Revelation 20

Revelation 20:1-15

THE AND Revelation 20:1-15THERE is a vast deal more revealed concerning the Millennium than the average Christian has examined, studied, and systematized. Three things in connection with the Millennium Kingdom are clear to even the superficial student of Sacred Scripture!THE REIGN OF THE “And I saw an angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. “And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, “And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled” (Revelation 20:1-3). Interpreters are commonly agreed that this is nothing less than Christ’s appearance to put away His great antagonist, —the Devil and Satan.In the midst of all struggles, in the days of deepest darkness, this promise has been the inspiration of the Church of Christ.“He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. “They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before Him; and His enemies shall lick the dust” (Psalms 72:8-9). In Daniel’s day that same vision was the hope of the faithful; and the great Prophet says;“I saw in the night visions, and, behold, One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of Heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. “And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14). His sovereignty will be solitary. In the preceding chapter we saw that ere the end of the age was on the great dragon—Satan, by his antichrist—would rule over all the world. The mightiest kings would “receive authority” from him. When, therefore, he shall go down these shall all fall with him, and Christ shall reign alone. The 72nd Psalm promises Him “dominion from sea to sea” and also says, “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts, yea, ALL KINGS shall fall down before Him: ALL NATIONS shall serve Him”. This promise of the Old Testament is repeated many times over; and it finds important place in the New Testament as well.

Paul, in that wonderful Epistle on Eschatology, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, and the 24th verse following says: “Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet”.What it would mean for all the nations of the earth to be under one sovereign, no man can as yet understand.

Then petty jealousies between peoples would be at an end; boundary disputes would cease; unjust restrictions in trade would be lifted; oppression from the people of one part against those of another unknown; wars would cease, and to the end of the world the doctrine of revelation that we are “all of one blood” would be understood as God sees it, and brotherhood would have its first opportunity at proper self-assertion.The blackest, bloodiest pages of past history have been born of opposing rulers and divided governments.That is a glorious day, promised in the Word, when the Son of Man “shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth”.It is related that the king of Prussia visited a village school and was welcomed by the children. Having spoken to them, he took an orange from a plate, and asked, “To what kingdom does this belong?” “To the vegetable kingdom, Sire.”, The king took a gold coin from his pocket and asked, “To what kingdom does this belong?” “To the mineral kingdom,” answered the little girl. “And to what kingdom do I belong?” questioned the king. Upon a little reflection, the child answered, “To God’s Kingdom, Sire!”It is said that tears stood in his eyes. As he placed his hand gently on the child’s head he said, “God grant that I may be counted worthy of that Kingdom.” And the time is coming—the Millennium—when every king of the earth, instead of sitting in the place of power, shall prostrate himself at Jesus feet, for, as it is written, “As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall how to Me” (Romans 14:11), and “all Kings shall fall down before Him”.His saints shall reign with Him. If there is to be a world-wide Kingdom, with Christ as Ruler, it is certain that He shall need, and shall have, His associates in the place of power. And we are told that those who have part in the First Resurrection, the ones on whom the second death hath no power —that “they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6).

This vision of the Millennium is not one born of John, while in the isle of Patmos (as those who set the Book of Revelation aside might be tempted to say) for if we turn back to Matthew 19:28, we shall find that Jesus Himself, whilst yet in the flesh, gave the promise. “Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel”.It is little wonder then, that we find the mother of Zebedee’s children coming to Christ and saying unto Him, “Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on the left, in Thy Kingdom”. Christ did not tell her she had made a mistake in asking that which was not to be accorded any man; but replied, by telling her that these unspeakable privileges should come to those who had been fitted for them by suffering, just as we are taught in the Book of Revelation; that the Apostle band, and the martyr company— those who have long waited for the avenging of their blood are to hold first places in this perfect theocracy, when it shall come.Dr.

Chalmers tells us that in 1858 some people were digging in France, and they found eight costly crowns, all lying close together, having been lost, or hidden away in the earth. Four of them were very costly and beautiful, while the others were smaller. The first four were for the king, and queen, and the prince, and the second oldest child. The other four crowns were for the younger children of the king’s household. And so, when Christ shall be crowned Lord of earth, even His little children shall share in the glory, for “when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, we shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away”.THE OF THE AND OF THE WICKED There are few things clearer in this twentieth chapter than that the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked will not occur together.There are a few passages in Scripture such as Daniel 12:2; John 5:28-29 and Acts 24:15 that would seem to indicate that the resurrection of the righteous and of the wicked will be at one and the same time. But the student of the Word must be impressed with the fact that no one of them asserts such to be the case, whereas the Scripture before us declares plainly a thousand years are to intervene between these mighty events.The resurrection of the righteous shall precede and prepare the way for the Millennium.“For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). When Paul wrote his First Epistle to the Corinthians, speaking of the resurrection, he said, “But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His Coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23).But the plainest passage in the Word of God is the sixth verse in the 20th chapter of Revelation which is the more meaningful in the light of its context—“And I saw an angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. “And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, “And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection” (Revelation 20:1-5). The resurrection of the wicked will end the Millennium.“And when the thousand years are expired * * “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 were cast into the lake of fire. “And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:7; Revelation 20:12-15). The close student of the Word of God will see that there are four judgments set for the end of the age—namely (1) the judgment of believers, overpassed at Calvary; “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). (2) The judgment of rewards for the saints, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it he good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). (3) The judgment of the children of the Millennium (Matthew 25:31-46). And, (4) this judgment of the dead in sin.It is the last and most terrible to contemplate.Jeremy Taylor tells of a certain Acilious Aviola who was seized with apoplexy and his friends, believing him to be dead, carried him to his funeral pile. But when the heat warmed his body, he awoke to find himself hopelessly encircled with funeral flames. In vain he cried for deliverance. He could not be rescued, but passed from torpor into intolerable torment. “Such,” says Mr. Spurgeon, speaking of the resurrection of the ungodly, “will be the dreadful awakening of every sinful body, when it shall come from its slumber in the cemetery. The body will start up to be judged, doomed, and delivered from God’s presence into everlasting punishment.”“And will the Judge descend? And must the dead arise, And not a single soul escape His all-discerning eyes? “How will my heart endure The terrors of that day, When earth and heaven, before His face, Astonished, shrink away? “But, ere the trumpet shakes The mansions of the dead, Hark! from the Gospel’s cheering sound What joyful tidings spread! “Come, sinners, seek His grace, Whose wrath we cannot bear; Fly to the shelter of His Cross, And find salvation there.” The Millennium will be marked byA FULL AND FINAL According to this chapter it means the redemption of the individual. For the living it will effect an escape from death; and a transition to immortality.“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53). For the dead, by resurrection, there shall be wrought the same glorious change. “The dead shall be raised incorruptible”. What else does a man whose soul is saved, need to complete his redemption, except to have such a change come over his body—that temple of the Holy Ghost—as will make it a fit habitation for Him, and for the Spirit with which God has possessed it? The greatest trials of life; the greatest annoyances; most frightful sins possible, are in consequence of physique, unredeemed. That is what Paul means in Romans 7th chapter, “I am carnal, sold under sin. “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate that do I. “If then I do that which I would not, * * “It is ho more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. “For I delight in the Law of God after the inward man: “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death”? That is the cry of every one of us. We are tethered, as it were, to a tenement that takes on the form of our very personality; and yet has a hundred open doors for the incoming of the evil one. When Christ returns and the dead are raised, those of us that are alive and remain, are to be redeemed from all this, and shall shout with the Apostle, when the mortal puts on immortality, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”.I like to think of the body as it shall be with all corruption gone—incorruptible; with all dishonor removed—glorious; with all weakness taken away—powerful; with all carnal appetite destroyed —spiritual.I will not attempt to say just what likeness the body then shall sustain to the body now, for the Scriptures are silent other than as to its identity. We are told that it is the same body. But as Christ’s body was glorified so this one is to be, and that its power and beauty are to be past conception is seen in one sentence—“Beloved, * * it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is”.The Millennium will also mean the redemption of the nations. It will bring into the world some of the fundamentals of a successful warfare against the deceiver.

Christian evidence will be overwhelming. There are people in the world today possessed of honest doubt touching the Deity; people who cannot’ understand the atonement; whose eyes are darkened to the cleansing Blood.

But, when Christ shall come and sway the scepter over the whole earth, infidelity will die before His face, even as certain vermin of the earth cannot live in the light of the sun. There will be no Rationalism then, for every eye shall see Him; no rebellion—every knee shall bow to Him, and no silence or shame—every tongue shall confess to God. Take the infidelity out of the world today, and you do more toward bringing in a new earth than is possible to human imagination.In the second place, deception shall be removed. We are distinctly told, with reference to this Millennial period, that an angel shall come down from Heaven, and lay hold on the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil and Satan, and bind him for a thousand years, and “cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled”.What is the chief difficulty of evangelization today? Why is it that the unconverted man and woman and child of the earth are content to be Christless? Why is it that our blind pigs are so frightfully patronized?

Why is it that our gambling dens are places of congregation? Why is it that the strange woman hath power in the streets?

Only because Satan, that old deceiver, lives and does his work; only because men are brought to believe that they can enjoy sin and escape sin’s result—disease, despair, death.Why is it that when one preaches, and makes the best appeal possible; to those who are without Christ, many of them reject Him afresh, resist the Blessed Spirit, and walk out into the blackness of darkness? Only because the devil lives, and men are deceived.Remove that deception once, and then let us preach! Oh, the privilege of it! God grant us some days of such a ministry!Fifty years ago we heard the Kentucky mountain evangelist Barnes, once say that when he had finished his ministry here he hoped to be privileged to preach in hell to the spirits in prison! Poor privilege! To preach to men who are under the remote power of Satan is discouraging enough; to speak to those who are under his immediate control would break one’s heart; but to preach in this world—when once Satan, that old deceiver, is set aside, and men are no longer under the clouds of his delusion!

It is an ecstasy to anticipate that!Pilate could have been saved by the preacher, but for Satan, the deceiver.Felix would never have asked for a “more convenient season”, but for the devil.The rich young ruler would have parted with earthly treasure for a heavenly estate, if Satan had been then bound; and so, when we can go forth in this world to preach to men of clear minds, and open hearts, what wondrous things shall be wrought!In that day, evangelization also will be undertaken in earnest. Ezekiel had a vision of the angels flying through the heavens with the everlasting Gospel, and I am not sure but they shall have part in it.“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. “Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away”. If you want a vision of what that day shall be, read the 60th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and be not faithless, but believing. God’s purpose for this world is not going to fail, “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea”. Cookman said, as he anticipated this time, “I hail the day, not far distant, when from the watch-towers of Asia, once the land of lords many, there shall roll out the exultant chorus, ‘One Lord’; when from the watch-towers of Europe, distracted by divisions in the faith, there shall roll up the grateful chorus, ‘One faith’; when from the watch-tower of our own America, torn by controversies respecting the initiatory right into the visible Church of our Lord Jesus, there shall roll forth the inspiring chorus, ‘One baptism’; when from the watch-towers of Africa, as though the God of all the race were not her God, as if the Father of the entire human family were not her Father; when from the watch-towers of neglected and despised Africa, there shall roll forth the chorus, ‘One God and Father of all’; when the sacramental host, scattered all over the face of this lower creation, shall spring upon their feet, and, seizing the harps of thanksgiving, they shall join in the chorus that shall be responded to by the angels, ‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in (us) all; to whom be glory, dominion; and majesty, and blessing for ever!”

Revelation 20:11-15

THE GREAT WHITE THRONE “The Biblical Order of Millennial Events” as set forth in Revelation 20:1-10 will be found discussed fully in the author’s volume, “The Evolution of the Kingdom.” Revelation 20:11-15THIS Apocalyptic vision more and more justifies its name, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”. There is so much in the volume that could be known to no man, save as the Son of God revealed it unto him, that we do an injustice when we speak of it as “John’s revelation.” It was the Revelation of Jesus Christ made to John, and through John to us. When one remembers this, the offenses that some find in Revelation are removed, every one. It may be well enough to say that no man could ever have entered into the mysteries of all time, and so laid before his fellows “the plan of the ages,” as is here done. But who can deny that the Son of God knows the end from the beginning; and, at His pleasure, can lift the veil that hides from our eyes the future and read with clear vision its last line.All through this Book John is saying, over and over again, “And I saw”.But he was not seeing in the sense of discovery; he was simply looking at what God’s Son showed unto him. He was seeing as the scientist’s child sees, when his learned father takes the complex flower, and picking it to pieces, explains its every part; he was seeing what he never could have seen alone, unaided by the higher intelligence of the Son of Man. And yet, what he saw is of the first moment. Atheists, skeptics, and quibblers of all sorts have in common the saying, “We know nothing of the future world, since no traveler to that land has returned to tell us about it”—a speech which Scripture flatly opposes.

John says he has looked in upon it; and Jesus came from that land, and in these words we have the witness of both Jesus and John, since it is the Revelation of Jesus Christ given to the Apostle John when he was in the Isle “which is called Patinos”. In the mouth of two such witnesses every word ought to be regarded as established. Let us look now into this Scripture that we may be taught its great truths.HereMAN’S IS MADE EVIDENT “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God”. Then “a man is better than a sheep.” When his body dies and returns to dust, that is not the end. Longfellow’s lines are justified by John’s vision:“Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returnest Was not spoken of the soul.” Men intuitively believe in immortality. As long ago as Cicero, that philosopher and orator wrote: “There is, I know not how, in the minds of men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence, and this takes the deepest root and is most discoverable in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls.”Yes, even in Cicero’s time this thought was old. The Book of Job is supposed to be one of the most hoary of volumes, and its author said—“Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me” (Job 19:26), John Watson insists that the hope of the future life has always nestled in the heart of the human race, and found wings upon occasion. When savages bury his weapons and utensils with the dead man in order that he may start with a full equipment, they believe that he is somewhere; and when the Athenians went out to Eleusis twice a year, in March as the life of the year springs, and in September as it fades, and held a solemn function, it was not only that they might live happily, but, as Cicero puts it, “might die with a fairer hope.”The instinct of the fledgling tempts him to leave his nest, and commit his wings to the air, and he is not disappointed; the instinct of the water-fowl lures him to trust the drowning liquid, and lo, it bears him safely up; the instinct of all migratory things sends them southward with the first blast of autumn, and lo, their experience is what they expected—a continuous summer there. Shall the intuition of man, touching the future life—a sunnier clime, be disappointed? If God never planted in the heart of a sparrow a single hope to deceive it, shall He bring the noblest aspirations of His own children to naught? Alfred Tennyson, expressed in beautiful speech, a universal thought, when he scorned the notion that death is the end:“My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is: “This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty; such as lurks In some wild poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim. “What then were God to such as I? ‘Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A little patience ere I die; “‘Twere best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws, To drop head foremost in the jaws Of vacant darkness, and to cease.” Science also affirms man’s immortality. The cheap wit of the man who says, “I have dissected many bodies and never found a soul,” is obsolete in more learned circles. It is confessedly admitted that the soul is not to be uncovered by the scalpel; and yet to deny its existence on that account, is to publish one’s ignorance. John Fiske, in his volume, “The Destiny of Man” says, “The materialistic assumption that the life of the soul ends with the life of the body, is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless reasoning that is known to the history of philosophy.”And John Fiske was no mean scientist. He concludes further, “For my own part, I believe in the immortality of the soul. * * I feel the omnipresence of mystery in such wise as to make it far easier for me to adopt the view of Euripides that what we call death may be but the dawning of true knowledge and of true life.’”And Science in its latest utterance, confirms Fiske’s faith, for what is its latest utterance, if it be not the absolute indestructibility of all things.You can convert wood and coal into gases, ashes and smoke, but you can not put one atom of it out of existence. The leaves that dropped from the trees last autumn are rotting, but in the years to come, they will return every one in blades of grass, blooming flowers, bark and branches.

That is probably the consideration that led Prof. Pope to say, “He who believes personal immortality unscientific, believes on insufficient evidence.”The argument, that because at least four of the physical senses know nothing of a soul and communicate to us no indications of immortality, we may not indulge such a hope, always reminds one of the reputed conversation between the young skeptic, a physician, and his Christian friend. This Christian friend had asked the physician if he was saved, to which the physician replied that he wasn’t sure he had a soul, and further questioned the Christian, “How do you know that you have a soul?” “Can you see it?” “No!” “Can you taste it?” “No!” “Can you smell it?” “No!” “Can you hear it?” “No! but I can feel it.”“Ah, then; you are willing to take the testimony of one sense against four, are you?”“Certainly,” said the Christian.“Well, I am not,” answered the skeptic.“Really,” said his Christian friend, “you are not? Do you believe in pain?”“Certainly!”“Did you ever see a pain?” “No.”“Did you ever hear a pain?” “No.”“Did you ever smell a pain?”“No!” “Did you ever taste a pain?”“No.”“But you have felt a pain?” “Yes.” “And you took the testimony of one sense against four!”The result of that conversation must have been an admission of poor reasoning. John Fiske was wiser when he said:—“I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I believe in the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God’s work.” What intuition hints, and science suggests, the Sacred Scriptures boldly affirm. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, calls the man who questions the resurrection a foolish fellow.In speaking to the Romans the same Apostle says of the judgments of God that He “will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life” (Romans 2:6-7).And again, to the Corinthians, “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. “So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory”. No wonder Macauley thought that while Christianity had changed the face of Europe and won a thousand palms, “its crowning glory was, that it had wiped the tears from eyes which had failed with wakefulness and sorrow, lent celestial visions to those dwelling under thatched roofs; and shed victorious tranquility upon those who have seen the shades of death closing around them.”But our text contains a second suggestion:MAN’S IS MADE GENERAL “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened * *. “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”. There is no class of men who will be absent when this hour is on. The great and the small will be there. Those who walk the earth and those who wake out of their graves. There will be at least three distinct, and separate classes present when that hour is on of which Paul wrote to the Romans in 14: 10, saying, “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ”, The subjects of the first resurrection will share in this judgment. That they will be present is evident from the very text itself. “Small and great” refers to all the dead.That they will not come to be judged, is equally plain from many a passage. In John 5:24 we read, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life”, “Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4).No wonder then, it is written into this same chapter, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with Him a thousand years”. F. B. Meyer tells us how he visited Canterbury Cathedral, and the Verger took him to see the crypt, and when he got into the dark recesses of the vaults, into the cold, chill atmosphere, laden with the sodden smell of death, he wished he were out. But, clinging to an iron railing, and following the verger’s voice, he went on into the tombs deeper and deeper, until they came to the bottom, where black vaults were on every side. Looking upward from that point, he could discern a dim light, which, as they approached it, grew more glorious, and finally led them out into the cloister gardens of the old Cathedral. There the glorious spring sunshine was bringing flowers into bloom, and in the midst was a beautiful fountain playing, and he felt as if he had come from the grave to be in the garden of God.One thousand years before the scene of this text, those of us who die in Him, will have been delivered out of the darkness of earth, and out of the bondage of mortality, and our part in this hour will be to stand in the glorious presence of the great God Himself, and testify to His grace toward the living, and His perfect justice toward the dead.The children of the Millennium will also be in this judgment. The twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew pictures their part in the same.“When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: “And before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: “And He shalt set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. “Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in: “Naked, and ye clothed Me: I was sick, and ye visited Me: I was in prison, and ye came unto Me. “Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, and fed Thee? or thirsty. and gave Thee drink? “When saw we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in? or naked, and clothed Thee? “Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee? “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me. “Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave Me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink: “I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in: naked, and ye clothed Me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not. “Then shall they also answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee? “Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me. “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matthew 25:31-46). I long since grew tired of that fanciful interpretation of this part of the Scripture which sets a part of the judgment immediately at Christ’s Second Appearance; makes the Jews, Christ’s brethren; and consigns whole nations to hell, or calls them up to Heaven, according as they had been unkind or kind to the literal descendants of Abraham a thousand years in advance of this time; and pronounces judgment on the basis of good works, versus the exercise of faith in Christ.But in this scene we have instead another report of the same transaction recorded in Revelation 20:11-15, and there is a harmony between the Gospel and the Apocalypse. When God sits upon His throne for His last judgment, the Son of Man, in His glory, with all the holy angels shall sit upon that throne with Him. Then, and not until then, shall the sheep be divided from the goats—the one taken to Heaven, and the other condemned to torment; and the children of the Millennium are the only people who can be justly judged on the basis of their works, since, having lived all their lives through, in the very presence of the Son of God, faith will have given place to sight, and works alone will remain to attest the true and to prove the false. (See my volume “Evolution of the Kingdom,” page 175)Not every one then, who is in the Millennium, will share in the eventual glory, for at the close of it, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison for a little season and shall “go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle”. Under his leadership they shall compass “the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city”, and contest the very throne itself, until fire from God out of Heaven shall devour them!And these, God’s last opponents, will also come before Him in judgment, and be reminded of their treatment of the saints—Christ’s brethren. And the sentence of their judgment will be the necessity of dwelling forever with Satan whom they chose as their leader.This judgment will also call from their graves the unregenerated dead. Phillips Brooks says, “It is difficult for us to imagine that the last man great and small will be brought there.

The very multitude of them bewilders the mind, and raises the question as to whether some of the smallest will not be overlooked, and some of the greatest of the unregenerate will not be excused. But, as has been well remarked, “God’s omniscience will not allow the most insignificant to escape unobserved; and His omnipotence will cause the mightiest to obey the summons.’”How this brings to mind the words of that heroic spirit, Hugh Latimer. Though living at a time when kings took off the heads of whom they would, that prophet of righteousness sat down and coolly wrote a letter to Henry the VIII., which he concluded in these words:—“Wherefore, gracious king, remember yourself: have pity upon your soul: and think that the day is even at hand when you shall give an account of your office, and of the blood that hath been shed by your sword, in the which day, that your grace may stand steadfastly, and not be ashamed, but be clear and ready in your reckoning, and to have (as they say) your “quietus est” sealed with the Blood of our Saviour Christ, which only serveth at that day, is my daily prayer to Him that suffered death for our sins, which also prayeth to His Father for grace to us continually, to whom be all honor and praise forever! Amen! The Spirit of God preserves your grace!”Yes; the small and the great!By this hour, also, MAN’S ESTATE WILL BE FOREVER SETTLED The unregenerate will be judged by the books.“And the hooks were opened: * * and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their Works”. When the head-bookkeeper of a wealthy institution sins against his masters, and makes way with their wealth, the mightiest witness they can bring against him, when he shall be called into court, is the books. The cash book, the ledger, the journal—he must face them all. And it is a fact that there will be volume after volume to testify in the last day against the godless man.There will be the volume of Divine entry, the records God Himself by His Recording Angel has made. For, as the Psalmist said, “There is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether”.There will be the Book of the Law, “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the Book of the Law to do them”. (Galatians 3:10).There will be the book of conscience, which bore them witness, and their thoughts, the meanwhile “accusing or else excusing one another; in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my Gospel” (Romans 2:13; Romans 2:16).And there will be the book of memory. The poor fellow, languishing for a drop of water to cool his parching tongue, heard from Abraham this sentence which opened this entire volume to him, “Son, remember”! And how much one may be able to remember in that hour, who can tell?Dwight Hillis tells the story of a distinguished lawyer, who, when in the midst of a heated argument, and under great mental excitement, found stealing clearly into his memory every word of pages of a legal decision which he had read thirty years before.

And men resuscitated from drowning or hanging have often testified that, in the last moment, the events of a whole life, marched like painted pagentry before the eye of memory. Oh, to so live that when the books are opened at last, our souls need not be filled with fear.

How many remember in reading Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter,” that awful night when Arthur Dimmesdale, paying the penalty of his single transgression, made his way to the scaffold on which his companion in sin, had stood to receive the publication of her shame; and there, trying to aid his penitence in doing penance, waited until the mid-night had come, when, suddenly, the darkness in which he supposed himself hid, became as day. Hawthorne says, “A light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street, with the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. * * And there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom and little Pearl, herself a symbol and the connecting link between those two. They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets.”If those who are guilty of a single sin were put to such shame, and filled with such awful fear, in the lurid light of a meteor at mid-night, who shall stand in the brightness round about the throne, and listen while all the books, recording all his sins, shall bare their pages in eloquent testimony against him.But, if the unregenerate are condemned by the books, the Christian escapes by the Book.“And, another Book was opened, which is the Book of Life”, To have one’s name written in that Book is to be free from judgment, and know that Heaven’s gate is ajar for him, for is it not written of the holy city, “There shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life” (Revelation 21:27). They say that in China the courts keep two great books—when a man is tried and found guilty they write his name in the Book of Death ; but if innocent, then they set it down in the Book of Life.”Reader, in which Book is your name written? Frank M. Davis did well when he wrote, “Lord, I care not for riches, neither silver nor gold, I would make sure of Heaven; I would enter the fold. In the Book of Thy Kingdom, with its pages so fair, Tell me, Jesus my Saviour, is my name written there?”