A recent Wall Street Journal article explained how gambling companies have been shifting betting further in their favor.

“Blackjack players lost nearly $1 billion to casinos on the (Las Vegas) Strip last year …according to data from the Nevada Gaming Control Board,” the story reported. “Gambling companies shift betting further in their favor, raising minimums at blackjack tables and tipping the odds in roulette …

“Casinos on the Vegas Strip are making it costlier to play and harder to win. Payouts are lower for winning blackjack hands … lifted their advantage over players in some games — doubling-down on a pre-pandemic practice of making subtle changes that favor the house …”

Astoundingly, millions of gamblers continue to roll into Las Vegas to be immediately captured by all the bling, high-rise houses of pleasure, and celebrity entertainers beckoning for their attention.

At first, the whole thing is exciting. But as the Wall Street Journal article concludes, YOU are the ones paying for it all, and YOU are the ones who come back time and again thinking that this time you’ll win, this time, you’ll beat the house.

Meantime, the high-rises keep expanding, the profits pile up, and the house keeps winning, because the house gets to change the game in its favor any time its operators choose.

The game is rigged.

Likewise, the “spiritual Vegas” of this world beckons to us all, appealing to its “lust of the flesh … lust of the eyes and boastful pride of life,” in the words of 1 John 2:16.

But this world system of darkness is also rigged and soon, “the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things” enter in and choke out the Truth.

The key strategy for keeping the people of this world on the sugar high of being “in the game” is distraction — usually in the form of a continuous, mesmerizing stream of comfort and entertainment.

C.S. Lewis wrote in, The Screwtape Letters: 

“Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

It’s no accident that casinos have no windows and no clocks — all the better to detach the customers from reality.

You and I are no match for the “house.”

As written in Ephesians 6:12, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

In “Spiritual Vegas,” we are up against “the great dragon, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world …”

Do you really think you can outsmart a being who has been around for thousands of years? This is a being who has been carefully studying you, just like those casino pit bosses do via their ubiquitous hidden cameras.

How to beat the odds? Get out of the game!

The mortality rate in this life is 100% for humans; no one gets out of this thing alive … unless … they choose to get out of “Spiritual Vegas” and stay out.

Yes, we were born into the world, but we don’t have to stay there. We have a choice.

Jesus warned in Matthew 7:12-14:

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

The key term is “find it,” which suggest an intentional/decisive act on your part to WANT to escape the rigged system of the world that leads to spiritual death. That will naturally lead you to the gate “that leads to life.”

Here is the secret, noted in John 11:25-26:

“Jesus said to her (Martha), “I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in Me will live, even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

The other option is to “go with the world’s flow,” as written in 2 Corinthians 4:3-5:

“… in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

How About You?

I’ve been to a lot of funerals and one thing is consistent with people who die, never having had a transformational spiritual encounter with Christ beforehand — they have taken their chances and are now reaping the spoils of betting against the house.

They are in that fictitious “better place” people incessantly talk about.

As Blaise Pascal once said:

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth, and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”