Facing Life's Record
Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/adJxW9wDOI4?list=PLA5C7629D1527F981
Beginning with those who first lived upon the earth, our Advocate presents the cases of each successive generation, and closes with the living.
I beheld, says the prophet Daniel, till thrones were placed, and One that was Ancient of Days did sit: His raiment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool; His throne was fiery flames, and the wheels thereof burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from
Thus was presented to the prophet's vision the great and solemn day when the characters and the lives of men should pass in review before the Judge of all the earth, and to every man should be rendered according to his works.
He comes to the Ancient of Days in heaven to receive dominion and glory and a kingdom, which will be given Him at the close of His work as a mediator. It is this coming, and not His second advent to the earth, that was foretold in prophecy to take place at the termination of the 2300 days in 1844. Attended by heavenly angels, our great High Priest enters the holy of holies and there appears in the presence of God to engage in the last acts of His ministration in behalf of man--to perform the work of investigative judgment and to make an atonement for all who are shown to be entitled to its benefits.
*A book of remembrance is written before God, in which are recorded the good deeds of them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name. Malachi 3:16.
Their words of faith, their acts of love, are registered in heaven. Nehemiah refers to this when he says: Remember me, O my God, . . . and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God. Nehemiah 13:14.
*In the book of God's remembrance .... There every temptation resisted, every evil overcome, every word of tender pity expressed, is faithfully chronicled.
There is a record also of the sins of men. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. Says the Savior: By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. Ecclesiastes 12:14; Matthew 12:36, 37.
---In the typical service the high priest, having made the atonement for Israel, came forth and blessed the congregation. So Christ, at the close of His work as mediator, will appear, without sin unto salvation Hebrews 9:28, to bless His waiting people with eternal life.
---As the priest, in removing the sins from the sanctuary, confessed them upon the head of the scapegoat, so Christ will place all these sins upon Satan, the originator and instigator of sin. The scapegoat, bearing the sins of Israel, was sent away unto a land not inhabited Leviticus 16:22; so Satan, bearing the guilt of all the sins which he has caused God's people to commit, will be for a thousand years confined to the earth, which will then be desolate, without inhabitant, and he will at last suffer the full penalty of sin in the fires that shall destroy all the wicked.