(*All Bible verses are from the NIV unless otherwise noted)
Chapter 20
11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.
12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done.
14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.
15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
Rev 20:11
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it:
John has seen Christ coming on a white cloud (14:14), and upon a white horse (6:2; 19:11), and now on a great white throne with the nations gathered before him:
Matt 25:31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
John 5:27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
Acts 10:42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.
Acts 17:31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
Phil 2:10 …that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
2 Tim 4:1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:
Rev 20:11
The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them:
Compare this verse with Daniel’s interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream:
Dan 2:35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
Dan 2:44 “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.
Daniel was shown that the old order of things—empires, kingdoms, and rulers—would become dust and be blown away before the coming kingdom of God. In much the same way, the “earth and sky” that John sees are symbolic of the material and transitory things of this earth that will be swept away by God’s Glory!
Rev 21:1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away..
Rev 20:12
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done:
The vision seems to draw a distinction between:
The books that were opened,
Which contain the things the dead had done,
And another book,
The book of life.
John has seen the redeemed standing with Christ, clothed in white, their names written in the Book of Life (7:9-16 and 20:4). Consider these passages again:
Eph 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Rom 10:9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
Luke 7:50 Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
John 3:15 … that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
According to these verses, it’s not the things believers have done that save them. Rather, faith in Christ saves a person from God’s judgment. The Book of Life symbolizes those who have been sealed to God through their faith in Christ. The “other books” that are opened symbolize those who have rejected Christ. They stand exposed by “the things they had done,” which they have chosen not to have washed clean through faith in Jesus.
Let’s approach this courtroom scene from a different angle. If following all the rules and laws is what saves a believer (as the Pharisees taught), even if one of those laws is broken, the person has failed and is found guilty!
Live by rules and laws to gain salvation:
Galatians 3:10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”
James 2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
Live by faith in Christ’s redeeming grace:
John 5:24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.
1John 5:4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
Paul presents the only solution:
Gal 2:19 [NLT] For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So, I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God1.
We all fail miserably to conform to God’s purity (Rom 3:23), but Christ freely offers to pay for those failings himself! Purposefully rejecting the forgiveness offered by God through Christ leaves the rebellious heart exposed before the Father’s judgment seat. If a person refuses a friend’s offer to pay the fine that is demanded for breaking a law, the Judge has no alternative but to make the guilty party pay the fine.
Rev 20:14-15
Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire:
The author of the Book of Hebrews offers this insight:
Heb 10:26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
We all make mistakes – poor choices and have lapses in self-control. But faithful believers never stop bowing before God’s love in faith and repentance. There’s a difference between making a mistake and truly trying to change one’s ways, and deliberately continuing to rebel against God with no remorse or intention to change!
The sad reality is that there are those who know the truth—who have experienced God’s love but purposefully choose ultimate and complete rebellion against Him.
Ps 52:3 You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth.
2 Tim 3:1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—
Some willingly reject the Spirit of truth, knowing exactly what they’re doing. In these cases, it isn’t that God refuses to forgive certain sins, but simply that those who know the truth and yet choose to reject it do not want, nor will they accept, His forgiveness:
Psa 119:155 Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek out your decrees.
Rom 2:5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.
The images of the lake of fire and the second death symbolize this terrible separation.
Gary North makes these observations: Both the regenerate culture of Christ, and the unregenerate culture of unbelief, develop side-by-side throughout history as wheat and tares (Matt. 13:24-30), toward greater consistency in epistemological self-consciousness – a deeper awareness of what they believe and why they believe it. As Christians fully submit to God in spirit and in truth, they become more powerful in living out His nature as demonstrated in the life of Jesus, and their dominion expands. Satan knows that there is only one God, and he and his hordes tremble at the knowledge (James 2:19).
Paradoxically, when unbelievers begin to take Satan’s lies about the nature of reality seriously, they become more chaotic and impotent because their actions are so obvious to the believer. It is when they begin to come to awareness that indeed, Satan’s lawlessness is a lie, and knowingly embrace that lie in bitterness and hatred, that they become dangerous. They begin to grasp the truth, pervert and twist it, then use it to undermine and deceive God’s people. The terrible reality is, when the rebellious believe in God, know that He is going to be victorious, but fully and self-consciously strike out at Him in their futile fury anyway, the war will be over.2
Footnotes
- See also, Eph 2:8-9, Rom 5:8-10; 8:1-2, 8:10-11, 10:9-10, and Gal 3:10-14. ↩︎
- North, Gary, Common Grace, Eschatology, and Biblical Law, p. 657f. ↩︎
*All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.comThe “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
