Revelation 20:11–15

The character of the throne itself is the first thing to attract our attention. It is called "great" — great either because it fits the dignity of the Judge, or because it suits the size of the judgment. It is also called "white." This is probably not the colour we know as white, like white linen. Instead, the word really means clear or bright — the "whiteness of light." This expresses the dazzling purity of holiness — whether the holiness of the Judge Himself, or of the standard His judgment will follow. Everything connected with Him must match what He is in His own essential nature: the throne He sits on, and the sentence He pronounces. The Judge is not named here, though John saw the One seated on the throne. But we know from other Scriptures that it is Christ.

Jesus sits upon that throne. He who is now the Saviour must then be the judge. God has put all authority into His hand, once pierced for our sins, and He sits there and wields the sword.

Many people suppose this to be the time of the coming of Christ, and so put the millennium before His coming. But this will not bear the light of Scripture... When the Lord Jesus comes, He comes to the earth from heaven. But that is not the case here. For the Lord sits on a great white throne, and instead of His coming from heaven to earth, both earth and heaven are gone. It cannot be His coming to the earth, for there is no earth to come to. The entire system of earth and heaven as they now are will have vanished from the scene. It will not be annihilated, but destroyed. There is a great difference between those two thoughts.

The earth and the sky the Lord Himself appointed to display His glory and righteousness cannot stay in the glory of His face... "Earth and sky fled away" — they did not pass out of existence, and they were not annihilated. The next clause guards against that unscriptural conclusion — "no place was found for them."... The world of the thousand years passes away, and the eternal worlds come in; both are material. Between the two, the great white throne is set up. This gives profound solemnity to the scene before us. For the throne is not set on the earth, nor in relation to its dispensations and times. It is a scene entirely outside human history. We have passed out of time into eternity. The judgment of the throne is therefore final, and eternal in its very nature.

On what do the dead stand? Not on earth, for that has disappeared... The greatest of the prophets saw a throne with an altar of sacrifice beside it (Isaiah 6). There the altar met and answered the righteous claim of the throne. The throne in the innermost room of the tabernacle of old had blood — the witness of death — sprinkled on it. But the throne before us is great and white, and there is neither altar nor blood. Oh, the horror, the despair, the agony of standing in one's sins, searched by the blaze of divine light! There are no caves, rocks or caverns in which the guilty soul may hide, for these have fled.

There they stand (verse 12), the great and the small, before the throne; but where is it? Just before, in verse 11, we are told the earth and the heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. Then we see, not thrones, but "a great white throne," and the dead stand before it to be judged... At the end of the thousand years Christ does not come. Instead the heaven and the earth that now are depart.

This is clearly not a judgment of living people, like the one in Matthew 25, where people are separated as sheep from goats. No — the passage says clearly that it is "the dead, great and small," who are found here. It is the dead out of Christ, the unsaved dead, and only they... this is not a throne of grace, or sprinkled blood to meet the sinner's need, but of stern unbending judgment and nothing but judgment.

At the sounding of the seventh trumpet, Revelation 11:18 says, "your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants... and those who fear your name, both small and great." Do the objectors themselves take that phrase to include everyone of every age who fears God's name? Of course they do not.

Every responsible soul on earth has his life and history written above. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is too small; God records it all, and never gets it wrong. Infants and those without understanding are the only exceptions. Judgment goes by works, by deeds. People are responsible for what they have done, not for what they are by birth... We cannot help the existence of the evil nature in us, but we are responsible for its activity.

"The book of life" is opened; but there is no judgment for those whose names are written in it by the hand of God's choosing, redeeming love. "The books" are opened too — those dreadful records written in letters deep, broad, and black. They are the terrible lists of the sins of every man, woman, and child, from the beginning to the end of time. There will be no hiding in the crowd. Each one will stand there alone, as a single person, in that appalling moment.

Deeds long since forgotten, and sins that people thought too small to matter and have dropped out of memory — all of them will be brought out as the ground of condemnation. And more than that: the book of life will be opened, and if the names of those brought before this solemn court are not found in it, the sentence is passed... So there are two kinds of evidence, positive and negative. Both condemn, and both shut out every ground of appeal.

The book of life is opened next and searched closely. Not one name of the ungodly is found in its pages. Their names could have been written in that book, but they despised mercy and refused grace, so now judgment and its carrying out must take their course.

People speak as though men were on probation, and the day of judgment would prove how it will turn out with them, whether they will be saved or lost. This is all wrong... the gospel comes to man and addresses him as one already lost, and needing salvation. Men do not have to wait until the judgment to know how it will turn out... Judgment is for my work (Revelation 20:12), and on that ground all are already lost. But salvation is of grace, and is God's work.