Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
As we saw last week from Rev.20:7-10, the end of the end of time is near in our text. John saw Satan loosened from his pit. He saw unbelieving mankind as numerous as the sand of the sea going up to battle against the saints of God. He saw Satan leading them himself. This time he makes a direct attack on the plan and person of God. In the tribulation period, just as he does now in the church age, Satan uses people to orchestrate his evil. But during his final insurgency at the end of Christ’s golden age he will attack Christ and all millennial believers head on.
His fury will be short lived as God will reign fire down from heaven and devour them before a hand is laid on God’s saints.
The saints of the millennium will be translated to heaven in resurrected bodies and there they will stand with the deceased millennial saints and be judged and rewarded accordingly. All believers will be in heaven at this time. This will be the first time all of God’s children will be together. Old Testament saints, Church age saints and Millennial saints will be gathered around the throne of God and the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. This is the grand reunion most people associate with heaven.
But before the new heaven and the new earth are prepared for God and his people a chore no man would want to conduct will take place.
I entitled this message “Man’s Darkest Day”, but I could have easily entitled it, Man’s Second Darkest Day simply because the darkest day of a man is the day he offers his final rejection of Jesus Christ; he actually is a dead man walking. A person may not think it is his final offer, but it could be as per Rom.1:19-24; Rev.22:11; II Thess.2:7. God is not obligated to make multiple offers for salvation.
What a dark day it is when a man or woman turns down the soul saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Think of the consequences of that decision. Rom.6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
There is a price to pay that you don’t have to pay. Why would a man pay the price of his very soul when he doesn’t have to?
v.11
The great white throne is the place of judgment of all the unsaved. It is the round up of all unbelievers down through time. They have been consciously awaiting this day since the moment they died and went to Hades. It is not a place to determine the eternal destination of mankind. It is the place to give the unsaved persons down through time an opportunity to stand alone with their works and defend themselves. It is the place where the unbeliever will stand alone and tell God why he rejected Christ as his sin substitute. It is the place where God will tell the unbeliever his works do not add up to the blood of Jesus Christ.
The one sitting on the throne is Jesus Christ. John 5:22-23 “For the Father has committed all judgment unto the Son; that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son honors not the Father, who hath sent him.”
The unsaved will be given an opportunity to hear themselves tell Jesus Christ why they did not deem him worthy to be their Savior. This is why I tell people as Christ did, “You must be born again.” People need to get saved because they of certainty will not get lucky at the great white throne judgment.
The reliable source we have of this certainty is Jesus Christ himself. If he deceived us about Hell, then we have no Savior, for he would have been just a man to commit such a hideous sin against mankind, not God in the flesh. Men who object to the idea of a biblical Hell have never been on the other side, but Jesus Christ has. Who are you going to trust?
He spoke of Hell as a real place forty times in the Gospels. Col.1:16 says he created all things, and this includes Hell.
He offered his life and died for you as a ransom payment for your sins and if you do not receive his offer Hell will be your final home. This is the judgment where the second death is pronounced on the unsaved.
It is said that at the face of Christ the heaven and the earth fled away [Aorist Active Indicative verb from pheugo]; in other words, at a definite specific point in time, time will be no more.
Time doesn’t run out on the lost when they die, or even when they are judged. Time runs out on the lost when they say no to accepting Jesus Christ as Savior. The Bible says the Spirit of God will not strive with man always. There is that last opportunity a lost person has to receive Christ and then there is no more time, and there will be no more opportunities. Yes, they may hear the Gospel many more times before they die, but they will not have ears to hear it. They will have already determined in their hearts that they will never bow their knees to receive Jesus Christ, Rev.22:11 teaches us the principle of volitional immutability. That is a man or woman can so determine that they will never accept Christ that this decision will become fixed and unchanged. I have spoken to many who have already tuned out God’s signal from heaven.
They don’t have anything against Christ; it’s just that they don’t see the need to receive Christ. They don’t see their sin for what it is; a death sentence. They may see their sin as a character flaw or that what they do is not worse than what a born again Christian does. They justify their sinful condition before God thinking their standing before God is equal to that of a born again believer. They measure the exceptions in your life (occasional sin) as the standard of your life and justify their habitual lifestyle of sinning as normal.
What they don’t understand is that the believer has already confessed Christ as Savior and when he sins he can confess his sins and be restored to fellowship with God, I John 1:9.
The unbeliever needs to still confess Christ as Savior to get into the family of God, Gal.3:26. Confessing sins as an unbeliever doesn’t save him; he still needs to confess Christ as Savior and Lord. All confessing sins does is admit you are wrong before God, and God says yes you are wrong, and by being wrong you stand condemned to hell. The question is, are you willing to accept Christ who bore your sins on the cross? If you do you will then be given divine power to cease from the dominating influence of your sin nature. God’s Holy Spirit will use the word of God to empower you to live a supernatural life you could in no other wise live.
Getting back to the heaven and the earth fleeing away:
II Pet.3:10 “But the day of the Lord (day of final judgment), this day “will come [future active indicative verb], it will come as a thief in the night,[ it will come suddenly and without notice] in which the heavens shall pass away [future middle indicative verb of the Greek word parerchomai], it will pass with a great noise, [ a whizzing sound of rapid motion].
When this happens the elements shall melt with a fervent heat. The word elements comes from the Greek word, stoicheia , and refers to the four basic elements of creation; earth, wind, fire, and water.
These shall melt, that is, be dissolved, [Future Passive of the Greek word luo from where we get our word loosened.] The elements will be loosened as a result of this fervent heat, and “the earth also, and works that are in it, shall be burned up.”
II Pet.3:11-12 read...
So here is the scene in Rev.20:11-15:
All humanity is taken from the earth including the unsaved in the confines of Hades.
All believers in Jesus Christ stand in complete union in the glories of heaven, these make up the first resurrection. Their resurrections occurred at different times, but now they are all together.
Mean while all the unsaved of all time stand in terror before the great white throne judgment of God, this is the second death group.
The heavens and the earth are consumed with fire while the judgment of the lost takes place at the throne of sorrows; the great white throne.
In our next lesson we will continue with the day of judgment of the unsaved.