Great White Throne Part 2 (Lent 34, ,2024)

Yesterday, we said that this Judgment at the Great White Throne is a tale of two books and two outcomes.  The redeemed will look upon Jesus who is seated for judgment upon mankind and they will be filled with inexpressible joy, infinite love, and gratitude for His mercy and grace at their being included in the Book of Life.

There is another outcome here though.  This is the wide road for those who don’t choose the narrow road of salvation.  The sad part is that it will have been their choice.

Revelation 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.

The devastating side of the story is that the unrepentant will want to run and hide.  Their outcome is not happy and filled with the love of Christ precisely because it’s His love they rejected over and over.  The Book of Life is there, but their names are not in it.

Jesus Christ’s infinite love, mercy, and righteousness made visible provides the deepest destruction of any self-justification they crafted for themselves.  Now they see His infinite love and they panic. They panic because they are not covered by forgiveness, mercy, and grace, but with fig leaves of their own making that they’d been told would never be enough.  Therefore, only condemnation is left.  They are left as not belonging to life, even though at any time during their lives, they could have accepted Him and been accepted by Him. 

Exercise: Ponder this reality: Love is displayed in both outcomes and both books.  God judges justly.  Ask yourself, “If unrepentant evil is not destroyed by the only One who can legitimately destroy it, is His love any good?  If He lets unmitigated, utter, and total evil get the same outcome of righteousness He had to die to give the repentant, is He still purity in Love, and is He still good?” Evil cannot exist in heaven.

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If you’re already signed up on my Home Page sidebar to receive posts, you’ll get the 2024 Lent Devotionals automatically. Or you can “Like” Seminary Gal on Facebook and they’ll be delivered to your Facebook news feed. If you haven’t signed up, today is a great day to do so. Advent and Lenten devotionals remain among my most popular offerings. You don’t want to miss this encounter with God to prepare your heart for Easter! Understanding that prior years’ devotionals continue to minister, you may want to have access to a full series ahead of time:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
• Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
• Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.
• Our Lent 2020 devotional series offered prayer points surrounding “Be Thou My Vision” and were aimed at helping us to see God for who He is. The full set of devotionals are archived beginning February 26, 2020.
• The theme for 2021 Lent Devotionals was how to live between two worlds while waiting for Christ’s return. Into the gap between the City of Man and its fixation upon sin and the City of God with its demand for holiness, two words minister peace: But God. Praise God for His intervention! They are archived beginning February 17, 2021.
• Revelation in 40 devotionals for 2022 offered 40 vignettes, scenes, concepts, and thoughts to inspire us to read the Book of Revelation as it is written and to go deeper. They are archived beginning March 2, 2022.
• Last year’s devotionals “Created to Display His Image” explored what it truly means to be made in God’s Image and the profound significance of that fact. They are archived beginning February 22, 2023.