If I were to open this door right now and take you out there, and I was to show you what is described in the book of Revelation where it talks about the wrath of God Almighty. It talks about the smoke of their torment going up forever and ever in the presence of the Lamb (Revelation 14:10-11). If I could take you out there and I could show you a picture of the lake of fire as it’s described in Revelation 20 on that day when the books are opened (Revelation 20:12-15); if I could show you the many multitudes who are going to be frantically crying out, “Lord! Lord!” They already know something’s wrong. Most of them came out of a holding place of the damned. They have been kept in chains for that day of judgment (2 Peter 2:4). They already know something is wrong. They are not in paradise. They already know.
But it’s like one last, frantic plea: “Lord! Lord!” They’re trying to reason. They’re trying to find some way to reason with the Lord to not ultimately cast them into that lake of fire. If I could take us all out there, and we could look at it and we could see what the judgment of the damned really looks like. If you could know it the way it really is. What would your approach be towards the lost now?
Let me tell you something, if I could take you out that door right now and take you into Isaiah 6 into the temple the day that Isaiah went there in the year that King Uzziah died, when he saw the Lord high and lifted up and His train filled the temple and the place was full of smoke and it was like an earthquake in the place; the doorposts trembled at the sound coming from the seraphim as they cried out, “Holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:1-4). And this man was seized with fear. The prophet. And he fell on his face, and he cried out, “Woe is me” (Isaiah 6:5).
If I could take you right now and show you the vision of Christ exalted in His glory like that, and then come back here and sit down you would be in stunned silence. Some of you would be weeping. Some of you would be shouting in absolute terror. Some of you not even seeing it anymore would just be on your face, and I don’t think you would move for a day or two.
If I could take you out that door right now, and I could show you the fullness of what Paul meant when he said an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). If I could take you out that door right now and show you you, yourself… from a camera’s perspective; a third-person perspective; if I could show you what it will look like when it’s your turn at the judgment bar. That’s reality. The moment’s going to come when your name will be called. If I could take you out that door right now and show you that moment as it really will be in that day…
Brethren, C.S. Lewis in some small way, he captured in one of his stories, there is a cabbie from the 1800’s or so, he drove a cab that was drawn by a horse, and he was pulled into Narnia in the day of Creation. And as he saw it, he said this, “If I’d have known such things, I would have been a different man.” If I’d known such things were true, were real, existed…
Let me tell you, the things I’m describing to you about your judgment, it’s appointed unto every one of us to appear before the judgment seat of Christ (Hebrews 9:27; 2 Corinthians 5:10). That includes the Christian. What I described to you about the lake of fire, about the wrath of God Almighty, about the way Christ appeared in Isaiah 6, this is truth. Eternal weight of glory. If I could show you right now what Jesus Christ actually meant by treasure in heaven; when He said don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on this earth, but lay up treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19-20). If you could see what that actually was, you would give everything away. Everyone in this room would become that poor widow who gave her last two mites (Mark 12:41-44). If you saw what the treasure was, you would give everything.
If you saw how short life is, and how you live will have mattered in that day, Jesus Christ said in Luke 14, when you have a meal, don’t invite your neighbor and your wealthy relative and so on, He said, invite the lame and the maimed and the halt and the blind. He said you will be rewarded in the day of resurrection (Luke 14:12-14). If you could see what the rewards were like, I am absolutely convinced, if you could see what you will feel when you look at Christ, to know how much of your life you wasted, how much of it you could have had eternal reward for, but you wasted it. If I could show you how things really are…
But brethren, here’s the thing, the Word of God does show us how things really are. The problem is not that you have not been shown how things really are, but the problem is we’re too much like the disciples. See, the disciples had it told to them who Christ really was. And yet, in the face of a storm, they forget who He really was. It wasn’t until they saw by sight the storm stifled that they fell down and they worshipped Him (Matthew 8:23-27). But the fact is, what was true about Him was true whether they saw the storm cease or not. The point is this, what is true about the treasure in heaven is true whether I can take you out that door to look at it or not. It’s true.
