"And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other," (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31.)
"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord," (1 Thess. iv. 15-17.)
"And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ," (2 Thess. i. 7, 8.)
"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up," (2 Pet. iii. 10.)
"And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. 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 the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works," (Rev. xx. 11-13.)
WHO ARE TO BE JUDGED?
We reply, men and fallen angels.
"We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ." If the government of Jesus Christ over men is to be revealed on that day, it is clear that all men, without exception, must be judged. So linked, indeed, is the history of each man with that of others,—as, for instance, the tempter with the tempted, the oppressed with the oppressor, the teacher with the taught, the child with the parent;—so necessarily is each man's condition and character affected by that of all who have gone before him, up to his first parents;—so truly do all human beings make up one race, one family, from the life of each being more or less connected with that of all, that the knowledge of the real history of even one man, almost implies an examination into the real history of the whole human race. And we shall possess, for the first time, a true history of the whole world, when we truly understand the history of each person, family, and kingdom in it; and so also shall we possess the true history of each individual part, only when we know its relationship to the great whole; and the history of events, when we perceive what bearing they have had on the kingdom of Jesus Christ, whose history is that of the world.
It has been questioned how far the sins of the people of God, which have been for ever pardoned, are to be revealed at judgment. But we see no reason whatever why this should not be the case, and every reason why it should. We might, beforehand, have thought it more likely that God would not have recorded in the Bible, and exposed in the light of all coming ages, the sins of His most eminent servants, as those of Abraham, Moses, David, of Peter, or of Paul. But He has told the whole truth regarding them for our warning and instruction; and so will the whole truth be told regarding every saint at judgment, "that no flesh may glory in His presence;" and that the reality of the wickedness of the old man may be proven, as well as the reality of the holiness of the "new man created in Christ Jesus unto good works." And what saint can be unwilling to have revealed what he was, that so the glorious love of God's Spirit may be made the more manifest, as the sole cause of what he has become, and will continue to be for ever and ever?
Fallen angels shall also be judged upon that day: "For God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them, down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment," "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day." Under what dispensation those beings first sinned against God, we cannot tell. All we know from the information given us by God is, that they have been permitted to exercise their power in this world, on the side of evil, ever since the creation of man. Satan, the adversary, the tempter, the enemy, who is the head of these principalities and powers, has been a "liar and murderer from the beginning;" and in every age and clime, he and his wicked spirits have advanced the kingdom of darkness with indomitable perseverance, untiring energy, ceaseless hate, and "all deceivableness and unrighteousness in them that perish." Fallen angels having thus taken so dreadful a part in the history of Christ's kingdom, and being responsible for all they do, shall be tried at judgment; and what a revelation must their trial be of the character, the hellish plots and machinations of those enemies of Jesus Christ and His Church!