SO then every one of us must give an account of himself to God.” Solemn words these, my reader, conveying to us in a forcible way that judgment―like salvation―is an intensely individual matter.
We were sailing from the West Indies to New York. At Kingston two stowaways got aboard, and came on deck after we had been about thirty-six hours at sea. The captain not wishing to have the expense of taking them back again (which he would have had to do had they been discovered by the authorities), ordered them to remain below when the doctor and excise officers came aboard at New York harbor. And so they remained out of sight until all danger of their being discovered was over, and then got into New York without being searched, though contrary to the law of the land. There are some people who think they can get into heaven like that; they mean to stowaway with the religious crowd, and pass through the pearly gates without being searched. What a fatal mistake. “Every one of us” excludes none.
Your life, my unsaved reader, with all its guilty secrets, is going to be uncovered. “What!” you say, “will my friends be let into the sinful details of my history?” That would be a small matter; you will not think of your friends then. The trouble will be, that the God whom you seek to forget now will know all about you, and He will pass His righteous judgment upon you.
Consider this prospect. Death were naught, were it not for the judgment which follows.
It must be. The infidel who scoffs at the thought of a hereafter, and the atheist who denies the existence of God, along with the careless profligate who does not take the trouble to deny either, must come into judgment.
Christless professors and religious hypocrites will then be manifested in their true colors, to their everlasting confusion.
But, says one, I don’t believe in the judgment. That may be. I might say I did not believe in policemen and prisons; but if I was caught in the act of theft, I should have to feel the grip of one and the confinement of the other.
The judgment is a terrible fact, my unsaved reader. You may slight it now, but you will face it then. And THEN your sins will be uncovered, for your eye and for God’s to rest upon. But something else. His all-searching eye is upon you today. He knows yesterday’s secrets and today’s sins, ―not one has escaped His notice. Great is His mercy that He has not smitten you to death in your sinful course.
But what is to be done? He commands you to repent. Repent now, and escape the judgment of the great white throne.
Thank God, there is a Saviour for sinners. If you see your danger, flee to Him. His precious blood can wipe out all the guilty past. He is in resurrection life and glory, and would impart that life to you. Then would come to pass those precious words in your case, “There is therefore NOW no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:11There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1)).
“You had better come to Jesus,
To Jesus, to Jesus!
You had better come to Jesus,
And that just now.
Oh! flee, guilty sinner,
And escape eternal fire,
Or you must stand your trial
On that great day.”
J. T. M.