Imagine that in the not-too-distant future, it is discovered that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has developed an amazing technology that enables the government to secretly scan the brains of targeted individuals and collect and store as digital files without their knowledge or permission their complete personal histories, memories and life experiences.
Further imagine that the government has already been surreptitiously testing this technology on the American public for some time when it is learned that hackers have broken into the government’s secret database and stolen these digital personal histories.
Finally, imagine that you have received an ominous text or email from the hackers threatening to dump your complete digital personal history onto the Internet for the whole world to see unless you meet their demands. What would you be willing to do to prevent this disclosure, this “Big Reveal” of your complete personal history and true character?
To be sure, there will be good stuff in the collection like your fondest memories and greatest personal achievements. But with these will also come all of your darkest and most shameful thoughts, words and deeds, things that were never meant to see the light of day and which you have kept carefully hidden from everyone else, even those closest to you who think they know you the best.
Included in the collection will be all of your sexual “dirty deeds done dirt cheap,” in the bedroom, in the shower, looking at porn on your computer screen, ogling that underage cheerleader at the football game, at the motel with your co-worker on that business trip, and so on. Also included in the collection will be all of the evil, backbiting, slanderous, gossiping, mocking, lying, cursing, and filthy words that you have ever uttered to or about anyone including all of those dearest to you.
And all of this doesn’t even begin to describe your deeply depraved, selfish, wicked, hateful, scheming, bitter, scornful, and rebellious thoughts and attitudes formerly on file in your mind but also now in the collection. Absolutely nothing will be omitted, and the revelation of what you truly are compared to what you wanted everyone else to think you are will be humiliating and devastating in the extreme.
Whether you accept the possibility of a scenario like this or not, just such a “Big Reveal” of your true character in complete and vivid detail is, in fact, coming “in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to [the] Gospel,” Romans 2:16. Ecclesiastes 12:14 confirms that “God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
Jesus Himself said that, “For every idle word that men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment,” Matthew 12:36, and that “Nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light,” Luke 8:17. If you have any conscience at all the prospect of such a raw, unfiltered encounter with the Living God should make you tremble with trepidation and dread.
While Judgment Day will be a fearsome day of reckoning that no one will be able to avoid or withstand in his own merit or strength, God in His great love and mercy is also “longsuffering toward us and is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance,” II Peter 3:9.
In fact, God loves us so passionately and is so committed to saving us from His divine justice on Judgment Day that He sent His own Son Jesus to die on the Cross for us and suffer the punishment that we deserve for our dark personal histories of wickedness and shame—histories that God already knew all about in advance. Indeed, Romans 5:8 declares that, “God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
All we have to do to escape the divine justice that we so richly deserve is repent, believe in Jesus as God’s Son and trust in Him and what He did on the Cross for us to save us. If we do this—if you do this—Judgment Day will not be a “Big Reveal” of your darkest secrets, but rather a revelation of the true magnitude of God’s extraordinary mercy that endures forever. He’s calling you to repent, so don’t delay: today if you hear His voice, cry out to Him, repent, and receive His great salvation in Jesus Christ.
Do You Want to Be Made Well? 