On the Verge of Eternity — E.A. Johnston

A Prayer for Conviction and Mercy

Great and dreadful God, I come before you by the blood of thy dear son Jesus. I ask you for your spirit to attend the preaching of your words this evening. I ask you to come and work in hearts tonight.

O great God, I plead with you that your spirit will come and will disturb folks. That you'll bring holy ghost conviction of sin and lead some poor sinner here this evening to the very verge of eternity.

O great God, lift the lid off that bottomless pit and open our eyes so we can see the red glow of those burnings. If there's some folks here tonight that are heading for hell, then warn them as hellfire flashes on their soul.

Open their ears, Lord, and let them hear the terrible cries of the damned so they won't want to go there. Let them get a whiff of the burning sulfur as it billows forth from that dark, horrible pit. O great God, in your mercy I pray, I pray for mercy tonight.

I pray for grace to come and be free here in this meeting. I pray that you will open someone's heart to see a bleeding and dying Christ on Calvary, hanging there with his arms outstretched under the awful weight of sin.

Come, awaken, alarm, come, disturb some secure person here tonight. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Well, I have a message for you tonight, friends, that you won't want to miss.

Warning of Judgment and the Verge of Eternity

I'm going to be honest with you tonight about your soul, and I'm going to warn you of a judgment to come. Like we say in the South, I'm going to give you the oil straight from the can, because before this message is ended tonight, hopefully we will be confronted with eternity.

Dr. Maurice Rawlings and Testimonies of Hell

Now, before we begin, I want to share a story with you. There was an atheist by the name of Dr. Maurice Rawlings, and he was a cardiovascular surgeon for the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. And he said he had witnessed strange occurrences in the operating room where he claimed some patients who died during surgery and who were clinically dead came back to life, and they told of incredible scenes from hell.

Their eyes would dilate as they described being escorted there by demons. They described the hideous forms and faces of these terrible entities. They spoke of smoke and fire pouring out of caverns and hell.

They went into great detail about the suffocating heat there in the intense darkness. And these stories and accounts so disturbed Dr. Rawlings that one day he went out and bought a Bible just to see what it had to say about hell.

And while he was doing his research by reading the Bible, he got saved, and he became a Christian. And he wrote a book detailing all this, which became a bestseller. And the book was called To Hell and Back, which I still have a copy.

It's a haunting book. My Bible says, And it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this to judgment. John Wesley called The Last Judgment the grandest size because it's a great courtroom scene. We find a vivid picture of this heavenly courtroom in the book of Revelation in chapter 20, where it speaks of the final judgment day.

The Great White Throne Judgment

Come with me, friend, as I throw the curtain back on eternity. Turn in your Bibles with me now to the book of Revelation. We will be in chapter 20. I'll never forget the time I preached from this very text on a Sunday morning to a congregation in the South, and God showed up in our midst.

The Spirit of God was so real among us that it seemed the very atmosphere was thick with the holiness of God. It was as if someone had lifted the lid off the bottomless pit just long enough for us to hear the cries of the damned and get a whiff of that smell there.

As I preached, I looked out upon the congregation, and they were sitting there with looks of alarm on their faces as if a cannonball had just been shot down the center aisle of that church. It was as if we each were led and we're each standing on the very verge of eternity, peering out over into the dark abyss, and we had to face the fact if we were saved or lost.

Well, let's look now, friends, at our text from Revelation 20. We'll be in verses 11, 15. Here now is the word of God. May the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His holy word. 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.

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.

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. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

This is the second death, and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. I will stop there, friends. I want us to take the time now to picture in our minds that great heavenly courtroom scene where the dead, small and great, the rich and the famous, the known and the nobodies, stand there before that judge who has eyes of fire.

Every Person Accountable Before God

His books are opened, and lives exposed beneath his intense scrutiny. The whole world is represented on that day. There stands all the drug dealers and beer barons and pimps who ruined the lives of millions.

There stands the captains of industry and the heads of state. There are the American presidents and the English kings, the popes and emperors. There stands Pharaoh who stood against Moses. There is Bloody Mary who butchered Christians.

There stands the great minds of history. There stand the great artists and literary giants, the poets and composers. There they are, the small and the great, as they stand before God and their lives are exposed, revealed and reviewed.

Books are opened. Evidence is presented. Cases are reviewed. And verdicts delivered. For the sentencing of the law must be carried out upon every guilty lawbreaker. There sits a holy God and a broken law.

One by one they stand before that great white throne, and the judge of all the earth judges them. It should not the judge of all the earth do right. One by one a verdict is read, and they are bound hand and foot, and cast into that lake of fire.

It spits and sputters as they scream and holler, wail and spit and curse as they are led away and thrown to their doom and damnation. There is a great roll call from every generation of every civilization.

There stands the adulterer, the fornicator, the liar and the murderer. And all of a sudden I hear my name. Here I come, as my name is called, and I stand before that pure white throne. It's a heavenly courtroom scene, complete with its participants.

The great white throne symbolizes purity and the holiness of God. The judge is God, seated on that throne. And if I may so speak, the angels are the bailiffs in charge of the books. Satan is the prosecutor, the accuser, the brethren.

I hear a voice of authority as it calls my name. It's roll call. There I stand, trembling before that throne and before that judge. My sins are stacked up against me, and they rise like a mountain before me.

There I stand in that dark shadow of my collective sins that I did in life. Sins of commission, sins of omission, willful sins, presumptuous sins. My mouth is stopped as my sins accuse me. The strictness and severity of God's unbending law is held up against me as a holy and righteous God drops his plumb line upon me.

He measures me out, and I fail that test for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. A guilty sentence hangs over my head like the sword of Damocles, ready to descend at any moment. My knees buckle and tremble, and all the blood drains out of my face, and a story comes to my mind as I stand in that heavenly courtroom.

The Thief on the Cross and Christ's Advocacy

It's a story about a man traveling through the city of St. Louis, and it's a Sunday, and he's a Christian. So he parks his car at a downtown church and goes inside to worship. Once he is in there, he realizes he is the only white person in an all-black church, so he takes his seat on the back row.

Up on the platform is a well-dressed elderly pastor who is speaking on his subject for that Sunday morning. His subject is heaven. He begins his sermon by saying,. Some folks call heaven paradise. Other folks call it Abraham's bosom.

I like to think of heaven this-a-way. Here is Jesus, just returned from his earthly ministry. He stands there at the pearly gates, and old Gabriel greets him. Hello, Jesus. Sure is good to see you, Jesus.

We sure missed you up here, Jesus. Good to have you home, Jesus. But wait, who's that with you? Is that that thief, that thief from the cross? Oh no, sir. We can't have no thieves up here. He's not welcome here, Jesus replied.

Never you mind, Gabriel. Never you mind. And just then, Jesus put his arm around the thief and declared, He's with me. Now that's the story I'm thinking about as I stand guilty before that great audience and before that great white throne.

My sins condemn me. I'm guilty as charged as I wait the sentencing of the law to be carried out upon me. As the verdict is read, I can see the red glow behind me of that burning lake as it flashes hellfire upon my soul.

But just then, there's a disturbance in the courtroom as my defense attorney, my advocate, rises to his feet. He comes beside me, puts his arm around me, and with a loud voice, he shouts, He's with me.

Well, there's a shout of hallelujah that rings out in that courtroom as I enter into God's presence forever and ever. There stand my loved ones and friends to greet me. It's a reunion unlike any other.

Repentance, Regeneration, and the Invitation of Christ

Bless God for his mercy and grace, and thank you, Lord Jesus, for dying for me on that bloody cross so I could live. Listen to me, friends. To get to heaven, you must be born from above and washed in the blood.

Will you die apart from Christ and end up in a Christless eternity? Don't go to hell, friend. I plead with you. Repent before it's too late. Listen to God's invitation. And the spirit and the bride say, Come.

And let him that hears say, Come. And let him that is thirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.