Scripture Reading: Matthew 25:31-46
This passage gives us a wonderful picture of the last judgment. It is not a parable, but a prophetic presentation of the great scene. The sheep and goats are used as representing the good and evil. Christ will be the Judge. He will appear as the Son of man, that is, in His humanity. It is a comfort to think of this, that it will be our Brother whom we shall see on the throne of glory. Christ came first in lowly form. He was born in a stable and cradled in a manger. No retinue of angels then attended Him except the host that sang their song in the shepherd’s ears. In His first coming He was lowly and despised. He was so poor that often He had nowhere to lay His head. He had but few followers and made but little name for Himself on the earth. But He will not come this way the second time. He will appear in glory and will be attended by hosts of angels.
For once the whole human family will be together. “Before Him shall be gathered all the nations.” Yet in our thought of the grandeur of this scene we must not lose sight of the individuality of the judgment. We shall be there, but none of us will be lost in the crowd; each one shall have personal judgment. During a war the telegraphic reports from the field say that in a great battle ten thousand men were slain. Not knowing any of them personally, we think only of the vast aggregate number. But suppose some friend of ours — brother or father — was among the slain; we think no more then of the ten thousand, but of the one. And every one of the ten thousand is mourned in some home — is somebody’s father, husband, brother, son, friend. From that battlefield ten thousand cords stretch to ten thousand homes. The heaps of slain are simply ten thousand individuals. So in that countless throng on judgment day, not one person will be lost in the multitude. “Everyone must bear his own burden.”
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