Let this suffice on this subject at this time. Let those who have held and are holding membership draw a rule from what has been said for the regulation of their conduct. So divine and essential a cause enlists their endeavors. Let them make it their business to honor it, to widen and extend its influences by being punctual at the services, by being particular in the observance of its sacraments, by being uncompromising in the belief and defense of its faith, by being active in encouraging all efforts necessary to its life and success. And those who have hitherto stood aloof from the Church, or who are mere lingerers about its gates, let them also learn from this the unsatisfactoriness of their position, and be admonished of the duty and necessity that is upon them if they would find God and salvation.
"Come thou and thy family into the ark,"—what time could be more opportune than this first day of another year of God's grace? Consider the matter, and may it lead you to lay your vow upon God's altar and have your name recorded on the roster of the Church. Amen.
SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT.
And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it. And 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 whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.—Rev. 20, 11. 12. 15.
We are all acquainted, my beloved, with the verdict that was once pronounced upon King Belshazzar of Babylon,—how, seated one night at a royal banquet, with his princes, his wives and concubines, eating, drinking, and making merry, there suddenly appeared upon the wall of his palace the ghostly fingers of a man's hand tracing in clear and distinct letters the words: "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin." When the king saw the mysterious script and surmised its probable meaning, his countenance was changed, the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. The wisest man in his realm was sent for, one Daniel, the Lord's prophet, interprets the words and tells him: "Mene: God has numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Tekel: Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting. Upharsin: Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." Nor was it the space of two hours before the verdict met its fulfillment. Darius, the king of the Medes, by a subterranean passage, dug under the city's walls, broke into the city. Belshazzar was slain that night, and his mighty empire shattered like chaff before the wind.
"Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," that is the handwriting which one might appropriately inscribe over the portals of this day. Loving and warning as was the picture which we contemplated on the last Lord's Day, where we observed our Savior riding in royal state, in the City of David, and heard the prophet's prediction: "Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek and sitting upon a colt," just as tremendous and awfully solemn is the account in to-day's Gospel, which presents to us that selfsame King transformed into a judge, His meekness into righteous display, His offers of salvation into sentences of sharpness, justice, and retribution, parceling out to every one, as He did unto Belshazzar at Babylon, the just verdict of his deed. It is Christ's "Second Advent," His coming to judge the quick and the dead, that forms the topic of our present contemplation, and taking up the account read from Revelations, step by step, may God's Holy Spirit make our consideration of it a blessing to your souls. Four things enlist our devotion: I. The Judge; II. the judged; III. the books; IV. the results.
The first thing that arrested the Apostle's eye was the throne. "And I saw a great white throne," he tells us. Thrones are the seats of kings and sovereigns, and they are always associated with the idea of regal splendor and magnificence. Just so the meaning is, that when the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, appears in the clouds of heaven, He will be surrounded with the manifestations of grandeur, majesty, and dominion, as the Gospel indicates when it says: "Then shall ye see the Son of Man coming in great glory," and things are particularly specified, too, regarding this throne. It is a "great throne," like the one which Isaiah, the prophet, saw in one of his visions "high and lifted up," so that the millions and myriads of earth can easily discern it as the spot where they shall hear their eternal destiny read out. And it was also a "white" throne. White, in the language of the Bible and of all nations, is the mark of purity and holiness, and when, accordingly, the throne is designated as being "white," it means that white decisions will be rendered there, stainless judgment, unspotted by the least prejudice, crookedness, partiality, or mistakes; none will think of questioning their equity, or dream of appealing to any higher court. Their verdict will be final and fair.
The next object that attracted the Apostle's eye was the Judge Himself: "And I saw Him that sat on it." No further description of the personal appearance of the Judge is given. John simply says: "I saw Him," whence it follows that He can be seen, and, accordingly, it could not have been the absolute, invisible God, who cannot be seen. Who, then, was it? It was none other than Jesus Christ, of whom we confess in the Second Article that He was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, dead and buried, and the third day rose again, and, ascending into heaven, shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. This is the plain teaching of Scripture throughout. Christ Jesus, the Son of Man, wearing the very nature of those whom He judges, will be the Judge. "God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained." But not any longer as the gentle, compassionate Savior, as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, but as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, as the Judge from whose face the earth and the heavens will flee away, and the unrighteous call out in despair: "Ye mountains, fall upon us, and ye hills, hide us from Him that sitteth on the throne." And think not, we would here add, that we are describing matters of imagination, such as poets and painters may dwell upon. We are describing things that will really happen. John saw these things in vision. You and I shall one day see these things in reality. "Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him." Where shall be our place, what our portion at that time, in that day?
This we learn from the next point of consideration: Who shall be the judged? "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God." By the "dead" here are meant all mankind, the entire family of earth, all of woman born, from Adam down to the last offspring of human race,—they must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. It is computed that there are more than eighty millions of inhabitants in our land. This is about one-twentieth part of the entire population of the globe, which, at this time, is calculated at one billion five hundred millions. These one billion five hundred millions will be all gathered together into one thronging assemblage, and not they only, but also, in addition, the two hundred generations of men who have preceded us, and those generations—how many we know not, God knoweth—that will still live in the earth between these days and the last general judgment. These all, which no man can number, shall be judged. It says: "The great and small." There will be no distinction of age, size, color, or nation, condition or rank, those of high degree and those of low estate, the rich and the poor, the sovereign and his subjects, the man of silvery hair and the infant of a span long, the distinguished scholar and the untutored savage, husband and wife, pastor and people, apostles and sinners,—all shall stand before God. All the dead, whose bodies were once consigned by loving hands to quiet resting-chambers beneath mother earth, those whose bones lie bleached upon the desert's sands or Alpine mountains, those whose corpse was lowered down into watery depths,—immaterial how, when, or where dead,—these all shall yield up their tents when the trumpet of the archangel sounds to gather the children of men unto judgment. And with the parties thus arrayed at the bar, we proceed to the judgment itself.