BY LESLIE KAY

AGGED RUINS JUT LIKE BROKEN TEETH from the fractured earth. Splintered remnants of uprooted trees, long since petrified, protrude from between blackened boulders. Sterile and still, the whole earth is a vast, cratered graveyard. Not a green thing trembles. Not a breathing thing stirs. Until, incredibly, living bodies begin to materialize in tile craters and the ruins. Bodies almost without number, varied beyond description--from strapping 14-foot herculean giants to spectral, hollow-eyed waifs ravaged by age and disease.

Is this the opening scene of the latest sci-fi or ghostly chiller? On the contrary, this is truth that's stranger than fiction. This is the dawning of judgment day. And these are the resurrected bodies of the damned.

Confrontation With Reality
Why has God summoned these lost souls from sleep? Why not let them remain in oblivion (they're just going to die again anyway)? It's because the second, eternal death they'll soon face brings a necessary, divinely orchestrated closure to the great controversy between good and evil. It's a death precipitated by a cosmic confrontation with reality--a dual encounter with the God they've spent a lifetime evading, and the secret self they've spent a lifetime concealing. To facilitate this confrontation, God permits the lost to do what comes naturally when they rise from death. He permits them to attempt His murder.

"As the wicked went into their graves, so they come forth with the same enmity to Christ and the same spirit of rebellion."¹ Whether or not they were conscious of this inner enmity during their lives, it was the actuating principle that shaped their characters. So they rise from death, incorrigible consciences and characters intact, compelled to "leave no means untried" in their determination to conquer the kingdom of God and establish in its place the kingdom of self.²

To that end Satan exploits their enmity and fastens their allegiance to himself, styling himself their redeemer and rightful king. Having rejected Christ, the lost are powerless to discern or resist his deceptions. Ensnared by his machinations, they follow him captive and "[march] up over the broad earth and [surround] the camp of the saints and the beloved city" (Rev. 20:9, RSV), with the express purpose of executing its King and placing Satan on His throne.

Yet just as they insanely imagine their goal to be within their grasp, they are arrested by a scene of transcendent splendor. "A great white throne" (verse 11), "high and lifted up,"³ appears above the city. On the throne sits the Son of God, whose radiance floods the fractured earth. "In His hands [are] the tables of the divine law" and "above [His] throne is revealed the cross,"⁴ symbols of His perfectly balanced character of justice and mercy. As His luminous eyes survey the murderous throng before Him, the light of truth breaks upon their darkened minds like a blinding sunburst. Naked before those eyes, every inner chamber of character exposed, the lost are suddenly "conscious of every sin which they have ever committed"; every selfish choice appears "as if written in letters of fire."⁵

In stark contrast to this horrific revelation of self is presented a panoramic portrayal of the self-emptying ministry of Christ. Powerless to turn away, the lost are riveted to the compelling vision of divine love as displayed in His sacrificial life and substitutionary death. As they watch, they are gripped by the certainty that the Good Shepherd could do no more to win their love and secure their salvation. He has spent Himself utterly for their sakes. The wall of evasion and denial behind which they have hidden from His grace is reduced to rubble, as each is made to understand "the nature of his own rejection of truth."⁶

"Before the vision of Calvary with its mysterious Victim" "every lying excuse [is] swept away."⁷ Another chance, another lifetime, wouldn't change their destiny. They are not saved, not because God didn't exhaust all His resources to save them, but because they have perversely and irrationally rejected Him. Reflecting upon their recent murderous attempt, they see that, if it were possible, they would annihilate their Source of life--indeed, by their choices they have effectually annihilated their Source of life. They have no place to fall but into the arms of death.

A Fearful Looking For of Judgment
The realization is too much. Gazing on the glorious city that they have unfit themselves to inhabit, looking upon the God of love they will never truly comprehend, they fall prostrate and exclaim in an agony of despair and self-loathing, "All this I might have had; but I chose to put these things far from me."⁸ And in spite of themselves, they are constrained to confess, "Just and true are thy ways, O King of the ages! . . . All nations shall come and worship thee, for thy judgments have been revealed" (Rev. 15:3, 4, RSV). The evidence has been presented; God's judgment has been revealed. The lost are excluded from eternal life at their own initiative, and they are constrained to agree with their just sentence of death.

Yet this dual admission of guilt and justice is not inspired by a sudden infatuation with truth. There is within their seared consciences "no genuine repentance for sin, no contrition, no change of purpose, no abhorrence of evil."⁹ Their confession is "forced from [their souls] by an awful sense of condemnation and a fearful looking for of judgment."¹⁰ How so? Because it dawns on these God-forsaken souls that not only have they forfeited an eternity of bliss by rejecting the Source of that bliss; not only will they slip into a featureless oblivion from which there is no return; but they see with devastating clarity that they will experience the ebbing of their identity in the context of a terrifying confrontation with the undiluted justice of God.

A Jury of Their Peers
It is time now for the final execution of judgment. The principle of sin, which is self-centeredness at its core, has been discredited in the minds of all created intelligences. The lost see that there is no place for this destructive principle in a universe predicated on the principle of life-giving other-centeredness. And because they have become inseparably identified with sin, there is no place in the universe for them. They have invalidated their existence, and must now be consumed with the sin they have come to personify.

Revelation 20:9 tersely describes this incendiary finale with these words: "Fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." It might seem that God has had enough of these incorrigible misfits and simply nukes them into oblivion. But careful consideration of this passage in light of other inspired commentary reveals that He is not acting unilaterally or vindictively. What this fire contributes to the second death equation has already been carefully determined during the millennial judgment.

"During the thousand years between the first and the second resurrection the judgment of the wicked takes place. . . . In union with Christ [the redeemed] judge the wicked, comparing their acts with the statute book, the Bible. . . . Then the portion which the wicked must suffer is meted out, according to their works; and it is recorded against their names in the book of death."¹¹

Sin is never committed in a vacuum. When self is on the throne, the hurt it causes carries vast and convoluted social implications. Recognizing this social context of sin, God has opted for the democratic solution of placing the lost on trial by a jury of their peers. The principle of justice upon which the stability of the universe depends demands that they "render an account for the pain they have caused to the bodies and souls of His heritage."¹²

Liberated from the limitations of the sinful nature, with minds and bodies made perfect, the "saints" have become qualified to "judge the world" (1 Cor. 6:2) fairly and dispassionately in cooperation with Christ. Having become one with Him, filled with the same spirit of self-sacrificing love, they share His balanced character of justice and mercy. And because they have experienced the same lifelong conflict between good and evil, with the same flawed equipment as have their counterparts, they are uniquely suited to understand what they have gone through.

Because the lost have rejected Christ as their only advocate and His grace as their only sufficiency, they have only their works to represent them in the judgment. And that will prove utterly insufficient.

Fire From God Out of Heaven
They are absorbed in their efforts to annihilate others when it comes upon them suddenly, like a whirlwind. "Fire was breathed from God upon them and consumed them. This was the execution of the judgment. The wicked then received according as the saints, in unison with Jesus, had meted out to them during the one thousand years."¹³

Much has been speculated about the nature of this mysterious, fiery "breath" of God. What, if anything, can be known about it? Ellen White provides this insight: "To sin, wherever found, 'our God is a consuming fire.' Heb. 12:29. In all who submit to His power the Spirit of God will consume sin. But if [people] cling to sin, they become identified with it. Then the glory of God, which destroys sin, must destroy them."¹⁴

Wrapped in this fiery embrace of God's purifying, sin-consuming glory, the lost consume away even as they receive that which has been "meted out" to them. They experience all that is comprehended in the God-forsaken second death--thus far endured by only one Person. That Person is Christ, and this is the essence of what He experienced:

"The wrath of God against sin, the terrible manifestation of His displeasure because of iniquity, filled the soul of His Son with consternation. . . . The withdrawal of the divine countenance from the Saviour in this hour of supreme anguish pierced His heart with a sorrow that can never be fully understood by man. . . . It was the sense of sin, bringing the Father's wrath upon Him as man's substitute, that made the cup He drank so bitter, and broke the heart of the Son of God."¹⁵

Christ's whole being was caught and crushed in a three-way death grip composed of "the sense of sin," "the wrath of God against sin," and "the withdrawal of the divine countenance." And this is the essence of what will claim the lives of the lost, in the context of this earth-purifying manifestation of God's glory. They will be crushed by a killing weight of guilt as the sense of the enormity of their sin is forced upon them. They will be consumed by the punishing heat of God's intense justifiable hatred of sin. And they will finally be "cast into outer darkness" (Matt. 8:12) as He withdraws from them the light of His merciful, life-giving countenance.

All Things New
Is this the way God would have it? Not at all. He is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). Moment by moment His Spirit pleads with humanity, "Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth," for "why will you die?" (Isa. 45:22, NIV; Eze. 33:11, NIV). "By the grace of God," He has already satisfied the claims of justice and "[tasted] death for everyone" (Heb. 2:9, NIV), rendering the second death unnecessary. He has borne our guilt, absorbed the hot arrows of wrath that we deserve; for our sakes He has been cast into outer darkness as a thing despised and rejected.

How can we respond to such a God? We can let His sin-consuming Holy Spirit purify and separate us from sin and self now, so we may spare Him the heartache of destroying us with His glory later. We can accept His all-sufficient sacrifice in our behalf, surrendering up the vain, self-sufficient works that can only condemn us in the judgment as rejecters of Christ.

We can let Him daily make of us a new creation, so our hearts will beat in harmony with His in that day when He joyously sweeps His arms across His purified, recreated earth and exclaims, "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5).

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¹ Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 662.
² Ibid., p. 654.
³ Ibid., p. 665.
⁴ Ibid., pp. 668, 666.
⁵ Ibid., p. 666.
⁶ White, The Desire of Ages, p. 58.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ See White, The Great Controversy,
p. 668.
⁹ White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 498.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ White, The Great Controversy, pp. 660, 661. See also Dan. 7:22; Rev. 20:4, 8.
¹² White, Christ's Object Lessons, p. 179.
¹³ White, Early Writings, p. 54.
¹⁴ White, The Desire of Ages, p. 107.
¹⁵ Ibid., p. 753.

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Leslie Kay writes from Kingman, Arizona.