share Christ with them? What would it look like to speak with both urgency and love?

This Week

Identify three people in your life who, as far as you know, do not know Christ. Write their names down. Commit to praying for them every day this week.

But don’t just pray vague prayers like “Bless them, Lord.” Pray with Baxter’s urgency. Pray believing that eternity is real, that they’re lost without Christ, and that God can use you to reach them.

Pray something like this:

“Father, you love [Name] more than I ever could. You sent your Son to die for them. But they don’t know you. They’re heading toward judgment, and I can’t bear the thought of them spending eternity separated from you. Open their eyes. Soften their heart. Give me an opportunity to share the Gospel with them. Give me courage to speak. And use my words, however inadequate, to draw them to Christ. Save them, Lord. Please save them. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”

Pray this way every day this week. Notice what happens in your own heart as you do.
Prepare your Gospel presentation. Can you clearly articulate the Gospel in 2-3 minutes? Right now, out loud, could you explain:
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• Why Jesus had to die?
• What the resurrection means?
• How someone is saved?

If you can’t, this week is the time to learn.

Use a simple framework like the Romans Road:

1. Romans 3:23 - All have sinned
2. Romans 6:23 - The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life
3. Romans 5:8 - God demonstrates his love: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us
4. Romans 10:9-10 - If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you will be saved

Or use the Gospel outline from 1 Corinthians 15:3-4:

• Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures
• He was buried
• He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures

Memorize one of these frameworks. Practice saying it out loud to yourself. Then practice sharing it with a Christian friend. And don’t forget to include your story of how you came to know the Lord and what he has done in your life.

The goal: be ready when God gives you the opportunity.

This Month

Step out in faith. Don’t just pray and prepare. Actually share the Gospel with someone this month.

Start with someone you know who’s spiritually curious or going through a hard time. Invite them to coffee. Ask them how they’re doing. Listen well. Then, when the moment comes, don’t chicken out.

You could say something like:

“Can I share something with you that’s made all the difference in my life? I don’t want to be pushy, but if you’re open to it, I’d love to tell you what I believe and why it matters.”

Then share. Simply. Clearly. From your heart.

Don’t worry about having perfect words. Don’t worry about answering every objection. Just tell them about Jesus - who he is, what he did, why it matters, and how they can respond.
And trust that God, who is sovereign over salvation, can use your imperfect words to accomplish his perfect purposes.

Baxter would say: better to stumble through sharing the Gospel than to stay eloquently silent while people perish.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, you are the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through you. Forgive me for living as though this truth doesn’t matter, for staying silent when I should speak, for caring more about comfort than about the souls of those around me.
Give me Baxter’s urgency. Help me believe, really believe, that eternity is real, that Heaven and hell are real, that people without you are truly lost. Break my heart for what breaks yours.
But don’t let my urgency become manipulation. Let it flow from love. Love for you, who died for me. Love for my neighbor, who needs to know you.

Give me courage to speak. Give me wisdom to know when and how. Give me clarity to present the Gospel simply and truthfully. And give me faith to trust that you are the one who saves, not my eloquence or my effort.

Use me, Lord. Even with all my fears and inadequacies, use me to point someone toward you. Let my life and my words bear witness to the hope I have in Christ. For your glory and their salvation. Amen.

Remember:

Christianity is practical because Christianity is true.
Christianity is practical because Christianity works.
Christianity is practical because Christianity was meant to be put into practice.
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Soli Deo Gloria