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THE JUDGMENT OF THE GREAT DAY

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, April 21, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 16

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THE JUDGMENT OF THE GREAT DAY.

(Continued.)
The saints having been received into paradise, into the presence of the Father, and having partaken of the marriage supper of the Lamb, as already set forth, they are ready, in conjunction with their Redeemer, to enter upon the Judgment of the wicked world, which is now committed to their hands. The sitting of the saints in Judgment must begin after they have been themselves accepted of the Father through Jesus Christ, but before the sentence, “Depart, ye cursed,” is pronounced by the Saviour upon the wicked whose cases are considered in this Judgment. The following texts bring to view this great Judgment work of the saints:—
Dan. 7:21, 22: “I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; until the Ancient of days came, and JUDGMENT WAS GIVEN TO THE SAINTS OF THE MOST HIGH; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.”
1 Cor. 4:5: “Therefore judge nothing BEFORE THE TIME, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart: and then shall every man have praise of God.”
1 Cor. 6:1–3: “Dare any of you having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust and not before the saints? Do ye not know that THE SAINTS SHALL JUDGE THE WORLD? and if the world SHALL BE JUDGED BY YOU, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that WE SHALL JUDGE ANGELS? how much more things that pertain to this life?”
Rev. 20:4–6: “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and JUDGMENT WAS GIVEN UNTO THEM; and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshiped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.”
We have presented these texts together that the reader might have before him at one view the testimony of the Scriptures on this important point. Let us examine them briefly in order.
The text first quoted declares plainly that the saints are to have a work of Judgment committed to them. But, as already noticed, this cannot be placed in their hands till they have themselves passed that investigative Judgment which decides all cases, and shows that they are accepted of God. All cases having therefore been decided for life or death, the Judgment work of the saints cannot relate to the salvation or damnation of those who are judged by them, but solely to the determination of the measure of their guilt.
The second text forbids on the part of the church the work of Judgment “before the time.” This plainly implies that when the appropriate time does come, then this work is to be done by those who at present are forbidden to do it. And that time will be reached when this prohibition expires; and this is limited by the words, “Until the Lord come.” This must refer to the second coming of Christ, and locates the Judgment work of the saints immediately subsequent to that event. That the decisions which they will render will be correct, is guaranteed in the promise that the Lord shall “bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the heart.” This will no doubt be accomplished by placing in the hands of the saints the books of record which contain an accurate statement of the deeds of those to be judged by them. Barnes in his note on this text makes this remark:—
“‘And then shall every man have praise of God.’ The word here rendered praise (ἔπαινος) denotes in this place reward, or that which is due to him; the just sentence which ought to be pronounced on his character. It does not mean, as our translation would imply, that every man will then receive the divine approbation—which will not be true; but that every man shall receive what is due to his character, whether good or evil. So Bloomfield and Bretschneider explain it.”
The third text states in the most explicit manner, “that the saints shall judge the world.” As it occurs in the same epistle which forbids this judgment “before the time, until the Lord come,” it is manifest that this is a work which the saints enter upon immediately after they have been exalted to reign with Christ. The nature of the Judgment which the saints are to decide is clearly determined by two facts: 1. It is rendered by the saints after the Lord has brought to light the hidden works of darkness, and made manifest the counsels of the heart; 2. It is said in this same passage and in the same manner, that the saints “shall judge angels,” meaning of course those angels that have sinned, whose cases are presented in the following texts:—
2 Pet. 2:4: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be RESERVED UNTO JUDGMENT.”
Jude 6: “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness UNTO THE JUDGMENT OF THE GREAT DAY.”
These two facts are decisive as to the nature of the Judgment which the saints are to engage in when exalted at Christ’s right hand. They are not to be judges over men in a state of probation, something as the ancient judges of Israel were raised up to rule over God’s ancient people; but their Judgment is to be rendered in the case of wicked men when the Lord brings “to light the hidden things of darkness,” and it is to be exercised alike in the case of sinful men, and fallen angels. It is not a Judgment to determine the guilt or innocence of the parties to be judged; for the guilt of the angels was virtually pronounced to be unpardonable when they were cast out of heaven, and delivered to chains of darkness, i. e., to utter despair, and the hopeless bondage of their own sins. And as to wicked men, their lost condition is determined by the investigative Judgment, before Judgment is passed upon them by the saints; and their condition is declared by the resurrection and translation of the just, which separates and sets upon the left hand all others as unworthy of everlasting life. And the fact that the saints thus sit in Judgment to determine the measure of every wicked man’s guilt, is the most absolute proof that all the wicked will have a resurrection to consciousness; that they will awake to shame, as declared by the prophet Daniel (12:2), and that God, when he renders to every man according to his deeds, designs, as the apostle Paul declares in Rom. 2:5–9, to inflict “tribulation and anguish” upon every soul of man that doeth evil.
In reference to the text we are now considering (1 Cor. 6:2), and in harmony with the view here presented, Dr. Bloomfield remarks:—
“Upon the whole, there is, after all, no interpretation that involves less of difficulty than the common one, supported by some Latin Fathers, and, of modern divines, by Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, Beza, Casaubon, Crellius, Wolf, Jeremy Taylor, Doddridge, Pearce, Newcome, Scott, and others, by which it is supposed that the faithful servants of God, after being accepted in Christ, shall be in a certain sense assessores judicii, by concurrence, with Christ, and being partakers of the Judgment to be held by him over wicked men and apostate angels; who are, as we learn from 2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6, reserved unto the Judgment of the last day.”
On the same text Dr. Barnes presents this comment:—
“Grotius supposes it means that they shall be first judged by Christ, and then act as assessors to him in the Judgment, or join with him in condemning the wicked.”
We now come to the fourth and last text (Rev. 20:4) relative to this Judgment by the saints. This is a very remarkable one. It shows that the resurrection of the just precedes the work of Judgment by them. It elevates them to thrones of Judgment, where they live and reign with Christ during the period between their own resurrection and that of “the rest of the dead.” It measures the space of time to be occupied in this vast work; namely, a thousand years! And this period is certainly none too long for the examination of the books containing the deeds of all wicked men and fallen angels, even though all the saints engage in it, as we have learned that they will.
In this statement respecting the “thrones,” there is evident allusion to Dan. 7:9, which speaks of the “thrones” being “cast down,” or more correctly rendered “were placed,” or “set up,” as many critics affirm. These thrones were “placed” those who were to engage in the work of Judgment when the Ancient of days took his seat as Judge in the second apartment of the heavenly temple, the cleansing of the sanctuary, or the investigative Judgment, began. And when at last “Judgment” was committed to the hands of the saints of the Most High, and they are able to enter into the temple, the pouring out of the plagues (Rev. 15:8), it appears that they sit upon these very thrones, and the Saviour at their head, finish the work of Judgment, as indicated in the texts before us. In this exalted state they are priests to God and to Christ, not as mediators with them in behalf of wicked men, but as worshipers of God and the Lamb, even as Christians in their mortal state are a royal priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. 1 Pet. 2:5, 9.
(To be Continued.)