“In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement!
Runs to each avenue; and shrieks for help!
But shrieks in vain! How wishfully she looks
On all she’s leaving, now no longer her’s!
A little longer, yet a little longer,
O might she stay, to wash away her crimes,
And fit her for her passage! Mournful sight!
Her very eyes weep blood; and every groan
She heaves, is big with horror! But the Foe,
Like a staunch murd’rer, steady to his purpose,
Pursues her close through ev’ry lane of life,
Nor misses once the track; but presses on;
Till forced at last to the tremendous verge,
At once she sinks,”—sinks into the bottomless and gloomy gulf of everlasting darkness and death!
Awful plunge! Dreadful exit! What heart can conceive, or tongue describe, the state of an immortal soul, trembling on the brink of fate; arrested by death; the prisoner of guilt and fear; reluctant to depart, yet viewing dissolution inevitable; looking forward to eternity with painful dread, and backward, upon the world, with sorrow and regret; unwilling to go, yet unable to stay; soliciting a reprieve for a year, another month only, or even a week, but denied one moment’s delay; putting off in imagination or in wish, what is present to sense; quitting the world, and bidding an everlasting farewell to all its enjoyments, with nothing in prospect to compensate for the loss; at length, forced to launch, though sure of shipwreck; and nothing in view, but a black abyss, a forfeited heaven, and an angry God! This is the end that awaits the wicked. This is the fate of those who die without Christ! Oh that the consideration might awaken the fears of the careless, and prompt the people of God, to give diligence to make their calling and election sure! 2 Pet. i. 10. And yet this is not all. For,
2. We must meet God at the judgment-day; when he will judge the world in righteousness by that man, whom he hath appointed. Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth that he may judge the people. Psal. l. 3, 4. 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 Thes. i. 7, 8. I beheld, says Daniel, till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued, and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. Dan. vii. 9, 10.
These are some of those sublime descriptions, which the inspired writers give us of that period, in which every circumstance that is grand, terrible, and august, shall conspire to render it the great and terrible day of the Lord, Joel, ii. 31, the great day of his wrath, Rev. vi. 17, the general assize. If we contemplate the dignity of the Judge, the splendor and multitude of his retinue, the majesty of his throne, the process and issue of the judgment, together with all the circumstances that shall precede, attend, and follow, his glorious appearing;—if we take into consideration either the goodness or the severity, the wrath or the mercy, the destruction or the redemption, the felicity or the woes, which shall be respectively dispensed in this important period, have we not reason to cry out, who shall be able to stand before this Holy Lord God?
Consider, what a Judge we have to meet!—one of infinite dignity; for he is the King of glory, Psal. xxiv. 7; the great God our Saviour, Tit. ii. 13; the mighty God the everlasting Father, Isa. ix. 6; King of kings and Lord of lords, Rev. xix. 16; the Lord of hosts himself, Isa. viii. 13, 14; compared with 1 Pet. ii. 8. The true God. 1 John, v. 20.—A Judge as much transcending in dignity all earthly judges, as the heavens surpass in glory the earth, or the sun in the firmament, the twinkling stars, which all disappear, when he riseth.—A Judge, at whose footstool the kings of the earth shall prostrate themselves in either cheerful or compelled adoration; and, before whose tribunal, judges themselves shall stand, and be judged. A Judge, whose eye is so keen, as with one glance to survey the universe; to pervade the thickest darkness; to penetrate the depths of hell; and to search the heart; whose arm is irresistible; and whose power neither men nor devils can control. He shall be seated on a great white throne; white in unspotted, unbribed, uncorrupted administration of justice, from whence nothing can issue but purity, equity, wisdom, and truth; and great, as being reared on the ruins of all earthly thrones, and as forming the magnificent seat of him, who is the Most High God, possessor and arbiter of heaven and earth. Gen. xiv. 19. Thy throne, O God! is for ever and ever. Heb. i. 8.
What attendants shall grace his advent! Countless myriads, a multitude, which no man can number, of saints and angels bearing the harps of God, and decorated with crowns of gold; all ambitious to be of his train; all vying with sacred emulation, who shall tune their harps to the sweetest notes, and exert their voices in loudest harmony, to the praise of Emmanuel; and all joining, without a single discordant string, in one grand and unanimous hallelujah, To him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen. Rev. i. 5, 6. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. Rev. v. xii.
What signs shall announce his arrival! On earth distress of nations, with perplexity; men’s hearts failing them for fear—wars and rumours of wars—earthquakes in divers countries—pestilence and famine—all nature thrown into universal convulsions, dreadful pangs that presage her approaching dissolution—the earth shaken to its centre, and sea horribly agitated—the heavens wrapped together like a parchment scroll, and passing away with a great noise—the elements melting with fervent heat; while the heavens and the earth are in one general flame—the sun turned into darkness, being utterly eclipsed by the overpowering lustre of the Sun of Righteousness; and the moon into blood—the stars falling, as when the untimely fruit of a fig-tree are thrown down by the wind—the tremendous blast of the trump of God, so loud as to pierce the caverns of the earth and the depths of the sea, to sound an alarm in the abyss of hell, and carry an awakening summons through the regions of the dead—the grave and hades resigning their respective charge—gaping tombs, and parting seas giving up their dead—bodies that slept for thousands of years in a bed of dust, roused at the Archangel’s voice, to sleep no more; and re-united to immortal souls, their ancient mates, all thronging to the tribunal of God.
See the Judge himself enthroned! a mixture of majesty and mercy, of vengeance and love, seated on his brow;—the clouds his chariot, and the heavens his canopy; while rocks and mountains flee before his face!
“His lightnings flash, his thunders roll,
How welcome to the faithful soul!”
Millions attend his bar. Men, angels, devils, all receive the summons, to await his decisive sentence. Adam and his numerous posterity, Lucifer and his apostate train, and all the angels who kept not their first estate, compose the awful levee. The righteous fly swifter than the wind or the rapid lightning, to meet their Lord in the air; devils and the wicked, like criminals in chains dragged from their cells, are compelled, though reluctant, to appear at his tribunal. Small and great stand before God; the books are opened; Rev. xx. 12; the judgment begins; the grand transaction that is to decide the fate of the world goes on, till at last sentence is passed, Come ye blessed, or Depart ye cursed; and then, upon the one hand, are heard doleful cries, tumultuous lamentations, bitter weepings, that bespeak guilt and despair; but upon the other, the triumphant songs of elect angels and redeemed sinners, rending the heavens with applausive shouts and acclamations in honor of the Judge; and with a voice, louder than the noise of many waters, and more harmonious, than that which celebrated the creation of all things, shouting Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the LAMB!