Breaking: Pastor Justin Heath Killed in Crash Hours After Preaching on Heaven

"I can't wait to get to heaven."

Those were among the last words Pastor Justin Heath ever spoke from a pulpit. On Saturday night, October 17, the 67-year-old North Carolina pastor stood before his congregation at a revival service and preached on Lazarus — the man Jesus raised from the dead — and told the room how eager he was for the place he described. Less than two hours later, Justin Heath was dead, killed in a car crash on a dark highway while driving his church van home.

The news has traveled far beyond the small towns of Mount Olive and Angier, where Heath led churches for decades. Congregants are calling it both devastating and strange — a man who spent his final evening talking about heaven, taken there the same night. His son-in-law Chad Smith said the pastor closed his sermon with a longing to meet Lazarus in paradise, to ask him what it felt like to be called out of the grave. Now, the church he shepherded is holding a funeral instead.

A Revival Sermon on Lazarus, Then Silence

The revival service Saturday night was supposed to be routine for a church like Fore Christ Church. Heath had led Cutting Edge Revelational Ministries and co-pastored Fore Christ Church in Mount Olive alongside his wife Lynn for decades. He was a former Wayne County sheriff's deputy who traded a badge for a Bible, and the congregation knew him as "Papa Heath" — a father of two daughters and grandfather of six who preached with the plain-spoken warmth of a man who had seen life from both sides of a patrol car.

According to Chad Smith, Heath's son-in-law, the pastor's sermon that night dug into the story of Lazarus, the friend of Jesus who was dead four days before Christ called him out of the tomb. Heath reportedly told the congregation that when he reached heaven, he wanted to ask Lazarus what it felt like to be pulled from death back into life. It was not a morbid sermon. Witnesses described it as full of hope — a man almost homesick for eternity.

"I can't wait to get to heaven," Heath told the congregation. Nobody in the room knew how soon that longing would be answered.

The Crash on NC Highway 210

Heath was driving his church van home after the service, traveling near the intersection of NC Highway 210 and Old State Road outside Angier at about 9:45 p.m., when his van was struck by a Honda Civic driven by off-duty Durham police corporal Joseph King. Investigators say King allegedly ran a red light. Heath was killed. His wife Lynn, married to him for 47 years, was in the van and was injured, along with six other people.

King has been charged with misdemeanor death by motor vehicle. The Durham Police Department has pledged an internal investigation, and the North Carolina State Patrol has stated the officer was not impaired. The investigation remains ongoing, and the details of the crash still rest on the statements of the Harnett County Sheriff's Office as reported by local outlets.

The timing has shaken even people who never met Heath. Chad Smith normally would have driven the church van that night. Instead, he stayed behind to prepare decorations for a Pastor Appreciation celebration planned for Heath the very next morning. The celebration became a memorial gathering instead — a room full of decorations for a man who never came home.

"I want when I get to Heaven, I want to ask how it feels to go to paradise and get called out." — Pastor Justin Heath, in his final sermon on Lazarus, as reported by his son-in-law

Who Was Pastor Justin Heath?

Justin Heath was not a megachurch celebrity. He was the kind of pastor America runs on — a steady shepherd in small towns, a former deputy sheriff who spent his working life serving his county before spending his later years serving his church. He and Lynn co-led the ministry together for decades, and their marriage of 47 years was itself part of his witness: a man who practiced the faithfulness he preached.

Members of the chuch remember a leader who showed up. Revival services, hospital visits, late-night phone calls from people in trouble — Heath was there. That was the reputation. The nickname "Papa Heath" did not come from a branding strategy; it came from decades of being the father figure people called when life fell apart.

It is worth pausing on that detail, because churches like Fore Christ Church rarely make national headlines. They bury their members, baptize their children, feed their neighbors, and keep going — mostly unnoticed by the wider world. Heath's death has pulled back the curtain on one such church for a moment, and what the world is seeing is a congregation grieving a man they truly loved.

The Funeral and What Comes Next

Heath's funeral is scheduled for October 24 in Mount Olive. Lynn Heath, still recovering from her injuries, will lay her husband of 47 years to rest surrounded by the congregation they built together. The church has asked for prayer — for Lynn's recovery, for the daughters and grandchildren, and for the ministry Heath leaves behind.

There is also the legal aftermath. King faces the misdemeanor charge while the investigation continues, and the Durham Police Department's internal review is expected to examine how an off-duty officer came to run the light that night. For the family, though, the legal questions are secondary. Their loss is not abstract. It is a grandfather of six who will not see the birthdays ahead.

Stories like this one raise the questions churches never fully answer — why a faithful man's life ends on an ordinary Saturday night, why the van driver who stayed behind to decorate feels the wieght of survival. Pastors across the country are preaching about Heath this week, and many are landing on the same thought: that a man who spent his last sermon looking toward heaven is not a man to mourn without hope.

A Legacy Written in a Final Sermon

There is something about the timing that believers keep returning to. Heath preached about Lazarus — a man called out of death — and spoke of his own eagerness for heaven, hours before his own death. Churches around the world have faced the deaths of beloved pastors, and some of those stories end in bitterness. This one, the congregation insists, is ending in hope.

Lynn Heath's recovery will take time, and the ministry she co-led for decades now faces the hardest season of its life. But the people of Fore Christ Church are saying what their pastor said Saturday night: heaven is real, and it is worth wanting. Justin Heath spent his last breath of ministry saying so. That sermon, it turns out, was his own eulogy — preached to a room that had no idea.

The funeral is October 24. The questions about why will linger far longer. And the church van — the one Chad Smith was supposed to drive — sits as a quiet reminder that life's smallest decisions can carry the heaviest weight. Whether the congregation can keep going without "Papa Heath" is the question nobody can answer yet. The revival, they say, is not over. It is just starting without him.

Read about another community of believers carrying on after loss in Catholic Priest Kidnapped in Benue State: Diocese Pleads for Prayers, and about a church that survived violence in Night Raid in Adamawa: Church Torched, Elderly Christian Killed as Villagers Flee. For stories of pastors making headlines across the country, see Breaking: Andy Stanley Stepping Down as North Point Senior Pastor in 2027.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.