While many predicted events are be tween us and the appearing of Christ in. glory, many things which form the burden of prophetic warning and find their amplified accent in our Lord’s dis course and are uttered and illuminated for us in the parenthetic chapters of Revelation, those terrible chapters which extend from the sixth to the nineteenth, between us and the coming of the Lord for the Church there is not a single fore-announced event. It may be at any hour and therefore at any moment. He has only to speak; the door will be opened. According to the Word of God, the testimony of the Son of God and the corroborative and unbroken testimony of the apostles, there is not the thickness of tissue paper between us who are Chris tians and the Judgment Seat of Christ. In the light of this tremendous judi cial imminency, the corollary of the present opportunity is immensely self- evident. As Christians we ought to arouse. We ought to make our calling and election sure. What an unspeakable experience it would be if before morning we should be summoned to the Judgment Seat of Christ and learn, sooner or later, that we could not pass the examination with honor to ourselves or glory to the Lord! What disaster, what shame if for the sake of a dance, a game of cards, a glass of wine, a night in the theatre; what a disaster if for the sake of self pleasure, self-gratification of any sort, and unwillingness to be strong and sted- fast and to stand for truth, a compro mise and failure by the way; what dis aster, what indescribable shame if we should find we were shut out from that golden hour, that splendid sweep of a thousand heaven-illuminated years. It is time to awake and let go the grip upon the things of earth, time to let the vision of heaven and heavenly things enter in and possess the soul, time to let go the handfuls of dust we call our plans, plans already slipping through our loosening fingers and falling into the ever-opening trench we call a grave; time to realize God in our daily exper ience, be as conscious of God as we are of the winds that blow or the heat that burns or the circumstance that dis turbs, hinders, or makes us turn; time to arouse, because should the voice call and the hand of power lift us to the Judgment Seat, we should be ready without hesitation and wholly unafraid to answer and say: “ Here, Lord, am I.” Get into Christ, let Christ get into you. Take God at His word, believe the record, stand on the promise, offer Christ as your sacrifice. Claim Him as your substitute; say, “ O God, death is my doom and death is my due; but Thou hast given Thy Son for such as I. Accept the judgment which fell on Him as though it had fallen on me. By His bloody pains, His anguish and His woe, let me go free. Accept me in His name, make me Thy child and Thine forever more.” Page Thirteen
and a half and during that three years and a half Satan is represented in heaven accusing the brethren, and this accusa tion implies and includes a trial before a judge, then evidently during that three years and a half the Judgment Seat of Christ has been in session that long at least, and as much longer as may be the lapse of time between the moment when the Church is taken up and the Antichrist enters into his seven years’ covenant with apostate Jews. During the final three years and a half on earth Satan will sway the whole world through this man of sin, the son of perdition, the Antichrist. Then will come the climax. Christ and His translated and adjudged saints will descend in manifested glory to the Mount of Olives to execute judgment on the ★ ★ ★ "The spectacle of a nation praying is more awe-inspiring than the ex plosion of an atomic bomb: the force of prayer is greater than any pos sible man-made or man-controlled powers, because prayer is man's greatest means of tapping the infi nite resources of God." — J. Edgar Hoover Head of Federal Bureau of Investigation kingdom of Satan, overthrow iniquity and set up the reign and rule of right eousness. All the saints will come with Him; for it is written: “ This honor have all his saints.” But, after the judg ment of the nations, those who are not to share in the earthly kingdom will, in the nature of the case, return to the upper city and remain there during the thousand years. Rulership and participa tion with Christ during the thousand years on earth is wholly and altogether a matter of reward. It is for those to whom at the Judgment Seat our Lord shall say: “ Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Christ as Judge is already imminently before the door of the Church. This is the Divine and Holy Ghost way of saying that the coming of Christ for His Church is imminent. So imminent is it that the Holy Ghost says He is before the door. If the door should be opened, the Church would find herself face to face with Him, not only as her Saviour but as her righteous Judge. ★ ★ ★
built nothing better than wood, hay and stubble on the foundation of Christ will be judged as unfaithful stewards of the Word of God. At that Judgment Seat the preachers who have been willing to make the Church a rubbish heap will be fully re vealed—men who have mixed law and grace, the righteousness of God with the righteousness of man; who have preached socialism and state legislation; who, like Lot, have endeavored to clean up Sodom, and like Lot in Sodom have vexed their righteous but unspiritual souls with their daily and manifested inability to keep it clean. The Judgment Seat of Christ will have a twofold consummation. It will continue for three years and a half and then Satan will be cast out of heaven. There need be no astonishment at the sugges tion of the devil being in heaven. He is the prince of the power of the air, the head of the hierarchy of evil spirits and angels who occupy the dark void sur rounding the earth. That Satan has access to the presence of the Lord is revealed in the first chapter of the book of Job. He comes into the presence of the Lord and accuses Job. This is his role. He is both an accuser and a slanderer. He is prosecuting attorney for righteous ness. He will be there to accuse the brethren. Then will be seen the advantage of confessing to the Lord down here. Whatever has been so confessed down here cannot appear up there. But Satan will bring to light every unconfessed sin and failure on the part of the Chris tian. Those who have been faithful, against whom he can bring no accusa tion, will overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. They will meet the charges he shall make by an appeal to the redeem ing and cleansing power of the blood and to the record of their faithfulness in testimony when here. He will be finally cast out into the earth and his angels with him. That the Judgment Seat of Christ will last three years and a half and that the casting out of Satan is the terminal point of the Judgment Seat of Christ is demonstrated by the fact that Antichrist, the man of sin who will be reigning on the earth after the Lord has translated the Church to heaven and set up the Judgment Seat, will enter into a covenant or alliance with the Jews in Palestine for seven years (called in the prophecy of Daniel “ one week,” that is, a period of seven, and by the context signifying years). In the midst of the seven years (that is, at the end of three years and a half) he breaks his alliance with the Jews. Now, it is at this very point of breakage he exalts himself with greatest power. An examination of Revelation thirteen will show that it is after Satan has been cast out that he himself gives all his own power to the “ beast” or Antichrist. The casting of Satan out of heaven then is coincident with the exalta tion to power of the man of sin; and as this exaltation takes place in the midst of the week or at the end of three years F E B R U A R Y , 1 9 5 3
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