Adventists have specialized in the biblical prophecies about the end of time. When we tell the story of the “last days,” we begin with the “investigative judgment” mentioned in the previous article.

Throughout the Bible the judgment is always pictured as a very public event. God does not make decisions about an individual’s destiny in the privacy of his own mind, but in the presence of countless witnesses, heavenly beings who provide an independent verification of the accuracy of the record presented in court.

This court process begins in heaven before Jesus returns to earth, while life here continues its normal course. When the judgment is finished, Jesus returns to earth. (This is the Second Coming.) The dazzling brilliance of the unveiled presence of divinity annihilates the wicked but announces rescue to the godly. Jesus resurrects the righteous dead, then transports them, together with the godly who are still alive, to a glorious paradise called heaven, where they live and reign with Christ for 1,000 years–the famous millennium of Revelation 20. Apparently, the only “life” here on earth during the millennium is the devil and his demons.

At the end of the millennium, the residence of the godly, the New Jerusalem, is returned to earth, and the wicked are raised to life again. The devil and his demons busy themselves with rallying the wicked for a final desperate attempt to establish dominance by capturing the New Jerusalem. As the hordes of the wicked assemble to attack the Holy City, they are interrupted by the appearance in the sky of a great white throne, with Jesus seated on it. All the wicked are arraigned before the throne. They are confronted with the irrefutable evidence of the justice of their condemnation. Crushed by the vivid picture of their folly and evil, they reluctantly bow and acknowledge God is right. They do not worship. They do not yield their hearts. But they grudgingly admit the truth: God is right; I am wrong. Even the devil bows and angrily acknowledges God is right.

Having bowed, however, the devil reaches deep inside himself for some last bit of rebellious courage. He summons his followers to join him in an assault on the city, and some rally to his call. But the entire judgment process has reached its conclusion, and fire descends from heaven to purify the earth in preparation for the re-creation of a perfect biosphere. The wicked, including the devil himself, die in this conflagration.

From that point forward begins the fulfillment of the promise: “Now the dwelling of God is with people. He will live with them. They will be his people; he will live with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order has passed away” (Rev 21:3, 4).

So what does this story mean?

We might not have every detail in our story correct. But the point of the story is what it says about the character of God. We connect our theories about the events at the end of human history with the picture of God given in the ministry and death of Jesus. The “moral of the story,” even the scary stories in Revelation, is God is love. On one hand, if the story did not include any scary elements we would dismiss it as utterly disconnected from the real world we live in. On the other hand, if the story did not help us transcend the fear and anxiety of this world, then why bother telling it?

Hell

Conventional Christian thinking for much of the last two thousand years has seen hell as a place of eternal burning. This doctrine was rooted in the Greek philosophical notion of the soul as inherently immortal. The body was ephemeral; the soul was the real essence of a person and was absolutely indestructible. So if the soul did not go to heaven, it had to go somewhere else. That somewhere else was hell, a place of endless flames.

We view hell as an event, rather than a place. We believe a person is an indivisible whole. If the physical body dies, that means the whole person is dead. There is no separate soul that can inhabit a place called “hell.” The fires of hell happen at the end of time and are designed to purify the earth in preparation for its re-creation. These fires are unstoppable in intensity but limited in duration.

Who will be lost?

Given the facts that Jesus died for the sins “of the whole world” and that God does not wish anyone to perish, why would anyone be excluded from heaven? The answer is not simple, but one classic response of Adventism is that those who are lost would have found heaven a place of torment.

The Bible paints vivid pictures of the society God has in mind. “They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain” (Isa 11:9). “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. For the old order of things has passed away” (Rev 21:4). “In keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness will be at home” (2 Pet 3:13). For some people such an environment would be torture. Imagine Hitler assigned an apartment next door to a rabbi or Stalin being required to yield his will to the directions of a kulak superior or a member of the Ku Klux Klan being asked to sit next to an African at a heavenly feast. Heaven would be hell.

If at the last minute God offered the wicked a passport to heaven, any who accepted the offer would find heaven a miserable place. Heaven would be unending torment to those who have defined themselves through selfishness, oppression and narcissism. We shape our futures through our present choices. God is constantly working to shape our lives by the Holy Spirit. If we are successful in stubbornly resisting the values of heaven here, we would find them oppressive there.

In Revelation, when the wicked are raised to life, we see them immediately joining a movement to attack the city. They do not change their minds. They do not plead for inclusion in the peaceful society. They are stubbornly, adamantly rebellious. This story offers a visual confirmation of the judgment of heaven. If people were given a second chance, they would make the same choice they did the first time.

Answers to My Questions

One of the most persistent obstacles to faith is the problem of suffering: How can a good, powerful God allow the misery of this world to continue so long? Most of the useful answers to the questions surrounding suffering have to do with the nature of freedom and love. But while these explanations offer hints of rationality in the sea of human hurt, they never reach the bottom of our heart-wrenching angst. They don’t answer the question, “Why my daughter” “Why my son?” or “Why my lover, my friend, myself?”

Some religious systems dismiss the questions. God is God. You are a mere human. You should submit to God and quit asking silly questions. But these are not silly questions. They are huge questions. And they go the heart of the questions, ‘Is God good?” “Is God trustworthy?” “Why should I worship?”

The story of the millennium helps us deal with these questions. Revelation 20:4 states that during the 1,000 years, the redeemed will act as judges. What does this mean? The eternal fate of every human being has already been decided. God doesn’t need assistance in figuring out the hard cases. The most likely focus of these “judges” is God himself. In the investigative judgment, the lives of people are examined to determine their eternal destiny. In the millennial judgment, the records of heaven are examined to build our confidence in God.

The saved will have 1,000 years to investigate to their own satisfaction the divine-human history. They will be able to trace all the lines of evidence that support God’s decisions. This 1,000-year opportunity demonstrates how much God respects your questions. In this life, God says, “Trust me.” In that life, God will say, “Test me.” Now we live by faith. Then we will live by sight.

The investigative judgment lays the foundation for the millennial judgment by creating a publicly attested record of God and humanity. The records available for scrutiny during the millennium are not videotapes God pulls out of his pocket or his personal archive. Obviously God could create whatever impression he wanted by editing the records, and we’d never know.

The investigative judgment doesn’t happen inside God’s mind. This is why it takes time. It is a public process conducted in the presence of tens of thousands, perhaps thousands of millions of celestial beings. These angels provide a check on the authenticity of the records the saved will examine. That’s how much God respects our questions. That’s how far he will go to win our confidence. God loves us and wants us to trust him. He is willing to do anything lawful to win our love and affection. He’ll even give us 1,000 years to process our questions and to recover from the grief and heartbreak characteristic of this world.

If you are a believer with a simple confidence in God and have no questions, I’m sure there will be other things to do in heaven besides poring over ancient records. But if your spiritual life is characterized by questioning and perplexity, the millennial judgment pictures a time of final resolution. We will finally find rest from our questions. We will receive a full accounting of divine activity (and inactivity). God loves us so much that he will not get on with the business of eternity until he has responded to every human question. That’s how much he respects us. That’s how much he cares.

After the Millennium

The Adventist version of the story of the universe begins with a loving God creating beings who could respond to his love and participate in a joyous, creative friendship. We then follow the story into the dark, heartbreaking world warped and bruised by evil—the world we live in. A world haunted with unanswered and unanswerable questions about justice and love, human freedom and divine initiative, foreknowledge and responsibility. We ache with a desperate hunger to understand how a loving God can tolerate a world that has become intolerable to us.

But the story moves forward. It ends with the restoration of the moral equilibrium and with the restoration of unalloyed love. Every human question has been answered, every doubt has been addressed. Questioners have come to confident, joyous trust. God himself demonstrates a new, amazing trust in humans. He assigns them a God-like status in the universe. God is still God. Humans are still human. But according to the picture in Revelation, God and humans share power and work. Jesus announces, “To the one who overcomes, I will offer a place on my throne, even as I overcame and am sitting on my Father’s throne” (Rev 3:20). This picture of divine power-sharing is the ultimate declaration that truly God is love.