God's Total Judgment

God being the Judge of All is Righteous in all His Judgments. His total Judgment consists of two stages, judgment in the present time and judgment in eternity. There is a logical and scriptural distinction between God's judgment in time (present time and in history) and God's judgment in eternity. It is of vital importance for believers to understand this distinction, otherwise the Bible can be easily dismissed as being inconsistent. Certain statements of the Old Testment Scripture are quite difficult to reconcile.

God's Judgment in Time

The first stage of God's total judgment is in the judgment in time. This is the judgment which is carried out upon the scene of human history and in the present time.

God gave a warning to Israel when He gave the Ten Commandments:

"You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep my commandments" (Ex. 20:4 - 6, NKJV).

The prophet Jeremiah prayed and reminded God of both the promise and the warning which He had given to Israel:

"You show lovingkindness to thousands, and repay the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them" (Jer. 32:18).

The above passages of Scripture make it clear that in many cases in Israel's history, the sins of one generation did cause the judgment of God to come upon succeeding generations, as far as down to the third or fourth generation. Conversely, the righteousness of one generation could cause the blessing of God to come upon many thousand of their descendants.

Let us study some examples of God's judgment in time and in history:

Judgment os Sodom and Gomorrah

A good example of this type of judgment is God's judgment upon the twin cities Sodom and Gomorrah:

"Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens. So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground" (Gen. 19:24, 25).

According to Peter this judgment of God serves as a warning to all those in succeeding generations who might be tempted to follow in sins of the same kind:

"(God) turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly" (2 Peter 2:6, emphasis added).

What were the sins of Sodom? Genesis 19 recorded only the sins of homosexuality and other forms of sexual perversion which has ever been called by the name "sodomy".

It is interesting to read Ezekiel's account of the basic moral and social conditions which led to the decline of Sodom:

"Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom; She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness, and neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy" (Ezek. 16:49, emphasis added).

The Bible does not suggest that the same form of sin will cause every subsequent case be visited with the same severe form of God's judgment. But, it does teach us the unchanging attitude of God toward this form of sin.

In my opinion, the average contemporary Church is in great danger of committing the same form of sins as Sodom and Gomorrah. Furthermore, Jesus reminds us any household or city that would reject the apostles' teaching would receive a worse judgment than Sodom and Gomorrah!

Jesus said to the apostles, "And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city" (Matt. 10:14, 15, emphasis added)!

It is easy to find many local Churches of large congregations of worshippers, with pastors and preachers in some degree reject the apostles' doctrine. If Chruches do reject the apostles' doctrine, how much more households and cities are expected to do likewise?

Judgment of Ananias and Sapphira

Acts 5:1 - 10 relates the story of God's judgment on Ananias and Sapphira. By pretending that the money which they brought to the apostles represented the full price of the possession which they had sold they had committed the sin of lying and hypocrisy.

It is true that there is no suggestion that God will always judge this kind of behavior by professing Christians in such a severe and dramatic way. But, it does demonstrate the unchanging attitude of God toward lying and hypocrisy and certainly serves as a warning to all succeeding generations of the Church of Jesus Christ.

God's mercy in the midst of judgment

Joshua Chapter 2 and 6 relate the story of Rahab.

From the standpoint of both background and environment, Rahab had everything against her. She was a harlot living in a city appointed to destruction. Yet in humility and faith she dared to cast herself upon the mercy of God, with the result that she and her whole household were spared, and she herself, through marriage to an Israelite, became a member of the direct line from which the genealogy of Christ was derived.

The story of Rahab shows that no matter how corrupt the environment, personal repentance and faith of the part of any individual will cancel God's judgment on one's household and call forth His mercy instead.

Believers must take note that God's judgment may or may not be fully revealed in time. This applies both to the punishment of the wicked and to the reward of the righteous:

Paul warned Timothy, "Some men's sins are clearly evident, preceding them to judgment, but those of some men follow later. Likewise, the good works of some clearly evident, and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden" (1 Tim. 5:24, 25).

Some of God's judgment may pass beyond the scene of time to eternity.

Solomon warned that we must not continue to do evil even if God's judgment is slow in coming:

"Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Eccles. 8:11).

Judgment in Eternity

The second stage of God's total judgment is God's judgments in eternity. The Bible calls this judgment as the "eternal judgment" (Hebrews 6:2).

Let us consider the following message of God to His people Israel through the prophet Ezekiel:

"The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, 'What do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying: 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge'? 'As I live,' says the Lord God, 'you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine; the soul who sins shall die'" (Ezek. 18:1 - 4, emphasis added).

The people of Israel in the time of Ezekiel blamed their backsliding condition upon the sinfulness of preceding generations. They implied that the national decline of Israel in their day was due to the sins of their ancestors and so God could not justly hold them responsible for their present moral condition. However, God, through this message by Ezekiel, entirely rejects this form of excuse.

God warned the Israelites that He held each one of them individually responsible for his own moral condition and each one of them would be judged (in eternity) solely for his own character and conduct, and not at all for anything that his ancestors might or might not have done. This warning is repeated even more emphatically a little further on:

"The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself" (Ezek. 18:20, emphassis added).

Notice that this is not the judgment of a nation or a family; this is the judgment of each individual soul. This is the judgment by which the destiny of each soul is settled for eternity.