Lesson 14: The Great White Throne Judgment

At the close of the Millennium, when unbelievers again make war against God, the war is ended by God destroying the world and the universe, as we read in Revelation 20:11-15: “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated on it. From His presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

This is also the judgment Jesus talked about in Matthew 25:31-46 where we see the separation of people to His right and left. Everyone in the history of the world will stand before Him at this judgment – everyone, except the believers in Jesus of this time which we call the Church Age. We will have been judged for our works during the Tribulation (after we met Him in the air in the Rapture).


The judge on this throne will be Jesus – see John 5:19-29. No one who stands before this judgment throne will ever be able to say the judgment was unfair because the judge did not know what the individual had been through in their life.

One of God’s purposes for all of history and this creation in which we live today, is to make an end of all sin. We read this in several places in Scripture, but one we have already seen in a previous lesson is Daniel 9:24. God allowed sin to enter His creation when He decided to give us free choice. While this free choice did not include everything in our lives, it does give us the choice for where we will spend eternity – with God or not with God. We cannot choose HOW we can please God – that is His choice, and He chose to make Jesus the only way to Himself. We also cannot define what sin is and what is not sin – God says HE is the standard, and anything which does not meet His standard is not good enough (called sin, or missing the mark).

The first sin ever committed was the statement “I will” from one of God’s creations. Our greatest sin is also “I” in some form. Anything we try to do for ourselves is always leaving God out, and therefore is sin. God told Daniel that a certain time was set for all transgressions to be finished and then all sin to be ended.

Prayer: Dear Jesus, help us to understand that time is short and You want us who believe in You to be at work for Your kingdom rather than for ourselves.