Before the judgement of the Lost will be one for the believers called the Judgement Seat of Christ -- aka the Bema Seat Judgement.
The Bema ain’t a place to decided if the person will get into heaven. They already decided when they turned and trusted Christ, but this is a place where the heart motives of obedience will be judged and rewards will be given. The person was freely forgiven, they are fully washed cuz of hte Cross and listen.. you too can make your reservations in advance. Think about it. Eternity is a long time. Now is a good time for getting right.. before you are left. Hey, God with His wonderful grace can help you with the repentance and saving faith. Just be honest and come as you are..to Him.
But who will be the Judge at the Great White Throne Judgement ahead? By what standard will those who stand before Him and it be judged? Will there be different degrees of punishment for unbelievers in Hell? What is the difference between the book of life, the Lamb’s book of life, and the other books that will be opened?
We all worship something or someone, why not worship the only One worthy of worship? Are you the god that you worship, or do you live for another? What is your master passion -- who or what has you? Who is your master? The so called gods of false world religions are not at all holy. They are said to be appeased by vain ritual and ceremony; the ascetics make many people feel good as they remember back to their childhood time there with family. The religions inspire no real fear of God in regards to accountability in their worshipers.
But the one real God is just, is kind, is living, is loving and yet is very holy. He doesn't change and must judge sin. We each choose, will my sins be judged on Christ's cross (as we repent and believe in Him) or for all eternity in HE DOUBLE HOCKEY-STICKS (hell -- the lake of fire)?
Ought not we share about Jesus? We ought not to talk about hell or the final judgement here without a tear ..for it’ll be dealing with and regarding some people we really love. The final sentencing of the lost is the most serious, sobering and tragic passage in all the Bible. It will be the last courtroom scene that will ever take place. After this there will never be a trial again, and the Lord will never need to act as Judge.
The accused will not be allowed to quibble over their guilt or innocence. There will be a Prosecutor, but no defender; an Accuser, but no advocate. There will be an indictment, but no defense mounted by the accused; the convicting evidence will be presented with no cross-examination. There will be an utterly unsympathetic Judge and no jury. There will be no appeal of the sentence once it is pronounced. The guilty will be punished eternally with no possibility of parole in a prison from which there is no escape. Banished for eternity, they will be without God, without love, and without hope.
The famous words, “Abandon hope, all you who enter here,” appeared above the gates of hell in Dante’s fanciful epic poem Inferno. According to Dante, those who pass beneath that sign will have no hope of ever getting out. Though the details of his fictional picture of heaven, hell and purgatory range from the fantastic to the blasphemous, he was right about this: at the end of the day, the wicked of this world will get a one-way ticket to hell. All hope vanishes and there will be no escape from the lake of fire forever and ever. And forever is a long time. This will be true of those at the great white throne judgment. They rejected the blessed hope (Titus 2:13); therefore, they will be without hope.
But ever since the fall of mankind in the garden of Eden, Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44), has attempted to deceive people about the reality of this inevitable judgment. He has done his best to convince the lost that there will be no final hearing. Satan has deceived sinners into believing that they can live as they please without fear of ultimate accountability or future punishment. Long ago the devil said to Eve: You will not surely die (Genesis 3:4), thus revealing his lie that sin would go unpunished.
The people that will be separated from the God of love by their decision to reject His dear Son Jesus will indeed be judged. But for forgiven in a relationship with Christ, however, there will be zero condo -- there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Think about it. For believers, the great white throne judgment will be no sweat at all -- it will vindicate their lives. Evil will be punished and faithfulness will be rewarded.
Unbelievers in contrast will stand spiritually naked so to speak before the Judge of all the earth. They will only have their putrid works as their defense that won’t stand the test. Mankind has always wanted to be judged according to their works – this will be their opportunity. Separated from Messiah at death, they will have no way of being united with Him again at the great white throne. They had made their choice long ago. God's only option will be to send them away from His presence, saying: Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his fallen angels (Matt. 25:41).
Jesus Christ will sit on a great white throne (20:11a). Although He shares the throne with God the Father (3:21), it is through Jesus Christ (Yeshua) alone that God (ADONAI) renders the final judgment.
Nearly fifty times in the book of Revelation there is the mention of the throne. Why is it white?... perhaps because this points to God’s purity, holiness, righteousness and justice. Every verdict handed down from this great white throne by the Lord will be completely righteous and just (Psalm 9:7-8) because that is His nature. He cannot act otherwise. Even more inspiring than the throne itself, was Him who sat on it (20:11b). All judgment has been given to Jesus Christ. The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son (John 5:22). Then several verses later John added: For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself. And He has given Him authority to judge because He is the Son of Man (John 5:26-27). Other biblical writers identify Christ as the Judge also (Acts 10:42, 17:31; Romans 2:16; 2 Timothy 4:1). Therefore, it is the second person of the Trinity, Jesus a.k.a. Yeshua Messiah, who will sit in final judgment of unbelievers.
Believers will actually share in the judging. Amazing huh. In Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:28-30 Jesus suggested that the Jewish disciples with Him would judge the twelve tribes of Israel. It will happen. In addition, we are told that believers will sit on thrones and judge the earth (See 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 and Revelation 3:21, 20:4). We can’t know all the details until that time. Where the Bible is silent, we must not speak dogmatically -- we must remain silent on that. Where it speaks, let's wisely speak. Tactfully share in love.
After describing the vision of Jesus on His throne, John realized that the earth and sky fled from His presence. The earth will have been reconfigured by the devastating judgments of the Great Tribulation and then restored during the messianic Kingdom. Yet, it will still be affected by sin and subject to the effects of the man's Fall. Yes, it too shared the effects of man’s sin (Romans 8:19-22). Nothing tainted by sin will be allowed to remain or exist in the Eternal State. Peter told us to: Live holy and godly lives of faith as you look forward to the day of God and speed it’s coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness (Second Peter 3:11-13).
The present earth and sky will not merely be shifted or reshaped, because John saw that there was no place for them (20:11c). They will be totally uncreated. Just as they came from nothing by the word of God (Genesis 1:3-26), they will be sucked into black nothingness by the same word of God. The day of the Lord will come suddenly and unexpectedly, just like a thief. The heavens will disappear by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare, totally consumed (Second Peter 3:10). It didn’t take eons of evolution to create the universe, and it won’t take eons toun create it. The uncreation of the universe will be like its creation, by the spoken word of God. That will leave everything ready for the judgment itself.
The prisoners before the bar of justice will all be physically dead, since no one could survive the destruction of the present universe. The last living unbelievers will die when God crushes Satan’s rebellion at the end of the thousand-year millennium (20:8-9). The last living Gentile believers who came to Christ during the Millennium will be translated and transformed into their resurrection bodies, like Enoch (Gen 5:24), Elijah (2 Kings 2:11), and the raptured Church (1 Thess. 4:13-18).
Only God sees the hearts, the motives, the thoughts -- only He can save people. I certainly can't say this one or that one will go to hell. Don't want any to go there, but many have sadly chosen this place by their rejection of Christ.
The resurrected dead, however, are pictured standing before the throne of divine judgment. These are not merely the dead from Satan’s last rebellion at the end of the Millennium, but will include all the unbelievers who ever lived (see the Second Resurrection in the Bible). To emphasize the broad scope of the judgment, John notes that the grand mass of unbelievers before Messiah will include both the small and the great. There will be a terrible fellowship... the dead, small and great, will stand before the Lord. Little men and paltry women whose lives were filled with pettiness, selfishness, and nasty little sins will be there. The small, whose lives amounted to nothing will be there, whose very sins were drab and plain, mean, spiteful, irritable, groveling, vulgar, common and cheap. The great will also be there, men who sinned with a high hand, with some pomp, courage and flair. Men like Alexander the Great, Osama bin Laden, Adolph Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Joseph Stalin will be present, men who went in for wickedness on a really grand scale with the world as their stage and who apparently died unrepentant. They will all be arraigned and on their way to be permanently damned. What a scene that will be!
What a waste of potential, what a waste of life. Sad for me to think about this! Before they are sent to the lake of fire; however, they will experience God's love and justice. As they stand before the great white throne and He who sits upon it, they will be in the presence of the Lord of real love. Love isn't God, but Jesus is fully God and God is love. Totally selfless. He honors those choices that we made on earth. If they had never experienced His love on earth, they will experience it in heaven. The last pleasant feeling they will have before spending eternity in the burning, choking, putrid second death, will be His love. The contrast will be devastating. I cannot fathom the hopelessness and the sorrow. No wonder the Bible tells us that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:12, 13:42, 13:50, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30; Luke 13:28).
A book was opened, which is the book of life (20:12b). This book contains the names of every person who was ever conceived: Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16). Believer’s names are retained in the book of life: He who overcomes will be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life (Rev 3:5). However, the lost will have their names blotted out of the book of life. King David said: May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous (Psalm 69:28). Many years before, Moses had pleaded with God (ADONAI) to blot him out of His book rather than withhold forgiveness from the Israelites who had sinned (Exodus 32:30-32). Because the names of the lost will be blotted out, they will be worthy of this judgment.
Books were opened (20:12a)... and the dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in those books (20:12c). They will contain the thoughts, words, and deeds of each unbelieving soul. The evidence written on the life of every soul will be the basis of the degrees of punishment in hell.466 The purpose of the great white throne judgment will not be to determine if a person is saved or lost, because that will be settled forever (one way or the other) at death. The purpose at the great white throne will be to determine the degree of punishment. There is a principle in the Bible that teaches degrees of punishment in hell are based upon degrees of sinfulness in this world. Jesus talked about things being more tolerable for some than for others in the day of judgment (Mt 11:20-24; Lk 12:47; Jn 19:11). On the basis of what is written in these books that the degrees of punishment will be determined. Consequently, even unbelievers will be treated fairly.
When the Bible says the books are opened and the dead are judged, Seventh Day Adventist’s believe that the dead are closely investigated. From this belief they have invented a doctrine called Investigative Judgment. This blasphemous doctrine states that Jesus can forgive sin, but He cannotblot out sin. They teach that only Satan can blot out sin and therefore the ultimate power of salvation lies with Satan and not Christ! You might want to remember that the next time they come to your door!
You can gain an assurance of salvation in Christ today. You need this now -- you need Him more than all else. Today you do, more than we know.
Hey, no purgatory, no karma, no "I hope my good deeds will outweigh all by bad deeds and thoughts" but we all will reap what we sow. One group that will be judged at that time will be the demons (fallen angels) who tried to ruin God’s plan of salvation by creating a race of demon possessed humans that could not be saved before the Flood. Those demons were so dangerous that God had to create a special prison for them called Tartarus (1 Pet 3:19-20; Ju 6), beneath Sh'ol. The word translated hell in 2 Peter 2:4 is the Greek word tartarus. For if God did not spare the fallen angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, or tartarus, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment. They were so dangerous that they were not released with Satan and the other demons at the end of the Millennium (20:7-10). Their judgment will come when the books are finally opened (20:12) after the last rebellion is crushed.
Finally, another book mentioned in the Bible is the Lamb’s book of life. This book only contains the names of those who are born again. You must be born again....cuz God said you must be born again (see John 3:3 and the whole context). Interestingly, their names were written into this book before the earth was ever created (13:8; 17:8b). I don't believe that God’s children will appear at the Great White Throne judgment --nothing further is said concerning them until after the New Jerusalem descends from heaven to the new earth.
