_And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth." _ --Matthew, xxviii. 18.
When these words were uttered by our Lord he had risen from the dead. On this occasion he had with him only the eleven Apostles, whom he had instructed to meet him by appointment at this time and in this place--a mountain in Galilee. A few words they are, but full of meaning. The Apostles saw our Lord in the flesh again; they heard his own human lips utter this truth: that all power is his in heaven and in earth.
How did they understand him? They understood that the Man they saw, the human being who then stood before them, was endued with all power that God would exercise in heaven and in earth; that to rule this vast universe was his right; that to sit on the throne of heaven, to be worshipped and adored as God by every creature, to shape the destiny of this world, of its many nations, of its many families, of every single soul born and to be born in it; to open and shut the gates of hell at his own will, to judge all without exception, each separately at the moment after death, and all together in the great Judgment day of God, is his right and office as the Man, because he is Man in God and God in Man; the Man selected to be the One through whom the Divine Nature manifests himself in all the fulness of the Godhead in human nature.
But what, therefore, is the first thought that must enter our hearts? It is necessarily this: How will that Man receive us when we are called into his presence, one by one, as we leave this world? How will that countenance look to us at that moment? How will those ears listen to our reports of our own lives? How will those lips speak to us in that dread moment?
But why do we ask ourselves these questions? Because we know that we are to meet that Man in God, face to face, to give an exact account of all of our deeds in the body, and that he is the One to praise or blame us, reward or condemn us, receive us into eternal blessedness or cast us out into eternal, never-ending darkness, and deliver us over to the rule of those who shall be our masters in hell.
Can we tell what the result will be? Yes; and to a certainty! If our lives have been good, or if we die in his friendship, the Man Christ Jesus will give us a blessed and glorious welcome; but if our lives have been wicked, that Man will reject us for ever. He will not have us anywhere near him. He will not endure our presence a single moment, nor permit us to speak in his presence, nor ever again to mention his holy name, but will cast us into that region of creation where holy names are not permitted to be uttered.