The Day of Judgment

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 27, 1864

The Day of Judgment.

Forgetfulness of death, judgment, and eternity, is very prevalent. The present world engages the whole attention of the most of men. But a day will come when we must not only think differently, but also give an account of all we have thought, said, and done. That is the day of judgment. It is hastening on apace. Before the great white throne we all must appear and give an account of the deeds done in the body. Are you prepared for that meeting? God has been executing judgment from the beginning, but all his past acts of judgment have been but foreshadows of the coming day. They have been heavy drops, but they are only the first of the thunder shower.

"Earnests and intimations of this his judicial character, and of the equity that marks all his administration, are strewn over all the daily course of providence; and furnish, as said Bacon, 'the hand-writing of the Divine Nemesis,' inscribed along the world's highways, and he who runs may read. But there comes a day, when this justice shall no longer as now but shoot out its bright sparks, and scintillate its occasional flashes; but when it will flame out in full-orbed radiance and flood Heaven and earth. In that day he will 'bring every secret thing whether it be good or evil.' How shall I, and how will you abide that dread day of account, the day to which all days preceding it are to be held responsible, and when all the liabilities, and debts, and arrears of a race morally insolvent, must be met in the final and tremendous reckoning? Earth's inequalities need to be remedied. Earth's mysteries await on that day their long expected solution. Earth's iniquities are treasured up for the day of inquisition. Yes, God must judge, and man must be judged*; and all the quick and the dead, the small and the great, and all of us from the graves of the wilderness, and from the crowded cemetery of the metropolis, and from the abysses of ocean, must hear the rustling of the leaves of the book of doom, and must encounter the flaming glance of those pure Omniscient Eyes, and bide the adjudication of those Infallible Lips, as they read the record and append the sentence that wafts us to unspeakable bliss, or sinks us to irremediable perdition."

If these things are true, surely the great proportion of men are acting the part of fools. Is it not unwise to put off preparation for meeting God at his judgment throne till the hour of death? If the present were the only life, you might say, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die;" but if you must exist in another world, and stand at the bar of the Eternal to be judged by your present life, it is time to consider your ways. He is a God of justice, and will give to every man according as his work shall be. "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near."