White Throne Judgement POV

The story below is by no means a definitive answer to how the White Throne judgement will play out. It is simply an imaginative exploration of what possibly could be, much like what “The Left Behind” series was to the Tribulation

My granddaughter and I had been standing there side by side for what felt like hours. I can’t say definitively it has been hours, as time wasn’t a thing anymore and my legs didn’t feel tired in the slightest bit, but I just had a feeling. Judging from the continuous procession of people that had been slowly shuffling forward down below me, one after the other, I could tell some sort of progression was occurring, even if it wasn’t tied to time. It was much like a sunny day would be, although there was no sun. The sky was clear. Not a single cloud. I was arrayed alongside millions of other saints, lined up in tiered rows. If I turned around and looked up, the rows sloped upwards and backwards as far as the eye could see, millions of glittering pinpoints in the daylight. Looking to the left and right, it was the same. As far as the eye could see, with a slight curvature. I could only describe the formation of us saints as an amphitheater seating arrangement. It was just bigger, taller, and wider than anything I could’ve ever imagined before I received my heavenly perspective and sight.

Everything was so bright. We were all adorned in white garments. Pure white. It was a loose, breezy material. Not quite cotton. Not quite silk. Our wrists, ankles, and waists were adorned with diamond ropes and we each wore crowns of gold on our heads. The diamonds and gold and white fabric reflected the light, spinning it into billions of fractal rays. The source of the light was God himself. He was so bright. His form was that of a king. His features were mighty and majestic. My eyes could only pass over Him briefly back and forth. I can only liken it to looking at the sun. You can’t stare into it, but you can catch glimpses before your eyes begin to burn. Way down below, in the center circle pavilion of the amphitheater, He sat on a huge gleaming white throne in front of the procession of people. In his lap was a book. The book was immaculate. Each page had a gilded edge. The binding was ornate. The paper was weighty and thick, and the ink on each page was thick and dark and red like blood. Even from my position, I could see that each stroke within the book had been placed with purpose. There were no scratch-outs. There was no scribbles. Ever letter of every word had been penned with purpose and care and deliberation. Angels stood alongside him on each side. Smaller, less ornate books were within each of their hands. Their wings shielded them from His Glory, covering their faces, but the books remained open in their hands.

The tiered stands of us saints were quiet. Everyone was engrossed with the spectacle staged below us. We were equal parts horrified and equal parts in awe. We were all somber. My eyes, as they seemingly had been doing for hours at this point, scanned the procession of people lined up in front of God. They were small and great, young and old. I saw a business man who looked like he had just stepped out of the Great Gatsby movie. A sheep’s wool suit coat with a cutaway front. A fedora. Polished shoes. Behind him stood a black woman with teased up hair, a crop top, sneakers, and low cut flare jeans. Behind her was a white man in tattered, soaked sailor uniform. Still behind him was a Jewish man, wearing remains of a 1st Century wedding garment. His clothes had been all but burned off of him and the skin underneath was heat-scarred and riddled with worm-sized holes. All of them were scared. Their eyes were darting back and forth. Their feet were nervously tapping. They were wringing their hands and tears were pooling in their eyes. No one was running. There was nowhere to go. Step by step, they shuffled forward.

My eyes continued to scan down the line. People who looked like royalty. People who looked homeless. People who looked liked clergymen. Black and White. South American, Canadian, Asian. Every culture, every occupation, and every ethnicity that ever existed was in the line. All of a sudden, my breath caught in my chest. My daughter. She was 3 or 4 people back behind the 1st Century Jewish man. She was trying to catch her breath too. I could tell that she was on the verge of hyperventilating. She’d been sobbing. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were splotchy. She was still wearing the same clothes I’d seen her in before the car accident. She was 35 when that 2023 Dodge Ram slammed into her 2019 Toyota Prius at the intersection 4 miles from my house. She’d dropped off Anne that afternoon and driven into eternity. My wife and I had raised Anne after that. A weekend at Grandma and Grandaddy’s turned into a home for the next 10 years. Looking back, and seeing my granddaughter standing next to me in that robe of white, I realized the Lord knew what was needed. Anne had moved into her Mama’s childhood room. We had finished raising her. She ended up coming with us to church. She heard the Gospel message, accepted Christ, and began living for the Lord. She was dating a good Christian boy and preparing to walk across the stage to get her undergrad degree the day that the Trumpet sounded.

Anne reached for my hand to squeeze it. She must’ve seen Jackie too then. My mind snapped back to when Jackie was a little girl. She was a good kid. Her mother and I hadn’t had the best relationship after she was born, and Jackie took it hard. That was before I really was living for Jesus myself, so I definitely wasn’t leading my family correctly. I ended up walking out. I errantly thought at the time that leaving was the best approach. No more bickering and fighting and yelling with her mother. When I left, I put a void in my daughter’s life that never was filled. Her whole life, she looked for male attention. Absent of me, the father figure, she looked elsewhere, and the vicious cycle began to spin. Men came and went through the years. She picked up and addiction to alcohol and pills. Somewhere along the way, Anne was born. During the time Jackie was going through that, I found the Lord, got in church, and remarried. I’d tried to begin mending the relationship with my daughter. I started to be a good grandpa to Anne. With Jackie though, we had so much baggage to work through. I was so worried if I said something she didn’t like she’d take my granddaughter away from me. So I kept silent. Sundays came and went. Birthdays and Christmases came and went. The men in her life came and went. She was in and out of rehab. Each time, I helped with the bills. I helped with taking care of Anne. I thought I was doing all I could. Looking back though, I saw that I didn’t take the opportunities to speak truth into her life. The few times I broached it, she said it was all fairy tales. It was a good story about a nice man named Jesus. And, even if it wasn’t just a good story, a loving God wouldn’t send her to hell. I held my tongue, not wanting to push her away. I was hoping she’d want what I had in Jesus, but I didn’t take all the opportunities to speak that truth. The reality was that I was a good-intentioned enabler.

While I had been self-reflecting, the line had kept inching forward. I snapped out when I heard her name. It thundered and reverberated through the amphitheatre. A rich, deep, tone filled with anger and sadness. Two syllables that came through God’s lips. She was standing before Him. My daughter looked so tiny standing before God. He was easily 3 times her height. Her head was about even with the bottom of the armrest on the white throne. Upon hearing her name, she, as those before her had, lost her resolve to stand and fell into a sobbing mass at His feet. Her cries and wails echoed through the amphitheater. God motioned to the angel on his left with one of the smaller books. The angel looked down and began to read. I could hear every word spoken clearly. It felt like a knife. The little girl that I had once rocked to sleep was receiving her final judgement, and there was nothing I could do. The charges were numerous. Hate. Bitterness. Drunkenness. Neglect of her child. Envy of her boss. Profane speech. Greed. Pride and vanity. Promiscuousness. Slander. Gossip. Lying.

With every charge, Jackie’s became visibly more distressed. She began to shake more and more. Her cries and sobs became louder. Still, the angel read on. By the time the angel finished, Jackie was laying prostrate on the ground at God’s feet, convulsing in fear and anguish. My baby was begging for mercy. Through her sobs, she kept asking God for forgiveness. No longer was she calling him a fairy tale, she was calling him Lord. She was stuttering through examples in her life where she’d done good things. She’d volunteered at a soup kitchen. She’d donated money to help buy school supplies for underprivileged kids. She’d began the process of forgiving me and her mother. She’d gone to church a few times. She’d done her best to raise Anne as a single mother. She listened to Christian music. The car crash had cut her chances short. The list went on and on.

God began flipping pages in the book in his lap. I could hear the rustle of each page as it slid against the others. He flipped through them one by one, scanning the list of names within. My heart dropped in my chest. Jackie Myles was not in that book. I knew it. Anne knew it. Jackie knew it. The millions of others all around us knew it. After a few minutes, God looked up from the Book of Life. Jackie lifted her head from the ground and her eyes locked with those of the Creator of the Universe. It was as if she was struck dumb and silent. Suddenly, she ran out of words to say.

“Jackie, you never accepted my son Jesus as Lord and your name isn’t written in His book. Depart from me, I never knew you”

That was it. It was over. Not only is God a God of love, but God is a God of righteous judgement, and His judgement had to be passed down. There was nothing my daughter could say. There was nothing she could do. All of her money, her beauty, her career, her goals, her mistakes and her dreams amounted to nothing in the light of eternity. The blood of Jesus didn’t cover her life and her sins, and thus God had to punish the sin that He saw before Him.

As it had for all those before, a deep trench opened in the ground before the throne. From my vantage point, I could see a red hot darkness. Even from where we stood, far away from the throne, I could feel the heat emanating from the trench. The air above was wavy with the refractive heat. A rushing cacophony of blood-curdling screams arose from the darkness. Drawn by a force, Jackie began to slide towards the trench. She found her voice again, and she began screaming in terror. She clawed at the ground, pushing with her hands and feet, trying to back away from the trench. I tried to look away but I couldn’t. Anne next to me gripped my hand tighter. Tears rolled down our cheeks, dripping onto our white garments. Our breath trembled, but we said nothing. Right as Jackie got to the ledge, in desperation, she tried to launch herself over the chasm. She was reaching to try and grab the Lord’s feet, eager to escape the eternal torment she was falling into. She missed by inches and fell into the black. I heard my daughter’s screams all the way down, echoing through the abyss, until they melded with the rushing sound of anguish. The trench closed, and the next person stepped forward. I knew I’d never see my daughter again.

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The truth we need to glean from the illustration above is that the White Throne judgement will be much more than a blip. It will be an event of much pain and sorrow. A culmination of centuries upon centuries of judgement. Many times, Christians do themselves a disservice when they breeze past the few verses in the Bible that mention this. We likely all know unsaved people who are at risk today of standing before that White Throne of Judgement. We all have a Jackie of some sort. What are we doing to help pull them from those flames? Are we standing for the cause of Christ? Are we living it? Are we speaking that truth into their lives every chance we get? Are we pleading with them to repent and get right with a Savior who sacrificed Himself that they would be saved? God calls us to. Pray that He opens doors for you and me to speak that truth. Explaining the importance and need of salvation should trump all of the social awkwardness. It should trump all of the hesitancy. The fear of hurt feelings. The fear of losing friendships. The fear of being ostracized. The consequences of us not sharing are too great. There is judgement coming, and we have a responsibility to love those around us enough to warn them.