"Jesus of Nazareth... who went about doing good... whom they slew and hanged on a tree: Him God raised up the third day.... And 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 [living] and dead." Acts 10:38-42.
The very One whom men slew is the One who is to be their Judge. Death is no avenue of escape from meeting Him as the Judge, for He will judge the dead. There is one way, and only one, of escaping judgment at His hands; that is by accepting Him as Savior now. I must either know Him as the blessed One who took my place and died in my stead on Calvary's cross and who bore my sins in His own body, or some day stand before the bar of justice and hear my doom from His lips. He will be either the sinner's Savior and Substitute, or his Judge.
Reader, do you know Him as your Savior? Happy are you if you do, for then you will never come into judgment. But if you are a stranger to Him in His grace, His judgment must inevitably overtake you some day. He will judge both the living and the dead, but not at the same time.
We who know Him as our Savior await that blessed moment when He will come and take us all Home to be with Himself in the Father's house. And, as we noticed in the last issue, we shall then have all our works brought into review before Him. Then all that has been done just to please self will be loss, and everything done for Him will be rewarded and be gain. This will take place after we are safely in heaven.
As soon as all the Christians are taken from the earth to be with Christ, the world will begin to feel God's judgment which will be poured out on it with increasing fury. During those days of world-wide trouble, wickedness will rise to unprecedented heights, and then shall appear the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven to personally execute vengeance on them that know not God (2 Thess. 1:7-9). When He comes out of heaven, the saints who will have been taken there will come out with Him as the "armies which were in heaven." Then the two leaders in man's consummate wickedness will be taken alive and cast into the lake of fire, and great multitudes will be slain by the sword of Him who is "King of Kings, and Lord of Lords" (Rev. 19:11-21).
After the Lord Jesus, as the Son of man, has cleared away many who will have risen up in rebellion, He will establish His throne of judgment on the earth to judge the living nations. This judgment session is described in Matt. 25:31-46.
"When the Son of man shall come [or, shall have 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."
It is after He has already come as the lightning striking swift judgment on His enemies, that He will establish the "throne of His glory." Then all of the living nations on earth are to be judged before His tribunal. It is definitely an earthly scene, for there will be no nations in heaven; and it is not the time of the judgment of the wicked dead, for when they are raised to be judged, nations will have disappeared. Here the ones who will appear before His throne are the Gentile nations alive on the earth at that time. (As for the Jews when He comes, He will deal with them separately.)
The method of discrimination and of judgment at the "throne of His glory" will be unique. It will be exactly suited to the situation and requirements. Both the sheep (saved ones) and the goats (lost ones) will be present at this trial. In this it will differ from the judgment seat of Christ in heaven where the believers are to have their works gone over, for only saved ones will be manifested there. And at the judgment the wicked dead, only the unsaved will appear (Rev. 20:11-15). But here, both classes are to stand to be separated the one from the other—the sheep placed on His right hand and the goats on His left.
The evidence on which those of the nations are to be judged is different also. They will be judged according to the way they treated "His brethren"—the Jewish messengers—who will have gone throughout the world after the Christians left it, preaching the "gospel of the kingdom." While most of the Jews will apostatize, and accept antichrist, there will be a faithful remnant who will believe in the coming of the true Messiah; these will go out everywhere telling the good news that He is coming. Their message will be much the same as that preached by John the Baptist before Christ came the first time. At His first coming, Christ was rejected and the coming kingdom was postponed, while Christians were gathered out of the world for heaven. But when the Christians are taken to heaven, then the "gospel of the kingdom" (Matt. 24:14) will be resumed by faithful Jews. These Jewish messengers, called by Christ "My brethren," will suffer much persecution and many will be martyred. Among the Gentiles, faith in God and the coming King will be evidenced by the manner in which the message and the messengers are treated. It will still be true that "without faith it is impossible to please God."
It may be needful to remind some that this preaching of the "gospel of the kingdom" is not a second chance for those who now refuse the "gospel of the grace of God." For those who in these lands refuse Christ as Savior now, God will send a "strong delusion, that they should believe a lie," for the purpose that they who refuse grace "might be damned" (2 Thess. 2:10-12). But there are millions on earth who have not heard the "gospel of the grace of God." By far the greater part of mankind on earth are outside of any profession of Christianity For these, the Jewish messengers will carry the good news of the coming kingdom of Christ. These few faithful Jews will do in probably not more than seven years what Christendom had failed to do in almost two thousand years; they will preach this gospel in "all the world." The Gentiles who believe the message will show their interest in its messengers and at the "throne of His glory" will hear "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." Matt. 25:34.
Here the Son of man is called the "King," and in addressing those on His right hand He calls them "blessed of My Father." They will not know God in the relationship of their Father, as believers in this age do, but be blessed by His Father. Another mark of difference from that which belongs to Christians is that the kingdom (earthly) was prepared for them "from the foundation of the world." The believers now were chosen in Christ "before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4).
It is beautiful to see how the "King" will credit the "sheep" with having done for Himself personally whatever they did for even "the least" of His messengers; He will so identify Himself with these Jewish "brethren."
It was a similar lesson that Saul of Tarsus learned on the road to Damascus when he heard the Lord say to him, "Why persecutest thou Me?" That persecutor of Christians had to learn that when he molested them he was persecuting "Jesus" (Acts 9:1-5). And contrariwise those who had despised the messengers of the "King" will be shown to have refused the "King" Himself.
Another point to be noticed is that the "goats" on His left hand—those who refused the messengers bearing the "gospel of the kingdom"—will be sent away into "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (v. 41). The lake of fire was not prepared for men but for the devil and his angels; and yet, how sad that rebellious men who will not have God's grace are to share it with them.