Are you being deceived?  Could your secret love affair with Suicide be the final and fatal deception of your life?  Such was the case with all those others whom I visited in the Valley of Recollections.  They rushed after him blindly into desolation, only to find an excruciating hollowness.  Have life’s rejections driven you, like they, into this diabolical romance with Death’s companion?  Can you be absolutely certain that Suicide will not play the same cunning trick that life has played?  He has a dreadful reputation for unfaithfulness and betrayal!

Satan entered into Judas just before he betrayed Christ. His unwillingness honestly to face his own personal relationships turned him gradually, but deliberately, from light into darkness.  Let us see what history says of this Judas.  Luke, the most scholarly of all Bible historians, tells us the story:



Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve disciples of Christ.  Then Judas went over to the chief priests and to the captain of the Temple guards to discuss with them how he might betray Jesus to them and what would be the best way to turn Jesus over to them, without causing a riot amongst the people.  Naturally, they were very glad that Judas had done this, for they had plotted against Jesus for a long time; they decided to pay Judas some money for being a traitor to his friend.  So he began to look for an opportunity to betray Him to them when the people weren’t around.  Luke 22:2-1, A.P. (Author’s Paraphrase).



Nothing went right for Judas after that. His remorse took root; it consumed all hope.  Think what must have gone through the tortured mind of Judas, the betrayer, as he waited alone for the venomous effect of his cowardly betrayal.  Driven by remorse, he stumbled onto his disastrous end.  He finally hanged himself!  But, true to Suicide’s deceiving ways, even that didn’t work out the way he had planned.  Suicide seldom goes according to plan.  The rope broke!  He fell headlong, still conscious, hurtling those countless seconds toward the silent street below.  His body finally was torn apart as it burst open from the impact—splattering his intestines across the impassionate pavement that spread its uncaring stones beneath the dangling rope. 

Listen to the account as it may have been heard, as the morning gossip spread across the troubled City of Jerusalem.

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Did you hear what happened last night?  You know that man, Judas, who betrayed Jesus?  Well, he bought a piece of land with the money that he took as a bribe.  Everyone is calling that piece of land Akeldama, which means Field of Blood.  Sometime last night, after the Temple guards arrested Jesus, it seems that Judas was so overcome with remorse that he tried to commit suicide by hanging himself.  He must have climbed up on some real high place to do it; after he had put the rope around his neck, he jumped, the rope broke, and he fell to the pavement below.  Dr. Luke says that his body burst open in the middle from the force of the impact and all his intestines poured forth Onto the stones where his body fell (Acts 1:18,19 A.P.)



Yes, that is what happened, because Dr. Luke gave his own eyewitness account of that fateful night some forty years later when he wrote the history of those early days in the Book of Acts.

You should ask yourself some serious questions about this erratic Enticer who is trying to pull you away into this same Field of Blood.  Who are you betraying with your thoughts of Suicide?  Will you be free from the conflict that rages within you?  Judas’ betrayal unmasked the foulness that lurks within mankind.  Suicide betrayed Judas.  His remorse became the ultimate symbol of loathsomeness.  For Judas, Suicide became the great deception.  Suicide will become your great deception, too.  Let me tell you more about your newfound, deceiving lover.