The Great Account # 2

The Great Account # 2

Whether an outward obedience has been paid to the letter of the law, what duties have been neglected, what has been left undone, which ought to have been done, what has been the employment of the talents bestowed, what use has been made of the years we have lived, of the influence we have possessed, of the wealth committed to us, of the opportunities for receiving or doing good which may have been placed in our way, what words have fallen from our lips and what thoughts and desires cherished in our hearts, what has been the chief motive and principle by which we have been actuated - nothing of all this can avoid the eye of our omniscient Judge!

Above all things solemn in the coming Day, will be the laying bare of that which is now altogether hidden and secret. "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil." "In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, by Jesus Christ, according to my Gospel." "Judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the heart."

Is there not a voice that comes to us from the remains of ancient Pompeii? Does it not remind us that "The time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all!"

Does it not set before our eyes, as in a picture, the fact that our present life, with all that belongs to it, shall yet have a resurrection? Do we not see here that centuries may pass by after the grave has become our resting place - and yet that all we have been and done, our names, our dwellings, and their testimony for good or for evil, may stand out as fresh as while we were alive?

Oh, what secrets will then, for the first time, be disclosed! It many a home, in many a little knot of companions, evil has been concocted and accomplished almost passing belief! Schemes of fraud have been planned and carried out; foul iniquities, deeds of darkness, have been committed in secret, which it might well make us shudder even to contemplate. The authors of these may be undetected, they may never here reap their just reward, but they are known of God, and the deeds they have done; and to the everlasting shame of the men and women who have thus acted, shall their crimes be made manifest before the universe!

Yet not only iniquities done in secret, but the the innermost feelings of the heart shall be laid bare. Where there has been no commission or thought of such acts as have been named - yet within the heart there may still be lurking the most deadly evils. In the sight of the Most High, how revolting must be those heart-sins which are often unthought of and unchecked, even among those who pay as external deference to His commands, and are found continually as worshipers in His sanctuary.

A determined selfishness, a secret aversion to His service, a willful forgetfulness of all His daily benefits, a cherished dislike of spiritual religion, and a thorough cleaving to the things of the earth - may exist side by side with a life upon which, it would be difficult to cast a shadow or reproach.

Is it not our wisdom to be willing before "that Day" to know the utmost of the evil in us, at present it may be, unknown by others or even by ourselves?

Behold the two-fold issue of the judgment.

There can be, in any case, but one or other of two sentences.

To those who have died in their sins, the outcome must be a sentence of "eternal damnation."

No language could have been used stronger than that employed by Christ to declare this. He speaks of "the worm that dies not, and the fire that is not quenched." He employs, with reference to it, the same word "eternal" that is employed as to the happiness of the righteous. "Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." These shall go away into eternal punishment - but the righteous into eternal life."

Throughout the whole of Scripture there is not the least intimation of a second judgment, or of a reversal of the sentence to be passed by Christ at His coming. If on that solemn day, therefore, the sentence is "eternal punishment" - how, or when, shall it ever be changed?

~George Everard~

(continued with # 3)