14.  And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.  This is the second death.

15.  And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

Vs. 11-15.—­Nothing now remains to bring to a close the moral administration of Messiah, but the raising of the dead and pronouncing final sentence on all the subjects of his government.  There is no intimation that any events shall intervene between the casting of the devil into the burning lake, and the appearing of the Judge.

The “great white throne” is suitable to the majesty and holiness of the Judge.  He is not at first called by any name, for “every eye shall see,” and seeing, recognise his divine dignity.  In the next verse he is styled God, not to identify him, but as a matter of course in the narrative.—­No sooner did the Judge take his seat, than “the earth and the heaven fled away.”  The simplicity and sublimity of this language are inimitable by human genius; and rarely if at all equalled, even by those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.  The first inspired writer uses language very similar. (Gen. i. 3.) We are frequently and sufficiently taught that the Lord Christ in person is to be the judge of quick and dead. (Acts xvii. 31.) “All must appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” (2 Cor. v. 10.) No person is competent to this work of judgment but one who is omniscient and omnipotent, not to speak of other divine perfections.  The “Judge of all the earth” is a divine person, possessed of all the attributes of deity; and as there is not now among apostate angels, so there will not then be a child of Adam, to deny the supreme deity of Jesus Christ. (Matt. viii. 29.) Of this he gave intimation at the beginning of the Apocalypse:—­“Every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him,” (ch. i. 7;) yes, they pierced him for blasphemy, “because that he, being a man, made himself God.”  (John x. 33.) Here the Judge on the throne demonstrates to an assembled universe, the scriptural warrant for the language of the Reformers when they say he is “very God, and very man.”  “God is judge himself,” (Ps. l. 6,) in the person of the Father; but “he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained.”—­(Acts xvii. 31.)

Before the righteous Judge “shall be gathered all nations,” (Matt. xxv. 32,) all that have ever lived upon the earth, from the creation till the end of time, all ranks and degrees, however diversified by sex, age, or social position; righteous and wicked, Jews and Gentiles, Herod and Pontius Pilate, Cain and Abel, Judas, etc.