And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it. And I
saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books
were opened; and another book was opened which is the book of
life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were
written in the books, according to their works; and whosoever
was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake
of fire.--_Rev. 20, 11. 12. 15._
We are all acquainted, my beloved, with the verdict that was once
pronounced upon King Belshazzar of Babylon,--how, seated one night
at a royal banquet, with his princes, his wives and concubines,
eating, drinking, and making merry, there suddenly appeared upon the
wall of his palace the ghostly fingers of a man's hand tracing in
clear and distinct letters the words: "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin."
When the king saw the mysterious script and surmised its probable
meaning, his countenance was changed, the joints of his loins were
loosed, and his knees smote one against another. The wisest man in
his realm was sent for, one Daniel, the Lord's prophet, interprets
the words and tells him: "Mene: God has numbered thy kingdom and
finished it. Tekel: Thou art weighed in the balance and found
wanting. Upharsin: Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and
Persians." Nor was it the space of two hours before the verdict met
its fulfillment. Darius, the king of the Medes, by a subterranean
passage, dug under the city's walls, broke into the city. Belshazzar
was slain that night, and his mighty empire shattered like chaff
before the wind.
"Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," that is the handwriting which one
might appropriately inscribe over the portals of this day. Loving
and warning as was the picture which we contemplated on the last
Lord's Day, where we observed our Savior riding in royal state,
in the City of David, and heard the prophet's prediction: "Tell
ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek
and sitting upon a colt," just as tremendous and awfully solemn is
the account in to-day's Gospel, which presents to us that selfsame
King transformed into a judge, His meekness into righteous display,
His offers of salvation into sentences of sharpness, justice, and
retribution, parceling out to every one, as He did unto Belshazzar
at Babylon, the just verdict of his deed. It is Christ's "Second
Advent," His coming to judge the quick and the dead, that forms
the topic of our present contemplation, and taking up the account
read from Revelations, step by step, may God's Holy Spirit make our
consideration of it a blessing to your souls. Four things enlist our
devotion: _I. The Judge_; _II. the judged_; _III. the books_; _IV.
the results_.
The first thing that arrested the Apostle's eye was the throne. "And
I saw a great white throne," he tells us. Thrones are the seats of
kings and sovereigns, and they are always associated with the idea
of regal splendor and magnificence. Just so the meaning is, that
when the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord
of lords, appears in the clouds of heaven, He will be surrounded
with the manifestations of grandeur, majesty, and dominion, as the
Gospel indicates when it says: "Then shall ye see the Son of Man
coming in great glory," and things are particularly specified, too,
regarding this throne. It is a "great throne," like the one which
Isaiah, the prophet, saw in one of his visions "high and lifted up,"
so that the millions and myriads of earth can easily discern it as
the spot where they shall hear their eternal destiny read out. And
it was also a "white" throne. White, in the language of the Bible
and of all nations, is the mark of purity and holiness, and when,
accordingly, the throne is designated as being "white," it means
that white decisions will be rendered there, stainless judgment,
unspotted by the least prejudice, crookedness, partiality, or
mistakes; none will think of questioning their equity, or dream of
appealing to any higher court. Their verdict will be final and fair.
The next object that attracted the Apostle's eye was the Judge
Himself: "And I saw Him that sat on it." No further description of
the personal appearance of the Judge is given. John simply says: "I
saw Him," whence it follows that He can be seen, and, accordingly,
it could not have been the absolute, invisible God, who cannot be
seen. Who, then, was it? It was none other than Jesus Christ, of
whom we confess in the Second Article that He was born of the Virgin
Mary, was crucified, dead and buried, and the third day rose again,
and, ascending into heaven, shall come again to judge the quick
and the dead. This is the plain teaching of Scripture throughout.
Christ Jesus, the Son of Man, wearing the very nature of those whom
He judges, will be the Judge. "God hath appointed a day in which
He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath
ordained." But not any longer as the gentle, compassionate Savior,
as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, but as the
Lion of the tribe of Judah, as the Judge from whose face the earth
and the heavens will flee away, and the unrighteous call out in
despair: "Ye mountains, fall upon us, and ye hills, hide us from Him
that sitteth on the throne." And think not, we would here add, that
we are describing matters of imagination, such as poets and painters
may dwell upon. We are describing things that will really happen.
John saw these things in vision. You and I shall one day see these
things in reality. "Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye
shall see Him." Where shall be _our_ place, what _our_ portion at
that time, in that day?
This we learn from the next point of consideration: Who shall be
the judged? "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before
God." By the "dead" here are meant _all mankind_, the entire family
of earth, all of woman born, from Adam down to the last offspring
of human race,--they must all appear before the judgment-seat of
Christ. It is computed that there are more than eighty millions
of inhabitants in our land. This is about one-twentieth part
of the entire population of the globe, which, at this time, is
calculated at one billion five hundred millions. These one billion
five hundred millions will be all gathered together into one
thronging assemblage, and not they only, but also, in addition,
the two hundred generations of men who have preceded us, and
those generations--how many we know not, God knoweth--that will
still live in the earth between these days and the last general
judgment. These all, which no man can number, shall be judged. It
says: "The great and small." There will be no distinction of age,
size, color, or nation, condition or rank, those of high degree and
those of low estate, the rich and the poor, the sovereign and his
subjects, the man of silvery hair and the infant of a span long, the
distinguished scholar and the untutored savage, husband and wife,
pastor and people, apostles and sinners,--all shall stand before
God. All the dead, whose bodies were once consigned by loving hands
to quiet resting-chambers beneath mother earth, those whose bones
lie bleached upon the desert's sands or Alpine mountains, those
whose corpse was lowered down into watery depths,--immaterial how,
when, or where dead,--these all shall yield up their tents when the
trumpet of the archangel sounds to gather the children of men unto
judgment. And with the parties thus arrayed at the bar, we proceed
to the judgment itself.
"And the books were opened, and another book was opened which is the
book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things which
were written in the books." Two sets of books are here spoken of:
first, two books, and then another book. Other passages in God's
Word also speak of books in connection with the Judgment. What
the character of these books spoken of is we are not at a loss to
determine; the one is the book of God's remembrance, and the other
is the book of God's Word. Not as if God in reality employs books
to make His entries; the all-knowing King needs no such helps to
remind Him of men's actions. His all-capacious mind knows all things
and forgets nothing. The idea is: Just as men, in their manifold
dealings, do not trust to their memories, but use memoranda and
records in order to be able to refer to them as occasion requires,
just so, in condescension to our way of thinking, figuratively
speaking, God represents Himself as keeping a book in which He
has an exact record of what has been done by any creature, past,
present, and future. And an exact record it will be, accurate in the
minutest detail. Not only man's general character, the sum total
of his life, whether (taken altogether) he was, on the whole, a
worldly or a pious man, or the like, will be taken into account,
but every trifling act, good or bad, of which his entire life was
composed. The word is: "God shall bring every work into judgment,
with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."
Everything. Nothing shall be kept back, nothing will be overlooked.
That thought that passed so rapidly through your mind as hardly
to be noticed, that word that so hastily escaped your lips, all
the deliberate and determined actions which have left their stain
upon your life, all these, down to the secret sin that you have
been so successful in hiding from the sight of man, all, whether
done in childhood, youth, manhood, or old age, all that has been
committed or omitted, will be opened out to public view by the
all-seeing, all-remembering Judge. This is the first book, the Book
of Remembrance.
And the divine Arbiter opens another book. We have no difficulty in
recognizing it at once. It is to us a familiar volume,--"The word
that I have spoken, the same shall judge you in the last day," is
the language of the Judge Himself. That book, we contend, is the
guide and rule of our faith and actions in this life; it is also
the statute-book of heaven, the touchstone by which our hearts and
lives are to be tried in the life hereafter. Plain enough are the
directions that book tells you. "Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God,
with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and
thy neighbor as thyself." Plainly does it speak to you and to all
of heaven, of judgment, of eternity, of faith, of holiness, and of
the new birth and conversion; plainly does it inform you of Him
who redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for
us, that he that believeth in the Son hath eternal life, and he
that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God
abideth on him. In brief, according to that opened Bible man shall
be justified or condemned. Here is the standard, the rule.
How important, my beloved, that we should see on what terms we
stand with our Bibles now--whether they justify us, or whether they
condemn us. Oh, for that oft-neglected divine Book!
But there is a third book to be opened. That is the book of life,
and "whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast
into the lake of fire." It was a custom generally observed at the
courts of princes to keep a list of the persons employed in their
service, of the officers of their armies, and sometimes even the
names of the soldiers; and when it is said in the Bible that a
person's name is written in the book of life, it means that he
particularly belongs to God, is enrolled among His friends and
followers. It is also probable that the early Christian churches,
like our churches now, kept lists of their members, and that this
term "book of life" was derived from such a custom, it being
regarded that any one on the list was also an assured member of
heaven. And how may I know whether my name is inscribed in this
book of life? "He that believeth in the Son hath eternal life,"
and "he that believeth not in the Son, shall not see life, but the
wrath of God abideth on him." What determines our eternal destiny,
our acceptance or rejection by the Judge, is our personal belief
and faith in Jesus Christ; on that depends our salvation, our being
enrolled or canceled from the book of life. "Jesus, Thy blood and
righteousness, my jewels are, my glorious dress; in these before my
God I'll stand when summoned to His own right hand." Nothing else
will avail but faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Redeemer.
That places our name in the book of life; with that men will stand
or fall. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he
that believeth not shall be damned."
But does not the Record here, verse 12, and the Bible _elsewhere_,
emphasize that we will be judged according to our works, according
to what we have done? Indeed, but this does not contradict salvation
by faith in Christ Jesus; our faith, to prove itself genuine, must
work and does work. If there are no works, we may rest assured
there is no faith. At the last day our works will be inquired into
to ascertain the nature of our faith. If there is no love toward
the brethren of Jesus, no manifestation of Christ's Spirit toward
Christ's suffering members, we may take it for granted that faith
is dead. Our works come into account as fruits of our faith;
but faith in Christ Jesus is the principle on which all stand or
fall, for--what will the outcome of that final judgment be? "And
they shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous
into life eternal." The Bible everywhere speaks, in connection
with the Day of Judgment, of mankind being separated into two
distinct portions. Now the wheat and tares grow together. There is
a difference between them, even at the present, which the skilled
eye in many instances can detect, but, as yet, they run together,
and there is no severance of them into separate fields or pastures.
It will not always be so. Infidels and Christians will one day
cease to live under the same roof, or believers and unbelievers to
be unequally yoked together, or the children of the devil and the
children of God to be intermingled in the same families, firms, and
societies. When men come to appear before their Judge, the record
is: "He shall separate them one from another, and shall set the good
as sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left." In ancient
times the left and right hand of a judge meant much. To be placed on
the right hand signified acceptance, acquittal; on the left hand,
condemnation, rejection. And He shall say to them on His right hand:
"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world." And, addressing Himself to the
other, there break from the lips of the Judge the dark, desolating
words: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared
for the devil and his angels." One shudders to speak them, but here
are the words from the lips of the almighty Judge Himself. Who can
alter them? On the one side is an inheritance, a realm of divine
blessedness, a kingdom which knows no evil, a life which knows no
death. On the other side gapes a lake of unquenchable fire, never,
indeed, meant or made for men. Punishments are there, and tears
that ever fall, and flames that ever burn, and miseries that never
exhaust. Exactly what it is I cannot tell, and wish that none may
ascertain. I can only rehearse the expressions of God's Word upon
the subject,--"blackness of darkness, worm that dieth not, weeping
and gnashing of teeth"; and no representation is more awful than the
one employed in the text, "a lake of fire," seething, sweltering,
weltering fire, that shall never be quenched, everlasting burning.
And why, brethren, bring before you these solemn truths? Is it
to torment you before the time? No, indeed, but as He Himself in
to-day's Gospel declares, "that ye may be accounted worthy to escape
all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the
Son of Man," that you be sincere believers and worshipers here on
earth, diligent in good works, and on that day be rated among those
who shall inherit their Father's kingdom, and to that end:
King of Majesty, tremendous,
Who dost free salvation send us,
Fount of pity, then befriend us,
With the favored sheep, O place us!
Nor amid the goats abase us,
To Thine own right hand upraise us!
Amen.