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The Jurisprudence of the Great White Throne, part 3

No biblical court could convict on rumor. Deuteronomy 19:15 says,

¹⁵ A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed.

God Himself obeys His own evidentiary law. Thus the books constitute lawful testimony, and this law is not only about one man accusing another of sin. The law says “any iniquity or any sin.” The standard of truth is very high. Christ said in John 5:31,

³¹ If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.

John 5 then lists His witnesses: John the Baptist (John 5:32), His works (John 5:36), the Father (John 5:37), and the Scriptures (John 5:39). Hence, even the Son honored the divine rules of evidence. If He did so in His first appearance, He will certainly do so again at his second appearance and certainly at the White Throne judgment.

Paul too understood this law, citing it in 2 Corinthians 13:1. A witness is not only a man or woman but also various pieces of evidence.

We see this in the case of Achan, whose sin was exposed by the Urim and Thummim. Joshua inquired of the Lord, and “the tribe of Judah was taken” (Joshua 7:16). The families of Judah were then presented “man by man, and Zabdi was taken” (Joshua 7:17). The Urim and Thummim in the breastplate of the high priest gave answers, yes or no, guilt or innocence. Finally, guilt was pinpointed upon Achan (Joshua 7:18), according to the witness of Father God.

Achan then confessed his sin, as the second witness. Achan’s tent was searched, and the stolen property was found. This was the third witness confirming his guilt. The point is that the stolen property buried in the ground under his tent served as a valid witness in his case.

Confession of Sin as Evidence

Honoring the law of two or three witnesses, no doubt, meant that some of the guilty ones might not be held accountable for their sin. Perhaps only the guilty man knew of his guilt, especially if stolen goods were no longer recoverable. Even his own confession would provide only a single witness. How can the earthly court handle such cases without violating its own rules?

First of all, the law of the one-fifth restitution is one of the most important restitution laws in the Torah because it distinguishes voluntary confession from conviction in court. It reveals God's preference for repentance over litigation and mercy over maximum penalty. Leviticus 6:1-5 says,

¹ Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “When a person sins and acts unfaithfully against the Lord, and deceives his companion in regard to a deposit or a security entrusted to him, or through robbery, or if he has extorted from his companion, ³ or has found what was lost and lied about it and sworn falsely, so that he sins in regard to any of the things a man may do; ⁴ then it shall be, when he sins and becomes guilty, that he shall restore what he took by robbery … ⁵ or anything about which he swore falsely; he shall make restitution for it in full and add to it one-fifth more. He shall give it to the one to whom it belongs on the day he presents his guilt offering.”

This law is repeated in Numbers 5:5-8, again telling us that he must pay one-fifth restitution along with the original amount that was stolen. The total amount of restitution is 120%, instead of the normal double restitution (Exodus 22:4). Essentially, God reduces the penalty to reward voluntary confession—no doubt because it denotes a change of heart (repentance).

This is one of the most beautiful principles of biblical jurisprudence. God encourages confession. The law makes repentance economically advantageous as well. The law encourages sinners to come voluntarily before judgment. This anticipates 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins…”

Twenty percent equals one part in five. Throughout Scripture, five often signifies grace,. Here grace does not eliminate justice. Grace reduces liability while preserving justice. The sinner still restores the principal. Grace affects only the penalty, and the ultimate effect is that it restores the relationship between the sinner and the victim.

The basic principle that sin is reckoned as a debt is not lost through grace. Salvation is not merely the cancellation of debt that the sinner owes his neighbor. Justice is not done until restitution has been made to all victims of injustice.

This law could become one of the central pillars of jurisprudence of the great White Throne. It demonstrates that God’s legal system distinguishes between those who voluntarily confess sin in their lifetime and those who persist in denial until Judgment Day.

In the present age God invites voluntary confession. Those who judge themselves receive the lesser restitution principle (the “one-fifth” law), illustrating that repentance is met with mercy. But at the final Judgment, those who refused confession until compelled to stand before the Great White Throne are judged after the books are opened. They no longer come as voluntary confessors but as defendants whose deeds have been exposed.

Restoring Fellowship/Communion

This harmonizes with Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 11:31: “But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged.” He stated this in the context of Communion, where the people themselves were to be in a covenant relationship with each other. Yet if one person had wronged his neighbor, that fellowship was broken and needed to be restored. 1 Corinthians 11:28, 29 says,

²⁸ But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.

The Torah had already established that principle. The law favored self-judgment and voluntary restitution over compulsory judicial proceedings. The Great White Throne, therefore, is not God’s preferred venue for dealing with sin; it is the court convened for those whose cases remain unresolved because they did not embrace repentance beforehand. In order to restore the lawful order and reconcile creation, all sin must be dealt with one way or another. For believers, this restoration has already begun. Yet the vast majority of sins in the earth will remain unresolved until the great White Throne judgment.

The main purpose of the White Throne judgment is to bring about the “restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21), where all sin is judged, all victims of injustice have been compensated, and all broken relationships have been resolved and brought into fellowship. This is the purpose of “the fiery law” (Deuteronomy 33:2 KJV).

The common church notion of eternal torment as a judgment for sin is foreign to the law of God. It is based on ignorance of the law of God which demands that all sin is judged proportionately to the damage of the sin itself. It knows nothing about the limits of judgment imposed by the law of Jubilee. Finally, the idea was entrenched into church doctrine after the fifth century by altering the meaning of the Hebrew word olam (hidden, unknown time) and the Greek word aionian (pertaining to an eon, or age). By changing their meaning to “everlasting” or “eternal,” the meaning of Scripture was altered in an unlawful way that hid God’s purpose for creation.

The Lake of Fire

In the jurisprudence of the great White Throne judgment, the books that are opened are first of all the books of the law, for God will judge all things by the righteous standard of His own law, not the laws of men—not even the laws of churchmen. The “lake of fire” is not hell, as many have pictured it. It is the judgment of God’s fiery law.

This “lake of fire” in Revelation 20:14 starts as a “river of fire” (Daniel 7:10) that flows from the fiery throne of God. The fire flows upon those being raised from the dead who have been summoned to stand before His presence. Each one is judged according to his works, but because no one has the resources to pay off his debt to sin, he is sentenced to slavery until the final Creation Jubilee, when all debts are cancelled and every man returns to his lost inheritance.

The river of fire pictures the passing of sentences upon the people; the lake of fire pictures the time that the condemned sinners remain under the jurisdiction of the law prior to the Jubilee. Meanwhile, the believers, whose sins were covered by the blood of Christ, will be given authority over the sinners being judged. They will be responsible to teach righteousness to the sinners, both by instruction and by example as they manifest the nature of Christ. So we read in Isaiah 26:9, “when the earth experiences Your judgments, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.”

Even the laws of restitution are part of that fire. The law does not demand eternal (unending) punishment of any kind. While a flogging may feel like one’s back is on fire, it is not administered by literal fire, nor is it unending. Likewise, being enslaved to pay one’s debt must always end with the Jubilee trumpet. God established these limits on judgment because mercy reflects God’s very nature.