Bible Commentaries
Revelation 20

Verse 6

The First Resurrection.

Revelation 20:6.

Resurrection is our hope—not death. It has always been the Church’s hope—the hope of patriarchs and kings and prophets. Martha only uttered the confession of the Church universal when she said, ’I know that he shall rise again.’ Israel knew resurrection well—and the Old Testament assumes the truth of it.

It is not the putting off this vile body (or this ’body of our humiliation’), but the putting on of the immortal and incorruptible that is our hope; not our going to Christ, but His coming to us; not merely our victory over sin and its spiritual consequences, but victory over death and the grave. This hope grew brighter as the ages went on, until it was fully revealed in Him who is the resurrection and the life. But still more was needed; and it was reserved for Paul and John fully to unfold the hope.

This twentieth chapter of the Revelation is a very wonderful one, and specially valuable as giving us details of the resurrection hope.

An angel is seen descending out of heaven; he has the key of the bottomless pit, or abyss, and a great chain in his hand. He seizes the dragon, the old serpent (the murderer and liar from the beginning, John 8:44), who is the Devil, and Satan; binds him a thousand years; casts him into the abyss; locks him up; sets a seal above or upon him, to hinder his escaping and deceiving the nations for a thousand years. Then thrones are set up (Daniel 7:9); and there are sitters upon them, to whom judgment is given (1 Corinthians 6:2); the souls (Acts 2:41, Acts 7:41) of the martyrs and the non-worshipers of the beast are made to live again; and being thus raised, they reign with Christ (Revelation 5:10). But the rest of the dead are not raised until the end of the thousand years. This is the first resurrection.

It gets the designation of ’first,’ not because of its pre-eminence and glory, but because it is before another. Properly speaking, the great resurrection fact is but one—’all that are in their grave shall arise;’ but it divides itself into two parts or acts, separated from each other by a considerable interval—an interval (like that between the Lord’s two comings) not at first revealed. But here the interval is explicitly announced—a thousand years. The righteous rise to glory at the beginning of that period, and during it they live and reign with Christ. At its close, the wicked rise, and are judged. This resurrection of the wicked at the close of the thousand years, sets aside the doctrine of annihilation entirely. They do not rise in order to be annihilated. They do not get new bodies merely in order to have these new bodies destroyed.

I. WHEN is it to be?When the Lord comes the second time. In the preceding chapter he is described as coming with the hosts of heaven for the destruction of His enemies. (See 1 Corinthians 15:23; 1 Thessalonians 4:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:1). He comes as the resurrection and the life; the abolisher of death, the spoiler of the grave, the raiser of His saints.

II. WHO it is to consist of?This passage speaks only of the martyrs and the non-worshipers of the beast; but other passages show that all His saints are to be partakers of this reward. ’This honor have all His saints;’ all who have followed Christ, or suffered for Him, from Abel downwards. They have suffered with Him here, and they shall reign with Him here. They have fought the good fight; they have overcome the world, and the god of this world. The conflict and the tribulation have been sore, but the recompense is glorious. Oneness with Christ now secures for us the glory of that day.

III. WHAT it does for those who share it?It brings to them such things as the following:

(1) Blessedness—Peculiar blessedness is to be theirs. God only knows how much that word implies, as spoken by Him who cannot lie, who exaggerates nothing, and whose simplest words are His greatest.

(2) Holiness—They are pre-eminently ’the saints of God;’ set apart for Him; consecrated and purified, both outwardly and inwardly; dwelt in by him whose name is the ’Holy Spirit;’ and called to special service in virtue of their consecration. Priestly-royal service is to be theirs throughout the eternal ages.

(3) Preservation from the second death—They rise to an immortality which shall never be recalled. No dying again, in any sense of the word; not a fragment of mortality about them, nothing of this vile body, and nothing of that corruption or darkness or anguish which shall be the portion of those who rise at the close of the thousand years. ’Neither shall they die any more’ (Luke 20:36). They ’shall not be hurt of the second death’ (Revelation 2:2), but shall feed upon the tree of life. Their connection with death, in every sense, is done forever.

(4) The possession of a heavenly priesthood—They are made priests unto God and Christ—both to the Father and the Son. Priestly nearness and access; priestly power and honor and service; priestly glory and dignity—this is their recompense. They, with their glorified and reigning Head, form the link between creation above and creation below—between the Creator and the creature, carrying up the incenses of prayer and praise and service from all parts of a holy universe, now linked to Godhead forever, beyond the possibility of fall. They maintain the communication between God and His world, between Paradise regained and the Paradise that was never lost—no, between God and His innumerable worlds throughout all space. For priesthood is not for sacrifice alone, but for carrying on the endless communion between heaven and earth.

(5) The possession of the kingdom—They shall reign for a thousand years over a renewed earth, where there are traces still of the fall, and on which Satan is for a brief season to be let loose; and they shall reign forever and ever over a world thoroughly restored and purified, into which Satan shall never again find entrance. They are kings as well as priests, both in one—God’s Melchizedek’s, wearing the priestly miter, and wielding the royal scepter. Having their home and place and throne in the new Jerusalem, they rule over a delivered creation, over the converted nations, over a world now filled with the Holy Spirit in all its nations.

Such are our prospects—let us live accordingly. Let our coming honors influence us now—making us self-denied, consistent, heavenly—quickening us to zeal and love.

Sinner, walking on in unbelief, and worldliness, and pleasure, what are your prospects? Have you considered them? Are they satisfactory? What is your hope? What is judgment to do for you? What is resurrection to bring? Look at the following alternatives, and ask which is to be yours. Everlasting gladness—or everlasting sorrow? Everlasting glory—or everlasting shame? Everlasting songs— or everlasting wailing? The marriage supper of the Lamb—or the perpetual banishment from all that is good and holy? The new heavens and earth—or the eternal wilderness, with its parched and burning wastes? The heavenly Jerusalem, with the Lamb as its light—or the blackness of darkness forever? The fruit of the tree of life and the waters of the celestial river—or the eternal hunger and the unquenchable thirst? (Luke 16:24). The first resurrection—or the second death? These are the alternatives before you—and there is no middle doom.

O that second death, and that resurrection unto condemnation! (John 5:29; Revelation 20:13.) You shall arise, O man—but what will that rising do for you? When you were carried out at the first death, there were tears shed upon your coffin; but shall it be so when you are carried out at the second death? Your funeral procession moves on; but there are not friends, no mourners. What means that dark procession? It is a legion of fallen angels come to escort you to that place where the worm dies not. They lament not, but rejoice that they have got you, both soul and body, into their keeping forever. O man! Man, made in the image of God, and made for fellowship with God—is this to be your end? Man, with a soul susceptible of such gladness and such sorrow, and with a body capable of such pleasure and such pain—is this to be your doom? Is this the end of all time’s hopes, and fears, and dreams—its songs, and smiles, and laughter? Is this the end of sermons, and Sabbaths, and sacraments? Is this the end of warnings, and judgments, and providences, and entreaties, and messages of love? Well may hell from beneath be moved at your coming, and say—Have you too become like one of us?

Oh, before the last trumpet sound, before you lie down upon your earthly deathbed, lift up your eyes to the saving cross! There is healing in a look. Look and live! Though it were your last look here, before the eye closed forever, it would suffice. The uplifted Savior saves even at the last—saves even the chief of sinners!

Verses 11-13

The Great White Throne.

Revelation 20:11-15.

This ought to have begun a new chapter, or formed a separate section. It is a new scene—following, no doubt, close on the judgment terrors of the preceding verses, but still separate from them. It is a scene of infinite grandeur and solemnity; a scene from which the world shrinks back, but which shall one day be realized on this very globe. John ’saw’ it—in vision, no doubt; but in a vision presented by God Himself—a true picture of coming realities to man and man’s world. All this scene shall one day come true. It is the ’vision,’ and it shall be one day the reality of—

(1) A THRONE—YES, a royal seat, a seat of judgment, the seat of the great King and Judge of all. There have been many thrones on earth, but none like this—one throne in place of the many.

(2) A GREAT throne—All earth’s thrones have been little, even the greatest—Nebuchadnezzar, or Alexander, or Caesar, or Napoleon—but this is ’great;’ greater than the greatest—none like it in magnificence.

(3) A WHITE throne—White is purity, truth, justice calmness. Such is the throne to be—unsoiled, untainted, incorruptible—no one-sidedness nor imperfection—no bribery nor favor there. All is ’white’—transparent and spotless perfection.

(4) One SEATED on it—It was not empty or unoccupied, nor filled by a usurper, or by one who could not wield the power required for executed its decrees. God was seated there; that very God before whose face heaven and earth flee away; that God whose presence melts the mountains, and made Sinai to shake (See Psalms 102:26; Isaiah 34:4, Isaiah 51:6; Jeremiah 4:23, Jeremiah 4:26; Revelation 6:14, Revelation 16:20). In the last two passages we find men upon the earth, and hail falling from heaven upon them, after it had been said that all had fled away; which shows that it is not annihilation that is meant in any of them. Nothing is annihilated. Our bodies return to dust, but return out of dust into themselves again; so earth will undergo changes, but will come out of these the same earth, only purified. For our bodies there is resurrection, for earth restitution, but for neither annihilation. If annihilation is the portion of the wicked—what then, does their resurrection mean? He who sits on this throne is the mighty God, able to judge and to carry out His decrees in spite of all human or hellish resistance. How terrible to stand unready before such a Judge and such a throne! All justice, all perfection, all holiness! Who can abide His appearing?

But besides the Judge and the throne, there are the millions to be judged. They are—(1) The dead; those who did not rise in the first resurrection, called ’the rest of the dead’ (Revelation 20:5). They remained behind the dead in Christ, but they must rise at last. (2) Small and great; from the youth to the old man, from the feeblest to the strongest, all are there. ’They shall not escape.’ They have to do with unerring eyes.

These ’stand before God.’ There are others who ’stand before God,’ or ’before the throne of God,’ but for very different purpose.

’The angels stood before God’ (Revelation 8:2); the two witnesses ’stood before God of the whole earth’ (Revelation 11:4); the great white-robed multitude ’stood before the throne’ (Revelation 8:9-15); the elders ’sat before the throne of God’ (Revelation 11:16). But all these are very different from the ’small and great’ who stand before ’the great white throne.’ The former stand for honor and glory and gladness, the latter for judgment.

The process of judgment is also seen. (1) Books are opened—books probably containing God’s history of the sinner’s life. His record of the sinner’s deeds. How different from man’s! How different God’s story of our great men, our literary men, our poets, our philosophers, our captains, our kings, from man’s! The divine version of human history—how unusual it will be! How unlike all earthly annals! Most of the leading facts the same, yet how differently told! Most of the scenes and events and actions the same, yet how differently put the interpreted! What a strange thing will be a biography, a human life, seen by divine eyes and recorded by a divine pen! What ’books’ these will be! Alongside of these is another book, called the book of life—the register of those whose portion is life eternal, whose home is to be the land and city of life, whose heritage is to be that God in whose favor is life. (Philippians 4:3; Revelation 3:5, Revelation 13:8, Revelation 17:8, Revelation 21:27).

The books first mentioned contain the materials for the Judge’s decision. Out of them the individuals are judged, ’every man according to his works.’ The ’things written in these books’ being thus connected with the ’works’ mentioned, lead us to conclude that they are the record or annals of the works of each. All things are written down. God keeps His diary of every soul’s doings and sayings and thinkings. Nothing is forgotten! Every deed awakes from its slumbers and speaks on that day! What a resurrection of each buried thought and word at that great white throne!

The judgment will be just and fair; nothing overrated, nothing underrated. Every fact will speak exactly for itself. Each word will be weighed in perfect balances. No one shall be able to complain. God will be justified in all. What a scrutiny! What impartiality and calmness, yet what exactness and minuteness!

It shall be universal judgment then. Sea and land shall give up their dead. Death and the grave shall part with their victims. Each region of earth shall furnish its thousands or millions of the dead for judgment. And again it is said, ’according to their works.’ On these each man’s judgment is to turn.

Then death and the grave are utterly destroyed. They exist no more, but are consumed. The lake of fire is their portion; and in this lake there is the second death. The first death passes away only to give place to a second far more terrible; a death that never dies, that has no grave, and no end. The second death! The lake of fire! What words of horror are these! Yet they are not exaggerations, but God’s own calm and solemn language. It indicates real punishment, not annihilation.

And all who are not found in the book of life are cast into this fiery lake—handed over to this second death, this eternal mortality, this never-ending dying—this death that is always both present and to come—the worm that never dies, the fire that is never quenched. Such is the eternity of the lost, according to God’s account of it. Man may dilute or disbelieve or allegorize the statement, but there it stands. Eternal sorrow or eternal joy!

(1) Is it all true? Do we believe it? All this about the great white throne, and the Judge, and the books, and the lake, and the second death? Are all these things true?

(2) Does it bear upon us? Have these scenes of judgment any bearing upon us? Are their terrors for us? Has humanity anything to do with that lake of fire? Or is it only for lost angels?

(3) Is it rousing to us? If anything could awake us, it would be a futurity like this. That Judge, that judgment, that woe!

Verse 14

Death and the Grave.

Revelation 20:14.

It is of His two chief enemies that God here speaks—’death and the grave,’ or ’place of the dead’ (Hades)—for such, and not hell, ought to be the rendering of the latter of the two words.

This is not the first time, nor the only place, in which they are thus classed together. There is a striking series of passages, running through all Scripture, in which they are names as allies—fellow-workers in the perpetration of one great deed of darkness from the beginning. Often are death and the grave in the lips of Job. David thus speaks of them—’In death there is no remembrance of You; in the grave who shall give You thanks?’ (Psalms 6:5.) Solomon thus uses them in figure—’Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave’ (Song of Solomon 8:6). Hezekiah thus refers to them—’The grave cannot praise You; death cannot celebrate You’ (Isaiah 38:18). Isaiah thus mentions them in their connection with Messiah—’He made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death’ (Isaiah 53:9). Hosea thus proclaims their awful fellowship in evil—’I will ransom them (His people) from the owner of the grave; I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be the plagues; O grave, I will be your destruction—repentance shall be hid from my eyes’ (Isaiah 13:14). Paul thus takes up the language of the old prophets—’O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is the victory?’ (1 Corinthians 15:55.) And then, as the summing up of the whole, we have these strange words of the Apocalypse—’Death and the grave delivered up the dead which were in them; and death and the grave were cast into the lake of fire.’

These last words accord strikingly with those in Hosea; yet they are not meant as a mere quotation or reference, but as an intimation of fulfillment—an announcement as to the way in which God is to execute His threat. ’O death, I will be your plague; O grave, I will be your destruction,’ is the old prediction; and of this John records the awful fulfillment, ’Death and the grave were cast into the lake of fire.’ This is the end of that death-power which was let loose in Paradise, and which has continued to exercise dominion upon earth through these two channels. The reign has been long and sad; it has been one of dissolution, and blight, and terror; but it ends at last! This dynasty of darkness, this double vice-regency of hell, is broken in pieces—death and the grave are cast into the lake of fire—which is the second death, the death that absorbs all other deaths, the death of deaths, the deepest death of all, the death after which there is no life, and no resurrection, and no deliverance forever.

These two enemies of God and man are here personified as two powers of evil, the one the handmaid of the other— twin demons,coming forth from the blackness of darkness, and returning to the darkness from which they sprang—servants of, or rather co-operators with, the prince of darkness, with him who has the power of death, even the devil, in carrying out the inexorable sentence, ’Dust you are, and unto dust shall you return.’ They are treated as two hideous criminals; who, though for a time permitted to go forth, like the Assyrian and Babylonian ravager, to execute the divine commission, are at last called to reckoning, for the havoc they have wrought, and dragged forth, as pre-eminent in crime, to receive their sentence of doom—and to be cast into the lake of fire.

DEATH has been the sword of law for ages; but when it has done its work on earth, God takes this sword, red with the blood of millions, snaps it in pieces before the universe, and casts its fragments into the flame, in the day of the great winding-up, in token that never again shall it be needed, either on earth or throughout the universe.

The GRAVE has been the chain and the prison-house of justice; but when its purpose is served, and justice has got all its own in the heaven of the saved, and the hell of the lost—God gathers up each link of the chain and flings them into the lake of fire upon the head of the great potentate of evil! He demolishes the dungeon to its foundation, and buries its ruins in a grave like that of Sodom—the lake of the everlasting burnings. Death and the grave were cast into the lake of fire!

The great truth taught us here is God’s abhorrence of death, and His determination not merely to end it, but to take vengeance on it. Let us then inquire into this, and into the reasons for it.

I. God abhors death.The fact of its existence on earth by His permission, is of no proof of His non-abhorrence; else would the prevalence of sin, side by side with death, be demonstration that He does not hate it. Accustomed with death, as WE sometimes are by its frequency—HE abhors death more truly than even we do who are the subjects of his ravages. We cannot but hate death, even when we have ceased to fear it, and know that for us its sting has been extracted. We hate it, and thrust it from us; loathing its advances, and waging daily war with it—seeking by every contrivance of skill to overcome it and ward off its stroke. We hate it because of its darkness—and its coldness—and its silence. We hate it as the great "robber of our loves and joys"—who gives nothing but takes everything. It cuts so many ties; it rends so many hearts; it silences so many voices; it thins so many firesides; it comes with its dark veil, its screen of ice, between friend and friend, between soul and soul, between parent and child, between husband and wife, between sister and brother. Of human sympathies it has none; it concerns not itself about our joys or sorrows; it spares no dear one, and restores no lost one; it is pitiless and mute; it is as powerful as it is inexorable, striking down the weak, and wrestling with the strong until they succumb and fall.

No wonder, then, that death is so unlovable to us—no, of all objects the most unlovable in itself, though occasionally acquiring some faint attractiveness, or at least losing some little of its hatefulness by its being made the termination of pain, and conflict, and weariness, and the gate into the presence of Him who is our life and joy.

After all, however, our estimate either of its attractiveness or repulsiveness would be of little significance, were it not that on this point God takes our side. His estimate of death coincides with ours. It is to Him even more unlovable than it is to us. He has set limits to its power; He has made it to His saints the very gate of heaven—for blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. He has proclaimed resurrection and incorruption. But still, with all these abatements, He hates it—nor is reconciled to it in one act or aspect. It is, in His eyes, even more than in ours, an enemy, a destroyer, a demon, a criminal, a robber. So thoroughly does He loathe it, that in order to make His displeasure known, He reserves it to the last for doom; He sets it apart for a great striking condemnation, and then casts it into the lake of fire.

But besides this final condemnation, He has given us others equally explicit. He calls it ’the king of terror;’ ’the last enemy;’ and thus addresses it—’O death, I will be your plague; O grave, I will be your destruction—repentance shall be hid from my eyes’—that is, never will I revoke my sentence against you (Hosea 13:14). Hardly could words be found to express more strongly God’s estimate of death, and His determination to abolish it utterly and forever. For six thousand years death has been the fulfiller of His purposes, His rod for the chastisement of His saints, His scourge for clearing earth of His enemies—yet He hates it; and as soon as His ends with it are accomplished, He will show His displeasure against it by casting it into the lake of fire.

There is then abundant consolation for us in this dying world, from the thought that God sides with us in our abhorrence of death and the grave. He is the enemy of our enemies; and specially of this, the chief. When He raised His Son from the dead, He showed us that life and not death, was His purpose, both for Him and for us. Resurrection is at once our faith and our hope. In His great love He has revealed to us the coming victory over death, when He who is our life shall appear to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all those who believe. Because He rose, we shall arise. He has taught us to say, ’I know that my Redeemer lives;’ and to add, ’God shall redeem my soul from the power of the grave.’ He has made us to hear the sure words—’Your brother shall rise again;’ ’I will raise him up at the last day;’ ’He shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His own glorious body.’

So that in covering dust with dust at the grave of a saint, we look beyond the tomb and see the glory; our eye rests not upon corruption, but upon incorruption; our fellowship is not with death, but with life. We shall arise. That which is sown in weakness shall be raised in power. The reign of death is hastening to a close, the reign of life about to commence its eternal gladness. Our true life is coming; the conqueror is on His way; He will redeem His own people from the power of the grave, and swallow up death in victory. Behold, I come quickly, He cries. We respond, Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

II. God’s reasons for abhorring death.It contains nothing in itself that is lovable; nor has it done any excellent works because of which God or man might love it. Its history is one of evil, not of good; of wrong, and sadness, and terror; of breaking down, not of building up; of scattering, not of gathering; of darkness, not of light; of disease, and pain, and tossings to and fro, not of health and brightness. But God counts it specially unlovable for such reasons as the following—

(1) Death is the ally of sin—’Sin entered into the world, and death by sin’ (Romans 5:12). With sin it has gone hand in hand, passing down the generations, and spreading itself round the earth. Partners in evil—sin and death have held dark fellowship together from the beginning—the one reflecting and augmenting the odiousness of other—like night and storm, each in itself terrible, but more terrible as ’companions in havoc’. God abhors death as the fellow and the offspring of sin!

(2) Death is Satan’s tool—One of the most fearful of Satan’s designations is, ’he who has the power of death.’ Death is Satan’s most satisfying work—his trustiest weapon. To inflict disease—but not to heal; to wound—but not to bind up; to kill—but not to make alive—these are the works of the devil—which God abhors, and which the Son of God came to destroy. The evil workman and his tool—the master and his servant—are alike hateful in the eyes of that God who loves not evil—but good; not death—but life.

(3) Death is the undoing of His work—’In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.’ Specially did he rejoice in man as His handiwork and His property, and in man’s body as that material form which His Son was afterwards to assume. God did not intend creation to crumble down or evaporate. But death has seized it! Death—the poison of hell has penetrated everywhere! Man’s body and man’s earth are falling to pieces, undermined by some universal solvent; the beauty, and the order, and the power giving way before the evil invader! The sculptor does not love the hand that spoils his statue, nor the mother the fever that preys upon her darling—so God has no pleasure in that enemy that has been ruining the work of His hands.

(4) Death has been the source of earth’s greatest pain and sorrow—Pain is the messenger of disease, and disease is the touch of death’s finger—and with disease and death what an amount of sorrow has poured in upon our world! We come into contact with sorrow only in ’fragments’ or ’drops’, as it falls upon ourselves and our friends. We cannot estimate the accumulated grief of a year or a century, or even of one day, all over earth. There is no ’sorrow-gauge’ to measure the quantity that has fallen all over our earth, since the first drop alighted. If there were such a measurement, we would be appalled at the amount of sorrow which death has inflicted on our race!

But God has measured it! He knows what the amount of human grief has been; and He abhors alike the evil and the doer of it. He does not love sorrow—He has no pleasure in pain—He is not indifferent to creation’s groans—and He will yet avenge Himself, and avenge man and man’s earth for all the woe which death has wrought—in the day when He destroys death, and banishes pain, and dries up tears, and delivers creation from the bondage of corruption!

(5) Death has laid hands on God’s people—Though He permitted Herod, and Pilate, and Nero, and the kings of the earth, to persecute His Church, He was not thereby indifferent to the wrong—far less in sympathy with the wrong-doer. He treasures up wrath against the persecutor—He will judge and avenge the blood of His own. So will He take vengeance on death, the last enemy. He will yet vindicate His saints, and honor the ’holy dust’ that has been scattered over sea and earth. Death and the grave shall be cast into the lake of fire, to make known to the universe eternally—His sense of the wrong done. Speaking of the resurrection of His own, and His plucking the prey from the spoiler, He says, ’I will redeem them from death, I will ransom them from the power of the grave;’ and then, shaking His hand against the spoiler, He proclaims His purpose of vengeance—’O death, I will be your plague! O grave, I will be your destruction! Repentance shall be hid from my eyes.’ For in proportion to His love for His own, is His abhorrence of their injuries—’He who touches them, touches the apple of His eye.’

(6) Death laid hands upon His Son—Death smote the Prince of life—and the grave imprisoned Him! This was treason of the darkest king, the wrong of wrongs, perpetrated against the highest in the universe—God’s incarnate Son! And shall not God avenge for this? Shall not His soul be avenged on such a destroyer—for such a crime? If the lowest of His saints shall be avenged—how much more His beloved Son? In the day when God shall judge the world, this deed of darkness shall come into remembrance; and God, in casting death into the lake of fire, shall intimate His abhorrence of death, and His displeasure against this the worst of all his deeds—the slaying of His only-begotten Son!

It is not then resurrection merely, but something more than this, that our text reveals—even God’s condemnation of all that death has done.We see, too, His joy in resurrection, and His determination to prevent the recurrence, more—the possibility of the recurrence of such an evil as death. To take the sting from death was much—to abolish death was more—but it is something more still to cast death and the grave into the lake of fire! Surely as over Babylon, the prison-house of the saints, so over death and the grave, when they are thrown into the abyss—we may sing this song of triumph, ’Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you of her—for in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.’

Then shall resurrection be not merely a prospect and a hope—but an accomplished fact; and not merely an accomplished fact—but an irreversible condition of creaturehood. ’Neither shall they die any more,’ is the consummation to which resurrection brings us. The inhabitant shall not say, ’I am sick.’ The eye shall not be dim, and the ear shall not be dull, and the brow shall not wrinkle, nor the hair be gray, nor the limbs totter, nor the memory fail. There shall be no more curse, nor death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain; for the former things have passed away!

We know that our Redeemer lives, and because He lives, we shall live also! He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and when He appears, we shall appear with Him in glory. And He who shall come, will come, and will not tarry—and those who sleep in Jesus God will bring with Him.

We preach Jesus and the resurrection; Jesus the resurrection and the life; Jesus our life. We bring glad tidings concerning this risen One, and that finished work of which resurrection is the seal; glad tidings concerning God’s free love in connection with this risen One. The knowledge of this risen One is forgiveness, and life, and glory. Oh then, what is there in our dying world like this to impart consolation and gladness? We shall not die, but live. Eternity is a life, and not a death; a life with Christ, and a life in Christ. For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne shall lead us to the living fountains of waters, and God Himself shall wipe away all tears from our eyes!