“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice. And shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John v. 28, 29).
IN the afternoon we were preaching from the 25th verse: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” That text speaks of the spiritual resurrection of the soul that is by nature dead in trespasses and in sins. In our text this evening Christ speaks of the literal resurrection of the body that is dead in the grave. As there was an hour when the spiritually dead were to be raised to life there is an hour in which all that are in their graves shall be raised to life again. That hour no one knows but God only.
In treating the subject we shall speak of:
I. The hour of the resurrection of all that are in their graves.
II. The means by which they shall be raised to life—the voice of the Son of God; and
III. What follows the resurrection of the dead—the final judgment of the quick and the dead.
I. The hour of the resurrection of all that are in their graves. Although none but God knows that hour, we learn from Scripture that many events are to take place before that hour comes.
(1.) In II. Thessalonians, ii. it is predicted that a great apostacy from the faith was to take place, which has been accomplished in the Man of Sin and his followers. This apostacy began after the Apostles had been removed from the world to the rest that remains to God’s people, and is still in existence. Another great apostacy took place before this one—namely, that of the Jews who had forsaken the faith—rejected the Saviour, and are now nearly 2000 years shut up in unbelief. In our own day on apostacy from the doctrines of God’s Word has taken place in many of the Churches of the Reformation. How long that apostacy shall continue we cannot tell, but we are strongly of the opinion that it shall last for several generations. Oh! how many precious souls in these Churches shall be lost in eternity during that period. Paul, in his 1. Epistle to Timothy, speaks of a time coming when people would not endure sound doctrine, but turn their ears from the truth to fables. This apostacy was to be brought about by false teachers, who would be numerous. They shall be in heaps, as they really are in the present day, as compared with those who teach the truth. The late Dr Kennedy, who gave many faithful warnings, said that there was a time coming when a minister who preached the doctrines of God’s Word would be in danger of his life for preaching the truth.
(2.) Another great event which was to take place was that the Gospel would be preached to all nations before the end of the world. It may be said that this is now a fact, although there are many in the world who have not yet heard the Gospel message, yet the Gospel has reached all the nations of the world, and it is a good sign that the Bible has been translated into the different languages of all nations, of which there are about 500, so that all may read the Bible in their own language. Surely this is a preparation for the glorious days to come when all nations shall serve the Lord, though this is lamentably neglected by our own nation to their own hurt—”For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.”
(3.) Another glorious event is to take place before the hour spoken of in our text comes—namely, the millenium. The millenium may begin like a grain of mustard seed, but shall go on gradually till “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Is. xi. 9). Satan shall be bound for 1000 years, and idolatry, which is the worshipping of the creature, together with all other systems of error and superstition, shall be swept away from the earth. There was before Christ came in the flesh a great shaking of nations, according to Scripture, and before He comes in the power of the Spirit to revive and advance His cause in the world, a great shaking of nations shall precede that event. During the millenium all kings shall be godly, and “Kings shall be nursing fathers to the Church and queens nursing mothers,” but in the present day it is deplorable to think that there is not perhaps any godly king or queen in the world so far as we know.
(4.) Another event which is to take place is the loosing of Satan at the end of the thousand years. He shall then go forth to deceive the nations of the world, and because he knows his time is short, he shall work with all his might. How does Satan know that his time is short? He knows it from the Bible, he said to Christ when he was tempting Him in the wilderness. “It is written.” Satan knows the Bible better than many in Dingwall, who, though they have that book, do not read it. Satan shall proceed with his evil work till he has succeeded in deceiving all the nations of the world. When shall he begin his work of deception? So far as the Church is concerned, he will begin in the pulpit, where all errors begin, and the evil effect of the pulpit will descend to the elders, members, and adherents. With respect to the nations he will begin in the throne. He shall deceive kings, and the evil influence of these shall affect the subjects, and then he shall incite the nations he had deceived to persecute and destroy, if possible, the Lord’s people, who are the fruit of the millenium. When these are gathered together in camp he shall come upon them with his great host to destroy them. It is likely that the enemies are armed with all weapons of destruction, while the Lord’s people have only the powerful weapon of prayer, but the Lord himself shall fight for them. He shall send down fire from Heaven to devour them, while His own people are safe. Then at the end of this destruction the final judgment shall begin, for John saw “a great white throne and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away, and there was found no place for them.” It is then that Christ shall come again the second time. Pre-millennarians say that He shall come before then and reign in the world in human nature for 1000 years, but there is no Scripture warrant for that idea. He came first in human nature to work out everlasting redemption for His people, and He shall come again the second time to judge the quick and the dead, but there is no mention in Scripture of His coming a third time. “The heavens must receive Him till the restitution of all things” (Acts iii. 21). When He was about to leave the world He said to His disciples, “Yet a little while and the world shall see me no more, but ye shall see me, because I live ye shall live also” (John xiv. 19). None saw Him after His resurrection except His own people, but when He shall come again every eye shall see Him—the wicked as well as the righteous. Then cometh the hour mentioned in our text when all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall come forth out of their graves.
II. The means by which they shall be raised to life. The voice of the Son of God, a powerful and an almighty voice. None can raise the dead to life but He who is God. The Jews denied that He was the Son of God, but He referred them to the works which He did, which none other than God could do. He raised many persons to life in His state of humiliation, and that by His voice. He said to Lazarus when dead in the grave, Come forth! and he that was dead came forth. It is the same voice that shall raise the dead at the resurrection. There shall be some living at that time who shall not die as we die; His own people shall be changed and taken to heaven like Enoch and Elijah. They shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. They shall have a glorious passage to the Father’s house above, but all the rest shall be raised by the voice of Him who is Almighty, and who created the heavens and the earth by the word of His power. He had power to raise himself from the grave, but it was the Father that raised Him by right. His resurrection was not a question of power but of right. When He paid the debt of His people to justice by the sacrifice of Himself, the Father raised Him from the dead, which was, so to speak, a receipt put in His hand. He left a copy of that receipt to His Church—namely, the Christian Sabbath, which from His resurrection is to be observed to the end of the world. When a man pays a debt he is entitled to a receipt, which he is very careful to preserve, and none but an enemy would try to get hold of the receipt to destroy it. There are many who profess to be the friends of Christ who belie their profession by doing their utmost to destroy or profane the Christian Sabbath. But we speak of the general resurrection of the dead at the last day effected by the voice of Christ. His own people, or rather their bodies, shall be raised first. He who raised them by His voice from their spiritual graves will come to their graves at the morning of the resurrection and say, “Children, it is daylight, rise out of your beds in which you have lain so long though you did not feel it longer than a moment.” Some of them had a very long sleep. Abel had the longest, and others had a long sleep too. If Christ comes to our grave and speaks to our bodies in such a loving manner as this, we shall have at the resurrection a day that shall never end, an eternal day; no night, no darkness, unbelief or sin then, but a bright day, a warm day, never such a warm day as the resurrection day. The grave was cold and dark, but at the resurrection day it shall be warm and bright. All in their graves, whether buried in the earth or in the sea, from Adam downwards to the last that shall die, shall be raised. Young and old, rich and poor. Not only that His own people shall be raised from their graves, but the wicked shall be raised also. John in the Isle of Patmos saw a vision of the resurrection and of the last judgment. All shall be raised to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Although it is Christ that shall raise them to life He will employ the angels to gather them to His judgment seat. “And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds; from one end of heaven to the other (Matt. xxiv. 31). They shall gather not only the Lord’s people but the wicked also. This is taught in the parable of the wheat and the tares, where He says, “I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matt. xiii. 30). There shall be many bundles of the wicked according to the sins in which they lived. Atheists shall be in one bundle, infidels in another, the higher critics in another, murderers in another, persecutors in another, Sabbath-breakers in another: all of them shall be in bundles according to their sins. When all are gathered to the judgment seat of Christ then Christ, who is the Judge, shall as a shepherd divide His sheep from the goats. He shall set the sheep on His right hand and the goats on the left (Matt. xxv. 32, 33). All good and bad shall be judged; some may ask why the righteous are to be judged seeing that they had been acquitted from all guilt when they were justified. In the Shorter Catechism, which is founded on Scripture, it is stated that they shall be acquitted at the Day of Judgment, but it is to be borne in mind that it is not from any real guilt they shall be acquitted by the Judge, but from all false accusations, scandals, and reproaches cast upon them by the devil and wicked men. The Judge shall acquit them publicly in the presence and hearing of all of these false charges. Some of the Lord’s people died under false accusations, but they shall be fully acquitted at the Day of Judgment, and the false charges will fall as a heavy load upon those who made them, and they shall lie upon them for ever.
All shall be judged according to what is written in God’s books. The books shall be opened and read publicly, so that all present may hear what is in them. So far as the Lord’s people are concerned there is no guilt in the books against them. Before their justification there was much guilt marked against them in the books, but when they were justified Christ drew the pen, dipped in His own blood, across what was marked against them and, therefore, they are free from guilt and condemnation, but it is otherwise with the wicked on the left hand of the Judge. All their guilt is still in the books, as is the case with those who buy on credit goods from merchants. Merchants mark in their book all that they buy, and this is in their book till payment is made, and if payment is not made, the debtors are sued in the civil courts and fined or punished. So it shall be at the Day of Judgment. The wicked shall be punished with everlasting punishment for their sins. So our text states that they shall come forth they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. All shall be judged according to their works. The works of the Lord’s people are good, and the works of the wicked are evil. None can do good works till they are first made good themselves. The tree must be good before it can produce good fruit. An evil tree cannot bear good fruit. The sinner must be changed in his nature before he can do good works. Christ the Judge shall pronounce judgment on both parties before Him. He will say to His own people on His right hand: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. xxv. 34); and to those on His left hand: “Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” The former shall have everlasting life, the latter everlasting death. Everlasting death does not mean annihilation, as some say, nor does it mean, as others hold, that the punishment of the wicked shall come to an end. If the punishment of the wicked shall come to an end the felicity of the righteous must come to an end too, for the word in the original rendered everlasting is the same in both cases. There are men who hold what is called the Larger Hope, that is to say, that all the wicked cast into hell, including the devil and his angels, shall be taken out of that awful place of punishment to enter heaven, but that is a delusion. The Larger Hope may be held in this world, but those who died holding this view found out by sad experience that there was no Larger Hope in eternity. Hell is a place of everlasting despair. There is no hope for a better state there. There are many ministers who speak of all that die as if they were in heaven, but these ministers are not yet on the way to heaven themselves, and betray their ignorance of the change that the sinner must undergo before he can have a well-grounded hope of going to heaven, for, as Christ says, except a man be born again he cannot see or enter the Kingdom of God.
In conclusion, we have been speaking on a most solemn subject. The resurrection of all that are in their graves and the last judgment of the quick and the dead. We shall not live in the world to the Day of Judgment, but death will decide our state for eternity; as the tree falleth so shall it lie; as death finds us so we shall be at the Day of Judgment. Seek preparation for death. Seek to be found in Christ not having your own righteousness but the righteousness which is by the faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. You may forget your sins now, but you may remember them entering the world of eternity. I heard a man “speaking to the question” on the Friday of a Communion. He told that he fell into the sea and reached the bottom, and he was afraid that he was to be drowned, and that all the sins he committed came to his memory as a heavy load, and that if he had been drowned he would have been lost for ever; but he was rescued, and from that day forth he was a changed person. He began to cry for mercy and pardon, and he obtained mercy and was forgiven for the sake of Christ. Christ shall come again, and His coming shall be a terror to the unconverted. They shall be crying to the mountains and rocks to hide them from His presence, but what is a terror to them is a matter of great joy to His own people. They love His appearing, and the last prayer of the Church is: “Even so come Lord Jesus” (Rev. xxii, 29). No tongue of man or angel can describe the blessedness and happiness of the redeemed in heaven, or the misery of the lost in hell. While on earth they are both associated with each other, but in eternity they are separated by an impassable gulf which stands between them for ever. While on earth they are in the same family, in the same congregation, and perhaps sat together at the Lord’s Table on Communion occasions, but the association was broken at death, never to be repaired. Some of those lost heard the same Gospel by which others were saved, but they rejected Christ, preferring worldly matters to Him, and are now lost. They may have thought that they would receive Him before death, but they allowed the accepted time to pass away, and when it was too late He would not receive them. This reminds me of an anecdote about one of the Dukes of Argyle. It is said that he came in an ordinary garment, and not in that which belonged to him as Duke, to ask a certain lady in the neighbourhood in marriage. She would not have him, she refused the offer he made. Soon, thereafter, there was a large meeting of the nobles of that district. The Duke was present in the attire befitting his station. The lady, who was in high position, went to the meeting also. She observed with admiration the Duke, and she asked who he was. She was told that he was the Duke of Argyle who had asked her in marriage the day before. The lady walked up to the Duke and said that she regretted having refused to marry him, but that she was to-day willing to take him as her husband. The Duke said to her: “You refused the Duke of Argyle yesterday and you will not get him to-day.” Christ may say this to you if you refuse Him to-day; it may be too late to-morrow. Christ in the state of humiliation veiled His glory so that many rejected Him on that account, but now He appears in His glorious apparel, and those who refuse Him on account of His humiliation shall not get Him as their husband in His glorious attire, however much they may regret their refusal of Him as the crucified One who was despised and rejected of men. Know then to-day if you hear His voice harden not your hearts against the Saviour of Sinners. Ah, may we have grace to consider these things. Seek to know Christ that you may be with Him where He is, who says: “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” The Lord add His blessing to the preaching of His Word. Amen.
Gold may be gold, and bear the King’s stamp upon it, when it is trampled upon by men.—Samuel Rutherford.
The doctrine of the death of Christ is the substance of the Gospel.—Stephen Charnock.