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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.