It is very hard to convince people of judgement to come. In these humanistic, materialistic days, you may as well be speaking to people about fairyland, unless they have a strongly religious background.
I must say the things that the Holy Spirit will use. That is the message to the preacher, the Sunday school teacher, the witnessing Christian. I must say the things the Holy Spirit will use and I must pray as much as I speak, because I depend upon the Spirit to apply it within and to bring it to life and to make it real. I will not try too much to supplant him or replace him or get the public address turned up so that I can yell blood curdling screams. The Holy Spirit will do much better than that and apply it within and the person will go his way. We remember the testimony of John Cennick, in the 1730s, who was one of the great preachers of the Great Awakening. He was a young man of 19 in London, learning to be a surveyor, which is quite something in those far off days, and he records how he was walking down Cheapside, and suddenly he was struck with a tremendous dejection and alarm about judgement. He had heard a sermon on this a few days previously and he had scoffed at it. But now right within him, came a sense of judgement, and it did not leave him, until he gave himself to Christ and repented of his sin. That is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Some people are teaching wrong things about the Holy Spirit, it is a shame – The Holy Spirit has come to give you all sorts of weird experiences. No, the Holy Spirit has come to convince the world of sin and of the righteousness of Christ and your need of his mediatorial righteousness and of judgement to come. This is the work of the Spirit. Who is my teacher? Christ the Lord, speaking to the apostles just before his passion begins.