The White Throne Judgment
Here we are at the end of time getting ready to step into eternity with God and at this point you are in one of two places. You either got saved during the Church Age and are seated with God getting ready to judge, or you died unsaved, went to Hell, and are now about to be delivered up to try and plead your case before God.
¶ And I saw a great white
throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled
away; and there was found no place for them. (Revelation 20:11)
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were
opened: and another book was opened, which is [the book] of life: and the dead
were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to
their works. (Revelation 20:12)
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up
the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their
works. (Revelation 20:13)
To give you a better idea of
what is actually going to take place here, let's just assume that you died
during the Church Age without accepting Christ as your savior. In other
words, you weren't saved. If you weren't saved when you died than you woke
up in Hell and immediately realized that something was wrong, and whatever your
reasons were for not getting saved are all you are going to have when you get to
the white throne. So now the time comes for you to be judged and you step
out of Hell up before that great white throne before God. You begin to
tell God how he made a mistake sending you to Hell because you were an active
member in your local church and you were the leader of youth group for 10
years. You then tell him about all the charities you gave money to every
year and how wonderful you were to your family and the poor. You start
panicking because you realize that he is not impressed by any of the things you
did in your life that you thought were going to get you into Heaven.
Remember, as it says above, everyone is judged according to their works.
So then God puts up the screen and plays back to you all the times you lost your
temper, or swore, or overslept, or got drunk, or overate, or lied, or stole, or
transgressed any minor detail of God's unattainable standards.
For all have sinned, and come short of
the glory of God (Romans 3:23)
Suddenly you realize that you are
wrong, and that you aren't good enough to get in on your own. Suddenly you
realize what all those people meant when they told you you need to trust Jesus,
you need to trust Jesus, you need to trust Jesus. He is the only one that
is good enough to get in, and without him, nobody gets in. Now you know
you are guilty, and you know where you are headed. And so into the lake of
fire you go to burn forever with the devil and his angels and all the other
fools who rejected Jesus Christ. 10 million years down the road when the
fire is still as excruciating as the day you got in there, your life on earth
seems like nothing but a fleeting thought, it's like it never even
happened. But you now have eternity to think about the worst mistake you
ever made, rejecting Jesus Christ.