The quick and the dead: Christ as judge

John Folmar looks at the Creed's confession that Christ will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. This breakout session considers the return of Christ, the judgment the church has confessed for centuries, and how a congregation lives in light of it.

John Folmar, “The quick and the dead: Christ as judge,” breakout session, Nicea Conference 2025, Istanbul.

Dubai

Good afternoon friends. My name is John Folmar. I’m the senior pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church of Dubai. And it is a privilege and joy to be here together with you in these days. And while folks are coming in, I just wanted to introduce our ministry in Dubai a little bit to you. I’ve been pastoring an English language congregation on the Arabian Peninsula in a country that borders Saudi Arabia and Oman on the Persian Gulf. I’ve been there 20 years. Now it’s an interesting country because only three generations ago. These people were nomads moving throughout the Arabian desert. Some of them were pearl divers. Others of them were fishermen, camel herders, and they would move into the oasis every summer and then out to the Gulf in the winter. Not a lot going on there for centuries until the 1960s when oil was discovered and they became fabulously wealthy overnight.

And fast forward 50 years and you have the glitz and glamour of the Dubai that we see on TV today. Dubai has been totally transformed. In some ways it’s kind of sad because the indigenous culture which used to be so rich and exclusive has faded away into something more general. It’s become however a sophisticated commercial center, a banking and tourism hub and they really want to be the leisure center for Asia and Africa and the Middle East. And they have succeeded wildly. They’ve got the world’s tallest tower the Jira Palm built out in the Gulf. It’s a glitzy place. They have a foot in both worlds. At the same time, they are modern and somewhat progressive and luxurious and open for business. But on the other hand, it’s a Muslim country and Sharia law still applies and there is no right to religious freedom in the sense that there’s no right to convert in that country. The city has attracted people from all over the world to engage in business. The largest population group there actually is not the local Arabs, it’s Indians.

There’s been an explosion of work, mostly construction, that’s attracted people from all over the region, indeed all over the world. So, it’s a hodgepodge of many different nations and cultures. It’s like a melting pot, but there’s no melting place. Everybody remains in his own cultural silo. There’s even a North Korean restaurant in Dubai with North Korean wait staff. My dentist was from Iran. My barber from South India, the street sweeper outside my house from Bangladesh, all of them are Muslim and it’s a culturally complicated place and the majority of the population is foreign.

And then of course there are the indigenous people, the Emiratis they are resistant to the gospel. The potent combination of Islam on the one hand or oil wealth materialism on the other creates a lethargy, a disinterest to the gospel. So that’s where we’re situated. It’s a global city. There’s English language used in the shopping malls. Underreached people groups everywhere. Middle East flavor. And despite all of the cultural diversity in Dubai, there is one thing that we all have in common.

Before the judgment seat

All of us will one day appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Because all of us, regardless of what country we come from, we’re all made in the image of God. We will all give an account to our maker. And it is that subject that we’re going to discuss this afternoon, namely the coming judgment of God.

There was a time many years ago when I was sitting in a courtroom watching while a criminal was being sentenced for his crime and the charges were laid out. He’d been convicted of drug trafficking and possession of a firearm and conspiracy and money laundering. And it’s interesting he was asked to stand while the judgment was pronounced. It was a very solemn moment that the criminal stands and it was a reckoning. It was a severe sentence in a federal court. And then after the sentence was handed down, the man was being led handcuffed into the holding cell.

And as he was walking out, the convict being led out by the guards paused, obviously agitated, and he turned to the judge and he yelled to him, “Judge not that you be not judged. Maybe reality was starting to set in.

The man was, I think, angry, possibly fearful, looking ahead to years of imprisonment, a ruined life. He was calling into question the legitimacy of this judgment. For some reason, in his view, it was unfair. Maybe it was excessive in his mind. The point is he didn’t believe the judge had the right to pronounce sentence on him. He was clearly unrepentant.

To him, the whole thing was unjust. And as I sat there observing him, I thought, well, the judge in that courtroom that day was theoretically capable of error, and he certainly didn’t have complete information about this guy. And we’ve all heard all too often of abuses of judicial power, miscarriages of justice. But imagine if God were the judge.

He of course has total knowledge. He knows all that you have done and even why you have done it. In fact, he knows your motives better than you do. And he can’t be bribed. He can’t be influenced at all.

Can you imagine standing before a judge like that and still insisting that the judgment meted out against you is somehow unfair, somehow unfitting? I wonder what you think about God as your judge. I know many people these days are uncomfortable with this idea. I confess to you that the message we’re going to hear together in these minutes is not an easy one. Ji Packer said, speaking of God as judge, he said, “Speak to them of God as father, a friend, a helper, one who loves us despite all our weaknesses and folly and sin, and their faces light up.

You’re on their wavelength at once.” But speak to them of God as judge and they frown and they shake their heads. But the truth is he is judge whether we like it or not. And he will settle all of the accounts justly on the last day.

This is what our forefathers affirmed in the Nicene Creed about our Lord Jesus Christ. One short sentence. He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. And it will be inescapable and unmistakable. And it will be eternal.

So let’s consider the judgment of God on those three headings, inescapable, unmistakable, and eternal. First, the judgment that is to come and that we cannot avoid if we want to is inescapable. I’m going to take you to three passages of Scripture as we look at these three headings. The first one is in Revelation 20. Please turn with me there.

Judgment is inescapable

Revelation 20, the ultimate judgment scene. Revelation 20 verse1, excuse me, 20 vers 11.

Then I saw a great white throne, and him who was seated on it. From his presence, earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. [Revelation 20:11–15]

The day is coming according to the Apostle Paul when God will judge the secrets of men. Not only outward actions but the inward motives of the heart, the secrets that motivated us to do what we did. It will be a total unveiling as we see in Hebrews 4. All are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. You cannot escape from the final judgment.

The Library of Congress in Washington DC used to be known as the memory of the world. You know, with all their books and newspapers and catalogs. Now, of course, it’s the internet that’s the memory of the world. All kinds of information from the most profound to the most trivial is stored there.

Even embarrassing personal details that we wish no one knew can be found there sometimes. And you can’t make it disappear. Imagine the countless millions, mostly teenagers, who have done things and said things that were captured in video or on print and then posted for posterity for everyone to see forever. A Georgetown law professor said, “If you are a 16-year-old and you do something dumb, there is no way to hit the reset button.” It is all exposed to the court of public opinion. But one day, our actions will be reviewed by a higher authority than the court of public opinion. There is a court that knows our every action, every thought, every motive. And before this court there is no way to disappear.

Nothing is forgotten. All is recorded. Before I went to seminary years ago, I was a lawyer in the US for eight years doing civil litigation and hearings and trials. And I’ll never forget the most climactic moment in the American judicial system in any courtroom is when the judge comes in.

Up until that point, everybody’s been stirring and talking and the lawyers are getting together and exchanging news, arguing over sports and politics and making last minute deals and negotiations and lining up witnesses for the trials that may occur that week. And then all of a sudden all of the busyness, all of the banter comes to a screeching halt when the bailiff says, “All rise. Hear ye. Hear ye. Hear ye.”

Conversations stop. Negotiations end. Because into the courtroom has come the supreme authority. Even in a little state court, state courthouse in a bucolic out of the way county seat somewhere. It’s a dramatic moment. But can you imagine the supreme authority of the universe when he comes to dispense universal justice? It will be a breathtaking moment the likes of which we cannot even possibly fathom.

It’s like the handle is just about to turn. The judge is standing at the door. But here in Revelation 20, he’s no longer standing at the door. Notice he has come into the courtroom and he’s taken his seat. The place of authority, the place of power and it says earth and sky fled away. Some sort of indescribable cosmic meltdown as all creation is called to attention. This Revelation 20 is the most important courtroom scene in all of cosmic history. The chief justice is there. He is presiding and his name is Jesus of Nazareth.

As the Apostle Paul said to the Athenians, God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this, he’s given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Interesting that it’s a man, the God man, who will be our judge on the last day. And who else will be there that day? Verse 12, I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne. I think that’s an interesting posture for the dead. They’ve been raised.

Even those who’ve been drowned in the ocean are somehow reconstituted. Jesus said, “The time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear my voice and come out. Some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

Why is it that some people will experience shame on those days? It’s because of those books. Think about that. The books stand for the record of each and every human on the planet. Every sin, every thought, every motive. This is a judgment that is coming. It is inescapable. No one here today is small enough to avoid the judgment. No one here is big enough or influential enough to buy your way out through influence.

The great and the small are there and they’re all doing the same thing. Giving an account of their lives to the one who created them. And it is not like Islam where you know if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds then maybe you will be okay on that day. It’s unclear.

No. Here is a God of absolute purity and unwavering holiness. And he will not turn a blind eye to even one sin. All wrongs will be writed on that day. And let me say if you are not a follower of Jesus Christ and you have come to this Nicea conference, understand very clearly that there will be no way to disappear on that day. You will give an account of all that you have done. No way to expunge your record in that day.

Only a trembling acknowledgment of the rightness of the God who will judge you. This is an inescapable judgment. Okay, here’s a second truth. This is an unmistakable judgment. Nobody on that day is going to need to get a second opinion or consult any religious authority about what’s happening. Turn with me to the second passage, Luke chapter 17.

Judgment is unmistakable

Luke 17, pick it up at verse 22. Luke 17 verse 22. And Jesus said to the disciples,

“The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.” And they will say to you, “Look there, or look here.” do not go out or follow them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will be the Son of Man in his day. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. Just as it was in the days of Noah. So will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all. [Luke 17:22–29]

So will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed like some sort of thunderbolt streaking throughout the sky east to west.

The second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ will be unmistakable. There will be no question of interpretation. It will be immediately obvious to every human on the planet regardless of his or her religious background. The ascended Christ will descend. And so the creed says he will come with glory to judge the living and the dead.

This is what Christians have always believed because this is what Jesus taught in cataclysmic language like Matthew 24. He said, “Stars will fall from the sky. Heavenly bodies will be shaken. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the skies. I think modern weapons of mass destruction will look like child’s play to what the Lord described for us in the New Testament. And here’s why.

The God who created us is unimaginably just and pure and humanity has turned against him in rebellion and eventually judgment will fall. God in his amazing patience has not yet come in final judgment. But the day is coming when it will be sudden and it will be shocking.

Now in Noah’s day, what were the people doing? Well, they were going out to restaurants and eating and drinking and attending weddings. Or how about in Sodom’s day? They were doing business deals and planting and building. Just the ordinary stuff of life. Phil Ryken said, “People will be shopping in the mall or stuck in traffic or taking out the trash or reading their financial reports and they will be overtaken by the wrath of God, the suddenness of it.

Ask yourself, are you so preoccupied with your ministry or with your job or with relational issues in your life or busyness that you hardly ever really think about the coming of the kingdom of Christ, your non-believing neighbor might laugh kind of like we saw in the case of Noah. He’s building an ocean liner, this massive structure in an open field somewhere far away from any large body of water.

Or like the people of Sodom laughed at Lot’s warnings that judgment was coming. Or what Christian faced in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Do you remember he had bolted from his hometown? His hometown was called the city of destruction. He had run from there. And we’re told his neighbors came out to see him run.

And as he ran, some of them mocked, others threatened, and some cried after him to return. And among those that did so, there were two that resolved to fetch him back by force. Well, friends, throughout all of the ages, ever since Christ, there has been mockery and mistreatment. There has been marginalization and persecution. People have been misrepresented and imprisoned because they were identified with Christ. But one day relief is coming for all those who have suffered unjustly by the hands of sinful men. And this brings us to the third aspect of the final judgment. And it is this. The final judgment is eternal.

Judgment is eternal

So, I’d like you to turn to the final passage of Scripture. It’s in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. Second Thessal Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 5. You know where there’s no place in the Bible where it says believers skip out on trouble and tribulation in this world. Rather the promise of Scripture is that God goes with us through those difficulties and trials supernaturally strengthening us so that we can endure. And when we don’t give up, guess what?

That’s a sign that something bigger is going on. Look at verse five. This is evidence speaking of when believers endure to the end.

This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering. Since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all those who have believed because our testimony to you was believed. [2 Thessalonians 1:5–10]

According to this paragraph, there are only two roads. There’s one road of payback and then there’s another road of relief for the believers who endure to the end. Payback for God’s enemies or unimaginably glorious relief for God’s people. This is the climax of human history. Verse 7, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven.

His first coming was in weakness and obscurity. His second coming will be in splendor and power. No longer on a humble donkey, not riding a lowly mule as he once did. What will he be doing? Verse eight, inflicting vengeance.

It’s called retribution, punishment. Some people think of vengeance as cruelty or vindictiveness, something beneath God, kind of unworthy of him. But it’s not that at all. Rather, vengeance is simply strict justice. It is judicial. It is fair. Look at verse six.

God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you. In other words, the punishment fits the crime on the last day. It is what Jesus says on the very last page of the Bible. Behold, I’m coming soon, bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done.

And who is it exactly that receives vengeance? Look again at verse eight. Those who do not know God and those who do not obey the gospel. To not know God is to be without hope and without God in the world according to Paul. This is why brothers and sisters there are no anonymous Christians in other religions.

There is no ray of light emanating from Hinduism or Buddhism. Jesus was speaking of himself when he said, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already.” You see, all of humanity needs to be saved, but we can’t save ourselves. We were made in God’s image.

We have each one of us voluntarily revolted against God’s plan and we have sought to remove him from the throne so that we could take center stage. We have lived for our own glory. We were designed to be kind of like a movie projector. You know, the movie projector projects the story of your life and the character of your life onto the wall of the watching world.

What we’ve done is we’ve distorted the image by the ways we’ve lived our lives. Each one of us, regardless of what continent we come from or what our religious background is, we’ve distorted the message, made a lie of what should have been a true and accurate representation of the character of God. We belittle infinite glory. And so, outside of Christ, all of humanity is already under God’s judgment, already condemned. And notice it’s personal with God in verse 9. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction.

It’s hard to even wrap yourself around the concept of eternal destruction. But understand this, hell is not non-existence. It’s everlasting. It is not annihilation. You know where people just cease to exist after a while. No, it is unending and conscious and torment. As it says in Revelation, the smoke from her goes up forever and ever.

Jonathan Edwards said, “Consider that if once you get into hell, you’ll never get out of it.” It’s horrible to contemplate. Now maybe you think eternal punishment is over the top. It seems excessive. It seems beneath God. If so, you have badly underestimated the dignity of the one we’re talking about.

The living God is infinite in holiness and goodness. We have offended the highest dignitary in the universe. And sin is personal treason against an infinite king. And one day, justice will be finally served. Now, we might be queasy, uneasy about the extent and severity of God’s judgment. We might be even slightly embarrassed at the depth of God’s wrath against humanity.

But the Bible is not. It is amazing to me in reading especially the New Testament that the apostles and Jesus himself and the book of Revelation are unashamed about the coming judgment. God must be just in order to be true to his character. So J.C. Ryle said, “Beware of manufacturing a God of your own. A God who is all love but not holy. A God who has a heaven for everybody but a hell for none.”

Again, if there are any non-believers here, you should do anything you can to flee from the wrath to come. Evade this judgment if you can because it is unending suffering and there are no second chances. And also it gets even more personal. The worst element of the punishment is in verse 10.

Verse 10 says it’s away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. It sounds a lot like what Jesus said to those who played around with religion but weren’t really his people. He said, “Depart from me.

Away from my presence, you cursed people into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Heaven is to be with the Lord forever. Hell is to be shut out. The final judgment will be inescapable, unmistakable, and eternal.

In some parts of the world, countries like South Africa, Australia, local councils put up a yellow sign on the beaches with large black sharks painted onto them and warnings not to swim in the unenclosed section of the water. Now, you could call those signs a scare tactic, just another way to restrict people’s civil liberties.

or you could call it loving and responsible government. Well, so it is here in the Scriptures. These are serious warnings and they’re given for our good and for our to fuel our ministries and lives of Christlike obedience.

Three questions

So, three questions as we close. Three questions applying these truths about judgment. Question number one is this very simply. Are you soft pedaling these warnings, in your evangelism, in your ministry, in your teaching, in your parenting. I know that people ridicule the final judgment as a rude religious relic of a medieval past, a hangover from ancient times. Even Christians do this, downplaying it, doing PR on the character of God, rescuing Christianity from the Bible, revising, remarketing, making it more appealing out of a good-hearted evangelistic impulse sometimes, which may explain why so many of our churches are in decline today. Because friends, without a final reckoning, without a coming day of judgment, what’s the use of the gospel? What does that have to offer?

Why is it appealing to anyone to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Jesus? In other words who needs to be rescued if there’s no coming judgment? Never downplay the final judgment. In fact, play it up in the same way that the apostles and Christ did, or else you’ll have nothing to give to the world.

Question number two, do you see the urgency of global missions as a result of these passages? Outside of Jesus Christ, all of humanity is exposed to exactly this, without hope and without God in the world. Ephesians 2:12. Paul’s operating assumption about those who had not heard is that they are without hope. Acts 4:12, there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Well, this that we’re considering today explains the modern missions movement and why it went out with such urgency and impulse. We must stop at nothing to go and to tell the good news so that people might avoid such judgment.

This has motivated countless missionaries. Why, for example, did Henry Martyn throw away his life and go to India and Persia and live the way that he did? Henry Martyn, he was born in Cornwall, England in 1781. He was a young celebrated scholar who met the Lord Jesus Christ and repented and believed and his life was never the same. So he left England at the age of 25 leaving behind the woman that he hoped one day to marry never to return again and he went to India and later Persia where he spent himself literally translating Scriptures into foreign languages. Upon arriving in India, he was appalled by the idol worship and he was burdened to see the local people saved. He said, “I shivered at being in the neighborhood of hell.”

He was motivated by the doctrine of judgment. Martyn was a gifted linguist and he labored on language and Bible translations. It was said of Martyn that he read grammars like other men read novels. Comparative philology and the problems of translation which an ordinary mortal would dread and avoid were his favorite means of relaxation. Thank God for linguists. But still imagine the difficulty in a previous era moving to a place like India without Google translate with no language schools learning the languages the painstaking work of translation. Well, in the end he left behind two of the most influential translations of the New Testament the East had yet seen. One in what they called Hindustani, the other in Persian.

He labored away on the word, but after only seven years in Asia, he fell to a disease, dying at the age of 31. Seven years earlier when he left England, he had written in his journal, “Now let me burn out for God.”

And that’s what he did. How do you explain such a man? Cambridge educated, cream of the crop, engaged to be married, yet seemingly throwing his life away like that. His biographer said, “The man who slaved away his life among people whom the lowest clerk of the East India Company despised and who dragged his dying body over many hundreds of miles of sea and mountains did it for this purpose to save men and women from destruction.” Henry Martyn believed these warnings of Scripture and he went to the ends of the earth in order to tell the good news.

And what about you, my friend? Do you tell people the only way they can be saved? One final question. Are you ready? Back in 16 se 1676, John Bunyan urged his congregation not to ignore this. Come face to face up with reality.

He plead with his people. Actually, be often meditating on death and judgment. When was the last time you heard that from the pulpit? Be often thinking of them that are now in hell beyond all mercy. I say, be thinking of them often. Thus, they were once in this world as I am now.

They once took delight in sin as I have done. They once neglected repentance as Satan would have me to do. But now they are gone. Now the pit has shut her mouth upon them. Jesus Christ said, “The son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

So are you prepared? How do you live prepared for an event like this? You do it by living each day as though it were your last. So, you should be wise about it. You should still budget for the future and you should still plan for a normal span of life, but get packed up and be ready to leave at any moment.

This is why it’s so important to be a part of a healthy local church because we need other people to remind us of this eternal perspective of what’s coming for all of us. We have no lasting city here. We seek the city that is to come. We tend to forget that fact. We need to be reminded. That’s what the church is for.

So, how do you live for the city that is to come? For the eternal reward that’s coming to his people who will avoid this judgment by God’s grace alone. Here’s one way. Here’s one way you live in view of the end. When people sin against you, when people wrong you and slander you, do you leave the judgment to God, or do you take revenge, either lashing out at them or sort of freezing your affections against them and deciding, I’ll never talk to that person again. Do you have a quiet confidence that one day God’s going to set everything right, including that? And so you don’t have to set it right or must you pay them back.

Somebody said, “If you hold a grudge, you doubt the judge.” Friends, don’t try to do God’s job. When people sin against you, leave room for God’s wrath, right? It will be paid for in eternity. Or if it’s a believer, it was paid for at the cross of Christ. Let go of bitterness. Extend forgiveness to those who wrong you.

Is the final judgment something that you merely assent to as in the surface reading of a creed? Or does this really impact you? Does this make a difference in your speech? Every careless word you will give an account for. And your finances, you’re storing up wealth in heaven, not here below. And your passions, you’re denying yourself in following Christ.

Remember, the final judgment is not only for the lost. Let me explain that. There’s a lot of confusion about this. The final judgment is not only for the lost. The Apostle Paul said, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” It is not just the people out there. It is the people in here attending this conference. Christians too will be assessed on the last day. Now understand these two points. Salvation is by grace alone. It’s a free gift wherein one receives the righteousness of Christ by grace. The judgment, however, is according to works, i.e. According to what you’ve actually done in your life. So think of those two. There’s the root of salvation, the shed blood of Christ, the finished work of the Savior. And then there’s the fruit of salvation, a transformed life, not sinless by any means, but observably different, substantially changed, noticeable. On the last day, believers too will stand before God. Even though we are secure in Christ, even though we enjoy his legal righteousness, we will give an account of the opportunities he’s given us. To whom much is given, much will be required.

You can call him savior. You can call him friend and helper. And all these things are glorious and true. But he’s also an eternal judge. Jesus stands at the end of life’s road for everyone in this room today.

Is that a fearful prospect for you? Are you as you sit here unprepared to meet him on that day? If so, call on the coming judge to be your present savior. J.I. Packer said, “As judge, he is the law, but as savior, he is the gospel. Run from him now and you will meet him as judge.” Then seek him now and you will find him as your friend. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, is the astonishing announcement that God loves a world that’s in rebellion against him. How extraordinary is that? God loved us and demonstrated that love by sending his Son into the world, taking on human flesh, living the perfect life that we wouldn’t live, but he voluntarily chose to die on the cross, bearing the penalty that we deserved in our place that we might be set free.

And he died and was buried. And then on the third day, God raised him from the dead. That’s why we know this is all true. In all the countries we come from, people are putting their hope in things that are shaky and disappointing. I mean, whether it’s politics or investments or relationships or good works, we have found a hope, however, that outshines all of those. Our best friend is coming back. In Pilgrim’s Progress, there was a character named Mr. Standfast.

He stood fast amid all the troubles of life and at one point Mr. Standfast was getting on in life and he was summoned to leave this world. Bunyan said he was told to prepare for a change of life for his master was not willing that he should be so far from him any longer. And Mr. Standfast said, “The thoughts of what I’m going to lie as a glowing coal at my heart.” And so it should be for you and me. Every time we affirm the creed that he shall come again in glory one day. He’s calling you home. All of us will appear before him and we shall see him as he is.

Closing

He’s coming in glory to judge the living and the dead. Only faintly now I see him with the darkling veil between. But a blessed day is coming when his glory shall be seen. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would prepare us for that day. We pray that we would heed these loving warnings you’ve given us in Scripture all over the place. We pray that through the warnings of judgment, we would become more intimately acquainted with your character, with your holiness. But we pray that as a result, we would hate sin more and that we would love holiness and righteousness. And we also pray that we would be mobilized to go tell others the good news that is able to save their souls.

Accomplish this in us, we pray for Jesus’ sake. Amen. Blessings. Have a good afternoon.