What will it be like for the false professor when his naked soul stands before God? How will he endure that voice: "Get away from me, you who are cursed. You rejected me, so I reject you. You played the prostitute and walked away from me. I have banished you from my presence forever, and I will show you no mercy."

What shame will overwhelm this wretch on the last great day when the mask comes off before the watching universe? Look! The openly wicked, those who never even pretended to follow God, will lift themselves from their beds of fire to point at him. "There he is!" one will say. "Will he preach the gospel in hell?" "There he is!" another will cry. "He rebuked me for cursing, but he was a hypocrite all along!" "Ha!" shouts another. "Here comes the psalm-singing church man—the one who never missed a service! This is the man who boasted about his eternal security—and here he is!"

The demons of hell will never show more savage delight than when they drag the hypocrite's soul down to damnation. Bunyan captured this with massive and terrible poetic grandeur when he wrote about the back door to hell. Seven devils bound the wretch with nine cords and dragged him off the road to heaven—the very road he claimed to walk—and threw him through hell's back door.

Watch out for that back door, you who profess Christ! "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith." Take a hard look at your spiritual condition. Are you in Christ—or are you not? Nothing is easier than going soft on yourself when you're the one on trial. But be ruthlessly honest here. Be fair to everyone else, but be merciless with yourself.

Remember this: if you are not building on solid rock, when the house falls, the crash will be catastrophic. May the Lord give you genuine faith, staying power, and unshakeable firmness. And may you never—on any day, no matter how dark—be led to turn away.