Rev. David Wilkerson, founder of Teen Challenge, founding pastor of the 8,000 member Times Square Church in New York City and author of the popular book “The Cross and the Switchblade”, was killed Wednesday in a car crash in Texas. He was 79.

His wife was also involved in the crash but as yet there is no news on her condition. Please pray for the Wilkerson family.

What a specter, what a horrible thing death is to most of us. We regard it as a terrible monster that is going to grip us. Death, we say, is the most terrible thing of all, the thing to avoid. No, says Christ, death is nothing but the door of entry to my Father’s house for his followers–‘In my Father’s house are many mansions.’

We tend to think of ourselves after death, do we not, as in some disembodied state in some great eternity where all is strange and terrible. But it is really to go home, if you are a child of God, if you are a brother or sister of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is not some terrible awful power, away in some distant eternity; he is your Father. He is one who loves you with a love you cannot imagine. Thank God for human love, but, my dear friends, our human love pales into insignificance and nothingness by the side of the love of God toward those who belong to him. ‘My Father’s house’ is a glorious home.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled (Crossway, 2009), 73

Update: A few minutes after posting this I received a message from a friend named Rodger, saying, “Wow how tragic. I will be eternally grateful to my Heavenly Father for this man of God! My wife, my father and my sister all received Christ at one of his crusades many years ago.”

Clearly, God has used Brother Wilkerson tremendously over the years.