The Judgement Seat of Christ - Part 2 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Need for Eternity to Shape Christian Living

Like, there's some psychological phenomena going on here, that while they were laid out he just lashed them with the Word of God. And people cried out in their despair. There was a reason for it, because before he had prayed over and over and over again, Oh God, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.

I don't know anybody else that ever prayed it, maybe we said it. But you know, if God should stamp eternity or even judgment on our eyeballs, or if you like, on the fleshy table of our hearts, I'm quite convinced we'd be a very, very different tribe of people, God's people in the world today.

We live too much in time, we're too earthbound. We see as other men see, we think as other men think. We invest our time as the world invests it, we invest our money. We're supposed to be a different breed of people.

Christ's Humble First Coming and His Future Return

It must have been very awesome in the days of his flesh to get up one morning and say, well I'm not going to work, I don't know who this man is, but I'll tell you what, I'm so stale and dried up, and I've been to the synagogue and the temple, and those old boys mutter, and they quote about somebody coming, and they don't believe he's coming.

You know, Enoch says, that said, Jude records, that Jesus will come with ten thousand of his saints. Why did he come that way the first time? Why didn't he come sweeping through the sky when it was as black as night over Jerusalem?

Why didn't he come with ten thousand saints? Why didn't he come with the sound of trumpets? Why didn't he capture the world like that? He didn't come that way. And when he did come, they couldn't believe that somebody clothed in flesh and blood, walking around, that had to eat and sleep and do everything else like we do, was the Son of God.

Jesus' Miracles and the Raising of Lazarus

But he began to stir Jerusalem, and you might have gone into town and say, well I've been on business in Jericho, you know, I've got to look after affairs. What are you excited about? Oh, we went to see this man Jesus, this fellow that the synagogues are disturbed about, and the priests are criticizing.

And you know, he does amazing miracles. Why? He unplugs deaf ears, and he casts the demons out of people, and he cures leprosy. And you know what he did yesterday? He actually raised a man from the dead.

My, that must have excited them. Jesus going to the tomb and saying, roll away the stone. He didn't roll it away. He gave wine at the feasts. But he said, you fill the water pots. There's some labor we have to do.

You put the water in the water pots, I'll turn it into wine. You roll the stone away. And then he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus! My, that would have excited me. I don't know about you, I'd have hit the ceiling, I think.

He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, as Campbell Morgan says. He said, Lazarus, come forth. If he'd just said, come forth, all the cemetery would have come, and it wasn't time for them to come yet. So he just said, Lazarus, come forth.

And he came forth. He was alive, but boy, he was bound with, gagged on his face. He had grave clothes. He could only shuffle. His hands were tied. And that's true about 95 of believers today. They're alive, but they're gagged.

Release from Spiritual Bondage

They're bound. They've still got grave clothes. And Jesus says, loose him and let him go. We're bound by superstition. We're bound by the theology of our grandfathers or something. But the church is gagged and bound.

She needs release in this awful hour in which we're living. And the only one that can bring that release is Jesus Christ himself. Why, even the disciples were, well, what do you think of our master now?

He's even raising the dead. And Jesus says in John 5, 28, listen, don't marvel at this. Oh, if this stirs your way, I've got a word for you. He says, the day is coming in the which all who are in the grave shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they shall rise.

The Resurrection Voice of the Son of God

Did you get that? From Adam, wherever he is right now, in the sands, in the dust, all who are in the grave shall hear the voice of the Son of God. You see, Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life, and I believe he did rise from the dead.

Not because of that long list in 1 Corinthians 15, but away at the end of the book of Revelation, he says, I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and hell.

Don't you believe that old bachelor in Rome? You don't know who he is? Well, it's the Pope. He says he has the keys, not on your life. Jesus has the keys of death and of hell, and of the voice of the Son of God.

Won't that be amazing when he says, rise! All that are in the sea, and all that are in the grave. I crossed the Atlantic, I guess, about 18 times on the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, United States, and after dinner at night, when people went to smoke, and drink, and dance, and everything else, I walked up and down the deck, and almost every time I crossed it, I looked overboard, and I said, hey, you down there, you're gonna get up one day.

You buccaneers who died in the Spanish Main, stealing treasures, and the folk that sank in the Lusitania, and the people that sank in the Titanic, and the people that sank in all the great ships during the war, at the voice of the Son of God, they're going to rise.

The Universal Judgment and the Wrath of the Lamb

Millions of them, billions of them, trillions of them, and they're all going to stand at the judgment seat of Christ. That's gonna be a spectacle. Oh, where is it going to take place? I don't know. You see, this book of the Revelation is not only at the end of the Bible, but it deals with the end of time, and then it deals with things that happen at the end of the time.

And it's the only book in the world which is authentic. And everyone that is dead is going to hear the voice of the Son of God. Look for a minute at that sixth chapter in the Revelation. Look at verse 12.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, oh, there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell to the earth, even as a fig casteth her untimely figs, a tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

And the heaven departed in a scroll, as a scroll, when it is rolled together. And every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every freeman, they hid themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that is sitting on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day is come.

Longing to See the Face of the Redeemer

In the end of the book of the Revelation, it says of the redeemed, which is in the other judgment, that they're going to come, and they long to see his face. Again, Fanny Crosby, blind for 84 years, and when somebody said to her, it's a shame, a great Christian like you is blind.

You can't see the sunset, you can't see the lovely flowers, you're at such a disadvantage. Oh no, she said, I'm at a great advantage. You know, she was the first woman in history, in American history, blind though she was, to address the joint, what do you call them, different sections of Congress.

She addressed the Senators, and she addressed the Congressmen, and she addressed the whole government. The first woman in history, a little blind woman. And they said, and you never see the sunset. God has denied you so much.

She said, my dear, I have a great advantage over you. What's your advantage? She said, don't you realize the first face I ever see will be his face. Do you wonder, she wrote so many hymns about his face, seeing his face.

The Dead Standing Before Christ's Judgment

We'll leave a spellbound when we see his face. But here, the great men, the rich men, the mighty men, the rulers, I saw the dead small and great. Every king, every king that's ruled over England, the Caliphs of Baghdad, the Maharajas of India.