“No, no, my child; every one of their sins is written down as well as those of the wicked—dreadful pages of guilt, too, that might well overwhelm them with wrath and condemnation.”
“How, then,” continued Emma, “can it be different with them from the others? How can God pass over their many sins?”
“He does not—He could not, my child,” replied the aged lady, “pass any sins over. But you may have heard of another book which |The Book of Life.| God will have before Him on that day. It is the Book of Life. There the names of all the redeemed are written. None who are written therein can be lost! It is as if the great Judge took His pen and drew it through every page of recorded sins, marking them all out with the blood of the Lamb of God.”
“But,” asked Emma, “will it not make the believer very sad and sorrowful on that day to see such an awful record of sins? It will be enough, surely, to bring floods of tears to his eyes.”
“I do not wonder at your saying so, my dear; but I think the thought of his sins will be lost in a still more wondrous and amazing one—I mean in thinking of the work of Jesus, that could take so many sins away, making them all forgiven and forgotten, and blotted out for ever.”
“Oh that my name, dear grandmamma, were safely written there! I feel as if I never could be for another hour happy or joyful until I felt sure that my name was in the Book of Life!”
“You have, my dear child, all the assurance necessary, if you are now believing in the Lord Jesus—trusting in His merits—seeking to love Him—to do what He commands—and avoid what displeases Him. Of such He says (Rev. iii. 5), ‘I will not blot out his name out of the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before my Father and before His angels.’”
“But tell me further,” said Emma, “how will the work of judgment proceed?”
“Jesus, my child, after the books have been opened, and the vast multitude have been brought before Him, will go on to pronounce sentence upon each. It will be a solemn scene. We read that ‘He will |The Awards.| separate the righteous from the wicked as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats.’ In this world the good and the bad, the ‘tares and the wheat,’ are mixed up together. We cannot tell the holy from the unholy; but Jesus knows them all; and on that day He will parcel all mankind into these two great classes. In one or other every human being must be placed.”
“On whom will He pronounce sentence first?” inquired Emma.