“You have, my dear child, all the assurance necessary, if you are now believing in the Lord Jesus—trusting in His merits—seeking to love Him—to do what He commands—and avoid what displeases Him. Of such He says (Rev. iii. 5), ‘I will not blot out his name out of the _Book of Life_; but I will confess his name before my Father and before His angels.’”
“But tell me further,” said Emma, “how will the work of judgment proceed?”
“Jesus, my child, after the books have been opened, and the vast multitude have been brought before Him, will go on to pronounce sentence upon each. It will be a solemn scene. We read that ‘He will [Sidenote: The Awards.] separate the righteous from the wicked as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats.’ In this world the good and the bad, the ‘tares and the wheat,’ are mixed up together. _We_ cannot tell the holy from the unholy; but Jesus knows them all; and on that day He will parcel all mankind into these two great classes. In one or other every human being must be placed.”
“On whom will He pronounce sentence first?” inquired Emma.
“He will address the righteous first,” said her grandmother. “It will not, indeed, be with _them_ a day of wrath. Believers, at the time of their justification (as I explained to you on a former evening), were dismissed with the sentence of ‘not guilty’ pronounced upon them. They are brought before God’s throne, that there they may be ‘openly acknowledged’—receive a public acquittal before men and angels—and listen to that happy, happy sentence, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”
“I can well imagine their joy,” said Emma; “but what next?”
“It will be a sadly different scene, my child. Let the words of Jesus himself tell you of it—you will find them in the 25th chapter of Matthew, 41st verse.”
Emma again turned to the passage, and read, “Then shall He say also to them on the left hand, Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
“After this,” continued the aged lady, “we read no more about the doings of that great day. The court is dissolved—the trial over. We see the golden gates of heaven open to receive happy saints and angels; and the miserable wicked sink down to the regions of despair! This solemn day terminates the kingdom of grace on earth. The kingdom of glory is then completed. The elect are gathered into it from the four quarters of heaven. They ‘enter into the joy of their Lord.’ But this I must reserve speaking to you about, if God spare me, till another Sabbath.”