Deathbed words. Do we die before our time?

Source: The Graphics Fairy

I read this on Facebook from No Compromise Radio

"Deathbed words: “I am dying before my time and my body is going to return to the earth.This is the fate of Napoleon the Great."

The dead always think it's too early to die. It is never too early to die. It's always just right.

God numbers our days and they are determined from long before the foundation of the world. He has appointed each one of us to a time, and a nation and a place. He stretches out our days or years to the exact amount of time He wants us to walk the earth. He appoints some to His wrath and others to His joy.

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, (1 Thessalonians 5:9)

The appointment of God's grace is here mentioned as the efficient cause of our salvation; and the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Mediator through whom salvation is bestowed. (Pulpit Commentary)

If there are some appointed to salvation then that means there are some appointed to wrath. Gill's Exposition says,

For God hath not appointed us to wrath,.... To destruction and ruin, the effect of wrath; though there are some that are vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction, of old ordained to condemnation, and who are reserved for the day of evil;

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12:2)

I'd said at the start that the dead (unsaved people) always think that their death is too early. No one who is unsaved think their death comes too late. Or rarely do they think so. But we all have a number of days.

“Man who is born of a woman
is few of days and full of trouble.
2He comes out like a flower and withers;
he flees like a shadow and continues not.
3And do you open your eyes on such a one
and bring me into judgment with you?

4Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
There is not one.
5Since his days are determined,
and the number of his months is with you,
and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass,
6look away from him and leave him alone,
that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day. (Job 14:1-5)

Matthew Henry says of the Job passage, and eloquently too,

Job enlarges upon the condition of man, addressing himself also to God. Every man of Adam's fallen race is short-lived. All his show of beauty, happiness, and splendour falls before the stroke of sickness or death, as the flower before the scythe; or passes away like the shadow.

Source: The Graphics Fairy

The dead have only a short life to cling to, but the living have Jesus, who is the Giver of Life and the Eternity in which we dwell. Since they know, and we know, our days on earth are short, how will we spend them?

I hope it is that we will share life. Share the Gospel today. For some, death will come early. At least, compared to eternity, it will feel very early.

No Compromise Radio also posted these deathbed words from a person who knew Jesus:

"Live in Christ, die in Christ, and the flesh need not fear death." ~John Knox