Reader, the Scriptures declare that it is the once-rejected but now exalted Christ who is "ordained of God to be the Judge of the living and the dead." (Acts 10:4242And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. (Acts 10:42).) The living nations will be judged before the millennial reign of Christ; the dead who have died in their sins will be raised for judgment when those thousand years are over. (See Matt. 25:3131When 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: (Matthew 25:31) to end, and Rev. 20.) He who has heard the quickening voice of the Son of God, and has believed the Gospel in this day of grace, shall not come into judgment; for even here below, possessing Christ, he possesses eternal life, and is passed from death unto life.
That Christ, once crucified by wicked hands, but now exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high, and who is ordained of God to be Judge of the living and the dead, is now "set forth to be a propitiatory (or mercy-seat] through faith in His blood." (Rom. 3:2525Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; (Romans 3:25).)
A mercy-seat! Glorious thought! A meeting-place between a holy God and a guilty sinner has been provided by that holy and sin-hating God Himself. It is found in Jesus and His precious blood shed on Calvary. But all who in the stubbornness of unbelief refuse to meet a pardoning God in Jesus Christ, will have to meet Him in judgment, from before whose face heaven and earth shall flee away.
In sending forth this pamphlet it is our earnest desire that many who are living thoughtless lives of worldliness may be brought to consider the clear warnings of Scripture as to events now at our very doors. Heaven and earth will pass away, but of God's Word not one jot or tittle! "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?" This principle holds good both in His dealings with nations and individuals.