Welcome to this weekend’s InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley. Because of God’s grace, you don’t have to enter eternity separated from him. Today we conclude our series, How to Choose Your Destiny, with a fresh look at the final judgment. This message deals with the most tense-filled fearful moments in all of human history.
And the title of the message is the final judgment of God. Now some of you are not going to be in that judgment but some of you are going to be. That is those of you who have refused the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord of your life. Those of you who have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of your sins.
Those of you who have decided to do your own thing to live your life as you please to put off to one of these days that you’re going to do better. All of you who die without the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior. You who have rejected his blood. You who have shunned his book. You who have shunned the offer of salvation, have turned away your friends who’ve offered you the opportunity of being saved.
You, my friends, who die without the Lord Jesus Christ, will stand in the most tense-filled, fearful moments in human history when before a righteous, holy God, you listen to him hand down the verdict, the irrevocable and eternal verdict concerning your future judgment and your eternity. The Bible says, “It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment.
” And so, you’re going to spend eternity somewhere. And if you do not receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, if you do not accept him in the forgiveness of your sins, you’re going to stand in this judgment that we’re about to read about. You’re going to have to give an account for every sin that you’ve ever committed.
And then you’re going to be cast, the Bible says, into a place called the lake of fire where you’re going to spend eternity. The passage is in Revelation chapter 20. It is almost at the end of this book of the revelation which God gave to the apostle John on the aisle of Patmas. The Roman emperor thought he did John a great disfavor by banishing him to the aisle of Patmas.
But God used that time of banishment to give to him the revelation of things that will come to pass in the future. And part of that is described in the 20th chapter of the book of Revelation as he describes the future judgment and he calls it the great white throne judgment beginning if you will in verse 11. And I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it from whose presence earth and heaven fled away and no place was found for them.
And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne. And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from those things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it. And death and hades, or torment, gave up the dead which were in them.
And they were judged, every one of them, according to their deeds. and death and Hades or torment were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. In God’s calendar of events according to the scriptures, this is the way the events are going to transpire.
You and I will be here in life just as we are today. Suddenly, the Bible says with a shout, the voice of the archangel, the trumpet of God, the Lord Jesus Christ is coming from heaven. And the moment that happens, the Bible says that all the graves of all of those who have trusted Jesus as their savior are going to open.
And the bodies of believers all over the world, out of the seas, out of the graves, are coming up out of the graves. They’re going to be transformed in the twinkling of an eye, likened and fashioned, likened the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. We which are alive at that time shall likewise be transformed and caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
