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Lately, in flipping through the television channels, I have seen a number of programs about Las Vegas advertised. A single phrase keeps popping up, “What happens here, stays here.” From the ads, it appears that the newest selling point for Las Vegas is that one can go there, engage in every possible sort of wickedness, perversion, and debauchery and then go home unscathed. After all, what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas. I don’t believe them. I believe the Bible when it says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Consider the following groups of people:

Some never leave Las Vegas. According to the February 18, 2005 issue of the Las Vegas Sun, “Nevada is one of the top states in the nation in suicides, and Gov. Kenny Guinn is recommending stepped-up efforts to combat the problem.” That article goes on to point out that Las Vegas’ suicide rate is 68% higher than the national average and the Governor’s answer for the problem is to spend $350,000 over the next two years to address it. Of course, it doesn’t say how it will be addressed, because the cause of the despondence and despair, gambling, is the one thing the governor of Nevada cannot target as the problem. Those who take their own lives in the wake of drinking Las Vegas’ sin-filled elixir learn the hard way that no person or place can make good on the promise to provide wickedness without consequences.

Consider the people who ruin themselves financially. I know that according to the commercials everyone is a winner, but in real life it doesn’t work that way. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, as of 1996 “Gambling generates more revenue than movies, spectator sports, theme parks, cruise ships and recorded music combined.” That “revenue” they are referring to is money that comes out of the pockets of gamblers and into the casinos’ bank accounts. In other words, what is “revenue” to the casinos is “losses” to the gambler. When totaled, “players lose $6 billion a year at Las Vegas casinos.” What kind of fool does it take to believe that people can lose all that money without harming themselves and their families financially? When these losers go home, they do not leave their Las Vegas experience behind. What happened in Las Vegas does not stay in Las Vegas. All those handsome/beautiful smiling people want their money, and they do not care what you have to do to come up with it. The truth is that a single moment in Vegas not only follows you home, but also can cripple you financially for many years to come. “Gamblers frequently exhaust their family's savings, run up credit card debts, embezzle, and in other ways acquire money for gambling from nonsustainable sources. Such ‘mining’ of the savings and credit card balances of a portion of the population has long-term consequences for the economy that we do not go into here.”

Consider the people who escape apparently unscathed. After all, most people who go to Las Vegas do not kill themselves. The reported suicide rate is 18.5 per 100,000 people. Most people who go to Las Vegas do not destroy themselves financially. The average gambler loses $580.90. So, why not consider the average Las Vegas gambler? What harm is there in taking a vacation to a warm sunny place, lying around the pool, having a few drinks but avoiding drunkenness, taking in a few shows, gambling a little money, and four days later leaving it all behind and returning to one’s regular Christ-like life? That would be the average trip. Would that not fulfill the Vegas promise? What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas? No, no, no - a thousand times no!

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). There is not a Las Vegas definition of good and bad and another definition for the rest of the world. God has already determined what is good and what is bad and we will be judged by that standard no matter what men might say (John 12:48). “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Prov. 15:3). Las Vegas is not hidden from God’s sight. He knows our behavior there as well as if we were sitting on the front pew in the church building singing O How I Love Jesus at the top of our lungs. “Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after” (1 Tim. 5:24). Do we see that? Sins committed in Las Vegas, or anywhere else, do not stay there. They follow us until we repent and wash them away in the blood of Christ. Even the sins we manage to hide from other men for an entire lifetime follow us to the judgment if we do not repent.

Dear friend, do not be fooled by the Devil’s promise of sin without consequences. Some consequences will come upon the sinner here on earth and be clearly seen by all. Other consequences will not plague the sinner until this life is over than he receives his final reward. Either way, let us know that we are ever under the watchful eye of Jehovah, and should live in a way that makes His constant vigilance a source of comfort. Let us like the Psalmist of old joyfully lay ourselves open before the Lord and say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psa. 139:23-24). Lead us out of the desert and to the river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. 22:1).