Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1234
“And before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them, one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.” Matthew 25:32.
JESUS Christ, the man of Nazareth, who is also the Son of God, was crucified, dead and buried, and the third day He rose again from the dead. After He had showed Himself to His disciples for 40 days—sometimes to one alone, at other times to two or three together, and on one occasion to above 500 Brethren at once—He ascended into Heaven. From the Mount Olivet, from the midst of His disciples, He rose into mid air and, by-and-by, a cloud received Him out of their sight. That same Jesus who is gone into Heaven shall so come in like manner as He was seen to go up into Heaven. That is to say, in Person, in His own risen body. The same Christ who rose into the skies will, in the latter day, surely descend again. The time of His coming is not revealed to us—“Of that day and that hour knows no man, no, not the angels of God,” but the time is certainly growing nearer every day, and we cannot tell when the hour shall be.
We are told that He will come quickly. It seems a long time since that was said, even 1,800 years, but we remember that things which are slow with us, may be very quick with the Lord, for one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. It is not for us to know the times and the seasons. They remain hidden in the purpose of God. For excellent reasons these times and seasons are unrevealed, that we may be always on the watchtower, not knowing at what hour the Lord Jesus may be revealed.
To the ungodly world He will come as a thief in the night and take them unaware. But we, Brothers and Sisters, are not in darkness that that day should overtake us as a thief. Being children of the day, we are taught to be wakeful, and standing in the clear light, with our loins girt, we ought to be always looking for our Master’s appearing. Always are we to be watching, never sleeping. Our text tells us that as one result of His coming there will be a general judgement. I am not going, tonight, to try and arrange the other events which will happen at the Lord’s coming.
It is probably true that at His coming there will be, first of all, a resurrection and rewarding of His saints, a dividing of the 10 cities and the five cities, according to the faithfulness of those who were entrusted with talents. And at the close of that period will come that last tremendous day of which Prophets and Apostles have spoken—
“The day that many thought should never come; That all the wicked wished should never come; That all the righteous had expected long; Day greatly feared, and yet too little feared By him who feared it most.”
A day of fear and wrath! A day of destruction of the ungodly! A testing day to all mankind! A day which shall burn as an oven! We may tremblingly say of it, “Who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap.”
There shall rise from the dead the hosts that perished before the flood and those, also, who were drowned amid its awful surges. There, too, shall appear the myriads that followed at the call of Nimrod, the swarms of the sons of Japheth who divided the isles of the Gentiles, and the hordes that marched to battle at the command of the kings of Assyria and
Babylon. The dead of Egypt shall rise from their beds of spices, or from the earth with which their dust has mingled. The tens of thousands shall be there over whom Xerxes wept when he remembered how soon they would all pass away. The Greek and the Persian, these, shall rise, and the Roman, too, and all the hordes of Huns and Goths that swarmed like bees from the northern hives. They all passed into the unknown land, but they are not lost—they shall each answer to the muster roll in the Great Day of the Lord.
The earth, which is now becoming more and more a graveyard, shall yield up her dead and the sea, itself, transformed into a solid pavement, shall bear upon its bosom the lonely ones who today lie asleep in her gloomy caverns. All of woman born shall come forth from the prolific womb of the sepulcher—myriads, myriads countless as the drops of the morning, or as the sands of the sea shore. Multitudes, multitudes shall be gathered together in the valley of decision! Their bones shall come together and breath shall enter their bodies anew, and they shall live once more. Long as they have slept in the tomb, they shall all rise with one impulse and start up with one thought—to appear before their Judge.
The Great White Throne shall be set on high, all pure and lustrous, bright and clear like a sapphire, as one vast mirror in which man shall see himself and his sins reflected—and on that Throne shall sit the Son of Man. That same Jesus who was nailed to the tree and rose to Heaven shall sit upon the Judgement Seat, appointed to determine the cases of all mankind of every age. What an assemblage! No imagination can compass it. Far as the eyes can see—yes, far as the eagle’s pinion can soar—the earth shall be covered with men like a field with grass in the springtide! And there will they all stand with the Judge upon the Great White Throne as the common center of observation, for every eye shall see Him, and they, also, that crucified Him. And all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.