4. The subjects of the final judgment.
The persons upon whose characters and conduct this judgment shall be passed are of two great classes:
(a) All men—each possessed of body as well as soul,—the dead having been raised, and the living having been changed.
1 Cor. 15:51, 52—“We all shall not 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”; 1 Thess. 4:16, 17—“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
(b) All evil angels,—good angels appearing only as attendants and ministers of the Judge.
Evil angels: 2 Pet. 2:4—“For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment”; Jude 6—“And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day”; Good angels: Mat. 13:41, 42—“The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth”; 25:31—“But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”
5. The grounds of the final judgment.
These will be two in number: