Matthew

Christ is presented in the gospel narratives in four distinct ways. In Matthew He is seen as Jehovah-Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham and presented to His people and rejected. In consequence, He passes to His higher glory as "Son of man," over all the works of God's hands (Psa. 8), through death and resurrection. Then He is presented as coming back as Son of man in judgment with the ensigns of Jehovah—power and great glory.
If you examine Matt. 24, you find the Messiah rejected by His people and cast out, then returning as Son of man in judgment, and delivering His people Israel. First dealing with Jews in the land of Judea (vss. 15-31), He appears for their deliverance. Then He gathers the "elect" of Israel from the four winds, from among the nations of the earth. (See Isa. 11:11-12; Zech. 2:6.)
Before that day comes, there is an immense heavenly interval, during which Christians are in relationship with Christ. We have this presented under three parables: the good and the evil servant; the wise and foolish virgins, and the faithful and the unfaithful use of the spiritual gifts of Christ as ascended and gone away for the time from Israel, until He comes and reckons judicially with His servants.
Then when the time we are passing through is past and gone, you find that after having come and delivered Israel (Ch. 24:15-31), and dealt in the true appraisal of the work and watchfulness of His servants (Ch. 24:44-51; 25:1-30), He sits upon the throne of His glory. There before Him are gathered the Gentiles (or nations), and His brethren after the flesh, the Jewish remnant of that day. The former are judged as to how they had received the message of His coming kingdom and glory through the latter. Believing and bowing to it constituted them the "sheep"; the rejection of it, the "goats." It is the judgment of the "quick" which introduces the millennial kingdom, the thousand years of earthly blessing. It will be seen that there are three classes of persons in this scene: the sheep, the goats, and His brethren.
You must quite set aside the human thought of this scene being a "general judgment" -there is nothing so foreign to Scripture. God does not confound together the saved and lost in that world, when by the truth He has wrought to separate them here, much as man has blotted out the distinction. In the judgment of the great white throne of Rev. 20, after a thousand years there is not a living man seen; in that of this chapter not a dead man is seen!
Besides all this, the ground of judgment in this solemn scene would embrace only a small proportion of the population of the world. Comparatively few will have had the testimony addressed to them, which forms the ground of judgment here, or any testimony from God. They will be judged according to their works—a totally different ground of judgment. This precludes the thought of its being a general judgment. Nothing but most careless reading, or the bias of human thought, could have so interpreted the passage.
With this judgment of the living nations the Jewish mind was most familiar; with a judgment of the dead but little. To us as Christians, the judgment of the dead is a familiar thought, and the judgment of the "quick" very little known.