Book: Beliefs and Doctrines of the New Testament Church

God is now judging every believer who has been called at this time. God’s judgment of each individual begins when God opens his or her mind to understand God’s way of life. With His love, grace and mercy, God gives each one who yields to His Holy Spirit the strength and the power to grow in love, faith and grace and to overcome human nature, the world and Satan the devil. God the Father holds each believer personally responsible to grow in the knowledge of His Word and in the spiritual stature and fullness of His Son Jesus Christ. As the believer loves God with all the heart and is living in faithful obedience to His Word, he or she has the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to him or her as the gift of God. The believer is then judged as wholly righteous and blameless before God the Father. All who remain in this imputed righteousness of faith will be in the first resurrection and will receive eternal life at the return of Jesus Christ.

Those individuals through the ages who have had no opportunity for salvation during their lifetime will be restored to physical life in the second resurrection, which will take place after the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ and the saints. Everyone who is raised in the second resurrection will have the same opportunity for salvation as those who were in the first resurrection. Each one will be taught the way of salvation and will have the opportunity to repent and to accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the remission of his or her sins. Each will be granted the same period of time to choose God’s way of salvation. This period, called the Great White Throne Judgment, will apparently last for 100 years. During this time, all who learn to live in accordance with God’s will, growing in grace and in the knowledge and character of Jesus Christ, will receive eternal life.

By the end of this period of judgment, all those who have chosen salvation will have entered into the Kingdom of God as spirit sons of God. At that time, all who have rejected their opportunity for salvation will be sentenced to the second death—their eternal judgment. All the incorrigible wicked from past ages who have committed the unpardonable sin, willfully rejecting the salvation of God, will be resurrected to physical life to join the living wicked in receiving the sentence of the second death as their eternal judgment. God will destroy all the incorrigible wicked at the same time in the lake of fire. This is the second death, from which there is no resurrection.

 

Scriptural References


I Pet. 4:17 Mic. 4:1-4 Heb. 10:26-27
Rom. 2:16 Acts 10:42 Rev. 20:11-14
Rom. 14:10-12 II Pet. 2:9 Rev. 20:5-6
I Sam. 16:7 II Tim. 4:8 Ezek. 37:12-14