The Judgment of the Great White Throne

Now we've come to the last of our series in the judgments of God, the seven judgments that the Word of God tells us are to take place. We've looked at six of them, and tonight we're coming to what is undoubtedly the most terrible scene recorded in all of the Bible.

In the midst of a book that sometimes records some awful and awe-inspiring sights, I think this is by far the most remarkable and the most awesome of any scene in the Bible. And we can only approach it with a great deal of solemnity and sorrow, really, as we view this scene of the great white throne judgment. Now you'll find the record of it in the 20th of Revelation, 11th through the 15th verses.

Let me read that for you, and you listen carefully as I read. God says, And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. 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 the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them.

And they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Now even as I read those words I could feel the sense of the solemnity and awfulness of that scene come over you as you listen to those words. And sometimes, you know, this seems so terrible.

And we're confronted with the charge that a God of love could never permit such a thing to take place, that we forget that God must ultimately vindicate the long silence of the ages. Somebody was asking me last night in a home gathering about this matter, and they said, why should there ever be a final judgment? And I had to point out that it's because God isn't judging things now. Men are not called to account for the injustice and the evil of their actions and lives today.

And for 2,000 years or more of human history, there's been no judgment for evil. And as the book of Ecclesiastes put it, because judgment for an evil work is long delayed, the heart of man is set in him to do evil. And yet, there must come a time when God vindicates his silence.

And he must at last show that he has been noting the evil of all these days and do something about it. And you know, I thought these words of Charles Spurgeon's were most appropriate on this occasion. Spurgeon says this, I charge you who profess to be the Lord's people, not to be unbelieving with regard to the terrible threatenings of God to the ungodly.

Believe the threat, even though it should chill your blood. Believe though nature shrinks from the overwhelming doom. For if you do not believe, the act of disbelieving God about one point will drive you to disbelieve him upon the other parts of revealed truth.

And you will never come to that true childlike faith, which God will accept and honor. I think those are wise words as we approach this solemn subject of the great white throne judgment. Now, we need to establish the time of this judgment.

When will it be? And if you look at the 20th chapter of Revelation from which this passage is taken and look back up at verse five, you'll notice that John tells us that in the opening verses of chapter 20 about the first resurrection, that there will come a time when the dead shall be raised. And this first resurrection is for believers. And that, as we learned in our previous studies, occurs at the beginning of the millennium.

When Christ returns, the dead in Christ, you see, rise. The Israelites, the dead in Israel, have been raised and so on. And these live and reign with Christ a thousand years.

But now verse five says, but the rest of the dead, that is, those who died in unbelief, the rest of the dead lived not again till the thousand years were finished. This one, he says, this one that he's just been talking about, is the first resurrection. But then there's to come this second after the thousand years of the millennium is over.

And then you have the account in the rest of this chapter how when the thousand years are expired, Satan is loosed from his prison for a little while. And he goes out upon the earth and immediately he finds a following. And he amasses an army and they go up to encompass the holy city of Jerusalem.

And God destroys them at that time. And Satan is cast into the lake of fire. And then comes this revelation of the great white throne judgment.

So that you see immediately that this is the last great judgment that God has in view for all his created beings anywhere. In fact, we're told specifically, you see, that this is the end of the world. Now people talk about in the newspapers, you'll often see some reference made to the end of the world.

And so many people seem to feel that when Christ returns to earth again, that's going to be the end of the world. Oh, no. The world's going to go on for at least a thousand years after he comes back.

And that's not the end of the world. That's the end of the age when Christ returns. But this is the literal end of the world.

Because you notice in verse 11, it says, I saw a great white throne and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away. And there was found no place for them. This is that same event that Peter speaks of when he says, the heavens and earth that now are, are awaiting the judgment of the great day when they shall be, when the present earth and heaven shall just explode with an atomic fire and shall be burned up.

And that's the event, you see, that takes place here. Now, this is an interesting thing because you'll notice that this last judgment doesn't occur on earth. Almost all the other judgments occurred on earth, but this one doesn't.

This one occurs out in space somewhere. And in view of our present outlook towards the conquering of space, this is indeed an interesting thing. Heaven and earth, as we know them, have disappeared, fled away from before the face of him that's on the throne.

And there out in space, this great white throne judgment is held. This is an awesome sight, if you let your imagination fill in the details of it. Solomon, you know, had built for himself a great white throne.

And that was the judgment seat in Solomon's day. And it must have been an awe-inspiring sight, that great throne upon which the king sat when he sat in judgment over the nations. And surely this is such a sight.

You know, you who have visited Zion National Park know that there in the middle of the park or at the end of one of the canyons is a great mountain, almost pure white as it glistens in sunshine. And it's been called the great white throne. Because as somebody viewed that, they were struck by the majesty of that tremendous mountain, white, glistening in the sun.

And they thought of this scene. And you know, it's interesting that right on the other side of that canyon in Zion Park is a range of mountains called the Redemption Range. And in it is a deep canyon that's called the Cleft of the Rock.

And somebody well acquainted with their Bible named those places in Zion National Park. Because the only place of safety in the day of the great white throne judgment is the Cleft of the Rock in the Redemption Range, that accomplished by Jesus Christ. Well, we want to know now next who is going to appear at this judgment, this terrible last great of size of earth.

And John tells us, I saw the dead, small and great. That is, the great ones of earth, the notable ones, the Hitlers, the Caesars, the Mussolini's, the Stalin's, the others of earth, the dead, small and great, stand before God. And this is all the unbelieving dead who have died throughout all the centuries of human life on this earth.

Somebody has estimated that for every person living today, a hundred people have died on the earth here at one time or another. And if the population of the world today is, as it is, two and a half billion people, that means that there have died already 250 billion people on the earth. Now, some of those, of course, have died in faith.

We don't know how many. And many of them, of course, probably a great percentage of them were babies, gone to be with the Lord when they passed away. And I think we always need to remember that when we reckon up the number of the losses against the saved, that in heathen countries, at least 80 to 90 percent of them die in infancy and are with the Lord.

But nevertheless, there's a great crowd of people, innumerable, impossible to count here, that are raised at last from the dead, from Cain clear back down there in the early dawn of history, who murdered his brother, all the way down through some of the great, some of the small of earth, they'll all stand before this awesome white throne out in space. And I think there's something significant, too, about this term, the dead. Now, some have wondered if maybe even at this judgment, there are not some here who are saved, some who perhaps have not been included in the other resurrection.

But you remember how John tells us back in earlier in this chapter, that he says in verse six, blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection. On such, the second death has no authority or power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years. And the first resurrection is all completed before the millennium, so that there are none of the saved here.

And that's emphasized by this term, the dead. You know, there's no other place in scripture where it speaks of the dead it uses the terms, the dead, to refer to believers. It always links with it, some descriptive phrase, the dead in Christ shall rise first, you see, said to be dead, but they're in Christ.

And believers who die are never referred to as the dead. This seems to be such a final word, you know, I think it refers not only to physical death, of course, was true of all here, but also spiritual death. These are dead, dead in trespasses and sins, spiritually cut off from fellowship with God.

The dead here are all those who have died in unbelief throughout the centuries. Now verse 13 adds some details to this. John says, and the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them.

And they were judged every man according to their works. Now notice something here. We have three areas here.

Death is, of course, a reference to the grave. The bodies of the lost are in the grave, are held in death, and death is that area or that part that holds the bodies of unbelievers. Hades is that part that holds the spirit of the unbelievers.

Hell or Hades. And death delivers up its bodies, you see. There's a great resurrection.

As Jesus himself said, the hour is coming, he said, when they that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth, some to the resurrection of life and some to the resurrection of damnation. And that's what he's speaking of here, the resurrection of the bodies and the spirits coming from Hades, that prison house of God in which their souls are held and waiting this great judgment day. They're brought together, body and soul united again, and they stand before the Lord.

But now there's also this reference to the sea. And this is a puzzling thing because, of course, if anybody's drowned at sea, they're just as dead as if they were died on the land. And their bodies are just as much in the grave, so to speak, or in death as anybody else's.

And their spirits, of course, are in Hades. So why does he include the sea here? And this is a rather puzzling and yet a very interesting thing. You remember that the book of Revelation is made up of symbols.

It has to be. Because it's speaking about things that human beings in that day and even largely still today have had no experience with. It's trying to put the immaterial, the invisible, the unseen, and the unknown into human known terms.

And you always have to resort to symbols when you do that. You remember that story of the two colored boys down in the Southland who were, one boy was trying to explain wireless telegraphy to the other one. And he says, well, he said, scratching his head, you see, wireless telegraphy is like this.

He says, it's like a great big hound dog that has his tail in Birmingham and his head in Memphis. And when you stamp on his tail in Birmingham, he barks in Memphis. Only there ain't no dog.

That's wireless telegraphy. And what is that? Well, it's simply an attempt to explain a difficult thing with the use of known symbols. And that's what the book of Revelation does.

That's why it's so filled with these many symbols. And death, you see, is a symbol here. Hell is a symbol here.

And so, I don't mean that they're not, they don't have a literal counterpart, but they're used symbolically in this case of the people who are in them. And so, the C is a symbol here. It isn't the literal C. It's a symbolic C here.

And there are other references to the C in the book of Revelation. And I'll be honest with you, this is one of those areas that fascinates me. I don't know what this means fully, but there's something suggestive about it that would seem to indicate that it's probably linked with the pit, that nether gloom that we spoke of last week where the angels are held in judgment.

And it's this that links, that makes me feel that the judgment of fallen angels that we talked about last week takes place in connection here with the great white throne judgment. It's the C, the pit, giving up those strange creatures that have been held in chains of darkness reserved until this great day. Well, be that as it may, we have clearly the subjects here are those who have died in unbelief through the ages.

Now, notice the basis of this judgment. And this is most interesting here. We're told that the judgment is to be based upon the books that were opened.

And I saw, 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. Now, there are two books here.

There's a book of works and a book of names. The book of works is the books that are referred to here. The book of names is the book of life, and it's referred to several other times in the book of Revelation.

One is a record of deeds and thoughts and things, you see. The other is just a list of names, that's all. No works in that, just a list of names.

And it says the dead are judged out of these books. Now, I don't think we need to try to imagine literal books there. Again, we're faced with symbolic representation.

I doubt if there's any such thing as a recording angel that really sits down and writes away in the books all the time up in heaven. The children sing that way, you know, my Lord's a-writing all the time. He sees all I do, he hears all I say, my Lord's a-writing all the time.

But that's just a symbolic representation of a fact that God is recording all that happens. Think of it, all that happens. Now, I don't know whether he'll be using a book or a tape recorder, but it really doesn't make any difference, you see.

It's just a record of the fact that the records are kept. I'll tell you what I honestly think it is. I don't think there's anything physical or material there at all.

Scientists tell us that every sound that has ever been uttered on earth is still in existence, that the walls of this room are permeated with the sounds that have been uttered in this room. And if you had the right kind of a machine, you could just contact it and take back again every sound, and we could play over again everything that's ever been said in this auditorium. Now, science tells us that like a pebble dropped into a pool of water, the ripples begin to spread out and reach to the uttermost shore, so every sound travels out into the atmosphere and into space and is still in existence somewhere.

And certainly that would be enough to account for every idle word that our Lord says men must give account of in that day. All the sounds are there, but you know that doesn't take care of the thoughts. And I believe personally that all this is stored up in man's own memory.

I don't think the Lord is going to have to produce a single thing other than the individual himself, because the psychologists tell us that all we've ever thought, all we've ever done, all we've ever been connected with is all stored away in the memory. And our contact point is rather feeble, you know, so that sometimes we have difficulty locating things in our memory at will, but it's all there. The librarian in this library is not very good.

He's not on the job very much, but the library is complete, see, and all you need is a good librarian and you can get out of it anything you want. Now if that's true, and I think it is, then you see all God has to do when an individual stands before him is to touch the spring of memory and everything that person's done, said, or been instantly recalled to him. We are told, you know, that this happens just before you die sometimes.

You just remember your whole life runs in rapid review. Well, I don't know if that's true or not. I haven't died yet.

I can't speak on that, but if it is, there's a suggestion that that might be the very way. But you know one thing that impresses me about this account? You read it and it's a very impressive thing. The utter silence of the accused here.

No one says a word in his own defense, not one voice is raised to try to justify himself. And it seems to me that that suggests that this is true, that the person stands self-condemned. He knows in his own heart that he's justly there, that everything that he's accused of is in his own life, and he stands utterly silent before this great white throne.

Now, what about these books, if we use this symbolism here? Well, there's the Book of Works and the Book of Names. Now, here's the interesting thing. These people are not judged by the Book of Works.

Oh, I know it says they're judged according to their works, but that isn't what determines their destiny. You look at verse 15. Whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life is cast into the lake of fire.

It's the Book of Names that determines destiny, you see. Is your name in the Lamb's Book of Life? That's the great question that's asked here, this thing. Is your name here in the book? If it's not there, you're lost.

You're lost. And then the Book of Works is brought out to determine the degree of guilt. Then, you see, you're examined on the basis of what you've done in order to determine the degree of guilt.

But your destiny is determined by whether your name's in the Lamb's Book of Life. Now, isn't it interesting that that book only contains names? There's no works there, because works does not enter into salvation, you see. It's on the basis of whether you've received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior that your name is entered in the Lamb's Book of Life.

Then a separate book is kept of our works that determines, you see, our reward, or as in this case, the degree of guilt and punishment in that day. But the destiny is the absence of that name in that great book, the Lamb's Book of Life. Now, look at the last thing here, the result of this judgment.

And this is a solemn thing. And death and hell, that is, both the bodies and the souls of the lost, were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. I think this is suggestive of one other great thing. You see, there's no need for death or hell anymore after this.

Somebody asked me last night, how do we know that when God settles this whole thing, it won't break out again? And we'll have to go through this all over again, perhaps, in some part of the universe. Well, here's the answer to that. Death and hell are cast into the lake of fire.

No need for them anymore. It's all settled once and for all. And then we move into the 21st chapter where John says, I saw the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

And there's no longer any question or need of these things. Now, some people have said, well, this second death, don't you think that means annihilation? Don't you think it means that we just simply lose consciousness of existence, that whoever's in that second death, they just are annihilated? They, poof, they're gone. Nobody knows, they don't know anything anymore.

Well, I tell you, I wish I could believe that. I wish I could believe that. If I could, I certainly would, because I don't, I hate to think of this thing going on forever.

But you have the answer to that right in this very chapter. Look back at verse 10, where it speaks of this lake of fire. And it says, the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they shall be tormented day and night, forever and ever.

Now, you see, that's not annihilation, is it? And though this is a grim and awful thought, yet we have to face the fact that the word of God says that it's forever, this thing forever. My, this is an awful scene, isn't it? I think we need to remind people of it, and we who are Christians need to constantly bear it in mind, that we might be aware of the awful end of those who reject the grace of God. Somebody's put it this way, after the joys of earth, after its songs of mercy, after its hours of light, after its dreams so bright, what then? Only an empty name, only a weary frame, only a conscience smart, only an aching heart.

Well, after this empty name, after this weary frame, after this conscience smart, after this aching heart, what then? Only a sad farewell to a world loved too well, only a silent dead with the forgotten dead. Well, after this sad farewell to a world loved too well, after the silent dead with the forgotten dead, what then? Ah, then the judgment throne, oh, then the last folk gone, then all the woes that dwell in an eternal hell. My, that's a solemn thing, isn't it, when you think about it? And, you know, this is what the psalmist saw that he describes to us in the 73rd Psalm.

I want to close this with this, because, you know, some of us have this experience. There in the 73rd Psalm, David tells us, or Asaph it was, tells us that he looked around at the world and he says in the third verse, I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. And sometimes we who love the Lord and have to give up a few things occasionally for his name's sake, we look around at others and we say, well, what about them? Look at these people that are so ungodly, look at the way they live.

These Hollywood stars living in immorality and wickedness, and yet look at the way they live, look at the blessings they have, the enjoyment of life they get. Sometimes we tend to grow a little envious, you know. And Asaph says, when I, I was envious with the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for there are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm.

They are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride confesseth them about as a chain, violence covers them as a garment, their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than the heart could wish. And then he says down in verse 16, when I thought to know this, it was too painful for me until I went into the sanctuary and then I understood their end.

Surely, he says, thou did set them in slippery places. Thou casteth them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation is in a moment.

They are utterly consumed with terrors as a dream when one awaketh. So, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image. My, that's awful language, isn't it? But then, you know, he goes on to close the psalm with this expression of triumph in the comfort of the hope of the believer.

He says, nevertheless, I am continually with thee. Thou hast holden me by thy right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel and afterward receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth, but my God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish.

Thou hast destroyed all them that go a-whoring from thee. But it is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all thy works.

And I don't think we should close this solemn and awful scene without reminding you that this is a word of truth from the word of God. And as surely as day follows night, if there is not a personal trust in the work of Jesus Christ, if you're not hiding in the cleft of the rock, you'll be part of this scene at the Great White Throne Judgement. Oh, the awfulness of standing in the presence of God, unforgiven.

But you know, this is the day of grace. And today it's still true. As the Lord tells us in John 5, 24, in that whosoever heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into the judgment, but is passed from death unto life.

My, what a tremendous hope that is in your life. Shall we bow in prayer?