Bible Commentaries

Revelation 20:11

"And the Books were Opened.".

What are the books to be read? We are not told their title, but I think we may make some conjecture.

I. The first book will be the book of the law of God. Just as in our courts of justice the laws of the realm are always near at hand, that in any doubtful case they may be appealed to, so, I think, the first book will be the book of the revealed will of the holy and just God, a record of the laws and measures by which men will be tried.

II. The next book will be the book of the Gospel. Side by side with the volume of the law will stand the volume of God's love contained in the Gospel, the wondrous record of all that is done by God for man.

III. The third book will be the book of the dealings of God's Holy Spirit with the fallen family of man. Some of us may have already lost sight of the striving of the Holy Spirit with us; but God does not forget it: God does not lose sight of it.

IV. The book of God's providence will be opened. In it is kept, without any possibility of mistake, a record of all God's dealings with us externally. God is ever seeking by His providential dealings to bring us to Him.

V. The book of our life will be opened. Every one of us is writing a book; we are every one of us authors, although we may never have written a book, not even a line, in our lives. Though we may never have dreamt of printing a book, yet we are dictating to the recording angel the whole of our life from moment to moment, from hour to hour.

VI. The book of life. Jesus Christ is the Author of it. From beginning to end it is His. From the first page to the end, it is life all through: life as it first entered the soul; life as it grew and was fed and nourished and sustained, and the glorious results of life, the glorious harvest reaped by the soul; life which triumphs over our dead selves, which brings the dry bones together out of the gloomy sepulchre—the book of life, written by the Lord of life, Jesus Christ Himself.

W. Hay Aitken, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 881.

Revelation 20:12

Standing before God.

I. What is meant by standing before God? We are apt to picture to ourselves a great dramatic scene, host beyond host, rank behind rank, the millions who have lived upon the earth, all standing crowded together in the indescribable presence of One who looks not merely at the mass, but at the individual, and sees through the whole life and character of every single soul. The picture is sublime, and it is what the words of St. John are intended to suggest. But we must get behind the picture to its meaning. The picture must describe not one scene only, but the whole nature and condition of the everlasting life. The souls of men in the eternal world are always "standing before God." And what does that mean? We understand at once if we consider that that before which a man stands is the standard, or test, or source of judgment for his life. Every soul that counts itself capable of judgment and responsibility stands in some presence by which the nature of its judgment is decreed. The higher the presence, the loftier and greater, though often the more oppressed and anxious, is the life. A weak man, who wants to shirk the seriousness and anxiety of life, goes down into some lower chamber and stands before some baser judge, whose standard will be less exacting. A strong, ambitious man presses up from judgment-room to judgment-room, and is not satisfied with meeting any standard perfectly so long as there is any higher standard which he has not faced.

II. The dead, small and great, St. John says that he saw standing before God. In that great judgment-day another truth is that the difference of sizes among human lives, of which we make so much, passes away, and all human beings, in simple virtue of their human quality, are called to face the everlasting righteousness. The child and the greybeard, the scholar and the boor, however their lives may have been separated here, they come together there. It is upon the moral ground that the most separated souls must always meet. All may be good: all may be bad; therefore before Him whose nature is the decisive touchstone of goodness and badness in every nature which is laid before it all souls of all the generations of mankind may be assembled. The only place where all can meet, and every soul claim its relationship with every other soul, is before the throne of God. The Father's presence alone furnishes the meeting-place for all the children, regardless of differences of age or wisdom.

III. Another thought which is suggested by St. John's verse is the easy comprehension of the finite by the infinite. All the dead of all the generations stand before God together. But there is no finite, however vast, that can overcrowd the infinite, none that the infinite cannot most easily grasp and hold. St. John says that he saw all the hosts of the dead stand before God. We, too, must see them stand before God, and they will not oppress us. Be sure that if you will begin, not by counting the multitude of the dead and asking yourself how any celestial meadow where you can picture them assembled can hold them all, but by lifting yourself up and laying hold on the infinity of God, you will find range enough in Him for all the marvellous conception of the immortality of all men. Every thought of man depends on what you first think of God.

Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons, p. 60.

The Secret Justice of Temporal Providence.

I. The great characteristic of future judgment is that it is open judgment: it declares itself. It does not leave the subject of punishment uncertain, so that a man does not know what he is punished for. All is open and plain dealing. We are told the reason of everything. We naturally connect a future judgment with a revelation of sin. It would seem to be a kind of Magna Charta of the next world that nothing shall be done without making known the grounds on which it is done. It is a transparent world; justice is a public justice, and proclaims its sentence upon the housetops. The whole congregation of God's creatures is made a witness to it, confirms and ratifies the great work of Divine reward and punishment, and stamps the impress of conscience upon it.

II. But, with respect to the justice of this world as conducted under God's providence, we must make very large deductions from this openness. Whatever may be said about the merit of it, and how much good it does, one thing is to be observed: it is not an open justice, like that in the courts of heaven; its characteristic is rather closeness. A great deal is done, and carefully done, by it in the world, and it may be said to achieve many most important ends here, and ends which the Divine government has in view, but it does not declare itself; it punishes largely, and says nothing. You cannot trace the links by which the disadvantages under which you suffer are connected with your faults; but the connection may be closer than you are aware. You complain that there is a falling short from what might have been expected. You struggle on, but there is an absence of advantages. The sun does not shine upon you. It is so, but how do you know to what extent you may yourself have cut off the sunshine?

III. We do not know what this or that particular penalty has been due to, this or that unkind, or ungracious, or selfish act, but we do know generally the kind of faults we are prone to and the risk we run through them. We know, or may know perfectly well if we please, that these evil habits or qualities tend to alienate good men from us. We must be always on our guard, and, so far as this world is governed upon moral principles and upon principles of justice, we must walk in caution and in fear.

IV. The invisible court of our fellow-creatures, which sits behind men's backs, and issues negative punishments, is a true part of providential justice. The will of society upon its members is executed, and that will embodies much which is just and in the true interests of the community. But when we compare the inevitable meanness of the justice of the world and of society, its privacy, its cunning, its closeness, and those tendencies to a low type which are a part of the very system of things—when we compare these with the open court of heaven, the scene to which we turn rises before us as one full of majesty. Here we live amid the privacies and secret management of earthly justice; there we see the type and ideal of justice, for there God is Judge Himself.

J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 337.

The Last Assize.

Consider:—

I. He who is to decide our portion for eternity is the very Being who died as our Surety. Who but man can fully sympathise with man? And yet if an angel be not qualified to sit in judgment, how can a man be? A man may have the power of sympathy, which an angel has not; but then he is far inferior to the angels in those other properties which are required, and in some of those properties even angels are altogether deficient. So that, if we would determine who alone seems fitted to bear the office of judge of this creation, we appear to require the insupposable combination—insupposable, we mean, so long as you shut us out from the Gospel—the omniscience of the Deity and the feelings of humanity. We cannot dispense with the omniscience of Deity; we see clearly enough that no finite intelligence can be adequate to that decision which will ensure the thorough justice of future retribution. But then neither can we dispense with the feelings of humanity; at least, we can have no confidence in approaching His tribunal, if we are sure that the difference in nature incapacitates Him from sympathy with those whose sentence He is about to pronounce, and precludes the possibility of His so making our case His own, as to allow of His deciding with due allowance for our feebleness and temptations. And here revelation comes in, and sets before us a Judge in whose person is centred that amazing combination which we have just pronounced as insupposable. This Man, by whom God hath ordained that "He will judge the world in righteousness," is Himself Divine, "the Word which was in the beginning with God, and which was God," He shall come in human form, "and every eye shall see Him," "bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh"; and they who pierced Him shall look upon Him, and recognise through all His majesty the "Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." It is thus we are assured that mercy and justice will alike have full scope in the transactions of the judgment, and that in appointing that the Mediator who died as our Substitute will preside at our trial God hath equally provided that every decision shall be impartial, and yet every man be dealt with as brother to Him who must determine our fate. It is one of the most beautiful of the arrangements of redemption that the offices of Redeemer and Judge meet in the same Person, and that Person Divine. We call it a beautiful arrangement, as securing towards us tenderness as well as equity, the sympathy of a Friend as well as the disinterestedness of a righteous Arbiter. Had the Judge been only man, the imperfection of His nature would have led us to expect much of error in His verdicts; had He been only God, the distance between Him and ourselves would have made us fear that in determining our lots He would not have taken into account our feebleness and trials.

II. Note the thorough righteousness of the whole procedure of the judgment: "The dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." Though no man can be saved by his works, every man shall be judged according to his works. If he have believed on Christ (and this is the single appointed mode of salvation), the sincerity of his faith will be proved by his works; and therefore, in being awarded everlasting life, he will be "judged according to his works." If he have not relied on the merits of his Saviour, the want of faith will be evidenced by the deficiency of his works; and therefore will he also as to everlasting misery be judged according to his works. And over and above this general decision, "according to his works," we believe that every particular of conduct will have something corresponding to it in the final retribution. Indeed, the brief description that the judgment will be "in righteousness" comprehends all that can well be advanced on this topic—righteousness, so that nothing shall escape the Judge, and nothing impose on the Judge, and nothing embarrass the Judge. If found in Christ, there is no adversary that can accuse us, if not members of the Mediator, no power that can absolve.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2032.

Reference: Revelation 20:12.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. vii., p. 97.