Koinonia: The Communication of Grace

The Great White Throne

“The heavens and the earth , which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men … [when] 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. Then I saw a large white throne and the one who was seated on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne. Then books were opened, and another book was opened-the book of life. So the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to their deeds. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each one was judged according to his deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death-the lake of fire. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, that person was thrown into the lake of fire.”

The Great White Throne and the Judgment of Works

Dr. Lewis Chafer:

“At the end of the thousand years [the millennium] this the last and all inclusive resurrection will take place. The number of those to be resurrected is incomprehensible. It is estimated that for every living person now on the earth at least one hundred have died and been buried. So far from being “the land of the living,” strictly speaking, earth is now the greatest cemetery that that could ever be conceived. It is out of this state of bodily death that the dead will rise to judgment. Their resurrection serves to bring all of remaining humanity before God in judgment and to prepare them for their conscious destiny in the lake of fire. The books are opened and men are judged according to their works. It will be remembered that in all ages – men have been under the inherent law or obligation to satisfy the design and purpose of their Creator. The believer has been perfected before God forever and therefore answers in his Christ-wrought perfection every demand of God upon him. In the present age, however, men are condemned not only for their unholy estate, but on the ground of their failure to respond to divine grace as it is offered them in Christ. At the present time evil works are wholly climaxed through an attitude of unbelief toward the Redeemer. The Lamb’s book of life is opened – evidently to demonstrate that no mistake has been made; for there will be none present whose names are written in that book. God’s irrevocable answer to human sin is the lake of fire, which is the second death. He may save men from it only as a Substitute answers the holy demands made of them and they receive that Provision for them. Too often men are blinded by the awfulness of this divine judgment against sin and contend that, since God is love, He will not finally execute all that is here predicted; but be it said again that, if God could save even one lost soul on the ground of His compassion apart from the righteous judgments wrought out by Christ in His death, He could save all lost souls by mere compassion, in which case the death of Christ becomes not only needless, but the greatest blunder of the universe. The glorious truth which needs ever to be proclaimed is that lost souls may be saved, which truth is good news indeed, but they may be saved only in and through Christ. Apart from Christ as Savior, there is no salvation. Even infinite wisdom, power, and love can provide no other escape from the holy judgments of God against sin. What God may do with those who die having never heard the gospel is not revealed, nor could it be revealed. The Scriptures present the unevangelized as wholly lost. Their estate is the impelling call to missionary endeavor. If men might be saved by their ignorance of the gospel, it were well never to take the gospel to them lest, being enlightened, they reject the message and come to be lost forever. Christians being instant in season and out of season are to present this gospel to all who are yet living on the earth. This judgment scene lends no support to the fancy that men who reject Christ in this life will have another chance in realms beyond death. The unsaved remain what they were when death intervened and until they stand thus before God’s great white throne to be judged according to their works.”

This writer:

For the Christian, faith and hope is swallowed up in seeing God and only love remains. For the unsaved, death and the corporeal conviction that death is the end will be swallowed up in seeing God. When only an endless waiting will remain – not death, or extinction.

Time is a construction and creation of God. Death as a curse encompasses the triple aspects of the physical, the spiritual, and the eternal. In the light of the revealed truth of God’s Word, death and the word wait become synonyms: “n (plural waits) time spent waiting: a period of time spent while expecting something to happen. The wait seemed to go on forever.” Death, as ordained by God, when fully comprehended, may only be seen as an ad interim instrument of God. Death comes full circle from the Fall of Adam in Genesis to the abolishment of death in Revelation.

Understood as such, death becomes a divinely decreed state of waiting. In this age, God, who himself is not bound by time, permissively “waits” upon the living to “obey the gospel of the grace of God.” The redeemed wait until they are released from the flesh of Adam and the sin nature and, the time of completion when they are clothed in the same glorified body as Christ their Savior. As a result of Adam’s sin, those who die without accepting the gift of forgiveness, eternal life, and the righteousness of Christ must await sentencing when their full measure of torment in the eternal damnation of the second death [wait] is determined by Christ:

“In dying [waiting] thou shalt die [wait]” (Gen 2:17, literal Hebrew translation).

That which follows is a dramatized account of a most real future Judgment of the lost and their works.

The Judgment of John Miley

I will see you sooner or later, either nearby among the crowds of the blessed elect or at a distance. If at a distance – when a cold chill runs down my back – as my eyes find you naked in your evil and stripped of all borrowed goodness. Standing alone and clothed in a resurrected body fit for a criminal. Alone and small in front of a high, gleaming, glistening Great White Throne that shines with the glory of Christ Jesus seated in Judgment. Jesus the King of kings and the Lord of lords with an Iron Rod in His fist. I watch as you bend your knee and confess that Jesus is Lord. He then cries out loudly, to the ends of Heaven, “I never knew you! Be gone from Me, you lawbreaker!”

Thus, openly confirming the record of your self-excluding sin in rejecting Him as the all sufficient Substitute for your rebellion and the Master of your destiny. The attending angel blots out your name from the Book of Life. Another angel then reads off your unforgiven acts in unbelief and calls out each of the light filled occasions in your darkened life when the Holy Spirit witnessed through Saints the truth of the Gospel of the Grace of God that saves eternally.

Then, at the Throne, Heaven shrinks – and the degree of eternal anguish assigned to your fate, when announced by the King, becomes like a terrible judgment in a small room. On one side of the Throne the redeemed Saints of Heaven in unison, in multitudes, sing His praises in the minor chords of sorrow, the never to be told agonies only the glorified God-Man knows full well. Chords of sound from the natural world that He created. Chords the Saints learned in earthly sorrow. On the opposite side of the Throne, the Angels recite His praises in a host after host of ten thousand. Now, in a sustained thunderclap of accord, the singing Saints and the reciting Angels repeat the three line phrase, “Holy! Holy! Holy! – Holy! Holy! Holy! – Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!”

You stand erect, not bowed, your shoulders braced against your heaving sobs. During the thousand years or more that you spent with the condemned followers of religion, open rebels, and the lost from previous ages who were waiting on this day, you gained perfect recall and know your greatest sin was to spread the gospel of death, “for what seems right to a man but the end thereof is death.” Truth has pierced through to your very soul. You know that there is no higher Judge, there is no redemption for those who did not trust the One who was the Death of death for a forfeit life that now is yours to bear for all eternity. As you hear your own Requiem of Damnation, a river of regret, that Mercy can never answer, streams from your eyes and flows down the curves and hollows of your naked body of shame – then disappears into the dry stones you stand on. These, your last tears for all eternity.

Silently, in great reluctance, I see Christ pour your unclaimed eternal life in the Church, His Body, slowly into the bowl of the unredeemed, back into the sea of the lost. The life He exchanged for His Blood at the Cross, the exchange of His infinite capacity to suffer separation from His Father for your limited capacity to suffer separation from Him – for all eternity. The portion made out to His glory. It was never your portion. It was His gift with your name on it, a gift waiting for you to claim with your trust. The twenty-four elders enter and surround you, each in turn says, “So be it.” The last Amen over your soul. An Angel reads, “Close the Book, put out the Candle, ring the Bell.” Another Angel closes the Book, the Light leaves the Throne, and a double note Bell tolls three times. Six notes for the mark of a man with no Christ for a Savior.

A Saint and an Angel from your life step out from the witnessing Host of Heaven. A loved one who prayed for your salvation, and a familiar face sent by Jesus to warn you. They lift you, first your weight, then themselves and carry you from the darkened Throne and then across the Gulf of Perdition to your final destination of endless, fruitless repentance. Where unrelieved torment, not torture, has been gauged to your degree of rebellion and this the worm that never dies – your eternal memory of the unforgiven sin that separates you from the Love that is life in Jesus Christ.

There in Ghenna, the final destination of the Darkness of Judgment, the Everlasting Lake of Fire, in solitude your soul will live a Second Death for all eternity, in waiting you will wait, in separation you will be separated, until the everlasting ages of the ages. In your willing self-confident religion of rejection you chose the fate of Satan. Satan, that ancient Serpent who strove in countless ways to deceive as many as would refuse an eternal salvation in the Light of the Righteousness of Christ Jesus. His deception, your rejection, has led you into the final reality and personal responsibility of the truth of the just curse of the Fall-

“The soul that sins shall surely die [wait in separation from the love of Christ for all eternity].”

David Coulon 2008